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Natalie
Islept for an hour before waking up again.
Unable to go back to sleep, I got up and went to my home gym, working out until sunrise in the hope that exercise would help silence my thoughts.
It didn’t.
All I could think of was what had happened at the festival. I hadn't heard of any casualties, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Even if everyone had managed to get away, it must have been extremely traumatizing. After all, those born in this realm like Rehema had never experienced having their lives at risk.
I tried not to think about my conversation with Lucian—about what we guessed was going on—but that didn’t work, either especially when I remembered something that I hadn’t mentioned to him, something important.
I thought back to the dryad who’d attacked me in the café. Rehema had pointed out how strange his behavior had been, but we'd brushed it off as a rare occurrence. Even Lucian, who’d been there at the time, didn’t think anything of it.
But what if it all was connected?
That dryad had been angry—really angry—for no reason, just like the florkin, although his eyes hadn't been red. I didn’t know if it was disease or not, but something was coming. Or maybe it was already here.
After taking a shower, I awakened my power and tried to force myself to get a vision but to no avail. I’d tried and failed to do this in the past, but since the magic in this realm was stronger, I thought it was worth a shot.
Then I decided to revisit the memory of my vision, over and over again, as if some new detail I hadn’t noticed before would appear. I knew I was grasping at straws, but I didn’t know what else to do.
It was only when I got a message from Lucian that I snapped out of the obsessive daze I was in.
Within a few minutes, I’d teleported to the location where he asked me to meet him—the field the festival had been. He wasn’t there until suddenly, he was.
“Come here," he said, holding out his hand to me.
He pulled me forward, and I stepped through some sort of barrier, which was obviously the reason I hadn’t seen him right away. I squeezed Lucian's hand as he led me over to study the ground where the florkin had been. Floating lights had been set up around the area, so we couldn't get too close, but we didn’t need to. It was hard to miss the fact that the earth looked scorched, as if there had been a fire.
But it wasn't black, as I’d have expected. Instead, it was red. And a red mist rose above it, drifting upward.
I covered my mouth, and Lucian took that as a sign to lead me away from the scene. "Did someone burn the body or something?" I asked as we stepped past the barrier.
He shook his head. “No. Its blood did that.”
I looked behind me, although I could no longer see anything beyond the camouflage barrier. A white wolf in his final form stepped out of the forest and nodded to us as Lucian led me away from the area.
“I’m guessing that’s not normal, right?” I asked.
Lucian shook his head. “Definitely not. But we have no idea what happened in there. The gods came earlier today and collected the body. This area is now off-limits, but I called in a favor so we could see it. No one is talking. Everyone knows just as little as we do well, less, actually, because they aren’t aware of your vision. But we were right. Something serious is going on here.”
Goddess, I didn’t want to be right about this.
“Did anyone die last night?” I asked as we walked into the forest, leaving the field behind. I sighed with relief when he shook his head.
"Many were wounded, but thankfully no souls were killed. The gods will discover what’s going on and put an end to it.” He turned to me. “I don’t want you getting involved with this. I know you're an Enchanted, but there are other Enchanteds in this realm. We don't know if any of them have had similar visions, but so far, no one has said anything.”
He tipped my chin with his finger. “So I’m asking you to keep quiet about this. I don’t want you saying anything to anybody, including Rehema and Brian. I think we should leave this up to the gods to sort out. Because you were right—something like this would definitely cause a panic, especially after last night. And . . .” He stared into my eyes. “I don’t want you going around the forest searching for other infected animals, either. Okay?”
“I wasn’t going to do that,” I mumbled, but he didn’t look convinced. “I would have asked you to come with me.”
“We’re going to let the gods handle this. They’re sensitive about things like this. They fight among themselves, but any unrest among the souls really bothers them. This realm isn’t perfect, but it’s peaceful.”
“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll stay out of it.”
“But I need you to tell me if you have any other visions.”
“If I do, we’ll have to tell the gods. Then I’ll be interfering in what they’re doing, whether you or I like it or not.”
