Dreams of the Oracle

Chapter 1

Cassandra was never in her own dreams, and she never dreamed about anybody she knew. Instead, places she had never seen would unfold across her vision. Figures would move and speak, and she would slip into the moment like submerging herself in dark water.

Thick darkness enveloped the great trees of the forest. The maple and oak trees rose, black and towering, casting their obsidian shadows over what little light remained. Seven figures stalked through the trees.

The six in front all moved with a calm calculated purpose, but the one in back seemed more intense. He glanced at the darkness, gripping something in his cloak. 

Some of the six would periodically sniff at the air like wolves trying to catch a scent. All appeared as little more than silhouettes, shadows come to life hunting something in the forest.

The temperature was dropping but no wind rustled the dead leaves that carpeted the forest floor. No animals called, no crickets chirped. Any creature with any kind of instincts at all had long since fled the seven hunters leaving them to their hidden work. The six shadows in front didn't even rustle the leaves.

The one in back, his footsteps were the only audible sound. He almost quivered with excitement as he walked. His right hand emerged from his robes and withdrawing a glittering red object...

Cassandra awoke with a start. Cold sweat coated her forehead and soaked her nightdress. She looked around at her room awash with the moonlight. Her bed was in disarray her sheets and blanket twisted into a knot at the foot of her bed.

She got up, placing both feet on the cold wood floorboards and walked quickly to the small desk on the other side of her room. Seven dark figures hunting something in the woods...she had no idea what it meant, but the memory would haunt her relentlessly until she wrote it down.

After listening to her wake up screaming for several nights in a row, her father had bought her a leather bound book full of blank parchment, as well as her own quill pen and ink bottle. She had been small, but her brother, Ashur had already taught her to read and write. Her father was always on merchant trips and didn't have time. In fact it was a sign of how little he had been home that he had waited as long as he had to do anything about the nightmares that had plagued her since her seventh year.

On the nights when he was away, she would cry out in the darkness and Ashur would come in and hold her, sometimes all night until she stopped crying. She had asked Ashur once if he had ever had a bad dream.

"Of course, everyone does sometimes." He had said, but she had never heard or seen him wake up screaming and crying all night.

Papa had given her the book and told her to write down her dreams. At first she was terrified, some of her dreams filled her with such fear that she would jump at shadows just going about her daily chores. The thought of having to go back and record all her darkest nightmares seemed ridiculous.

But she did it, nobody disobeyed father. 

She was surprised at how clear the memories were as they flowed through her pen and onto the paper. She recorded the nightmares in the back and the good dreams in the front and, amazingly enough, the fear began to leave her. She hadn't had a dream terrible enough to wake her up in some time.

Even as the images of the shadow men spread onto a page in the back of her dream diary, she hoped this nightmare wouldn't return as they sometimes did.

She frowned. It was strange that this one should have such an effect on her. She had seen worse, far worse. The old memories chilled her skin, but in this dream all the shadow men were doing was walking through the woods. No, not walking, hunting, hunting something.