Chapter 10: Omens
Perspective: Shadow
"Warnado." Shadow said to her apprentice. "Today I will tell you about what people call precognition."
Warnado replied: "You don't seem to like that word."
They were walking through the tunnels, going steadily towards the living quarters of the leadership. The Prophet had temporarily taken up residence in an unoccupied room, where he usually spent his time sleeping or staring off into the distance when he wasn't preaching.
Shadow said: "You'd be correct. Where I am from predicting the future in great detail is futile, we're lucky if the weather report is correct for the next five days. Both scientific and magical 'precognition' usually works by observing a system in detail and trying to predict a future state."
"Like the weather?" Warnado asked.
"Like the weather." Shadow confirmed. "I personally don't think there is a thing such as fate, as in the big invisible hands holding the puppet strings with everyone being doomed to play their role. What there are, however, are⦠constraints or contracts of a sort. Spells but on a much greater level. How exactly they work is not well understood."
Warnado tilted his head and appeared to shrink several inches. "Like contracts with demons?"
"Not exactly. Think of how your own magic works. You want currency and coins appear. You don't think about the shape of the coin or its molecular structure. Think like that but bigger. If certain thoughts are made in the right circumstances, they create a magical spell that will try to influence the world to make the thought a reality. Imagine if someone, by chance, sat on a big node of magical energy and wasn't happy with their current king. If they have affinity for magic that might just create a spell that tries its damndest to make sure the king dies, which may involve making that random baker's son into a tyrant-slaying hero. Whether he wants to or not."
Warnado looked at Shadow, his eyes lit up. "So, if it's like my magic, where does the strawberry jam come in?"
Shadow laughed. "I suppose that's anything the originator of the spell didn't specify. They wanted the king dead but said nothing about the hero or what the hero does while on the way to the king. Perhaps the spell also causes the king to reform but still sends the hero, with all the problems that brings."
They turned a corner. They were almost at the door to the Prophet's lodgings.
Warnado asked: "So, how's all this related to precognition?"
Shadow said: "If one were to look in the correct place with the correct tools, they could spot these magical contracts and with a bit more luck actually decipher them. If they are read correctly, you have a prophecy on your hands." Shadow paused. "However, usually people either go mad precisely from reading the contracts or their ability to read the contracts comes from existing madness. Mad oracle is a stereotype for a reason."
"So, have you ever read one?" Warnado asked.
Shadow shook her head. "No. If I'm being honest most of this is the result of millennia of collective magical research. We have pretty much proven the existence of those contracts, but we can't actually create or read them due to some safeguards our world has."
That was the reason they were going to see the Prophet. Shadow wanted to see where his visions came from. Warnado's own magical senses had developed quite nicely so he would probably be able to share in her discovery. Nexus was so packed with energy that it was very possible that even people without magical affinity could create a contract, the Prophet was probably seeing all of them at once.
Shadow put a hand on the doorknob of the Prophet's room. "However, the most important difference between these contracts and actual 'fate' is that nothing is absolute, anything can be avoided, changed or bent with enough strength or trickery."
She opened the door. The room was bare-bones like the rest of the leadership lodgings: a bed, a drawer, a table and two chairs. However, it had the distinct advantage of offering privacy, something that was hard to come by in the barracks.
The tall and haggard form of the Prophet was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring off into the wall in front of him with his glowing white eyes. When Shadow entered the room, he simply continued his staring, however once Warnado was through the door the Prophet's head jerked around and was fixed on the quarter-demon.
With his shrill voice the Prophet spoke: "A shard becomes a whole, a whole shatters and is a shard again, lonely in the collapse."
Warnado looked at Shadow, slightly intimidated. "What does he mean?"
There had been little talk of shards in the Prophet's past sermons, so this probably was one of his more literal prophecies. The collapse was a known concept, it occasionally showed up but never with anything that would tie it to the rest of the prophecies. Shadow shrugged.
"Now, what we came here for." She said. "Open your sense for magic and look out for any connections he might have with any outside magic. If you're lucky you might even spot a thread to a contract."
Warnado took a deep breath. Shadow could feel how he mobilized his magic to follow his will. He was making good progress. It took measurably shorter for him to get ready compared to previous times. Suddenly he stopped.
"There's nothing." He said.
Shadow was skeptical but when she focused her own sense of magic there really was nothing she could find about the Prophet that would suggest a connection to the magical background field.
"Weird." Shadow muttered.
She walked closer to the Prophet and checked again, nothing. All the while the Prophet's eyes had been fixed on Warnado, even when Shadow had crossed his line of sight.
He spoke another sentence: "The love is distanced but finds a different kind."
That one made even less sense than the last one, either these were new bits of the big prophecy or they were directed at Warnado himself. Shadow contemplated telling her apprentice about this realization but decided against it, he had enough to think about without cryptic prophecies that might not even come true.
Shadow lowered her head and brought her face directly in front of the Prophet's. So far, he had completely ignored her, she wanted to try something to get his attention. "Hey, would you mind not staring at my apprentice?"
Suddenly the Prophet's focus shifted. He narrowed his eyes, opened them again just to narrow them another time. He froze up.
"Another." He whispered, his voice becoming abnormally clear. "Only one. Not two. Only one."
The Prophet's voice suddenly became loud and shrill again: "The leader! The death of the leader! The protector unravels and unravels and unravels and unravels and all unravels and unravels and unravels!"
After that, his voice became too frantic and incoherent to make out what he was saying.
Shadow looked at Warnado, he looked more than a bit disturbed: "I think it's best if we left."
After they closed the door behind them, they walked until they couldn't hear the screaming anymore.
Warnado asked: "Any clue what he meant with that last one?"
Shadow shook her head. "Nope."
Shadow honestly wished that were true.
