Chapter 10

Brynn's knees buckled, causing him to awkwardly drop Seleeku down onto the cold stone floor of Grimcairn. He was dimly aware of his surroundings. A large round room, barren except for a lidless empty stone coffin in the middle.

There was blood. Too much blood.

Seleeku’s eyes opened ever so slightly, thin slits just enough to expose clouded pupils. She spoke a word so faintly that Brynn wasn’t sure he heard it or imagined it.

“… don’t …”

Her eyes closed. Was she still breathing?

“No-no-no-no …” Brynn kept repeating the word as if it might stop what was happening.

“We can save her,” said a familiar voice from behind him.

“Kodroth!” Brynn exclaimed, turning to face him. “Am I in a dream?” His voice cracked with hope.

“No, Backstabber, you’re not,” Kodroth replied. He watched Brynn intently.

“We can save her? How?”

“All I need you to do is place her in there.” Kodroth nodded at the coffin. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

The coffin. It was made of black polished granite and gave Brynn an ill feeling. He looked at Seleeku and then back at Kodroth, indecision gnawing at him. Something was wrong. He knew it.

“She’s fading, Backstabber. There’s no time to lose.”

Brynn picked up Seleeku as gingerly as he could and reluctantly carried her over to it. He looked down at her face, pale yet peaceful. He could still change his mind.

“She’s almost gone. Quickly, now!” Kodroth’s eyes gleamed with anticipation.

A thin rivulet of blood trickled past Seleeku’s lips. Brynn put aside his reservations. It was time. He gently set her down inside.

Her last breath escaped with a wheeze and her body went still …

… She gasped, her lungs filling with air, with life, and let out a painful wail. A dark keen full of sadness and despair and aching. Brynn dropped to his knees and put his hands over his ears, but the sound pierced through them and into his mind, drowning out all else. He was in a void, falling, falling, falling. A numbness took hold. A finality. He had no more thoughts.

He opened his eyes.

He was laying on the ground. Kodroth was nowhere to be found. Seleeku was sitting up in the coffin, looking up at nothing, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“What have I done?!” she cried.

---

“You saved my life!, I-I—” Brynn stammered as he pushed himself to a standing position. “I … What did you do?”

“The prophecy …” she sobbed.

“The Old Ones?” he asked, involuntarily taking a step back. The Old Ones had written down their prophecies, but the Druids of Galdir would never read them. They were cursed.

She didn’t answer. “Nessana?” she asked instead. Her voice quavered.

“It all happened so fast. I’m sure they made it to the forest, though. Are you alright?”

Seleeku pulled herself out of the coffin and stood on Grimcairn’s stone floor. Her legs trembled as she swayed back and forth unsteadily. Her clothes were still crimson from where the wyvern had wounded her, but she was now unharmed. It was a miracle. A dark and terrible miracle.

“We have to find them!”

Brynn placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her. Maybe himself too. “Seleeku, you’re in no condition to do anything just yet. And the wyverns could still be out there. Let’s rest for a moment.”

Seleeku nodded vaguely and slumped down onto the ground. Her carefree grace was gone. “You made a corrupt bargain,” she stated, hugging her knees and staring downward.

“W-What makes you say that?” Brynn asked, surprised. “Do the elves have their own prophecies?”

She let out a bitter laugh. “Yes, you could say that.”

Brynn sat down beside her and opened his mouth to speak, but she looked away. She was not ready to talk yet.

So he studied the room instead. It was round with the walls made of the same kind of rocks that were on the outer side of Grimcairn. They curved upwards, forming a dome above his head. If the magic that held all the stones together were to disappear, Brynn and Seleeku would be crushed immediately by the full weight of the barrow collapsing down upon them. It was not a pleasant thought.

A dim glow suffused the room, as if by a dull moon, but Brynn couldn’t discern where it came from. Everything felt like it was covered in one big shadow. The effect was disquieting, making the interior space seem like the scene of a bad dream. But it wasn’t a dream—according to Kodroth, at least.

Kodroth had told him that the answers to some of his questions lay here, but where? And which questions? The room was empty except for the stone coffin, which was absent of any markings. And the Supreme Warlock was nowhere to be found. Where was he?

“You won’t find any answers here,” Seleeku spoke softly.

“But that’s not what …” Brynn trailed off.

Seleeku gave Brynn a long, hard stare. Finally she said, “When I was seven, I remember crying to my mother about dreams I had of her leaving home and going into the forest, never to return. She told me they were just nightmares. But they wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t make them go away. Three months later and … and she was gone. She went on an expedition in the Far Forest and disappeared. We never found out what happened to her. It’s the reason I became scout. I hope one day to find her out there …”

She hesitated before continuing. “Sometimes I have visions. Or a voice speaks in my head. Other times it’s just a feeling.”

“The prophecies, they’re yours?” Brynn asked. He shivered.

“Yes,” she replied, her voice flat.

“What—Which—prophecy—?” His mind felt like it was mired in mud. He was having trouble forming a question.

She replied as if reciting something from rote memory, in a monotonous tone without emotion:

The one who sleeps beneath the Hollow's Tree,
the one who crosses the River for thee,
the one who plants the Acorns three,
will save your life and set it free.

“That’s—”

“—a terrible rhyme, I know.”

“—about me?!” Brynn’s voice was shrill.

The answer was obvious from the expression on her face. He stood up and backed away from her.

“You used me!” he cried.

“Brynn, no one goes near the Hollow’s Glade. Not even animals. It’s instinct. You, with your … sight, you should have known what was there!”

Brynn stalked around the room. He thought back to his encounter with the hollow. It was true that he hadn’t noticed it when he slept there. And later it had disappeared when it went up into the tree. How?

Never mind. That wasn’t what upset him.

“What about the river? You led me there and convinced me to cross!”

“I’m sorry about that, Brynn,” she said remorsefully. “I had to know. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same.”

He stopped and took a deep breath. Had Seleeku pulled him into her prophecy to save her own life? Could he blame her for doing so? Or had she been fated to ask him to cross the river? What would have happened if she hadn’t? Would she have died? But she was attacked by the wyvern only because the elves had brought him here to Grimcairn. Maybe she would have lived if she had ignored him in the first place. He wished he understood better how prophecies worked. The Druids of Galdir would never teach their apprentices anything about them. He did know one thing though.

“Prophecies are dangerous, Seleeku!” Brynn shouted.

“You think I don’t know that!” she shouted back. “You saved my life, but something horrible has been released into this world! A darkness took hold of my mind while I was in that …” she gestured at the coffin, unwilling to name it. “All it wants is to transform this world into oblivion. It reveled in its newfound freedom. The prophecy … I didn’t understand …”

Brynn gave her a blank look.

“The prophecy says that you will ‘save my life and set it free.’ Set IT free! Do you see what that means?”

“No—” Then the realization hit him. He groaned. “We let the Darkness free! Is that what the prophecy means? It was bound and we freed it?” He thought about the ritual that had saved her life. But at what price? He hadn’t even thought to ask. “I was trying to stop it, not help it! Who knows what it’s going to do now!”

“I’m sorry, Brynn.”

“This is why the druids stay away from prophecies!” he yelled, pacing once more. “They’re cursed! We have huge collections of prophecies from the Old Ones. Tomes filled with them in our Library. No one is allowed to go near them! Terrible things can happen if someone reads them!”

“It’s not like I can avoid mine!” Seleeku retorted defiantly.

Brynn kept talking, barely pausing for a breath. “A long time ago, some fool was somehow able to access one of them. He read one line. One line! You will make the earth tremble, it said. And then an earthquake toppled the city of Freefield!”

He was shaking now. “Why did I come here?!” he ranted. “I should’ve gone back to Galdir and been safe in some prison. Sure, I’d be locked up in a dungeon and the food would be terrible. But at least I’d have a roof over my head and not this abomination!” He shook his fist at Grimcairn’s ceiling.

“Brynn, listen to me, after I was attacked by the wyvern, when you brought me inside, I had another prophecy—”

“No!” Brynn cried. “No more prophecies!”

“It’s important. The prophecy says I have to tell you now!”

Brynn was staring at the coffin. This was all its fault. His exile from Galdir, all the hardship he had gone through to get here. And for what? So he could let loose doom? The exact thing he was trying to prevent? The coffin had tricked him. How could he have been so gullible? He wanted to tear it apart with his bare hands.

“Brynn, it’s just one word! Are you listening to me?”

He brought his leg back, readying himself to give it a swift kick.

“Don’t!”

His foot connected hard against the solid black stone, stubbing his toe.

… creak …

“What was tha—?” Brynn started to ask.

And then the ground opened up beneath him and he was falling.