visions

That night, her dreams were clear as crystal, and just as troubling.

The tallest spire in the city, covered in stained glass windows of mostly people she had never met. A devil man, a ghostly dragon, a man in shining armor. A woman bending stone, a Ravnican gorgon, a golem made of steel. They were intricately detailed, and she felt like she could reach out and touch the people within.

Some of those windows were uncomfortably familiar. A Chrontomian minotaur surrounded in flames. A shark-shaped merfolk covered in clockwork. A catfolk with a fake leg, ducking through alleyways, and a Pith among the lush forests of home.

Next to the catfolk, two figures that turned her stomach outside in and back again.

A dark-furred batfolk, with tarnished gold scale patches and long horns curving backwards, wearing a cloak more at home on the streets of Ravnica than in either of their homes, and a pale-furred foxfolk with two long pairs of inwardly turning horns, bright brassy wings at her back and a long, coiled tail behind her, wearing practical Darastrian dress. Each one had points on their face and limbs of the opposite color, each one was facing the other against a similar background as if forming one cohesive picture.

Her and her sister, there with others.

Entering the building revealed an otherwise featureless room, with naught more than a chandelier covered in candles, swaying to and fro in an ominous fashion. Through a window whose glass panels were not entirely installed, a dark breeze blew through the featureless hall, extinguishing the candles one by one… until only one remained.

One flame burning when all the others had been extinguished.

One spark left.

When she awoke again, buried in notes about the Flux and the Chrontomian founts and myths and legends and songs of times years in the past, her heart was racing. She pulled from her pile of books a small journal with a gilded lily on the front, and began to frantically scribble the contents of her dream.

It lined up with the others she’d been having. Two suns exploding over a vast desert, the streets below her crumbling beneath her, sending her tumbling into the grasp of an army of the damned. A crown plucked off a woman’s head by an oily-looking, clawed hand. A man with puppet strings raining lightning from the sky. A demon of steel and of sadism.

As if she didn’t already have enough to worry about.