Chapter 679: A Moment in Fate
The fourth vision was even harder than the second. Strands of Fate repelled each other like magnets, leaving me stranded in my soul space, surrounded by a chaotic, tangled mess of scenes. Every time I tried to force them together, my soul quivered under the strain, weakened from the stress of the last vision.
Finally, I cobbled together a few, gaining some momentum. The rest of the weave snapped into place, giving me a glimpse of the battle raging above the spire.
The sun kissed the horizon, half-obscured by the caldera’s distant wall. Walls of ash smothered the oncoming twilight, the stars hidden by billowing smoke. Fires roared into the night, forming pillars of flame hundreds of feet tall. A few souls scurried around the upper reaches of the spire, a scant handful compared to the thousands who populated it the day before.
I shifted to the top of the spire and was nearly blasted from the vision by a powerful shockwave. A thought sent me some distance away, allowing me to take in the battle safely.
Two dragons flew through the sky without wings, moving like serpents slithering across a lake. They reminded me of Fyren, in a way, and the other fire demons. Their scales were igneous black, with the seams between them glowing with lava. Fire dripped from every angle of their body, and their claws and teeth were jagged and long. Their eyes held none of the wisdom eastern dragons were supposedly revered for, instead filled with demon-like hunger and cruelty.
"Sealed for four hundred years," I whispered, absently tracing the lines the slave crest had once burned across my chest.
To a dragon, was that a long or a short time? Were they justified in such anger?
The question struck me hard, setting my tail curling. I didn’t want to empathize with these monsters, but I couldn’t help it. How would I feel if I had been chained for hundreds of years and the ones responsible had built an empire over me? Would I be angry to learn they used my power to warm hot springs, or named their nation after me?
We weren’t so different, after all. There were too many parallels to my story.