Blade's Edge || Deception Book II ||

Chapter 46: The Claraphim Star Pt.II

"This isn't creepy at all," I muttered to myself as I passed shelves of jars filled with mysterious liquid and gods knew what was suspended inside. "I feel like I'm in Frankenstein's laboratory."

I flinched as I rounded a corner and an eye the size of my head loomed in my vision. It looked like it was staring at me. I watched it warily as I crept past it, and nearly knocked over another shelf as it moved. "Holy gods!" I shrieked, stumbling back and barely managing to catch myself as I bumped into a table. "What the blazing . . ." I trailed off as I looked at the plaque attached to it. "Cyclops eye. Killed by Luke Castellan."

"Nope, I did not need to see that," I muttered under my breath. "Did not need to see that. Do not need to think of him. Not right now." I flicked my hand and a tendril of shadow curled out, wrapping the glass jar in smoke. It flexed into itself like a whirlpool, and the jar disappeared. "Better," I muttered. "Now, where is the Oracle?"

A few moments later, I found her. It. The mummy, slumped down on a wooden tripod stool. What once used to be a beautiful young maiden was now a shrivelled shell that wore a tie-dyed sundress, a wreath of beaded necklaces, and a headband that kept her matted, long black hair out of her thin and leathery face. I met her glassy, white eyes, and fought the shiver that rolled down my spine.

Not giving myself the time to chicken out and run back downstairs to avoid the inevitable fate awaiting me, I walked up to her and said quietly, "I think it's time I knew my prophecy."

She straightened on her stool, opened her mouth, and green mist poured out, curling, snaking, and hissing over the floor like snakes. I reined in the urge to release my black snakes in response to it and forced myself to stand still and remain calm.

A voice hissed inside my head, "I am the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. I have awaited you, Clarianna Sinclair, daughter of Hecate yet not. You seek your destiny. Are you prepared to discover it?"

I swallowed thickly. Maybe it would have been a good idea to bring my wolf. I didn't need to fight, but she was good emotional support. "Yes."

When the word left my lips, the green mist thickened, swirling around me in a funnel until I was surrounded and couldn't see anything beyond the wall of mist. I forced my feet to remain firmly planted, even as I felt the rest of the world fall away. This isn't right, I thought. You're not supposed to become trapped in a cyclone of mist.

Then, amid the smoke, images coalesced.

I saw the endless, smoky mist of Chaos and all the matter of the universe suspended inside it. The birth of Gaea and the lovely green and blue planet that I called home. The life that Gaea breathed onto her body, the rise of mountains, the tides of seas, and the creation of all the wonderful creatures that roamed the wild, untamed land. A flash of light that was replaced by a sea of stars in the sky. The figure of a woman with curly black hair and a flowing green dress with a man that wore the pattern of the sky on his skin.

Then, the serene scene vanished, replaced with a sky of oppressive grey clouds, flickering lightning, and a world where the ground shook, rivers flowed, and the cries of a mother filled the world with pain and agony. A world of darkness, where even the glow of candlelight and the smile of the woman at her husband masked a devious scheme of death. The glint of a silver scythe, The splatter of golden blood. The cruel, wicked smile of the Titan king.

Then everything vanished, the illusions of the mist dissipating. Before I could even think, "That's it?" it solidified before me, this time back to the misty space of Chaos. Light, an angry red and black, flickered through the swirl of the cosmos. I glanced to my right and found the sleeping figure of a woman curled in a faint ball of flickering blue, a ghostly, insubstantial figure of the husband she'd killed floating above her while a deep red glow emanated from the slumbering dome beneath her.