A falcon-shaped container appeared out of nothing, manifesting on the same stone table as the empty, blood-streaked bowl. It began to shake and vibrate as dense smoke andlight formed into the face and body of the same man I’d seen in the visions, only he looked much older now, with pitted, glowing, gold eyes.
My mind went to the ritual my aunt had attempted on me, the one where she’d meant to put my great-great grandmother’s spirit or soul in my body.
The parallels suddenly felt disturbingly close.
I began walking forward, closer to the man covered in blood.
I’d nearly reached his side, when a flash of light behind me caused me to turn.
Graham Strangemore stepped through a vortex opening, laughing, holding two drinks in his hands. The image of him there, obviously more than a little plastered, was so incongruous with the priest with the Osiris head and the blood, I could only stare at him in bewilderment.
When he landed on the stone floor, the scene around us abruptly reconfigured.
I watched the priest with his mask and carved, bloody chest vanish.
The green circle, the falcon urn, the curved knife, and the gold and green flames rippled out of existence. The pyramid and its temple vanished, too.
I bit my tongue,fighting a scream of frustration.
Everything had disintegrated in a puff of smoke, and I couldn’t even say why I wanted to call it back. It was an illusion, after all, a chimaeric fantasy. The scene I’d witnessed came from Forsooth’s mind, not mine, and not from anything that happened between me and my aunt. Knowing that didn’t changeanything about how I felt, or lessen my rage at having the whole thing snatched away before I could make sense of it.
All I knew was, whatever I’d been witnessing, it felt important.
It felt like the answer to a question I hadn’t known to ask.
Now Graham and I stood in a shimmering blue field, overlooking a lake that could have been Vulcan Lake, only it was covered in faery lights and small canoes, each of them with a lantern hanging from a curved prow. I saw couples out there, paddling in the still water, and others standing on the grass, talking, holding drinks like Graham. The stars looked iridescent in the sky, but the view in front of me was undoubtedly familiar, and completely unlike what the vortex had shown me.
I stumbled a little in my heels when I stepped backwards.
Graham was close enough by that he switched one of the goblet stems to his other hand and caught hold of me with strong fingers, bringing me upright.
“Hey,” he said. “You alright?”
I nodded, but my heart still thumped too hard in my chest.
I bit my tongue to keep from snapping at him.
I took the goblet he handed me, mostly for the same reason, and noted the color of the drink inside wasn’t cerulean this time, but a pale, new-leaf green. I didn’t recognize the exact cocktail, but I didn’t care. I took a sip, and a sweetness exploded over my tongue. It was almost too sweet, reminding me of a bad experience I had when I was fifteen, with a bottle of peach schnapps I’d tried at a party, back when I still lived in Overworld.
“What was that?” he asked, as I gasped from the sweetness of the drink and lowered it. “Where did the chimaera take you?”
I frowned. It clicked somehow, that he understood this better than me.
“Why am I no longer there?” I asked him instead. “Doesn’t every vortex go to a different place? I saw different images when I looked into each one… they weren’t all the same. I don’t understand why it changed when you came?”
He returned my puzzled look.
“They aren’tplaces,Leda… not really,” he said. “They pull from your mind. From all of our minds. Naturally, whenever someone joins you in one of the constructs, it changes, as there’s two minds to pull from, not just the one. If your visions are different enough, you end up here, which is where everyone ends up after their initial vision fades.” He looked around at where we stood. “This one’s more like a dressed-up version of the Malcroix grounds and campus. There’s thousands of little chimaeras worked into this one… it’s more like a hub for the rest. Which is why it’s the endpoint, I suppose.”
I thought about that, looking around where we stood.
The overall concept was brilliant.
Creative, thought-provoking, even educational, like I’d theorized from what I knew of Forsooth, as a professor, at least. Definitely worthy of the mage considered one of the top theurgists and chimaerists in the world. The idea of using the participant’s own mind to determine where they ended up was absolutely brilliant.
It also excited and frustrated me even more, given what I’d lost when Graham Strangemore stumbled into my construct uninvited. Had the chimaera showed me something significant, after all? Had it meant more,beenmore, than just some fanciful historical reenactment by Forsooth?
Why on earth would my mind have sent me to Ancient Egypt?
