My mind snaps back to a world covered in a white haze and filled with danger.
A dizzying whirl of strikes, all blurred, glint and spark in the air around me as the Frost King fights the seemingly formless enemy that has come for us.
Resolutely, he holds me to his chest as his swords skillfully slice and cleave, shrieking and flashing through the haze.
My arms have fallen to my sides, my head threatens to tip back, and my weight drags me down, my pelvis to his upraised knee and my feet on the ground.
The warm water is painfully near and at the same time, treacherously far, a glistening mass lapping at the rock near my left foot. Each time it comes closer, the Lethian threads draw farther back from my toes, as if they’re preparing for me to immerse into the liquid.
I thought my toes might be blue, but they’ve progressed to a deeply dark shade of purple, much like the web of thick threads rapidly weaving around us.
I can only see the web building from the sides; my range of view is limited, but the lattice grows, located cleverly outside the reach of the Frost King’s sword.
If he let go of me, he’d prevail, but he seems determined to hold me tight.
I should panic, but I have no energy for it.
The web begins to close in around his back and then?—
A gentle flutter fills my chest. The sensation of a bird opening its wings grows within my heart, its feathers beating against my ribcage.
An Oracle vision. My first clear vision in days.
As much as I welcome it, the timing couldn’t be worse.
There’s nothing I can do to prepare for the way my body will freeze during the vision. Even though I’ll remain aware of my surroundings, I won’t be able to move for as long as the vision lasts.
Well. It’s not as though free and voluntary movement is within my control right now, anyway.
My body stiffens as the vision takes hold and I watch, as if I were an observer standing outside myself?—
I’m walking through white mist, my footsteps calm, my right hand outstretched and trailing through the fog.
A narrow path is clear at my feet, black rock sparkling and smooth. On either side of me, shapes move within the mist, making the fog gently swirl, streaks of flowing amethyst dancing in time to my steps.
In my left hand, I hold an ovoid object. Small, the size of an egg, lightly cradled in my palm.
Except that, on looking down, I discover that my limbs aren’t my own. I am not fae.
I am not…me.
I’m part of a whole, a hive of branches and roots that weave webs as they swirl across the ground. As I move, the othersmoving within the mist reach out to me, rough limbs brushing mine.
At their touch, the shape of the object cradled in my left limb transforms, its shell peeling back and folding outward.
The seed grows into a flower, its stem part of my hand.
My gaze is drawn upward into the mist, where tree branches sway and dance, and I am no more than a sapling among them.
Just as my first flower blooms, a blade glints through the mist in front of me.
Steel slices neatly through the fog, cutting across my throat and spilling my amethyst blood?—
I come back to myself with a garbled cry. “Icy sword slicing.”
At my scream, the Frost King’s focus flashes to me.
For a split second, my entire field of view fills with his chilling countenance. His ghostly eyes and high cheekbones. The splatter of amethyst liquid cut across his face and white hair. His unearthly presence gleams against the shadow of the cocoon that has built around us.
