It took me a minute to spy the Oracle among the mess. The only light inside the hut was the beam of sunlight trickling in through the cracked-open front door. There were a few glass windows set into the earthen walls, but heavy, dusty-looking curtains had been drawn over them. Altogether, the Oracle’s hut felt a bit like a cave. Or like the den of a person who spent altogether too much of their time indoors.
I spotted the Oracle lying splayed out over a set of floor cushions on the floor. This seemed to be where she spent most of her time; the area around the cushions had the highest density of scattered magazine clippings, along with empty cups and food bowls.
From behind me, I heard a bonk, followed by an ow, and turned to see Aeshma rubbing her forehead. She had bonked her noggin on a brassy metal pipe, one of many that criss-crossed the ceiling. In the center of the hut, just above where the Oracle was currently lying, the pipes took a perpendicular turn and extended down from the ceiling, each one ending in a strange-looking nozzle, almost like the mouthpiece of a trumpet.
I wondered what they were for, but the Oracle answered my question before I could ask it. There was a noise like a steam whistle, and amber smoke began leaking out of one of the mouthpieces. The Oracle discreetly leaned over and inhaled it, then released it in a puff which drifted up towards the ceiling.
I followed her gaze up. A cloud of the same amber smoke was pooled in a little alcove in the ceiling. Even though the air in the hut was perfectly still, the cloud was roiling and lively like it was being disturbed by a strong wind. I thought I could even make out vague human silhouettes. When the Oracle’s latest puff merged with the cloud, the roiling intensified, and the whorls of smoke coalesced into clear human figures.
The image quality wasn’t great – it was a little like watching a staticky, low-res television in a smokey bar – but the scene playing out was a familiar one: three figures standing at their podiums, one with a mustache and two without. It was the very same debate we had attended in the Hagit town square.
“So?” the Oracle said, dramatically flopping over on her cushions to look at us. She gestured wildly at the scene playing out above her. “How are you gonna fix this?”
“Fix… what? Fix the election? Like, rig it?” I asked slowly. “The Money Mongers’ guild seems to have the same idea, so it might be difficult to–”
“No, not the election! Ugh, just look down! No, not at the floor! The magazines!” she shouted, irritation clear in her voice.
“There’s a lot of them here. What should I be looking for specif–”
The Oracle scooped up a magazine from beside her and hurled it at me angrily. I caught it against my chest. It was titled The Daily Droop, and seemed to feature a story about how Sloam and Menly had broken off their secret wedding, after an argument about the pension fund for Hagit’s civil servants had spiraled into a no-holds-barred brawl at a sleazy dive bar in a bad part of town.
“So these two candidates for mayor are, uh, on the rocks? They’ve been fighting?” I asked, unsure of exactly what it was the Oracle wanted me to ‘fix’. Frankly, I was starting to have doubts about the integrity of her Oracular prophecies. The Daily Droop didn’t seem like a very credible paper, and that seemed like the kind of thing that an Oracle should have been able to perceive.
“They aren’t just mayoral candidates! Sloam was the comptroller, and Menly was head of wildlife conservation! And they met at the local gala and they’ve been in love ever since!” the Oracle wailed. “And now The Hagit Local Dolly is saying that they’ve been cheating on each other with the same Goblin! And I know it can’t be true, but… but… oh, everyone’s saying it!”
She paused to collect herself, as a vision of a lewdly dancing Goblin flickered and faded from the cloud of smoke above her head.
"Everyone has been saying this?" asked Tatzel, the derision clear in her voice.
"Everyone!" The Oracle flopped dramatically back onto her cushions, and the smoke above her returned to the debate. She must have been watching it on repeat.
Aeshma, Tatzel, and I all looked at each other, bewildered. The Oracle continued watching her visions.
“So… you want us to, um… fix… that?” I finally asked. “Like, find out whether these two politicians are both really dating some Goblin? Because I don’t really see how that, you know, is stopping you from, um…”
When the Oracle didn’t respond, I pressed on, “I guess I don’t understand how their problem stops you from doing your prophecies?” The Oracle was focused intently on the scene playing out on the ceiling, and didn’t deign to answer my question. She seemed more irritated with me than anything.
Aeshma shook her head and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Roland, I might not know everything about emotions, but I recognize heartbreak when I see it. Just look at this.” She proffered a dog-eared magazine to the both of us. It was open to a page featuring a photo of the two candidates, both of them poorly disguised, having a romantic, candle-lit dinner together.
Little hearts had been drawn onto the page with gel-pens; and in the margins, there were paragraphs upon paragraphs of imagined, soppy dialogue between the two of them. It read like a bargain-bin romance novel. You couldn’t have beaten this kind of writing out of me.
"You think she’s just depressed her favorite celebrity couple are breaking up? And that’s stopping her from using her powers?" I asked.
Aeshma’s ruby eyes twinkled as she nodded. "Well, probably not that she can’t use her powers, but more like she won’t, you know?"
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“This is unbelievable,” Tatzel muttered. “We don’t even know whether this couple existed in the first place. For all we know, their relationship could have been entirely fabricated to fill the gossip pages.”
“They were together! And they loved each other more than anything!” the Oracle shouted from across the hut, still watching her reruns.
"Shit, she's got good hearing," Aeshma mumbled.
"I can hear everything on this mountain! For I am the ordained Oracle!" boomed the Oracle.
“Yeah, sorry,” Aeshma replied. “So look, if we can get your politicians back together, you’ll tell our fortunes? They’ll be easy ones, too. Real basic.”
How do I kill the Queen of all Monsters and Is my dead sister in this plane of existence were hardly basic questions, but it wasn’t like I was going to argue against my own case.
The cushions rustled as the Oracle sat up and faced us, and as she did the vapors above her started to whorl. The mayoral debate disappeared, and in its place a new figure emerged. It was our silhouettes up in the cloud – Aeshma’s, Tatzel’s, and mine, standing side-by-side. There was a little blob off in the corner, too, that must’ve represented little Jie.
The Oracle grunted her agreement and gestured for us to approach.
“You may call me… Friss,” she said. “There’s no need to introduce yourselves. I already know your names, along with everything else!” She looked at us expectantly. “That’s an old Oracle joke. It’s… we don’t really… well, nevermind,” she said, shaking her head.
Up-close, I could see that Friss was about my age, or maybe a few years older. The overalls-style dress she was wearing had really aged her up from a distance. She had long, brown hair, which reached nearly to the small of her back. Little metal chains and fine twigs had been braided in. At least I hoped they were braided in, and hadn’t just gotten tangled in there.
She peered at us with her dark-rimmed eyes. “So? What do you suggest?” she asked. “How are you going to solve my problem?”
Aeshma was deep in thought. Tatzel looked annoyed that she was here, so she probably wasn’t going to offer up a solution.
“Maybe we could… um… get them to talk to each other and sort out their differences?” I offered.
Friss’ expression dropped. That solution apparently wasn’t dramatic enough to satisfy her insane mind. She took another puff of her amber gas, and the cloud above us writhed into the figures of Sloam and Menly, both clawing desperately at a barrier which separated them.
Aeshma’s face lit up suddenly. “Ooh, ooh! You’re an Oracle, do you know Dream Bubble? What if the three of us, like, go into the politicians’ dreams and make them love each other again?”
Friss looked at Aeshma and cocked her head. “Hm. I do know that spell… but as I’m sure you know, it’s quite forbidden for me to hand off a Dream Bubble to a non-Oracle. And I can’t leave the mountain myself, so I’d have to give it to you three to activate.” She shifted on her cushion. “Succubi are known for their treacherous, cunning ways, aren’t they? Tell me, Aeshma, can you and your party be trusted with such a powerful artifact?”
“Oh yeah, for sure,” Aeshma said.
Friss chewed her lip, unconvinced.
"Consider this, Oracle. How many other parties have offered to help you recross these lovers’ stars? We may be your only option,” said Tatzel.
Friss contemplated this for a moment, then sighed and turned back to Aeshma. “So what sort of dream-scenarios do you think would work best? I assume that Dream Manipulation is one of the topics you were instructed in during Succubus Camp.”
“Uh, well,” Aeshma said, rubbing one of her horns absentmindedly as she tried to mirror the Oracle’s relaxed posture on the cushions. "I did get some training on, like, dream stuff, but I never got to do too much of it. They banned me after I– quit it, Roland!” she yelped, as I elbowed her to stop her from talking us out of a job. “After I kept killing people inside the dream and waking them up.”
Friss eyed the two of us thoughtfully. “Perhaps you could set up a dream scenario where Sloam saves Menly from some horrible Monster. Yes, that would work! You, Aeshma, could play the Monster! That would give it some real oomph, I think, over using a figment,” she said, seeming to lose herself in thought. “Emotions would run high… Menly would be so grateful for being saved… it could be enough to even trigger a makeout sesh. No, no, they’d never do that in front of strangers. Unless…”
“I’m sure we can devise the dreams ourselves,” Tatzel interrupted coolly. She apparently didn’t want to hear any more of the Oracle’s real-life fan-fiction.
“Okay, so how does Dream Bubble work, exactly? It’s a spell, right? You said you’d entrust us with something, how do we use it?”
Friss’ lips thinned and she held up one finger to signal me to wait. After a moment, a faint, tinny whistle emitted from one of the pipes hanging down from the ceiling. She took a puff from its mouthpiece, closed her eyes in concentration, and slowly blew out, into her open palm. The smoke condensed into a fragile-looking, smoke-filled sphere.
She handed it off to me. It felt smooth and glossy.
"Now, this won't remain stable for more than a week or so. You’ll want to pop it while you’re in close quarters with both Sloam and Menly. It’s vitally important that you don’t break it before they’re both in range – within five feet of you. Roland, you’ll have to be the one to do it, because Aeshma and Tatzel can’t use magic items. Uh, what else, let’s see… oh, I actually have some instructions written down.”
She reached into the front pocket of her overall-dress and pulled out a little note, which she read aloud. “Ahem. Whosoever activates the Dream Sphere controls the content of the dream. Reckless behaviors which disrupt the current ‘vibe’ of the dream may lead to dream destabilization and, ultimately, collapse. Anyone who dies within the dream will immediately awaken. Do not, under any circumstances, dream up a Dream Sphere and use it within an existing dream.”
“Got it,” I said.
Aeshma folded her arms suspiciously. “I was the one who suggested we use a Dream Bubble. How did you already have those instructions ready to go?”
The Oracle wiggled her eyebrows mysteriously as she took another puff of her miraculous oracular gas.
NOTABLE PEOPLE
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Friss LV11
Ancestry: Human
Class: Oracle
Notable Perks:
Vapor Seer: You unlock the secrets of divining gasses.
Gas Symbiosis: You may freely telekinetically manipulate any divining gasses within your Bonded Site.
Memory Vapor: After consuming divining gasses, you may Scry to view a distant location. The maximum distance between the Scried location and your Bonded Site scales with your Level.
