Fires dancing like serpents. Mist and smoke banish the light. Doom.
Panting, eyes wide open, and chest beating like a drum, Hubdeen awoke.
Startled, Lushayla woke up as well, dragged from the comfort of sleep in which she was briefly ensconced.
“Another nightmare”, she asked.
“A memory and a vision”, he replied. He trembled as he spoke.
She stretched her arms to him and he lay in her bosom, clinging to her as a child would its mother.
Thousands of years ago, Borg, covered the world in darkness and turned the hearts of Feline and all people to evil. Disease and sorrow filled the land, souls torn from bodies to feed the great appetite of the Enemy.
Although it had been generations since his ancestor, Ixarion fought alongside Pax, who alone Noi entrusted with the power to defeat Borg, the memory of it seemed to strike a few unfortunate souls.
The Magisters had told him, “You see what is hidden, what is forgotten”.
But the burden was heavy, and rest evaded him.
Hubdeen left the bed and walked to the balcony, where the cool evening breeze quelled the fires of his spirit.
Leaving Lushayla to sleep, he went to his Seeing Chamber. Being the only one who could open it, he entered quietly and closed the doors. A black stone sat on a plinth. He looked into it. It carried him across the kingdom, like a bird far above the fray of those bound to the urth.
He could see mothers putting their children to bed. Wherever the light of the moon and Tep touched, he could see. As he surveyed his kingdom, the slumber of his subjects, brought peace to his troubled heart.
“All is well”, he said to himself. “Where the night veils its secret, the day brings its troubles”.
A day like the one ahead of him needed clarity of vision.
He commanded the Akhtanit, in the tongue of Kings, “Show me the darkness, cast the light of the moon on the hidden vaults”.
Though he willed the Akhtanit to expose the depths of the mountains, the moon could not reach and he remained blind. Despite his best attempts, there were places even his eyes could not reach.
No trouble had come for over a thousand years, but with visions of fire and death, it was hard to be fully eased.