I sit on the grass in a small forest clearing, across from Arcadia and Sigrun. We three make a triangle around the fire Sigrun built, and there’s something unnatural about the colors of the flames, they’re too vivid, and at times they flicker and shift into pinks and purples and other shades I don’t have names for. The red moon and the blue moon watch, high above amidst the stars, and even the trees feel like they want to be involved. It seems as though their trunks bend ever so slightly inward, toward Sigrun’s magic fire.

Sigrun’s eyes are closed, and she rocks back and forth slightly in her seat as she mutters her droning incantation, her right hand open, palm up, her left clutching a handful of small bones. I don’t know how long we’ve been at this. It feels like hours have gone by. In the back of my mind I wonder if these things are meant to be boring on purpose, if there’s something significant about all this repetition. My very uneducated guess is that it’s meant to wear down the mind’s resistance. To test one’s stamina.

On and on she chants, and I sit there, as still as I can manage. Arcadia seems to be having no trouble with this at all. Her eyes are closed, her back straight, hands rested upon her bent knees. She looks like one of those Zhou statues of a monk in meditative repose. I don’t know much about religion or magic. But what I do have is a warrior’s discipline, and I find that it’s doing the job tonight. Even if this isn’t exactly the job it was meant for.

The forest around us, which would normally be alive with the sounds of night birds, deer, wolves and whatever else, is eerily silent. The only sounds left are those of the crackling flames and Sigrun’s low, raspy voice. She’s stopped rocking back and forth now. Her posture resembles Arcadia’s, straight backed, chin held slightly aloft. I feel a little thrill of anticipation when I see her move for the first time in what feels like hours. Perhaps the extraordinary moment is coming.

Sigrun lifts her left hand to the sky as she chants. Then her eyes open, and I am a bit alarmed to see the pupils and irises gone. Her eyes have either rolled all the way back in their sockets, or they’ve simply gone milk-white all over. The volume of her voice climbs, as if she were calling out to the heavens themselves, and then she casts the bones into the fire.

I feel the heat against my face intensify. A moment later, the flames leap several feet upward, and outward, shining bright enough to turn the night into day. Sigrun gazes into the fire, and I notice that her eyes have returned to normal. Arcadia’s eyes are open as well, and she too gazes into the flames expectantly.

Sigrun’s magic fire begins to move in unnatural ways, the flames twisting and reaching upward, flowing out from the ground like a great bubble of water. The bubble seems to flatten into a disc-like shape, the surface of it shimmering like a mirror. I am reminded of their scrying bowls, how they use water to communicate over long distances. Whatever lies beyond this fire, it seems, has something to show us.

“The Door has Seven Keys,” Sigrun intones, to the fire. “And the names of the keys are Ra… Iah… Sen… Mawat… Irt… Durut… Safadwa…”

Nothing happens at first. For several long moments the fire simply hovers there in its odd shape. But then it shows us.

First, we see the image of a great city in the desert, standing at the shore of a bright, blue sea. Its architecture reminds me of home, but it isn’t Nar K’zar. Within its vast walls are crowded streets, graceful towers and minarets, earth colored buildings great and small built next to and on top of each other in orderly rows. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Arcadia’s face light up with excitement when she sees it. Apparently she knows this place.

Next, we see a tall, dark mountain covered in snow. It is the highest peak amongst its neighbors, each a mighty mountain in its own right, but this one stands above them all. It is a world of white, as far as the eye can see, a range of mountains that stretches off into the horizon in all directions. In the foothills I see a gate carved directly out of the living rock, guardian statues posed threateningly on either side of it. It looks like the entrance to a temple of some kind.

The fire shimmers again, and the image blurs into something else. We see another city, this one far darker than the first. The homes and buildings are ebony, with wrought iron gates and fences around and between them, lit with lanterns whose flames glow with pale blue flames. Above it all stands a dark castle, what I would imagine to be the abode of a vampire. A very unwelcoming kind of place. The strangest thing about this area is how verdant it is. The trees are large and plentiful, and the abundant grasses are a healthy shade of green.

The final image is that of Jhekata’s Compendium. It’s sitting right where Arcadia left it, on the table in our room in Kellheim Keep. Judging by the lighting, it seems as if we’re being shown this in real time. I suppose it would follow that everything else we just saw was a live image as well. Interesting.

The fire seems to dissipate, the magic mirror of flame fading into wisps of multicolored smoke. And then it’s gone, reduced to nothing more than a simple campfire. I don’t know if what we just saw in that fire was good news or bad, so I look across it at Sigrun and Arcadia, hoping I can get a clue from their expressions.

Sigrun is solemn. Arcadia, on the other hand, looks conflicted. I see excitement in her eyes, eagerness in her posture. But also fear.

“So… It worked?” I ask. “We know where to go now?”

“Aye,” says Sigrun.

She doesn’t seem to want to elaborate. I feel a little irritation stir in my gut because of it. But rather than pester her, I try the other Sorceress here.

Arcadia blinks and shakes her head a bit when I tap her knee, as if doing so brings her back to earth. I smirk, gesture at the fire. “We only saw three places. Well, four, if you count our bedroom. Why didn’t we see seven? Doesn’t ‘The Door Have Seven Keys?’”

Arcadia smiles. “It does. But the keys are the Paths.”

Her statement hangs in the air for a moment, and I look at her expectantly. She blushes when she remembers I’m the only person here who doesn’t know what that means.

“Ah, the Paths were the disciplines of Amorakethian magic,” she says. “But their arts differ from the more modern ones. Rather than separate everything into its own field of study, they looked at things in terms of pairs of opposites. Or, things that appear to be pairs of opposites. So you would learn two things at the same time, and the emphasis is on the connection between what, at first, look like opposing forces.”

“What we saw were the locations of the Houses of Life,” says Sigrun. “The last ones standing, anyways. The House of the Sun and Moons, The House of the Hand and the Eye, and the House of the Lotus and the Locust. Places where initiates would go to receive an opening to the energies of the Paths.”

The Sun and Moons. The Hand and the Eye. The Lotus and the Locust. Three destinations, and I have no idea where any of these places are. But Arcadia seems to have recognized at least one of them.

I look at her. “Where was that first place?”

Her answering smile is a bright one. “Aleria. I spent some time there as a child, when my parents were working out an alliance with their country.”

“What of the other two? Are they closer to us than Aleria, or farther away?”

Arcadia’s smile vanishes. She and Sigrun trade a dark look before she returns her gaze to the fire, chewing her lip anxiously. For a few moments it’s quiet, and I can’t help but wonder what kind of dangers they’re anticipating.

“I think we should go to Aleria first,” says Arcadia. “It’s the simplest one to get to by sea, and I have a friend there. If he remembers me, I think he’d be willing to help us.”

I lean back, placing my palms on the grass behind me as I look off in the direction of Kellheim. I’m sure their victory party is still going strong, but when Arcadia and Sigrun told me they’d be doing this augury thing straightaway, I didn’t feel regretful about missing it. Maybe I’m more troubled about changing sides than I realized.

No. I’ve only ever had one side. Arcadia’s side.

I lean over and kiss her on the cheek, making her blush and glance at Sigrun embarrassedly.

The old witch sees it, and smirks. “Very well,” she says. “Your path is laid out before you. I do believe you’ll be equal to the tests to come.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I say.

Sigrun’s smirk turns into a crooked grin. “Maybe I was wrong about you, K’zar. Or Rekka the Lioness, I suppose it is.”

Now that’s a title I could get used to. Rekka, the Lioness of Kellheim. This land favors me.