Chapter Text
Chapter ONE: The inevitable ways for which fate goes
Walking through the catacomb Adaine sighs tiredly and debates if she should cast something to speed this up.
The Bad Kids had separated just after entering underground, the place had ‘requested it’ with a sign that Fig had chosen to ignore, making the place angry. It pushed, charmed and trapped them apart. So they ended up separated anyway.
Arthur Aguefort had asked them to come because he had lost a magic hat a century ago and you could only go in once ‘without losing a limb or making yourself crazy’- they hoped this wasn’t literally, but with Aguefort you never know- and he needed it to go to a wedding with it. And when they said no, he said it would be 60% of their grade, so here they were.
She fidgets with the grip of the sword as she walks. Here she was.
The phone call with the others had ended after checking everyone was alright, Riz had found the hat and now they had to find a way out without magic or brute force -they had already tried- just walking. This place was supposed to give you something you desperately needed or seriously wanted and you could only take one object out, but the place would take one object of yours that it wanted and you were carrying… or you could just not take anything and you would simply get an interesting experience.
Adaine hugs Boggy close and waits for an object to appear so she can get out of here. Only Kristen and herself were waiting for an object to appear.
She felt a powerful spell on herself similar to a Detect Thoughts since the beginning and wonders if the reason nothing appears is because it reads the indecisiveness in both of them.
Adaine feels the strange anxiety she gets when she’s about to have a vision yet nothing comes to her. And with a frown from the girl the scenery changes from blocks of concrete to a passageway of windows and mirrors.
Here it is.
She grips the Sword of Sight and with a suspicious yet supportive Boggy, the elf passes the door frame.
Adaine looks around in wonder at the room, a mix between a library and a museum, where it seems there isn't a single corner where darkness can reach. From wall to wall full of books that when she comes close she realizes with a gasp are diaries of the oracles before her. The objects displayed are -after some uses of the Identify spell- magical but most important, from the Oracles themselves, it ranges from a mirror that allows you to show visions or memories, to a blanket that allows you to trance without dreams.
She sees one book-maybe a diary- written by a name she recognizes, but quickly she looks away when her heart starts hammering.
The Oracle does not doubt a second that this is what she wants . Fallinel had refused to share information to help her be a better Elven Oracle unless she returned there to be trained and used how they pleased. She wrote a lot of fuck you’s in Common back when she received the letters. She doesn't know how to control the visions, what to do with them. But she won’t be in the control of anyone but herself. Adaine simply wants to understand herself better in her own time and it makes her angry that a country finds that offensive.
She scowls but keeps going through the room until the end where a weird object is displayed.
In the middle of the room under a skylight, a strange fusion of different kinds of clocks lays on an altar. The amalgamation looks wrong and still as it meant to be, Adaine feels herself get closer. Boggy croaks distrustfully and she stops.
“We shouldn't, right?” she mutters. And the magic frog agrees.
Of the things she learns in the practice as the Oracle it’s that some things are meant to happen and the visions usually make her feel the inevitable moments from the future. She also learns that a little action can change everything, one snowball can make an avalanche.
Adaine feels the vision of something unavoidable, too fast to make sense of it. Images pass her eyesight, feelings come and go and she knows this vision is about herself but nothing seems to slow down. She recognizes the familiar feeling of panic taking hold in her chest.
When her eyes come to the present once more, she feels her hand griping something that isn’t her sword. She swallows and glances down.
And to her horror, her fingers are entangled tightly to the weird clock and before she can react a bright light consumes her.
Some things are inevitable indeed.
He remembers being chosen and how everyone said it was such an honor, such good news, how lucky for his family.
He remembers how his parents had hugged him - he couldn’t remember the last time that happened- and told him this was his true path.
He remembers how the last Elven Oracle appeared before him, saying it was a shame how young he was.
He remembers the Court of Stars examined him coldly and harshly, to conclude he was skinny and scruffy, but it’ll have to do.
He can’t quite remember the order it happened. And still he doesn’t know how to forget that it did.
Some things are inevitable indeed.