Rowan felt the hairs along his legs resonate with the floor, the interior of Nezethar's room rattling with such potency that the four heroes outside its door could all feel its reverberations.
His limbs were shaking ever so slightly, urging him to move further away from the room, but the door's purple glow that defended itself from the forces inside invoked a sense of security in him--at least allowing him to stay put and wait as Nezethar had instructed.
After Nezethar had finished her explanation regarding why it's best not for other people to hear your prophecy, she convinced the heroes that they also be patient as some readings may take longer than others.
But Rowan's pupils were dilated, the never-ending passage of time encouraging him to close his eyes and hopefully whisk away the wait with sleep.
Yet, despite his brain telling the rest of his body that he was tired, he couldn't quite drowse off, his mind far too hyperactive with mixed thoughts of hope and fear.
The constant whirring of his mind could almost be heard, like two little guys on his shoulders arguing in his ears. The resulting unrest was far too much for Rowan, his eyes darting open as he almost yelled at the top of his lungs for them to stop.
But looking at the other heroes, several of which were notably close to falling asleep, Rowan withheld the impulse, instead opting for quietude in contrast to his restlessness.
"Hey, what do you guys want your fortune to be?" Elias cut in, shattering the invisible chains that'd overcome and clasped the mouths of the four heroes. "I know that I'd prefer being told that I'll become a firefighter one day."
Kaia opened her eyes, standing up from her seated position as if to respond to Elias' inquiry.
"Hah, you all should know by now, but I will become the demon queen!" She shouted, her mouth in such a gaping smile that Rowan could see the deepest parts of her throat.
'Disgusting', he thought.
"Well, you know, we all come from the same world, right?" Rowan asked, pointing his finger up to garner the attention of the other heroes. "I mean, we all seem to have fairly similar experiences and social constructs from our original homes. Yet, Kaia, you've kept talking about a 'demon queen', something that I'm sure none of us have known growing up outside of fantasy novels. What's up with that?"
Rowan's hands were outreaching, palms open wide to express his honest curiosity.
Kaia's face twitched for a second, half-stuck between exhilaration and frustration.
"W-W-Well... you s-see--"
"Alright, next kiddo up."
The one to cut Kaia off was Nezethar, her chest pumped out while Lucien clung to the lower part of her robe with his right arm, hunched over with his face encapsulating a green as if he were holding back bile.
He'd been using his other hand to grasp his stomach, rubbing it with enough intensity to turn the skin red with blood.
"Hey, you'll be alright, Strategist, now get going!" Nezethar exclaimed, spinning on her right heel to both unclench the hand Lucien'd been using to hold on to her, and reach her leg out to his face.
Fwam!
Promptly, Lucien was kicked twenty feet away from the door, moving fast enough to generate an uplifting tailwind.
The earth heeled at his impacting body, tiny fragments of concrete and brick coughing up while the rest of the force dissipated to form cracks in the ground.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing!" Kaia yelled, stepping forward just past the unconscious Lucien, but Nezethar quickly stuck her hands out, waving them whilst simultaneously grinning at Kaia as if she were looking down on a raging toddler.
"Calm down, it's just tough love is all. Better now he gets knocked out and sits on the rampant knowledge later than if he were to try to process it all now. Trust me, I've been through this rodeo enough times." Nezethar replied, striding towards Kaia to lightly tap her on her shoulder. Kaia resigned to her, simply looking down in apology. "Although, if you feel you're up to the test, you can go through just the same experience he had. Understand his position a little, am I right?"
Kaia's face was blush with red yet again, her brows furrowing to personify her newborn ambition.
"Hah, you know I'm the future demon queen, right? There's nothing I can't take." She said as she raised her pumped fist in the air, the tensile force visibly distorting the surrounding air to produce small specks of violet red that flew off into the distance.
"Then come this way, honey." Nezethar sung, pulling Kaia along into her chamber.
The three heroes simply looked on with expressions of irritation, the impatience wearing at the bones, but once the door behind the two were slammed shut, they knew they would have to wait again.
As Rowan's eyes shut with tense frustration, it only felt to him as five minutes when the purple glowing door's hue was slowly dimmed, the knob turning to reveal the two again.
However, this time, Kaia's limbs were freely hanging, her stomach directly above Nezethar's shoulder as she'd been carried out.
"Haha, it looks like this fiery beast couldn't quite handle all the incoming information, although that's for the better. I've never seen someone stay conscious through their readings as well as the black-haired cutie over there did... anyway, who's up next?"
Nezethar lightly placed Kaia on the ground, looking up at the heroes as she'd done it.
Nobody made a response or wished for some explication, instead, one single person raised their hand, jetting faster than either Rowan or Liora could respond.
"Me, next." said Elias, looking dead on into Nezethar's eyes with a strength that Rowan hadn't seen in him in the short time he's known him.
"Look at who you're ordering around with that commandeering tone, kiddo. Well, if you're that serious about it, who am I to stop ya'?" Nezethar replied, grabbing Elias by his wrist and pulling on it with such force that Elias couldn't help but discard his serious expression to instead be replaced by frantic regret.
Liora and Rowan simply looked at each other, their straight faces adjusting into playful, lighthearted smiles as the door behind Nezethar and Elias slammed shut.
The two simply laughed, finding amusement in what had just played out before them.
Eventually, their laughs died down, their expressive eyes meeting each other to form a shared gaze.
"Hey, do you want to go before me?" Liora inquired, laying her chin on her index finger and thumb as if to pivot into a more serious conversation--although Rowan couldn't take the topic quite as serious with the laughably large smile she'd been donning.
"Nah, I'm not really that interested in getting my reading done. Would much prefer finding my future for myself, if you catch my drift." Rowan replied, almost breaking in tone from the unseriousness of his remark.
"Well, you know, it may be helpful to at least know what awaits you." Liora said, moving her hand to form a half-fist that ran into her other hand, clasping it. "After all, if time is as malleable as Nezethar said it is, then just as there are ways to prevent a good future, there must be ways to prevent a bad one."
The thought presented by Liora was enough to allow Rowan to even ponder at such a prospect, although his face didn't change that much.
"I guess, if you really wish to think about it that way. But I think that all makes the presumption that the future is something that we should avoid." He said, his response just a little bit more delayed than was comfortable.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that in this world--or I guess, all worlds since we come from a different one, if we use our time dealing with certainties and factors outside of our control, we'll end up wasting away and forgetting about all the ones that aren't." Rowan said, closing his eyes to better encapsulate the fleeting ideas in his mind. "Well--uh, I mean, I guess that if we truly value life for all its better parts, we should accept its worse ones as well. If nobody had bad experiences, none of us would grow, and strength is built through pressure."
Liora was stuck on his words, eyes and mouth wide with surprise.
Rowan's introspection was immediately cut off as he felt the awkward silence etch a decisive blow on his chest, his hands waving with frantic vigor.
"W-wait, uh, I didn't mean to go on a tangent--"
Liora's laugh cut Rowan off, her cheeks blush in an all too exhilarating fashion.
"Ha ha ha! No, I wasn't mad or anything, I was just impressed, is all." She said, touching his shoulder with her left hand.
Rowan's torso stiffened, his mouth forming a rectangle as he felt his hairs rise. Liora's light brushing of her hand over his skin was enough to make not just him, but any man nervously pale in anxiety.
"W-Well, thank you! I, um... um... Liora, I--"
Slam!
Suddenly, Elias' dangling body was rested was thrown across the dim hallway as the door was thrashed open. Nezethar was on the other side of it, clearly agitated by whatever had gone on inside.
"Alright, next!"
The passing thrums of Rowan's heartbeat stretched indefinitely, the trills of his muscles lengthening in duration as he felt his sense of time dissipate.
Rowan thought back to when Liora had volunteered herself to having her fortune be seen, most likely considerate for his indifference towards his future.
She'd stepped forward immediately, easing Elias down before being pulled by Nezethar.
Rowan looked on at the unconscious bodies of the three heroes, Lucien muttering something indiscernible while his eyes vigorously twitched, Kaia's lips trembling in response to the flowing air in the hallway, and Elias' face still distraught from getting thrown onto the ground.
The harrowing void filling Rowan's chest only grew in size, the feeling that he was missing something gnawing at his conscious.
Out of a peculiar boredom, he began knocking a stray stone on the ground back and forth, most likely stemming from when Nezethar had kicked Lucien straight into concrete.
The stone's rattling was enough to desensitize him to the more annoying parts of his circumstances, filling the void within him the same way a cat would with their ball of yarn.
"And I'm a grown man." He said, silently cackling at his own remark.
Tiny vibrations stuck his tibia, the floor acting as the messenger for the thrashing inside the room concealed by Nezethar's glowing door.
Rowan pushed himself off the ground, discarding the piece of stone in the process.
"This is typically when the reading gets finished." He said, patting away dust on his already tattered pants. "Unless, of course, Liora is like our friend, Lucien here."
He smiled at the thought, a small part of him perhaps hoping that she's special, but he bore no genuine concern for such a relatively trivial matter in the face of what might be a future predicament if he doesn't tackle it right.
Thwam!
With comedic timing, the door slammed open, its purple hue reflecting as a streak in accordance with its movement.
This time, the door's glow had not disappeared, instead staying active?
"My, aren't you the resilient one?" Nezethar said, poking at the cheek of an unbothered individual just to the right of her.
She was standing up without using Nezethar as a crutch as Lucien had, instead simply... unimpeded. She had no visible signs of disarray, nor any clear issues.
She didn't look hurt. But something about her stillness unsettled him more than Kaia's collapse had.
"Well, I think the other heroes might have been playing it up a little bit more than they needed to." She added, almost spitting back Nezethar's sarcasm, "although, I might just have a knack for it. Who knows?"
Nezethar didn't open her mouth, instead just pushing Liora from her back and prompting her to stand back out in the hallway.
"Anyways, it's your turn now, kiddo." Nezethar said, gazing upon Rowan who'd been standing with an awkward posture, his arms reaching out almost randomly with his mouth half-open.
"W-Well, that's the thing. I think I'm better off not getting my fortune done." He said, stepping back a couple steps while scratching his scalp. "I believe there's certain things that people-"
"How ridiculous, just come here!"
Instantly cutting him off, Nezethar squelched Rowan's speech by spinning him around by his wrist.
Her grip was so strong that Rowan could feel the popping of small balls, pressing up against more deeper parts of his wrist.
He just barely bit back a yell from the intense pain, intent on breaking free from her control.
Flexing his knees to buckle under using his own weight and holding onto her wrist with his other hand, he violently resisted her pull, just barely enough to stop her gait.
"Hold on, crazy woman! Just hold on--"
Again, Rowan was cut off, but this time, Nezethar didn't spare him any words.
She tensed her muscles, aether vehemently flashing out from her muscle as Rowan was jetted towards the interior of her room.
Rowan limbs flew out and about from the sudden onset of wind's resistance against his body, helplessly ragdolling across her room.
Slamming against the ground, the spontaneity of the impact left Rowan unaware of who, what, or where he was, his mind tracing between several threads before eventually resolving into one, clear thought.
He could feel a throbbing resonate with his heartbeat along his ribcage, stealing the breath from his lungs as he clenched for air, but his mind was taken off this pain for just a moment when Nezethar slammed the door behind her.
Runes familiar to Rowan etched their way into the door, spiraling into the obscure image of a lock, but that wasn't where his concerns laid.
Nezethar was looking down on Rowan, his grit teeth the only barrier between her and his swirling curses ready to be unleashed.
"Sorry for that kiddo. You're a hard man to convince..." She said, looking up as if she just realized something. "Or, would've been, anyway. The thing is, I already know and have had this conversation with you, and I already know how it will end--hey, hold on, you're pretty cute. To be honest, you might beat out that Lucien kid."
Rowan's face immediately became enveloped with a bright pink, the throbbing in his chest just a little bit less debilitating.
He patted himself clean of any dust and pushed himself off the ground, mindful of any other injuries he may have wrought from her throw.
The room was bright with light now, illuminating the faint shimmer of silk wrapped loosely around her. Her silhouette wavered through the light like something dreamt into existence--not seductive, not comforting, but overwhelming.
"Hey, my eyes are up here, kiddo." She said, pointing her index and middle finger at her eyes.
Rowan, now stammering, aggressively waved his hands so as to attempt to elaborate that he wasn't checking her out.
"Nah, I'm just teasing you, although I'm not telling you you can't look. In fact, you'll look regardless of what I say to you." She said, raising her hands behind her head with a slowed, seductive glint in her eyes. "But I digress. I believe it's time for us to start."
"Start what?" Rowan asked, his head tilted to the side.
She stepped forward. The light behind her dimmed, just a little.
"Your reading, dummy."