Sunset of Lantonne (108 page)

I see war. Not just the war that is erupting among the families as I was brought down from the mountains. They vie for control over our people with my inevitable death. No, I see a war that will ravage all the lands. This war will not be among the nations, but between life and death, between man and monster. Most importantly, it will be between our world and the magic binding it all together.

My heirs will believe they have protected themselves from all I have seen and written, but that will be their undoing. They will become complacent and fail to see the signs left for the council to act upon. They will allow the enemy into their midst, and all will fall in these cold lands. That will be the beginning of the end for my people, but my visions of this war tell me nothing more about the land I wish to know the most about in those times. I see nothing of the north and nothing of the time period in which I lived.

Instead, I find myself seeing the impossible will happen.

A scaled god will choose to cast aside the mantle of immortality and fly headlong into a sky ablaze, giving his life to preserve the child he owes nothing. Out of emotions his kind were not meant to feel, he will give everything to spare the child from misery. With his death, the great tear in the fabric of magic itself—created through my own mistakes—will finally come asunder, letting horror enter our world, while preventing far worse. I sought this prophecy specifically to prevent this, but the vision I am given says I have failed.

I see a betrayer seeking forgiveness already given. Had I never seen these visions, I would have demanded his death, but all is forgiven now. He will stand at the ready for signs he might never witness. I once bound his fate to death, but I now bind it to saving us all. These few days have brought him back to me and shown me his true intent. He will carry a burden beyond the others.

As I have already written, the time will be known by the betrayer when those whose deaths were already mandated come to him for help. The betrayer will be first met by a lost man, whose preferred color will always be red. The betrayer will be told about war that has come to all the world, and he will know it is time to seek out the fragments of what we thought was power and learned instead to be doom.

The doom we will all face is my own fault, and I have sought to undo my errors. I have scattered the tools to bring about this war in hopes they will never be found, but I am no fool. A vision of the results of them being found likely ensures I have already failed. Perhaps I have bought us time, of that I cannot even be sure.

In those days, the betrayer must safeguard the last of those we thought would cause our destruction and leave them to face those we knew nothing about. He will step back to a time already past or be himself destroyed trying. The betrayer will know he has finally arrived where he must confront the mistakes of his own life when he finds the sheep in wolf’s garb that truly wishes it was a wolf. Perhaps with great effort, the wolf will find its own path and be what it was always meant to be, but its own losses may well lead it astray in time.

There will be six, or there will be failure. The man shrouded in black and white will be a key to the others.

Redemption for what we have done wrong comes from the lowest of people, though in those times, some might not even consider them to be people. Through degradation, they become our saviors.

I will leave the crumbs of bread in the world for the betrayer to find. If those are found by another or never found at all, even the gods will die as the dragon already knows, whether he believes or not. None will be safe anywhere in this world or any other that touches it. Destruction will seek out every last creature across every realm in time, regardless of what they do if at least some of what I foresee is not acted upon.

There is a little more I see, but I need to rest. Guard what I have written, On’esquin. Guard it from everyone, including my brother. They will try to take it from you and call you a liar, but we both know that is one thing you never were. For all your faults, you are the only one who stayed with me this day of my death, even after I demanded your death before it all became clear.

Pray that my wife returns soon and prevents all I have seen from coming to pass by saving me. The dragon’s own understanding of her place in the fabric was that the simple act of healing my wounds was key to undoing my visions, but only if done by her hands. If she does not come back in time…I am the lucky one to have died before all of this began.

In dying, I will mourn for you. I will mourn for the world I leave behind and the nations that will suffer at the hands of those who believe they follow my wishes.

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The first chapter of the lost prophecies of Turess.