Chapter 20 | Part 4

The vision came that night.

They’d put distance between themselves and the ice cave, moving fast through terrain that grew rockier with each hour. Eldric pushed them until Maris’s legs gave out, then pushed them another league before conceding to rest in a shallow ravine where the wind couldn’t reach.

Maris barely felt the ground when she sat. The Beacon’s new signal had been pressing against the inside of her skull all day, louder now, insistent. She’d been counting the nosebleeds. Four since the cave. The blood came without warning, a warm trickle she’d wipe away before anyone noticed.

They always noticed.

“Eat something.” Xandor crouched beside her, offering dried meat from their dwindling supplies. “Your body is burning through reserves faster than it should.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

She took the meat. Chewed mechanically. Swallowed.

The Beacon pulsed in Dulint’s pack across the camp. Maris felt each pulse behind her eyes like a second heartbeat that didn’t belong to her. Since the fragment’s integration, the connection had deepened. Before, the Beacon had been a distant signal she could sometimes tune into. Now it was a conversation she couldn’t leave.

She lay back against the ravine wall and closed her eyes.

The vision seized her.

No preamble. No warning flash. One moment she was in the ravine with cold rock against her back, and the next she was somewhere else entirely.

Water. Black water, thick as oil, stretching to a horizon that didn’t exist. She floated in it without sinking, or perhaps she was the water, looking up through its surface at a sky made of stone.

The Stable Image came.

The image that had haunted her for weeks resolved with a clarity that stopped her breath. A small boat on black water. A hand reaching over the side, trailing fingers through the surface. She’d seen this a hundred times, always fragmentary, always dissolving before she could make sense of it.

This time the image held.

The hand belonged to someone. She could see the arm now, thin and long, the skin so dark it blended with the water. The fingers were grey at the tips, like they’d been dipped in ash. Not human fingers. Too long, too angular, with an extra joint that bent where a human knuckle wouldn’t.

The arm led to a shoulder. The shoulder led to a face.

Dark skin. Not brown, not black. A deep grey-violet that caught no light and reflected none. White hair, long and tangled, plastered to the skull with water or sweat. And eyes. Eyes that glowed with a faint luminescence in the absolute dark, like embers buried in wet ash.

The face was young. Not a child’s but not a man’s either. Something between. The features were too sharp for a human, cheekbones cut high, jaw narrow, ears that swept to points she could see even through the matted hair.

He was looking at her.

Not past her. Not through her. At her. Directly, deliberately, with an expression that held no surprise. As if he’d been waiting for her to arrive.

His mouth opened.

The sound that came out wasn’t language. It was pain shaped into syllables, a word or a name or a plea dragged from somewhere below language. It hit Maris like a physical blow.

“Help me.”

Two words. Clear as a bell, clear as shattering glass, and then the vision broke apart.

She came back screaming.

Balin was holding her down. Eldric had her legs pinned. Xandor was pressing cloth against her nose, which was pouring blood in a steady stream, soaking her shirt, pooling in the dirt beneath her.

“She’s back,” Balin said. “Maris, can you hear me? You’re safe. You’re in the ravine. You’re safe.”

She couldn’t stop shaking. Her teeth chattered so hard she bit her tongue. The taste of blood mixed with the phantom taste of black water.

“How long?” she whispered.

Balin and Eldric exchanged a look.

“Two minutes,” Eldric said. “Maybe three. You were convulsing. Foam at the corners of your mouth.”

Three minutes. The longest vision she’d ever had. And the clearest.

Xandor helped her sit up slowly, supporting her head, wiping blood from her chin. His hands were steady but his eyes were not.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“A face.” The words came out cracked and raw. “I saw a face. Dark skin, white hair, pointed ears. Eyes that glowed. He was in water, black water, and he looked at me. He said…” She swallowed. “He said help me.”

Silence.

Dulint looked at Xandor. Something passed between them, a communication Maris was too wrecked to interpret.

“A drow,” Xandor said softly. “You’re describing a drow.”

“A what?”

“Dark elves. From the underdark civilizations.” The druid’s voice was careful, measured. “They’re not supposed to exist above ground. Not in this part of the world. Not for centuries.”

Maris closed her eyes. The face was still there, burned into the darkness behind her lids. Young, frightened, drowning in black water. Looking at her like she was the only thing between him and the dark.

“He’s real,” she said. “Wherever he is, whatever he is, he’s real. And he’s running out of time.”

End of Chapter 20.4 —> 20.5: The First Fragment: The Hunters