Mirai

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The dream I had that night wasn't much of a dream, but still terrible and had me waking up in cold sweat.

I didn't see anything in the dream, but I felt pain. So much of it. I knew it wasn't physical pain, but emotional. The intensity of it though, made me wish for physical pain. I couldn't imagine any physical pain being as bad as that emotional pain was.

It ripped through my body. Tore at my very essence. It was blinding and without an end. Suffocating. But not enough to make oblivion take the pain away.

When I woke up, it was six o'clock. It wasn't until seven that I had calmed down enough from the dream to be able to get out of bed. An hour, it had taken me an hour to be fully aware the pain didn't belong to me. But I was sure it belonged to someone, and I had a guess who, but I didn't allow myself to think it. I didn't want that to be true because if it was, I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to forgive myself or my gift for not having found her sooner.

Gift. That was what Mom and the Priestess and all the rest called the sight. I didn't think I'd ever be able to see it as that. It had tormented my life because it hadn't been there, and now that it grew, it plagued me in a very different way.

Elijah had packed a rug sack filled with food that he insisted I take with me. He then walked with me through the forest and to where the area which was protected ended.

"Do come and tell me when you've found her," he said to me.

I gave him a weak smile and was thankful he didn't add an if to the sentence. I myself felt that the if was very prominent.

"I will," I answered and hugged him quickly. "Thank you for helping me."

I turned away from him. Summoned my magic to teleport myself away. But Elijah spoke again before I had time to.

"Wait! You never said what your name is."

I looked back at him over my shoulder. "Mirai."

With that, I teleported myself. I first went to Salem, to the portal there that I now remembered was in the Highland Park. I stepped through.

It wasn't until I took that one step that I realized how far from home it would take me. I had only ever been to Toronto before my birthday. But I had that day left my own country, and now I took a step which made me leave my own continent.

I stepped out onto a hill overlooking Jerusalem. What was the weirdest part was that I could tell it was the beginning of evening. Just moments ago, the day had just started. But now the day was slowing down. The sun wasn't ready to set yet, but it had traveled quite a bit of its daily trip.

Anxiety made itself known for me. What did this mean for the countdown? Did it mean I had lost several hours of it as well? Was I much closer to zero than just moments ago?

I managed to halt the thoughts when I realized how ridiculous that would be. The countdown would, of course, not care about different time zones.

When the anxiety settled, I took a moment to appreciate the view before me. The city was so unlike home, with the low stone buildings that had almost the same color as the sandy landscape surrounding it. That made the temple, with its golden roof, stand out even more. Briefly, I considered how it would look if placed in Toronto and was sure the beauty and magic it emitted would have been lost then.

I was about to walk down towards Jerusalem when everything became much, much darker. I looked up at the sky. It had been completely free of clouds, but it wasn't anymore. Instead, the clouds that floated there were in a gray that promised rain.

Shouts started from the city and I looked out over it. I was too far away to actually see anything, I could only hear the terrified screams. They were of pure terror and made my body tremble. Then came another sound. Also a scream, but more that of a wild animal. A mixture of a growl and a hiss, but so much louder. It was loud enough to even make the temple quiver.

When the scream was over, all was eerie quiet, like the inside of a grave, and red lines appeared. They grew stronger in color and spread over the whole city. The streets were died by blood.

Something shot out from the city. It was like a ball of light. It flew in an arch, up high and over me. Into the mountain terrain and disappeared.

As soon as it was gone, the light came back. The sky was clear again and the blood was gone. I could hear things once more, the faint bustling of the city. People talking and moving about.

Another vision, and this one made me think of the dream with the woman, naked but covered in blood, on a field with corpses all around. Had that been here? Or somewhere near? Had she lived here and been through whatever terror that had attacked the city in my vision?

Or... was she responsible somehow?

I didn't like those thoughts. Refused to believe she was capable of destruction. So I moved on to think about the ball of light. What had that been? It honestly had looked a little to me as a sign to follow. As if I would find some sort of answer wherever the ball had landed.

I could always check it out. If it turned out to be a dead end, I could always come back, walk into Jerusalem, and hope to find some other clue.

But how to know where the ball had landed? Would it be possible for me to teleport to it? Generally, you needed a specific location to teleport correctly. Or well, to at least not risk ending up in the completely wrong place. Like when I had teleported to Toronto the first time, I had known exactly what alley I wanted to go to and then ended up there. While when I had teleported to Forks, I had just had Forks in mind, so I had ended up at a random place there.

Would concentrating on the location where the ball had landed work since I didn't know where that was? And especially since there hadn't actually been a ball of light, but a part of a vision?

But then again, when I had teleported to Colorado, I hadn't concentrated on any place in particular. I could have ended up anywhere in the state, but I had turned up where I needed to go.

I closed my eyes and concentrated. Thought hard about the ball and its landing. Then I turned.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a valley, surrounded by beige-orange stone on both sides. It all looked dried and deserted, a feeling the glaring sun contributed to. But the place wasn't deserted. On a plateau a bit up the stone wall, laid a creature basking in the sun. It was a creature that made me stunned by equal amounts of shock and fear. 

Here comes our first mythological creature 👀 Any guesses what it might be?