Chapter Ten

  “Come on, then. You’ll get nowhere if you keep lazing about like that.”

  A distant voice called to me, pulling me from the deep state of rest I was in. I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was stars. Hundreds upon hundreds littered the sky, in all kinds of colors and brightness. How long was I asleep? Hours? Long enough to be night time. Shit. We were supposed to be in Ravenwood by now. I hauled myself up into a sitting position, and my breath caught. There was no mossy clearing. This was not the dryad’s forest. This was… nothing. There were no trees, no river, no sky. Not even any sounds that I could pick out. It was as if I was sitting among the stars themselves, like space had just swallowed me whole.

  “Finnegan?” I called, but my voice seemed to echo around and into the darkness. “Sahara?”

  The voice chortled at me from afar. “I know you’re a bullhead, but don’t be stupid, kid. Come. You’ve much to discover, and time is limited.”

  “Why is time limited?” I finally stood, looking around for whatever I was speaking to. The ground beneath my feet was missing. I was standing in pure shadow. When I faltered, a small path of stars finally exposed itself among the foggy floor. I started along it, not sure which direction I was supposed to be going. Images danced along my eyesight in the stars. Constellations all around me replayed moments of my life; My parents building my house, my sister and I running through the town market. The night of the massacre. I stopped to watch that one, my mouth going dry. This was the scene that haunted me, night after night, replaying in third person by a bunch of burning orbs in the sky in front of me.

  I swallowed down the ash feeling in my mouth and shut my eyes right before it happened. I already knew how it ended. So I continued forward, watching more scenes unfold. I watched our father, kissing Gia on the forehead as he left Haven to seek revenge for Mother. I watched my life after that at Haven, fighting with Gia constantly. Sneaking out against the Elders’ commands to go watch the townspeople below the mountain. The day I’d finally had enough and left for good. Then came my time at Shane’s, when I first came to Sailor’s Rest. When he took me in off the streets when I was just seventeen years old. It was all there. I watched as the stars played though everything, acting out my entire life story in front of my eyes. Valen’s outpost was mostly dark and muddled, as if there was some sort of interference, but it was there. Once it got through the battle with the dryads, they all scattered and faded back into the inky space around me. So, no seeing my own future, then, I thought to myself.

  Footsteps echoed around me, not coming from any particular direction. I spun around, frantically looking for the source. I looked all over, and when I’d finally made a full circle, someone was standing directly in front of me. He was my height, and average built. He didn’t appear threatening, at least, as he just stood there with his hands in the pockets of his black slacks. The white shirt he wore was unbuttoned halfway, and his sleeves were pushed up to his elbows. I couldn’t quite make out his features or skin, though. It seemed almost translucent, as if it was made out of the stars themselves. Hells, maybe it is, I thought.

  The second his chuckle rumbled up from his chest, I knew exactly who he was. My mind greeted him like an old friend. “No, it’s not.” He answered my question out loud. “This is the Plane of Stars. You’d shit yourself if you saw yourself in a mirror right about now.”

  The comment immediately had me looking at my skin. I raised my arms and stared at my own hands in disbelief. I, too, was completely see-through. Thousands of stars, galaxies, and cosmic dust littered the space beneath my skin. I furrowed my brow, but said nothing. He spoke again instead, the sound of his voice coming in through my ears instead of directly in my head shook me a little. “It’s good to finally put faces to names, Rune. You can call me August. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m sure you have questions. I don’t have a lot of time, but I wanted to speak to you about it in person.”

  Damn right I had questions. I had a lot of questions, about everything happening right now. Like why I’m here, for starters, or what HERE actually is. Or why I’m suddenly a whole damn cosmic ghost watching my life play out in front of me as if it were some sort of performance. And what in the Goddess’s graces was happening to Finn and Sahara. I scoffed and began pacing, rubbing the back of my neck. “Listen, Gus, I don’t know why you brought me here. In case you missed it, though, we’re kinda in a dangerous spot out there in the Material Plane, and I would like to have a body to return to. So, I’ll give you five minutes to explain what’s going on, and then you send me back.” His lip was slightly curled into a sneer when I finished, looking like he wanted to break my jaw.

  “August. My name is August. Honestly, it’s like you were born deaf instead of Blessed. And I CAN’T send you back. You’re here because you pushed your Blessing past the point your body was able to channel. Consider this the recovery period.”

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  I stopped pacing and thought back to the blue aura that had burst from my skin and soaked into Sahara. “She’s okay though, right? The counter-spell worked?” The question earned a single nod. “So…” I mulled over his statement, “I’m essentially stuck here until-”

  “Until you’ve recovered enough to wake, yes.” He finished for me.

  “So, why did you choose until now to meet me? And why are you in my head to begin with?”

  He chuffed at this. “I was just a figment of your imagination, according to you. I remember Gia telling you to get your head out of the clouds after your father left. We used to talk often, and then you cut me off. After the raid. I never left, though. I’ve been watching. And when you left Haven, I took the liberty of re-integrating myself. ” He sighed a little, looking to the sky as he continued. Images danced in the stars around us, portraying the timeline again as he spoke. However, instead of continuing through Haven after the raid, hidden deep in the mountains, the stars shifted into something new. Something I’d never seen before. Now, it acted out the story that August was narrating. They displayed a grand castle, nestled in the darkness. A hall, and a long table filled with people of all races. Some had wings, some had animal features, and all were facing the end of the table where an empty chair lay in wait. A younger August approached the table and nervously sat, staring at the head of the table where Selune sat.

  “I’ve been a consort for Selune since the extinction. Each who bears the Blessing of the Goddess has an advisor, and when she learned that I was an advisor to one of the last Blessed Children, she insisted that I join her council. We’ve been monitoring the Mortal Planes very closely for some time now.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms, and the lights around him scattered back into the darkness.

  “There’s a certain unspoken balance among the gods here, Rune. When one entire race is completely wiped out in the name of a god, there tends to be a bit of friction amongst them. When your homeland was slaughtered allegedly in the name of Tyr, it was out of fear, not worship.” I remembered some of my mother’s final words, when she spoke of a cowardly king and raging war gods. The questions that churned my brain since childhood came to surface again, finally being answered ten years later. “There was a prophecy, many moons before your time. In the time when Selune herself freely walked the Planes. The Seers of her time had inscribed it into the cosmos.

  In a time where demons walk free, a king shall fall from grace,

  While seeking power from a god in a desperate place.

  He shall become the Tyrant, feared by all

  But under the moon’s gaze he will fall.

  He will be swallowed by a scorned woman’s rage

  And the shifters will rise with the new day.”

  My heart stopped as the pieces clicked in place; The letter talking about a prophecy, the King being paranoid and wiping out an entire species, and Valen’s crew seeming doggedly determined that I’m useful in his schemes. It all made perfect sense. I was just a pawn in some stupid game because someone heard a poem from a millennium ago. Slowly, rage started to bubble up from deep in my gut. They could’ve been saved. The gods knew this would happen. They watched it play out and didn’t lift a finger.

  “Don’t go there, Rune.” August growled, lowering his head to look me in the eye. “It won’t end well for anyone. They didn’t know this would happen. Even Tyr did not command for your people to be outlawed, or eliminated. That responsibility lies solely on the Tyrant King. He made his decision based on paranoia and power-hungry rage. And now it’s your responsibility to bring your people back into the world. You have to restore the balance. You are the last of the Blessed shifters. Have faith, continue the path. The demon-spawn is actually working in your favor, although it’s for personal motives more than the greater good of all. It will take time, though. Build relationships, train your skills and your mind. Your time will come, if you just stay the course. And don’t do anything stupid, please. There might not always be someone like Finn or myself there to watch your back.”

  His gaze suddenly snapped up to the sky. “I have to leave now, she calls me back. You should rest now, you’ll wake sooner. We’ll talk again soon.” With that as his farewell, he took a step back. I watched with curiosity as stars flocked to him and materialized into massive blurry shapes on his back. In their place, a large set of grey wings shimmered into existence. Holy shit, I thought to myself. I should try and magic myself some wings sometime.

  August burst out in a hearty laugh, the first time I’d ever heard him truly laugh more than a chuckle or snort here or there, and launched himself into the sky above me. “Maybe someday, Rune. Keep practicing with your Blessing.” The inky sky swallowed him up, and I was left alone in the Plane of Stars.

  As his words sank in, my vision started blurring. This is exhausting. He always told me I was meant for more than that cave, but I never would’ve guessed I’d end up in a mess like this. The stars scattered, leaving me in complete darkness. I guess the only thing I can do now is wait. I decided, and sat down right where I was. In both this Plane, and my own. I laid down on my back, hands behind my head, and closed my eyes. I just hope Finn and Sahara don’t presume I’m dead and try to burn my body or something. I laughed at the morbid joke, how ironic it would be. I save her, and in response they think I died and killed me. A true bard’s tale. I sighed, and let the deep sleep overtake me once again.