The Scrolls of Skava

Return to the Emerald Oracle - Part 3

     The chamber of the Oracle was exactly as Shaun, Thomas and Diana remembered it.

     Above the door was the design of the two legless dragons, facing each other and almost touching, nose and wingtip. Inside, sitting on a throne, was the Oracle itself, reading its book of all the world’s knowledge. It looked up as they entered, the book vanishing as it laid it aside, and once again all three of them saw the Oracle as an older and wiser version of themselves. Shaun saw an elderly battlescarred warrior, the veins standing out on his massively muscled arms and legs, while Diana saw an ancient female cleric of Caroli, withered and shrunken by all the holy power that had flowed through her but with eyes that still glowed with compassion and faith.

     The moment Thomas laid eyes upon the Oracle, though, he gasped with horror and staggered back, turning and stumbling out of the room in near panic, his eyes wide and staring.

     “Tom!” cried Shaun as he ran after him. “Tom! What’s wrong?”

     “The Oracle!” cried the wizard, shaking with horror. “It’s...”

     He looked cautiously around the edge of the doorway, peeping into the Oracle chamber, and cried out again, but this time in relief and wonder. The Oracle was exactly the way he’d seen it during his first visit, over a year before. An old wizard radiating power and wisdom. He had a long grey beard and was wrapped in midnight blue robes sewn with runes and sigils. Himself in thirty or forty years, or so he hoped in his daydreams. “Sorry,” he said, regaining his composure and sheepishly re-entering the room. “Just my imagination, that’s all. I thought I saw something.”

     “What?” asked Diana.

     “Nothing,” repeated Thomas, waving a hand to dismiss the subject. “Just my imagination, that’s all.”

     But he hadn’t imagined it, he knew. He really had seen it, even if only for a moment. When he’d caught his first glimpse of the Oracle, coming in through the arched doorway, it hadn’t been an old and wise living wizard he’d seen. It had been a withered, mummified corpse wrapped in rags, and in its sunken eyesockets had glowed two pinpoints of brilliant blue light.

     No! he told himself vehemently. I’m never going to become a rak, no matter how old and powerful I get. He was calming down now, though, as he remembered that, during their first visit, the Oracle had told them that it was impossible to foretell the future. Not even the Gods Themselves knew with certainty what was to come. Thomas had the potential to become a rak, of course, as all wizards did, and that was probably why the Oracle had briefly appeared as a rak to him, but he was absolutely determined that that was one potential that would never be realised.

     Shaun and Diana glanced at each other in concern, aware that something had happened to upset the wizard, but Thomas was anxious to put the matter behind him and was digging a piece of paper and some lumps of charcoal out of his backpack. “Okay, I’m going to ask the question,” he said, tearing the paper into three equal pieces and handing one to each of his companions. “Get ready to write down everything it says. If any of us misses something, the others will hopefully get it so that, between the three of us, we’ll be able to piece together a complete transcript. Okay?”

     “Right,” replied Shaun, taking a piece of charcoal. “Ready when you are.”

     “Okay,” said Thomas again and he turned to face the Oracle, who was gazing steadily back at him with brilliant blue eyes. “O mighty Oracle, we came to you a year ago in search of information to help us in a quest, but I did not ask you any question. I have come to ask my question now.”