*Thunk*
The pain ran through every single nerve in his body in the blink of an eye. He felt like some had stripped him naked, leaving him vulnerable, weak and afraid all at once.
All these primal emotions came up unexpectedly and caught him off guard.
They stirred up a memory from his childhood that had been buried deep within his psyche. It was pushed to the surface as a result of this sudden shift in his emotions.
His vision went dark and he found himself standing outside somewhere in the cold rain. Barefooted, he was all alone on a dark road crying his eyes out. His feet were bloody from all the running and he was out of breath but he still couldn't stop.
Something or someone was chasing him and although he didn't know who or what it was, he did clearly remember that it was very bad.
Suddenly, he felt someone grab him from behind. Shocked, he looked down and saw another small hand gripping his own.
"Don't worry, I'll keep you safe," an adolescent voice comforted him. It sounded remarkably like his own as if someone was playing back a recording.
But the cold vanished, the fear drained out of his body and an eerie calmness took over him upon hearing it. He stopped dead in his tracks.
"Don't be afraid, I will never leave you alone," it whispered into his ears again. Now he couldn't tell if the voice was coming from somewhere behind or from his own mouth.
It felt like he had been electrocuted but the shock wasn't perceived just physically.
"Argh!"
Hao Xuan came to and quickly pushed the stick away from his head in a fit of rage. He wanted to jump to his feet and throw a punch or two but he held back upon feeling Ma Jiang still holding onto him.
His head jerked around with tightly knitted brows only to see Princess Helena staring in his direction with an apologetic look.
"What did you see?" the same voice came again. It was coming from the other side of the room. Hao Xuan turned another 90 degrees to see an old woman sitting behind the small table on the far end of the room.
There was a smoking pipe in her hand which she was carefully refilling.
Hao Xuan's eyes narrowed. It was definitely that smoking pipe that had hit him just a second ago but how had she managed to do it from all the way over there? Because he did not hear her move or make any sort of movements that would give her away.
In fact, if she wasn't talking directly to him right now he wouldn't even have noticed her. Hao Xuan sniffed the air and the findings filled his heart with trepidation. He could barely detect a scent but it was unlike anything he had come across before. It 'smelled' like nothingness.
It felt like he was looking at a black hole and all his senses were telling him there wasn't anything there. He wholeheartedly wanted to look away at once.
Hao Xuan swallowed a mouthful of saliva to wet his parched throat and spoke after steeling his heart.
"Who are you?"
The old lady smiled mischievously without looking up, "Shouldn't you know that already? YOU are the one that came looking for ME, no?"
Hao Xuan's eyes widened and then narrowed as he recalled something. He glanced towards Helena to confirm.
"You're the grand priestess?"
"Are you asking me or telling me?"
"Asking."
"Then, yes. I am."
"….."
When she saw that he wasn't planning to speak up again she repeated her previous question, "You didn't tell me what you saw."
"Saw what? Where?" Hao Xuan pretended to be ignorant.
The grand priestess gestured towards Helena to exit the tent to which she promptly complied.
"You know what I'm talking about. The vision. Whom did you see?"
'Whom?' Hao Xuan repeated, she knew he saw a person.
"Why? What was that? An illusion?"
The grand priestess chuckled, "No, not at all. It was a gift for saving that one's life," she pointed towards Ma Jiang with the smoking pipe but he didn't take his eyes off her for even a second.
"What kind of gift was that?"
Her lips slowly arched into a toothy grin, "I'll tell you if you tell me what you saw."
She sounded like a crafty old woman lulling an innocent child into a trap.
But Hao Xuan thought about it for a second and decided to tell her the truth. He needed her help in some others matters anyway so it wouldn't hurt to be honest from the get-go, despite her strange behavior.
"I saw myself. It felt like a memory but it was the first time I had seen it. It…didn't make any sense."
The grand priestesses smile faltered for a moment but she didn't let it show while Hao Xuan didn't pick up on the change either.
"Hmm. So why have you come here then? Surely it wasn't to escort my granddaughters home safely."
"Huh? No wait, you said you would tell me what the visio-"
"Time is a luxury that we do not have, Lord Hao Xuan. Do you want to keep wasting it or get to the point? I believe you need something from me, no?"
