Her vision went dark, and an image appeared of a small girl in boy’s clothing, walking the halls of the mountain. Kerrigan startled as she realized… it was her. Dream Kerrigan entered an unguarded room. The sentinels who should have been standing watch were distracted at the other end of the hall. Oh gods, she knew what was in that room. Dream Kerrigan looked up at the shimmery, iridescent doorway and knew what she must do. She drank from a goblet, closed her eyes, and then pressed her hand to the doorway.
Kerrigan gasped awake from the vision. She was drenched in a cold sweat. Her magic was drained, but not nearly as bad as normal. She kept waiting for unconsciousness to beckon and for her to slip under, but she felt steadier than she had with any of her other visions.
Everything was different about this vision. Her visions had never been that deliberate. This was breaking the theme of them. They always showed images of what was to come in the future. They never told her what to do. The whole thing made her uneasy. Did she follow what the vision had shown her? Or did she run and tell someone what she had seen?
She chewed on her lip a minute as she debated what to do. The longer she thought about going into that portal room, the more certain she was of its inherent rightness. She couldn’t turn her back on the dreams now. She had no idea where the portal would take her, but it had told her for a reason, and despite the recklessness… she knew it was her destiny to follow the instructions.
Kerrigan took the bread, cheese, and chunk of meat and stuffed them into the small pouch she kept at her side. After a quick jaunt back into the feast room, she found a water pouch and slung that over her head as well. She was weighed down, but she would rather have the provisions than not. She left the rest of the food behind. Valia would wonder where she had gone off to, but she couldn’t wait to run the food back to her.
With a determination set into her very marrow, Kerrigan left for the portal room. It was not a long walk, and within minutes, she was at the end of the hallway. She waited patiently for the two guards standing in front of the room to turn and walk the other way. She didn’t know what kind of gods’ luck this was, but as soon as their backs were turned, she hustled down the hallway. With her heart in her throat, she turned the doorknob and entered the room, carefully closing the door behind her.
The room itself was enormous. Big enough for multiple dragons to comfortably stand in. This was only the Fae entrance. There was a separate tunnel that the dragons could enter through that disappeared deep into the mountain. And standing as large as a house was a giant stone archway, magnificently carved and ornately built. The center of the archway shone a brilliant iridescent. Just as in her vision, there stood a goblet on a table next to the archway.
Kerrigan warily approached it. She looked into the milky liquid with unease. She knew what this did. It was the same potion the competitors had taken before walking through that portal. But why would she need to take it? She wanted to doubt the dream, but she didn’t doubt it.
So, with a deep breath, she brought the golden goblet to her mouth and consumed a few mouthfuls of the chalky substance. She gagged once around the disgusting liquid, and then she felt the magical effects. Her magic was being drained away. One second, it had been there. Then, the next, it was like pouring sand through a sieve, and it was gone. She felt suddenly bereft, just as she had that night with Clare. Her magic was empty. With her will, she reached down into that well of power and felt… nothing. It was severed. She shuddered in discomfort.
Pushing that aside, she turned to face the portal. She had walked through this once and ended up on the other side of the world. Walking through it again for another vision felt like it was all coming full circle.
She tied her red hair up into a ribbon to keep it out of her face. Then, with trepidation, she pressed her hand to the side of the portal arch, just as she had in the vision. The center of the portal shimmered and moved at her touch, and for a moment, she felt as if the portal read where she needed to go. The portal opened to darkness, and with her heart in her throat, she stepped through.
47
The Forest
A weight settled on Kerrigan’s chest in the darkness.
The portal had sucked her through, only vaguely tugging on her, as if it wanted to keep her for itself, and then she had entered this mysterious place.
She didn’t instantly recognize her surroundings, as the sun had completely fallen and only the light from the moon and the stars barely penetrated the canopy. Thankfully, the House of Dragons had equipped her with wilderness knowledge. They had taken an expedition around the mountains for a few days when she was younger. Darby stayed home, but Lyam and Hadrian went with her to learn how to start a fire and read trail signs. Growing up in the city, she hadn’t had any idea why she would need the knowledge, but she had found the camping trips more fun than being stuck in the mountain.
Now, she was thanking Mistress Moran for encouraging her to go out into the woods with Master Faris for these extracurriculars. Without her magic to light a fire, she would have to use that limited knowledge. Of course, she hadn’t used stones to light a fire in probably six years, but she knew the mechanics of it. So, she got to work,
