Revelation
934 Words
Blithe’s discomfort was shared among us as she screeched in agony. An empathetic sweat broke out across Cora’s brow as she did her best to console her. Lesley glared at me as if I had struck her down myself.
“Ander, what are you going to do?” Lucas said not peeling his eyes from Blithe’s body writhing in Cora’s arms.
“I don’t even know what’s happening.” I snapped back. “I’ve only just been told this is somehow my fault. If only my elders had thought to prepare me for such troubles rather than to fault me for them!”
“You’ve been coddled your entire existence.” Lesley seethed.
“It would seem he’s been hindered quite much of his life, no?” Lucas rebutted. “You’ve said yourself he was kept away. Seph was more than fair with his assessment of your blatant hypocrisy. Is our city not now in peril because of decisions you made to circumvent its very happening?”
“Lucas.” Cora said as if to negate him but she quickly fell silent as if she couldn’t.
“I’m not wrong, Cora.” He clenched his jaw. “Everything this city is, started with decisions made at this table long before we got here.” He slammed his finger into the table top.
“You never even gave me a chance to make this into something else.” I said sadly. “You’ve given me rubble and expected I make a temple of it. Where’s your accountability?” My voice broke.
Lesley opened his mouth to speak but was cut off.
“Ander!” Ollie’s voice shot through the great hall and we all turned to see her bursting in, her aura fluttering and snapping around her in waves of rainbow and pale pink.
“What is it?” I stood and crossed the floor to meet her.
“The tide! It’s burning everything it touches!” She thrust her finger backwards to point in the direction I last saw the seeping red. “The trees are about to ashes. The smoke burns!” She thrust her arm out to me and showed me a burn on her arm that was causing the skin to bubble. “It’s forming a wall around the city.”
Rage and confusion blurred my focus. Rage because I hadn’t protected her from it and confusion because I didn’t know that I would have been able to. I cradled her arm in my hands, furrowing my brow when she winced.
“This is far worse than the Grey man.” I grated.
“No one knows what to do. Where to go.” Ollie panted. “It’s like it knows we’re trying to run! It’s surrounding us!”
As we stood the screams began to carry in on the tepid breeze. I glanced around the room expecting to see matched concern but instead I saw, acceptance? Like everyone had already come to terms with my foretold failure.
In not knowing what to do I looked to my elders for answers. I looked for what they weren’t saying. I tried to delve for anything that might make sense of what was happening outside.
I noticed things I wouldn’t have before. Cora had a chip in her fang that caused a slight whistle when she spoke. Samwell wouldn’t enter a room with unlit candles, ironic considering. Phyllup always brought the scent of spice and Earth with her and Blithe tended to hum at the end of long sentences as if there was always a song playing in her head. But Lesley?
Seeing his true image was still unsettling me. The swarm of immediate events had allowed my discomfort to go nearly unnoticed. It was my job to observe and something had just become blindingly clear.
“Where were you when the Grey man came?” I asked Lesley who had returned to hiding his true image.
“I don’t know what you mean.” He responded with a hint of unease.
“Yes you do.” I squinted. “The three of you are never separated and yet for the entirety of the Grey man’s reign you were nowhere to be seen. Only your sisters remained.”
“Your absence was rather unexpected.” Lucas agreed. “But noticed.”
“My absence was none of your concern.” Lesley snapped at him.
“But you weren’t absent were you Lesley?” I breathed.
Like an ill-fitting puzzle, pieces of the past began to rub together. Of the three, Lesley had always been most distant to me. It was speculated that he suggested my abandonment upon my birth. Did this prophecy scare him because of my part in it? Or his?
“You were right here the whole time.” I shook.
“You’re mad.”
“Mad or finally seeing things clearly?” I quaked.
“What’s happening?” Lucas whispered.
Phyllup squeaked and squirmed in her seat. Pleading with me with her eyes. I could see now that she knew everything I was speculating. Did I dare voice my suspicions out loud?
I dared.
“You are none other than the man who seeped the world in grey.”
- Writer
