Page 12 of Acolyte (Tempris #2)

-An excerpt from A Time Mage’s Field Guide to Dream Symbology

The Sight is a rare and coveted gift, and for those few that possess the ability to peer into the future, reality begins to take on a new shape through the simple act of dreaming.

While the future can never be determined with complete accuracy, dreams allow the time mage to see possible eventualities months, sometimes even years, ahead of the event in question.

Details, of course, change based on the accumulated effects of individual choice.

A dream on the eve of battle may hint at victory, but a last-minute decision to go right instead of left, an accidental fall, or even a misfired shot can become pivotal, thereby skewing the expected outcome.

The future, by its very nature, is inherently malleable, and it is generally advised to take a time mage’s dreams as a prediction and guide for future actions rather than true divination.

The first thing Taly noticed was the quiet.

Neither gentle nor easy—it was oppressive, almost like a physical thing crawling across her skin. It was the kind of quiet, the kind of charged stillness that came from being in a place that was better left undisturbed.

Towering walls of gold surrounded her on all sides, and if she looked closely, she could see that instead of stone, each partition had been fabricated from countless threads weaving, tangling, and snarling together into a dense web.

She inhaled, somehow relieved when the rasp of her own shallow breathing reached her ears.

“Hello?” Her voice echoed, and Taly touched a finger to a nearby wall, watching as it rippled out into infinity. “Is anybody there?”

There was no answer.

Her thoughts scrambled, and her senses felt dulled.

She knew she should probably feel panic.

Especially when the walls began to realign themselves, moved by an unseen hand.

But all she could muster was the faintest trace of confusion as she picked at her nightdress, her unbound hair.

As she tried to remember where she had been, where she was going, and why she didn’t have shoes.

Sound and light began to bleed through the gossamer threads, and then, so abrupt that it left her staggering and gasping for air, the landscape snapped into focus.

Screams pierced the air, and the shuffling of thousands of feet shook the ground. A swarm of people, covered in mud and blood, their skin slick with rain, writhed as they pressed together on what looked like a bridge.

Taly immediately recognized the woven net of branches and steel that formed a tunnel around the canyon bridge. Storm clouds painted the sky, and a dark chasm loomed below. Walls of red stone stretched to the east and west.

“The Riftway,” she said, her voice swallowed by the wailing din of the crowd. She was back on Tempris, standing in the middle of the bridge that spanned Crescent Canyon.

Which meant—a dream. She was dreaming. She knew that instinctively, even if the realization felt muddy and faraway.

Shields clanged in the distance, and she began to press her way forward, making her way to the south side of the bridge.

The crowd frothed and writhed in their panic, and even though their bodies were little more than smoke, forming and reforming around her, it was like trying to swim through a wall of water.

“Shore up that line!”

Taly jolted at the familiar voice, so full of exhaustion and rage.

Skye.

She began to run, not caring about the ghosts that still streamed past as her feet hit solid ground. The bridge was behind her now. A rank of heavily armed mages pushed back the crowd, and just beyond, streaming through a break in the wards and swarming the road—

Shades.

They used no careful formation as they slashed and hacked at the retreating refugees, pushing their way through a rapidly crumbling defensive line of mages.

And there, in the middle, shoving the wounded out of the way of the oncoming horde, was Skye.

There was a scrape on his neck that wasn’t healing—the blood so bright against the blackened gore that streaked his skin.

And instead of a sword, he wielded a long staff.

Men and women stumbled around him as the shades broke through their ranks, and he reached down, pulling a young black-haired boy to his feet and pushing him to the center of the sloppy formation.

“Skye!” Taly screamed as panic—true fear—wormed its way inside the dazed indifference that still muddled her senses. Something was pulling her forward, like a tether, some sort of invisible rope.

“Behind you!” she screamed again, even though a part of her knew it would do her little good. She was a wraith, nothing more than a spectator, and all she could do was watch as Skye ducked to grab at another scrambling mage—only to take a dagger straight to the gut.

His armor tempered the blow, and even though he was already recovering, rapidly turning on his heel as he adjusted his grip on the staff, that slight blip in his attention had cost him.

Another shade leaped onto his back, clawing at his face just as a third grabbed at his legs.

He struggled, still swinging that staff that glowed both red and blue, but more began to pile on top of him, eventually wrestling him to the ground.

“Serves you fucking right,” a familiar voice said from somewhere behind her. Kato. She glimpsed a flash of brassy hair. There was shame in those amber eyes .

Then he was gone, swallowed by the crowd.

A scream. A flare of magic.

“Skye!” Taly was still reaching for him, still struggling against the crowd that seemed more solid and real with each passing moment. This couldn’t be happening. Skye couldn’t die. She refused to believe that there was a reality that existed where he could die and leave her behind.

When she was thrown to the ground, she began to crawl, blood staining her hands, her nightdress, her hair. It felt warm and sticky and far too real—same as the pain she felt as she was trampled and kicked from all sides.

By the time she reached the place where Skye had been, the shades had moved on, already on the bridge. It was chaos behind her, the screams growing louder as people began jumping into the canyon, choosing one death over another.

But Taly didn’t care. About any of it. Not as she began to dig, wrenching away the bodies—some she recognized, others she didn’t—until she found him. His breaths were coming in gurgling gasps, and his eyes stared at the sky.

“ Em ,” she tried to say, but she couldn’t breathe over the great shuddering sobs that broke out of her.

One of his eyes was gone, the entire left side of his face destroyed.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not nearly as bad as the gash that split him from sternum to hip, so deep that blood and entrails were leaking out of him.

“Skye, please,” she tried again, but he didn’t turn. He just stared up at the clouds as the rain began to fall.

As she began to scream his name and grope at that giant, gaping wound, fingers twisting in his innards as she tried to piece him back together .

His blood soaked her skin. The light in that single green eye began to fade.

She knew the moment that he was gone, and that something of her had gone with him.

Taly was still screaming when the world grew dim.

Still screaming when she wrenched awake.

She screamed until her voice went hoarse, and she became aware of soft sheets and the smell of flowers and the lack of screaming outside her own.

She stopped, her entire body shaking as she cracked open her eyes.

The soft violet light of the first moon spilled through the windows, punctuated by the occasional flash of blinding white as the world outside rattled and shook.

The palace. She was at the palace, not Crescent Canyon. And Skye…

“A dream,” she rasped. “It was just a dream.”

A horrible, terrible dream that had felt far too real …

Taly pulled the blanket firmly around her shoulders, curling on her side as she willed the images to fade. “It was just a dream,” she whispered, too afraid to close her eyes.

She’d always had bad dreams. For as long as she could remember.

“It was just a dream.”

So, why could she still smell blood?

“Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream,” she chanted.

But her body continued to shake.

Skye stood at the edge of the cliff, a reckless thrill shooting through him as he peered into the yawning expanse. Pebbles knocked loose as he shifted his weight, and the wind whipped at his hair and clothing, howling, pushing him closer to the edge.

Crescent Canyon stretched across the landscape, following the path of the city for which it had been named.

Once a sprawling, underground metropolis, Crescent City had collapsed during the Schism.

The rubble had been cleared away long ago, but the soft-colored rock was still peppered with holes, and gaps, and tunnels that had once been homes, and stores, and roadways.

Some gates, like the Aion and Seren Gates, weren’t online when the Time Queen forcibly closed the bridges between the worlds.

They survived with little damage and minimal loss of life, while others, like the five gates that now lay at the bottom of the canyon, had been open.

The aether surge the Queen had used to override the safety protocols had immediately shattered the Crossroads—that artificial space between worlds where the fey had built their bridges.

Those that were there that day always said that the flashes of light came first. Then the explosions, the smoke, the fires.

There had been no signs of impending danger.

Nothing to hint at what was to come as people gathered on the bridges, fanning out through the markets that spread around the gates.

Very few had survived the blasts, though places like Crescent City…