“There’s a dozen revenant masters in that room.” Dorian stared at the image as it flickered out to show us the room. “Can we see more of Itzarriol?”
Xiu nodded and the scene changed.
The sight of an electric-blue blade snapped across the visionary window into the Immortal Plane, swinging close to the ghostly leg of a harvester. The harvester jerked back, trying to evade the blade’s end. The hunter gauntlets allowed them to grapple with the harvesters easily. A group of harvesters was attempting to flee into the distance, but a line of hunters ran after them. My heart sank with dread. The rulers had clearly developed a way to restrain the mysterious harvesters, the shadowy creatures forced to pull energy out of souls for the ruling class. The hunter dragged the harvester backward, across a barren desert with jagged rocks on the outskirts of the Immortal capital.
The image changed again, this time to a flash of troops, hundreds upon hundreds of hunters, lined up in marching ranks. Their boots glinted in the amber soul-light. White skimmers drifted across the sprawling stone plaza. It looked like snowfall, from our angle. Had they ramped up production in the passing months? My tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth. It was horrifying to see so many of them. A brief glimpse of makers in shackles, glittering with electric-blue sparks if they resisted, infuriated me. The rulers were forcing every single caste into submission.
“We only have a few glimpses left,” Xiu warned. I swallowed hard, knowing that we needed to prioritize, even if it was hard to concentrate with the overwhelming images before us. Irrikus was preparing an army. Hell, he already had one.
“Can we see alternate timelines for what Irrikus might do in the future?” Dorian asked.
“It’s possible, but in this case, there are too many potential futures.” It was Sen who offered this explanation, her dreamy voice noticeably flatter. “We cannot analyze all the possibilities to determine the most likely, not in the time we have left.”
And we need to make the most of it. Determination sharpened my vision. We needed to focus. There were revenants, and likely the old board members, who were still at large.
“They’re working with allies in the Mortal Plane,” I said. “There was an old governing board at the organization I worked for. They were arrested for their work with the rulers, and then freed by the Immortal Council with a revenant attack. Can you find them? I can imagine my uncle… he was among them.”
Xiu closed her eyes with a look of intent concentration, but they shot back open. “I’m having difficulty looking into the Mortal Plane. It feels like there’s interference… I suspect the tear is interrupting our connection with the lowest plane.” She shook her head. The Mortal Plane wasn’t an option.
Even Un scowled with displeasure. “There’s so much going on there. It’s like nothing but noise comes back when we try to reach out. There are too many creatures… too far away.” He sent a wary look at his comrades, an unusual slip in his typical confidence. If Un’s worried, that’s not a good sign.
Dorian shifted beside me. We exchanged worried looks, as well. Who else could we look for?
“I’m trying to think of ways to search for the revenants, but there’s no way to see them in the Mortal Plane if there’s this much chaos going on,” I said. He nodded and then stiffened, as if suddenly remembering something. “What?”
“Sabal came for Myndra in the Immortal Plane,” he pointed out. “Could Myndra still be in the Immortal Plane?”
I nodded and concentrated on the thought of Myndra, finding it difficult not to think of her sister, as well. Their separation had been devastating, even if I wasn’t especially close to either of them. I couldn’t imagine being in Sabal’s situation when she heard the news of her sister. Myndra’s turning into a revenant had destroyed Sabal… enough for her to come to the Immortal Plane and search it all by herself. “If we find her, perhaps we’ll see the other revenants.”
A long shadow passed over the image. I got the feeling that this might be one of the last images we saw. I focused, taking in every inch of the vision, as the image gradually began to lighten. It was somewhere dark and dreary, unfortunately. I could make out the soft glow of soul-dim light somewhere outside a small chamber.
Myndra sat slumped against iron bars with her forehead against the metal. Her dark brown arm was threaded through a gap in the bars. Sabal was on the other side of the bars, free in a passageway. Her hand clutched Myndra’s in a vise-like grip. It was a heartbreaking image, two sides of a coin linked by hands through bars. So, Sabal had found Myndra in the end and taken her somewhere safe. At least something good had happened while we were gone.
Clean but ragged bandages covered Myndra’s forehead and most of her face. Her new hair stuck out in wild black tufts through the bandages. She trembled and bounced her head off the bars. Sabal whispered sweet, soothing words I couldn’t quite understand.
Dorian swore.
“What?” I asked, desperate to know what they were discussing.
“It’s a vampire lullaby,” he replied in a strained voice. “It’s what parents sing to their children to get them to calm down.” A deep pain moved just beneath his rigid composure. His glacial eyes softened.
The image suddenly rumbled.
“That’s not us,” Xiu blurted. I stared, alarmed, as Sabal jerked back from her sister to look through whatever doorway or window was providing the light. Her brilliant green eyes hardened, almost glowing in the darkness.
“I’ll be back,” she whispered to her sister. She rushed to a doorway and poured out of a shack-like building. The ground, I recognized, somehow. It was dirt, but oddly flattened… as if it had been purposefully set up for a kind of encampment.
“Where are they?” I pressed. I had a feeling I knew, but it was difficult to tell in the darkness. My heart raced as the arbiters struggled to stabilize the image. It was flickering like a television with poor connection.
“This will be the last image.” Xiu’s voice was strained. The image fluttered and gave another terrible shake. It was the ground itself, trembling. Sabal was flung to the dirt.
She looked up from the ground of the training camp. She wasn’t alone. I spotted a few other figures, wearing ragged vests that looked very familiar. My heart froze in a moment of dreadful anticipation.
The light changed as a shadow of a long, serpentine body fell over the already dim camp. It was a shrieking decay. Not far behind, an armed force of flying skimmers and shadowy creatures flew toward the training grounds. Yells echoed in the distance. Wildlings screeched, using horns to trumpet a warning of the oncoming attack. Lanterns lit the tops of the partially destroyed walls. The camp flickered to life.
Our allies were under attack.
4
Lyra
Our allies spread across the training grounds. The walls had been repaired, but the entrance had a handful of rougher repairs with stone patchwork that didn’t perfectly match. Craters from other battles littered the ground, but most were filled in with stones from the Vanim mountainside. They must have been attacked continuously since we left. The ground trembled, summoning more fighters from the barracks in the middle of the camp. They wore the same clothes we'd seen in one of our weird visions, showcasing vests of varying ranks. Wildlings, vampires, and makers scattered inside the perimeter of the camp.