Prophecy

Every legend starts with a prophecy. A prophecy of swords or of magic, of good and evil, and an end that is never really the end.

Sometimes, though, there are prophecies that are never fulfilled.

Never understood.

Lost in the depths of time, only heard by the screech of a banshee, or the death of a god, when Time takes back what is Hers.

And these prophecies show us a world that could once have been, and never will be now.

“The half god is First.”

Water is his and his is water. Able to manipulate the ocean’s depths, call the element to writhe around him, power enough to sink a thousand ships. His was to be the long lasting power that will seep through the world.

He whimpered in his sleep, tossing and turning in the depths of one dusty corridor, a small figure hidden in the black, black silence. He lived underground with the other cursed things; the half-creatures that people refused to admit to bearing, throwing away, into the cracked and buried ruins of Mayn, blind and blind and so very, very blind.

He had no name, no history, no life really. He never knew what he looked like and, as he finally woke up with a shout that echoed through the catacombs and got, stumbling to his feet, stepping on a snake that turned around and bit him, he never would. The poison spread rapidly through his limbs, stiffening them and leaving him writhing, screaming on the floor before paralysis set in and he lay there.

Unmoving.

Until he died, with cracked lips and begging, begging for water in his mind.

“The human is Second.”

She loves war. Revels in it, laughs and wails and keens as the blood sprays over her. Her hands summon up her weapons – forged of fire and passion and pure, bleeding fury – and uses them to kill. Hers was to be the weapon, the war.

Vigdis moved furiously, slashing and hacking and spitting at those fools who came near her, her sword slamming down and cracking on shields, before moving down, lightning fast and darting under the rim, slicing open the flesh as the blood spilled out onto the muddy field. It was a bad day for a battle, with the sky hung over and bad-tempered and the sun unable to see the warriors dying for it – unable to send its messengers down to earth to bring its warriors up to heaven. A vicious back swing slammed into someone’s throat, and she took pleasure in hearing a gurgled cry as the warrior clasped his hands to his neck.

“Fall back!” she heard someone yell, and the cry was repeated yelled through hoarse voices as the army was forced back step by step. Vigdis couldn’t make herself move though, her pride screaming in her as she was slowly surrounded by more and more soldiers. They trapped her in with their shields, hacking down with swords and axes, and then she was left to drown in her own blood, drown in the mud that booted feet churned up as they moved past.

Drowning, and she couldn’t swim.

“The aeris is Third.”

To fly is the greatest pleasure for her. There is nothing to compare with the wind on her wings, the freedom that she soars in, powerful, aloof. She was to slip, invisible, from air current to air current, and her words were to be pure silver on the tongue.

She was reckless, foolish. She had always been thus, if you were to listen to what her father had to say in his stuffy, disapproving voice, but she had gone out flying in a storm, and the wind had whipped around her, casting black hair into her eyes and her face. Haezial had thought it had been the best thing she had ever done, until the wind grew too strong and her wings bent backwards and snapped like brittle bones, sending her crashing into the ground.

She wished she had died then. The humans had found her though, and they had brought their swords and their daggers, destroying her wings and shredding them into pieces. She fled, running and running and running, all her defiance destroyed with her wings. And in the dark, Haezial was found again, and only her hatred for the humans kept her from crying her fear to the world.

They buried her alive, and she died with earth underneath her fingernails.

“The dryan is Fourth.”

He is a tree, and not. He was to belong to nature, and nature was to belong to him. His kind; the dryans, the treefolk, were to answer his call and follow his word, and the earth itself was to have opened at his very command.

He slept, merged with his tree, his arms outspread. There were humans in the forest, with axes and sharp edges as they chopped and they chopped, but he didn’t hear the screams of his own. When a dryan slept, it was for hundreds of years, and it was hard to disturb them. Daan murmured a few words, and his tree whispered it out, breathing his sleep to the others, and his sister tried in vain to wake him.

An axe slammed into his tree, again and again, and Daan woke with a scream on his lips, unable to flee from his tree in his panic, forced to stay and feel the blade slam in, again and again until the tree fell and he was allowed to die.

There was wailing in the trees.

And when the humans checked their axes, they found the red of dryan blood staining them.

“And now, Magic has ended,” She says, and smiles up at the blank sky.