Visions and Blood

I woke to darkness. Darkness and a column of light stretching down from the heavens, it had been less than a day since I saw it last and still, I thought it had grown wider. And there she was, gazing into the light as though it was the most beautiful sight in all the world, she turned around as I stepped forward and gave me a comforting smile.

“Why am I here? Why have you summoned me again?” I ask her, starting off with frustration in my words, though as I see her eyes I soften and feel my shoulders slump.

She steps towards me, lowering the hood of her cloak to reveal her snow-white hair and giving me the clearest view of her face I have had so far. She is as beautiful as I remember, and her eyes entrance me once more; though there seems to be an ethereal sadness within them, as though she had the echo of a tear blossoming from them.

“No my boy, I have not summoned you here” she says solemnly, her hands clutched behind her back. “It pains me each time I see you in this place, but you may rest a while and heal your soul. Perhaps we may even have some time to answer your questions”

I swallow at that, so she didn’t bring me here, then what did? I think to myself before remembering what she had said last, Will she actually answer some questions now?

“Okay…” I think for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts, I have so many questions that I don’t know what to ask first, “Okay, you said you gave me a spirit last time I was here, what’s with the dark spirit? Why couldn’t I get a normal one?”

“Don’t you like it?” she says, her face shifting into a frown

I feel something wrench inside me as she frowns, desperate to assure her otherwise I almost shout as I reply to her, “No, no, no, no” I say quickly, “It’s not that I don’t like it or anything, it’s just a bit odd. They haven’t existed in almost a thousand years”

She nods her head to me, taking a moment of silence before replying, “I know, I could not give you one of the spirits to which you are accustomed to. They are slivers of Soras, Tallaque, and Cleonora. Pitiful creatures though not something I can give to you. The dark spirits however have been some of my most useful servants in the past, it will serve you well as it has me” she tells me, though instead of answering my question she replaces it with a dozen others

“So if the other spirits are part of the goddesses, does that mean that you’re like them? Are you a goddess too?” I ask, unsure of what answer I want from her

She closes her eyes, “I am nothing like them” she hisses, anger dripping into her voice for the first time though she recovers quickly and lets out a calming sigh “Though we are similar, I suppose. We are not goddesses, we may be powerful, but we are far from omnipotent, we don’t exist in the heavens as they would have you believe” she tells me.

I think about that for a moment, unable to separate the idea of those beings as something other than goddesses. But she claims to be like them, _could Lilith truly be a goddess? _From what I had seen so far it could be true, I had never heard of anyone being able to pull people into visions, and granting spirits for that matter is only done by the goddesses.

I look at Lilith with a fresh vision, how could those golden eyes belong to anyone other than a goddess. Those ageless features, and her sonorous voice just screamed divinity. I want to ask her more, why me? What is this place? Why aren’t there more dark spirits? I open my mouth to ask her these questions but before my lips can form the words, I hear a loud thud

I’m awake once more, in the bedchamber of the royal citadel with moonlight pouring in through the window and something moist stroking my face. I rise from my bed with a start, my mind racing from what I had just learned. I was sure now that the visions of Lilith I had had were not mere visions or dreams, there was no way something that felt so real could be anything less.

I press my hand to the crystal by my bedside and see the room become lit in a soft glow, pulsing at first before it becomes a solid light. I look down to my bed where I had felt a moistness moments before and leap from my bed at what I see.

Blood. So much blood has drowned my pillow and bedding, I look down and see the stains on my chest and rivers of it dripping down my neck. Urgently I press my hands to my body, searching for wounds; my hands rub my chest, wiping away the blood and then moving to my neck. It feels a bit sore, but I don’t find any wounds. I notice my breathing has quickened and force myself to calm down, taking controlled breaths before reaching for my bed sheet and wiping the blood from my body. What the hell happened? Where did all this blood come from?

Satisfied enough with how much of the blood I had wiped from my body, I look down at the once white bed sheet to see it now resembles more of a bloody rag than something I would be happy to sleep on. I pace across my room, running my hand through my hair as I think what could have caused this. I have no wounds on my body and I seriously doubt that this much blood could have come from a nosebleed or anything else. I reach for my door to see if anyone is outside and find my door unlocked, I thought I had locked it last night, I think to myself but brush it aside as I look out into the adjoining room.

The living chamber is empty, the candles melted to a stub and the crystals providing a dim glow to the room. My eyes dart from side to side, trying to see if anyone could be hiding in here but realise there isn’t. I walk through the room but find myself unable to spot any more blood on the floor or anywhere else.

Realising I am going to be unable to figure out anything else about this tonight, I walk to the door of the bathroom and go inside. The strange instruments that Opal and Bella had in their rooms are present here as well. Instead of buckets of water there for washing myself as I am used to, there are pieces of metal attached to a spout that I twist to make water come out. As amused as ever by this novelty, I take a towel from the rack on the wall and damp it in the water before rubbing it across my body to clean the blood. By the time I am done, my body is clean, and the towel has turned red.

I sigh and go back to my bedchamber, closing the door and locking it, this time adding a chair against the door in case someone had come in last night. I throw the towel in with my bloodied bed sheets and lie back on my bare mattress, still stained with blood. I press my hand to the crystal, turning off the light and close my eyes.

I find it difficult to return to sleep and try to sort the thoughts going through my mind. Each time I had seen Lilith I had felt that I was on the brink of death, when Zarin was beating me, when it felt my whole body was set aflame during the test of divinities, and now tonight where my bed was covered in blood. Had someone tried to kill me? Had they stabbed me? But there was no wound anywhere, Did Lilith save me, did she heal me? I think as my thoughts return to the golden-eyed goddess. These thoughts race through my mind for hours before I finally succumb to sleep.