Descendants of the Kings (Book 2)

Ch 19.2: The game of the Gods

Ella turned her gaze towards the sphere, still laying innocuously on the pillows. "I started to clean the ball and it must have triggered something. I had... a vision of sorts."

"A vision," Blaise echoed, interest piquing. "You saw an image?"

"Something of the sort. My visions are usually... different. They can be short, confusing dreams where I see images that make little sense to me. The images are hazy, out of context and have no deeper explanation. It's up to me to interpret them. Sometimes, I can make sense of them. Sometimes..."--she shrugged--"well, they're just dreams."

"This, though, was different. It wasn't a series of disjointed pictures in my mind. This was as if I had travelled. As if I'd left my body..." she bit her lip. "Like the time I was transported into my brother's prison cell. Or when I saw Harrion being murdered in front of my eyes. Except, that was happening at the moment. This... wasn't something current."

At her companions' varying confused expressions, Ella sighed. "I saw the Great Five," she said, not beating around the bush. "At least two of them. I believe I saw Queen Saoirse and King Faolan, my ancestor."

At once, everyone spoke in unison, stepping over each other.

"The queen, the lady who got us into this mess? This is just too much--"

"You saw the Queen? What did she say? Is this even possible?"

"The sphere must be rigged with some sort of spell, I knew it was simply a matter of figuring out--"

Ella slashed the air for them to be quiet. "I don't know," she cut in. "I don't know how such a thing would be possible, and I don't know how it happened. Surely, there was something in the sphere that triggered my reaction, no doubt."

"What happened when you arrived, what did you see?" Aedion spoke this time.

Ella looked around the room, trying to imagine it as if had once looked. A temple. "I was standing here. In this very room. Thousand of years ago, it was a temple," she mused still amazed she had travelled in time and space so far back.

"King Faolan came in with Queen Saoirse. She spoke to him of a vision she had had. The stars had shown her great evil would rise again. It would come upon us and destroy us. Death was prophecied," she whispered, feeling herself shiver.

Despite the fire raging in the hearth and the buttery candles lighting up the room, she still felt the eerie chill of the austere temple. The thunder crackling overhead did little to deter the chill that seeped into her body.

Heavy warmth shrouded her shoulders, and she looked up to find Aedion placing a knit shawl around her. The one she'd left upstairs all those hours ago. It seemed like an eternity had passed since that quiet moment. She flashed him a small, grateful smile and burrowed further into the soft material, seeking comfort.

"She foresaw war?" Blaise's voice was awed, if a bit intimidated. "Thousands of years, and she had the sight enough to see that coming. The power it must have taken..."

"They were something else," Ella shook her head, fingers gripping the knit tighter, remembering the sheer power radiating off them. "They were not elves. They were not faeries. They were something else entirely. I have never encountered the sheer density of power they exuded. It was as if they were..."

"Heavenly creatures," Aedion supplied in a quiet, pensive tone.

"They are power undiluted," Ella murmured. "It came off them in waves. I could barely breathe."

She thought of the Queen, with her halo of light pulsating around her, and King Faolan, his shadows enmeshed with his body. Both of them, extensions of darkness and light.