Rise Of Faeries Book I : Ascension

Chapter 13 - It Was Foretold

10 years earlier...

The Ice Fortress loomed high above the entire hemisphere, so high its top floor was amidst floating clouds. Although that high it was the most invincible in all of the world.

The Pythia of priestesses lived and ruled there from their alters. Along the ice floor, the High Priestess Marcella walked delicately towards the meeting chamber.

Although older than seven centuries, she looked quite young if she had to say so herself.  Her silver hair flowed behind her like a fluttering curtain and every inch of her spelt power that rivalled that of the deities themselves.

The meeting chamber was quite empty except for one person.

She bowed when Marcella came into her view, she kept her head down until Marcella sat on her high chair.

"Good day, High Priestess, " Priestess Riana bowed, she was the youngest to join the Pythia and yet blessed with the rarest of gifts. An oracle who saw the past, present and the future.

A true asset indeed.

"Riana," Marcella hummed the young girl's name, her ice blue eyes pinning the girl to the spot she stood on. She looked scared yet courageous all the same, Marcella liked her.

"Tell me, have you found her?"

Although calm and collected, Marcella had waited nights in and out for this meeting. They had to find her, she had to have lived. She had to.

"I have Your grace," Riana smiled in her voice as she relayed the news, "She is as beautiful as you said she would be. And powerful,  although she is blissfully unaware of it, however."

There it was. The other shoe that Marcella waited to drop, she hated how good news always came in companionship with bad news.

"However?" Marcella was almost at the edge of her seat when she asked.

"She is sickly. She gets sick a lot and each time it gets worse, the healers in that world are almost baffled all the time she is brought in," Riana's baby face contorted in concern, "She needs an anchoring, very soon".

Marcella was scared that she would hear these words. She slumped in her chair, her hands had begun to tremble.

Of course, the healers in that world were baffled, the child did not belong in that world. She only took refuge in it to survive, but it seemed she was not safe entirely. Being that sick was not good, it could weaken her to the point of death. She would be useless even when she came back home.

"Riana..." Marcella called the young girl. She did not care much that her voice had trembled. "What happened to the ancient prophecy?"

There was silence. As if asking the question out loud was scary, Marcella closed her eyes when she voiced it out loud.

Due to the stretch of the silence, she opened her eyes to find the young girl standing still. So utterly frozen and staring right at her with eyes that shone golden.

She was no longer the young oracle Riana with warm brown eyes, she was now a vessel to a celestial being.

Marcella stood to bow in reverence.

"I don't need your respect," the voice was cold and curt, Marcella heard it in her head instead of through her ears.  Riana was just staring at her, nothing of hers moving to indicate she had spoken.

"The Ancient prophecy that you all seek has not been lost. The prophecy is the girl," the celestial being inside Riana narrated.

Marcella was so taken aback by the words that she levelled her eyes that she had kept low in reverence.

"How is that possible?" the high priestess mumbled in shock.

"Why are you surprised?" the being taunted icily, "And yet you call yourself a High Priestess? How pathetic indeed."

The voice was so condescending that Marcella gritted her teeth. Her rebellious side wanted so badly to give a remark but she was not a 16-year-old girl who had the world at her feet. And this was a celestial being after all, however, she hated being insulted by anyone.

"I am the High Priestess, I don't see anything pathetic about that," she could not help herself from retorting. "Besides who appointed me as such? Is it not you?"

An elongated pause reigned. The air around them seemed to carry an electric charge all of a sudden.

"Is this a rebellion, high priestess?"

"Oh, absolutely not," Marcella cheekily replied as she once again lowered her head.

There was a pause. And then a laugh.

"I must have lost my touch to be ridiculed by you lowly mortals!"

Marcella said nothing. She heard the underlying fury in the laugh and that last sentence, even she knew when to stop being a mouth off.

Another stretched silence emanated. So long that Marcella thought that the being left in a fury. When she raised her eyes she was startled to find Riana on the floor and in front of her stood a young man.

A handsome young man whose beauty Marcella had never seen before, his hair was as white as snow and his eyes golden stars. It hurt her eyes to look at the young man too much, this time she lowered her eyes and went to her knees.

"Listen, Marcella, no one can completely shed their identities high priestess or not!" the celestial being told the woman on her knees, this time the voice was not inside her head.

His voice sent her body shaking from the tremors of it alone, the entire fortress shook at the magnitude of it.

"Take the oracle and a few of the sisters of the Endless Cycles and make sure the child gets the anchoring. That child needs to survive, that child is the ancient prophecy that you all believed to have lost," the instructions were clear as day, " She will come to Kaimana when she is ready. Although she will be young, when she comes of age she will be like you...a Priestess of immense power who will not be bound by the walls of this fortress."

"What..what would she be?" Marcella hated her timid yet humbled voice, she was reduced to the lowly mortal she eventually was underneath the power of a high priestess she wielded.

"No one knows. Not even us. But one thing is for sure, she bears the celestial favour that will save you all. Protect her and teach her well. Fail to do so and I will make sure hell breaks loose from above and not beneath."

The heavy aura that surrounded the room just then disappeared so suddenly that it left Marcella cold to the core of her soul.

She felt it in the walls that had always come alive with power, she felt it on the icy floor that was lit with bluish energies and she felt it within her troubled soul.

The disconnect.

They were now truly on their own.