"This is foolishness, High Oracle. You know that, don't you?"
Morgynn asked while observing the translucent veil of force separating her from the oracles. "This barrier will not hold forever against me.
Meanwhile, your people are dying as we speak." Sameska did not answer.
The other oracles stood ready to act, though Morgynn felt none of them were a match for her magic. Those who sat in the semicircle concentrated on their barrier all the harder. Though their minds focused on the magic, she could sense their fear. Something was hidden in that rhythm beneath their breasts, some secret they held from her.
Curious, she raised her hands to test their barrier. Weaving her spell, she sent waves of light against the translucent veil of magic.
Screaming as she pushed herself harder, she fought the combined wills of the oracles and the old magic they wielded. She stumbled backward as her spell failed and the light faded. Breathing heavily, she glared at her hands as if betrayed. She slowed her pulse and stretched her neck. Her muscles spasmed as she collected herself. "I can feel each of you," she said quietly, her words amplified in the chamber. "You're hiding something from me." Sameska looked up then, peering at Morgynn over her shoulder, trembling. "Idiots!" Sameska hissed at them, but they ignored her still. Morgynn raised an eyebrow at her outburst and cast another spell, calling forth a sphere of mist above her palm which she hurled at the barrier. It burst in a puff of smoke and tendrils of shadow spread across the invisible wall like a web, probing at the magic. Morgynn touched the shadows with her fingertips, shutting her eyes and listening to the spell as it sang in her blood, feeding her what she wanted to know. "Calm yourself, dear Sameska," she said as the shadowy web melted away, slowly retracing its course back to her outstretched hand. "I once knew an old woman, many years ago, whose faith had outgrown her humanity. In the end, she lost both." She smiled grimly at the memory of her mother, disgusted by the similarities she saw in the high oracle. The shadows ceased their movements and froze at her will as she sensed something unexpected.
The oracles' heartbeats pounded in her mind, a cadence within the harmonies of the Weave that flowed through her, but another rhythm pulsed there as well. A multitude of hearts seemed to thunder together, dispersed and hidden. She dismissed the shadows and opened her eyes knowingly, realizing the true source of their fear and sickening righteousness. Demurely, she approached the centermost oracle and knelt down to speak to her eye to eye, only the shimmering veil of magic between them. "They're hiding here, aren't they?" she said, seeking some reaction in the young woman's solemn expression.
"Those too old or too weak to fight. You're protecting them, hiding them somewhere in this place while you sit here and wonder if you've made the right decision. Defying prophecy, betraying the faith of your high oracle, and gambling with the lives of your people." The oracle remained outwardly stoic, but Morgynn could feel her quickened pulse.
She knew that if she had learned any lesson from her mother, it was that faith did not exist without doubt. Morgynn noted that Sameska watched the exchange with rapt attention. "It is a thin line you walk," Morgynn continued, "between honor and oblivion. I have seen the Abyss where doomed souls go. I know the fate that awaits you there."
For a fleeting moment, Morgynn saw the oracle's face flinch and relax, a hint of grudging resignation. She scowled as the girl tightened her fists and raised her chin, resolute and unmoving. Wordless, Morgynn stood, shaking with anger and backing away. She drew her dagger and gripped the blade as she summoned the words to another spell. Sameska, wild-eyed, leaned forward, gritting her teeth. The high oracle pulled a dagger from beneath her robes. "May Savras have mercy on your soul!" she cried, drawing everyone's attention. Morgynn tilted her head and halted her spell, intrigued by this development as Sameska brandished the hidden blade and lunged for the young oracle's throat.
Misty blades flashed and rippled in the rain, driving Quinsareth back, hard pressed to deflect the attacks of the wraithlike creatures Morgynn had placed outside the temple. He cursed her name with each parry, spitting words that might have raised eyebrows even among the pirates and rogues of the Dragon Coast. The undead pressed on, nearly mindless but amazingly quick. Their bodies alternated between solid and ephemeral states. Their shifting had foiled Quin's initial charge, Bedlam's blade only serving to disrupt their spiritual forms harmlessly. With luck, he'd managed to fell two of them, swinging in anticipation of their attack and cleaving the things as they'd materialized. Though fallen, their forms still writhed on the ground, wailing as their semisolid bodies twisted and malformed. Their souls seemed bound to their dead bodies, wraiths bearing the cumbersome weight of undead flesh. The remaining three sentries worked in unison to break Quin's swift defense and stab beneath his hissing blade.
Quinsareth fought to control his breathing, reining in his anger as he skipped backward. He tried to recognize a cycle to his opponents' unstable corporeality. Patterns rose and fell in his mind, found but quickly abandoned. He counted the breaths carefully, numbering each parry, deftly wielding the large shield and Bedlam as if they were a buckler and foil. Indeed, the unarmored opponent carried such a blade, looking more like a dandified fop than a warrior. The fop's blade passed within a hair's breadth of his neck as he arched backward to avoid the slice. Angrily, he began to count out loud, slowing his backward motion and quickening his defense. "One… two… three …" he breathed, then crouched, rolled forward, and slashed left and right. The hunters' blades thrust harmlessly over his head as he carved through flesh and bone, crippling the two along their upper thighs. He knew he could not kill what was already dead, but he could slow them. He sought to immobilize them that he might bypass Morgynn's guards and follow her into the temple. Leaning back on his left leg, he swept his right in a wide arc to trip the third sentry as it materialized, but he was a heartbeat too fast. His boot passed through the legs of the fop just before it took solid form, and its foil sliced down on Quin's low position. Two arrows hissed into the dandy's chest, followed quickly by a third that found its sword arm, halting the swing and burning its undead flesh. The creature reeled backward, wailing in agony. The pale shadow of its spirit clawed at the arrows, as if suddenly nailed to corporeality. Quinsareth rolled back to his feet, casting a glance over his shoulder to see Elisandrya nocking another arrow, a look of grim satisfaction on her face as she fired.
The arcane missile seared into the fop's neck, quieting its cries to a wet gurgle as it fell on its back, shaking as its spirit turned to a pungent, thick smoke and dissipated on the wind. The body left behind flopped in the rain like a landed fish gasping for air. Quickly scanning the area, Quin noted that the temple doors were unobstructed.