Blogtober 2021 Story Project
“Stop us from doing what, exactly?” Lucius asked. “I can’t see how it fits together.”
“Let me show you what he saw,” Kamali said. She closed her eyes and extended both hands palms up. Sparks like fireflies emerged from her hands and floated in the air until they coalesced into faint glowing images of the future.
Lucius saw himself at the head of several legions in the uniform of a prefect, many ranks higher than he held. His troops massed in the desert outside Alexandria, with thousands of hooded men rushing toward them. The light shifted, and he saw himself in a hooded robe leading the horde of demons back into the city.
The same was true of Chaim; in one image, he led a group of believers in prayer on the roof of a city Lucius assumed was Damascus. In the next, his red eyes and savage teeth pounced on an endless succession of Nazarites.
“Which one holds the truth of the future?” he asked.
“All of them are possible outcomes,” she said. “The future is like the weather, hard to predict, impossible to control, each choice we make like a separate drop of rain.”
“Why us, though?”
“Some people are like keystones in an arch,” she said. “Remove them or turn them, and the structure collapses.”
“We are the keystones?”
“You are the ones I have seen,” she said. “My people are seeking to save the others.”
“Who are your people?”
“We are the stewards of the Library.”
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