Leah: Prophesy

[moonshadows]

“Well, Leah, the explosion doesn’t seem to have harmed you.” Uncle Deckard rolls my sleeves back down, the cool tingle of his magical probe retreating. “It seems the magic came from inside you, in response to the threat on your life.”

He’s as calm as if he were interpreting some ancient runes, slightly curious and mildly excited, but my heart drops into my stomach.

“But Uncle, I don’t have power like that.”

“You don’t have power like that that you know of,” he corrects with a gentle smile.

I huff. “If I’ve got that kind of magic, how come I can’t use it?”

He taps me on the forehead. “Because you don’t know how, dear child. Horodric training can only teach you how to use the powers inherent to humanity.”

This isn’t helping. I lick suddenly-dry lips. “What other powers are there?” It’s not exactly a question; more like a plea to kill the horrible certainty sitting like lead where my heart should be.

“My dear, I believe you to be a nephalem.”

Twelve may be on the cusp of being a young woman, but I feel like a child again, terrified and alone and yearning for the blissfully ignorant comfort of my mother’s skirts. “But Uncle…the only demon walking the world when I would have been conceived…”

“I know, Leah,” he says gently, hugging me close. “And I think it’s time I started telling you about that dark time. Your birth could not have been an accident; not with where I found you. No doubt the forces behind your conception will have designs on you, and knowledge will be the best weapon I can give you to counter them.”

 

I blink to clear the memory from my eyes, turning slightly so as to break contact with the stranger’s golden ones. If it weren’t obvious enough that he’s not normal – I mean, who falls from the sky in a ball of fire, breaks three floors of a cathedral, and isn’t a charred, splattered mess? – then causing a full-on flashback to that memory would have tipped me off.

“Come on,” I say with a sigh, reaching for his hand. “Let’s get you back to Uncle Deckard so we can figure you out.”

 

White and gold; light and harmonies the human mind was never meant to comprehend.

“All I am guilty of, Imperius, is bringing justice.”

Terror, thrilling through my being. Certainty, solid as truth itself. Cold anger, hot joy.

“You cannot judge me! I am Justice itself!”

A ripping, terrible and right. The harmonies ripple and falter, as though heard underwater. This is wrong, sacrilege, but at the same time – so very right.

 

My hand jerks back of its own accord. Startled, the stranger stares at me. No, not ‘the stranger’. I know who he is, even if he does not. I have been able to rattle off lists of angels and demons alike since I was eight. This is, or was, Tyrael. Three deep breaths and the invocation of the strongest mental barrier I know, and I reach for his hand again and pull him to his feet.

“Come on,” I repeat. “Let’s get you back and figure out what kind of mess we’re about to get into.”

“I came…with a warning…” His voice is deep and soothing, like a father telling his child that everything is well. Not my father, of course, but an archetypal Good Father.

“At the end of days, the first sign shall appear in the heavens. Justice shall fall on the world of men. The armies of light and shadow will clash across the fields of eternity.” The words taste like ash in my mouth, ringing hollowly off the broken stone around us. Uncle Deckard drilled me in the prophesies enough that they tumble effortlessly to the front of my mind. He always said that they were written with oblique precision; that is, they seem like vague nonsense until the events they describe actually take place, and then there can be no mistaking it.

My skin crawls. It can’t be a coincidence that he should arrive here, exactly where I am. Exactly where it all started. I’m not foolish enough to think that I will be allowed to just sit this out. They say you should fight fire with fire, but am I to be the flame the world fights with, or against?