Even before I heard Kate yell for help, I knew something was wrong with Craig.
I felt his anger and fear slam me back into my bed as I tried to get up.
After taking a few deep breaths, I managed to drag myself up, and rushed down the hall to his room. “Craig!”
I threw the door open, and Kate was on the floor, Craig’s head in her lap, as she shook his shoulders. “He won’t wake up!” she told me, holding back tears. “I don’t know what happened. He was just starting a fire, and then he just keeled over! What’s happening to him?”
“Whatever’s happening, he’s in pain,” I grunted as another wave of anger struck me.
Together, we got him up onto the bed as Lucy and Luca appeared in the doorway. They rushed in to help, Lucy laying her head on Craig’s forehead. She closed her eyes, whispering something under her breath when I gasped for air and fell back against the wall clutching my chest.
“Forrest?” Kate rushed to me, holding me up as I struggled to breathe. “What? What’s wrong?”
Words wouldn’t come, and all I could do was try to breathe through the immense pain that made me feel like I’d been stabbed through the chest.
“Vision,” I murmured. “I think he’s having a vision.”
“Then why won’t he open his eyes?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know… but whatever he’s seeing, it’s not good.”
I needed to break into his mind and see if I could pull him out somehow. Whatever Craig saw was worse, far worse than anything we’d seen yet on this journey.
He growled fiercely on the bed, and we all watched, hoping he’d open his eyes. They remained firmly shut, and Kate squeezed his hand, begging for him to wake up.
He shifted, and I thought he was coming to, but then he thrashed and bellowed in pain. It took all of us to hold him down and stop him from hurting himself.
“Ropes!” I yelled to whoever else was at the door. “We need rope!”
Kate and I pinned his shoulders while Luca and Lucy grabbed hold of his legs, but whatever had hold of him made him lash out, and he was damn stronger than before.
He nearly threw us all to the floor before Tristan and Greyson rushed in carrying chains.
“Thought this might work better,” Tristan explained at my curious look.
As gently as we could, we chained Craig down as he continued to strain and snarl as if he’d gone completely mad.
“What do we do?” Kate whispered. “Forrest?”
I leaned closer and pressed my hand to his forehead the best I could, searching for a way in. “I can feel his emotions… like path into his mind, but I can’t find a way to get to him.”
Kate hurried around, so she stood on the same side of the bed as me and took my hand in hers. “Let me take care of that.”
Warmth shot from her hand into mine as the runes on her body burned brilliant blue, lighting the room.
“No,” Lucy said worriedly. “No, this is too dangerous!”
“We don’t have a choice,” Kate argued. “We have to get him back… I have to get him back. If Cassius attacks and we don’t have Craig here, we’re doomed anyway, right?”
She said it lightly, but the dark truth of her words made everyone shift and frown.
She swallowed hard as we exchanged one final look before I told her to clear her mind the best she could and just think of Craig. I did the same, keeping my hand to his forehead, and latched onto the swirling storm of his raw hate.
The second I had hold of it, I felt my mind yanked away from my mind, and Kate’s grip on my hand tightened painfully.
I was falling through nothing, and when I landed, it took a few seconds to understand what was happening.
A battle was happening around us. We stood in the middle of the field outside the castle in Torolf, as chaos surrounded us. There was screaming and the cries of dying men and women, dragon’s roaring, and plagued everywhere.
“What… what is this?” Kate whispered, spinning around as she let go of my hand. “Where are we?”
“A vision,” I replied. “This must be what he’s seeing.”
No wonder he was thrashing around in his sleep. I squinted, peering through the mass of bodies and searched for Craig.
A plagued sprinted toward us and I braced for an attack, yelling a warning to Kate, but it passed right through us both. We weren’t really here, just visitors.
“No!” I heard Craig bellow and we both whipped around.
Kate cursed, but the sight before me froze me to the spot.
Kate, a different Kate, stood across the field with Cassius before her. From the amount of blood dripping down her body and the victorious look on that bastard’s face, he had just killed her.
I finally spotted Craig and stepped back in shock to see a sword jutting out of his chest.
Another version of me was sprinting toward Cassius, but in a few horrible seconds, I watched that version of myself get killed.
Kate and I watched, stunned into silence, as Cassius moved across the field and finished Craig off.
“What… no,” Kate whispered, shaking her head. “No, this can’t be right, can it?”
I didn’t know what to say, but before anything came out of my mouth, the world spun around us, and we landed right back where we started, but further back into the battle.
I heard myself yelling for Craig and saw me helping him up, swords in his hands, and driving back into the fight, as Kate and Cassius battled overhead.
“It’s a loop,” I whispered, watching it play out all over again, all the way to the very end. “He’s stuck in a damn loop! We have to break him out of it!”
“How do we do that?” she asked, already hurrying to catch up to Craig.
I was right behind her, watching him go through the motions. Half of me hoped it wasn’t the real Craig, and he was somehow just a witness in all of this, too, but as the sword plunged into his chest again, Kate and I gasping in shock and cursing, I heard him mutter, “Damn it, enough!”
“Craig!” I yelled, right in his ear.
He flinched, but it wasn’t enough to pull him from his vision.
“Craig, come on,” I yelled louder, grabbing hold of his shoulders, but either he couldn’t feel me, or I wasn’t actually reaching him.
The scenario played out a second time, and when he reset, Kate and I were right there when he got up with the other me by his side.
I stood right in front of him, but he merely walked around me without even seeming to think about it.
“It’s not working,” Kate snapped, going so far as to smack him across the face.
He flinched at the hit and blinked confused, staring around.
The rest of the vision seemed to slow around us, but then it sped right back up again, and he kept on going.
Kate looked at me, but I had no idea what else to suggest… except the one thing that might be enough.
“Remind him,” I told her as we stayed right beside him through the whole fight. “You have to remind him!”
“About what?”
“About you, both of you, together. He’s trying to get to you, to save you, Kate. Remind him that you’re not that Kate, that none of this has happened yet!”
While we’d been talking, the other Kate had been slashed, and the sword had just plunged itself into Craig’s chest. He sank to his knees, spitting curses as Kate knelt in front of him. She held his face in her hands and kissed him.
Cassius kept moving, as did the rest of the fight, and I hung my head thinking it wasn’t working, but then the vision came to an abrupt halt, just as the other Forrest was lifted off the ground by his throat.
Kate pulled back slowly, narrowed eyes watching Craig closely, before his arms wrapped around her and dragged her to his chest, kissing her again and hugging her.
“Kate! Your alive, thank the gods,” he whispered over and over again.
She hugged him back, and I patted his shoulder. He turned to look up at me, grabbing my hand.
“Way to scare the piss out of us, man.”
He climbed to his feet, and we all stared at the sword that laid on the ground at his feet, the one that had just moments ago been jutting out of his chest.
“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve watched you both die?” he whispered.
His gaze lingered on the dead Kate across the field, and his face paled.
He shook, and we turned him away.
“How long have I been stuck in here? Wait, are you two stuck in here, too?”
“No, no I don’t think so,” I replied. “And not long, twenty minutes or so?”
“That’s it?” He shuddered, and Kate’s hold on his hand tightened. “Sorry, I just… I expected to have a vision the closer we got to the end of this mess, but nothing like this.”
Kate blanched, staring around the field. “You think this will really happen?” she whispered.
“No, maybe?” he said quietly. “I don’t know, but if not exactly like this, I think this vision has told me something vital. We’re missing whatever the key is to stopping Cassius, to stopping all of this.”
“But what?” I asked, slowly moving around.
“I don’t know. I’ve watched it all happen again and again and again, and I can’t understand what happens. Kate has the shield, but he destroys it and kills us all, it’s like our strength just disappears…”
“Craig?” I asked when he stopped talking.
He tapped my shoulder, and I turned around to see what he was pointing at that had him, and Kate transfixed.
Three figures stood across the way, a strange wind rustling their hair and clothes, though none blew across the field. Three figures who beckoned to us and clearly did not belong here.
Together, the tree of us marched across the field, stepping around and over dead bodies, passed Cassius still holding me by the throat, and the dead body of Kate I quickly averted my gaze from.
We stopped a few feet short of the others, stopping directly in front of the past lives we each had. Broden, Celandine, and Malcolm.
Each smiled softly at us as Celandine stepped away from the others.
“The time for the final battle is upon you,” she said.
“And this?” Kate spread her arms wide. “This is what happens?”
“It’s one of many possible outcomes,” Broden replied in his deep growl of a voice, “but the most likely if you do not correct a mistake we made so long ago.”
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly. “What mistake? You did everything you could to stop all of this. What did you not do?”
Malcolm sighed as he reached out and rested a heavy hand on my shoulder. “It’s more of something we should not have done. The realms should never have been divided. In trying to protect the races, give them a chance to defend themselves, we made them weaker, made them nearly defenseless against this plague.”
“You did it to try and protect them,” I argued.
“Yes, and in doing so, we failed them.”
“Wait,” Kate mumbled quietly, “you’re saying… you want us to put the realms back together?”
The three nodded in unison.
“It is the only way,” Celandine assured us. “The only way to give you enough strength and power from all the realms to defeat the darkness before it consumes everything in its path.”
“How the bloody hell are we going to do that?” Craig growled.
Broden smirked, and the look was nearly identical. “Carefully, but to do so, you’ll need to pull on the original power that split them in the first place. That of the Vindicar that runs through all of you, and the one who dwells within the darkness.”
“Cassius?” Kate snapped. “We need his blood? You’re joking right?”
“Sadly, no.” Celandine stared proudly at Kate as she cupped her cheek. “You have come far, Katherine, and proven yourself a true Vindicar. Have faith, and you will see this through.”
“And this future here,” Craig muttered, “we can avoid it? None of us will die?”
“I’m afraid that is up to you in the end,” Malcolm told us. “But hope is your strongest weapon. Never forget that.”
I wanted to ask more questions, figure out how to ensure none of us died, but then everything swirled around us, and I gasped as I came to back in Craig’s room, Kate beside me.
“Uh, guys?” Craig muttered, and I glanced down to see him staring at the chain curiously.
Kate and I quickly freed him and helped him sit up. He was slow to move, but once we got him on his feet, and he hugged Kate close, I sensed his mind clearing.
“What happened?” Lucy asked urgently.
But it wasn’t her I focused on.
Out in the corridor, people were rushing around, and bells rang out.
Malcolm’s talk of hope disappeared in a second as I realized what was happening.
Cassius and his army, they were here.
Were we ready to fight them? Ready to do what had to be done to bring this all to an end?
“Mama Lucy,” Kate said as she took Lucy’s hand, “I need your help.”
“What are you thinking?” Craig asked.
“I’m thinking we need a trap for Cassius,” she told us. “Time to trick him for once before we end him for good.”