Oracle

By DandoMando!

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It was said that it could grant your deepest wish

It could change the past, legend said. It could write the future. It could make dragons fall into and out of love. It could cure the sick and make the old young again. It could bring dragons back from the dead without a scale out of place.

All you had to do was complete the Prismatic Shrine's test. It was an ancient and powerful monument to light, still standing pristine and opal-white while the ruins around it crumbled to dust. No one had heard of a dragon who had gone to find it and had come back alive.

Many assumed the Shrine's trial was one of strength, or of magic, or of cunning. It was not.

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Oracle had always caught glimpses of the future, but he always desired more than a glimpse. Many before him had prophetic powers going down in legend and passed down in blood. Oracle had only a sliver of this power.

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Aimlessly he wandered across Sorineth, hearing the legends, and eventually wanting to find the Shrine himself. If not to achieve riches beyond his wildest dreams, then to at least wish for some special power that made him important in the eyes of his family.

Oracle spent many days meditating on his glimpses of the future, and many nights in stody old libraries searching through crumbling books. His search led him to the hewn city and the obscured crescent and beyond. And finally, he found it.
The shrine stood in the middle of the densest, thickest forest in the sunbeam ruins. So thick and dark, that he had to trek on foot rather than on wing, lest he miss the clearing that held the shrine. He stumbled over logs, and slipped on leaves, and nearly broke his lantern crossing a drainage. It was a long, weary trek, but once Oracle's initial enthusiasm wore off, he didn't have the energy to hate the hike.
Before long, he had entered the clearing that held the shrine, a space surrounded by a wall of trees taller than the monument itself. And the Shrine- sparkling white marble and golden brass, surrounded by intricately carved pillars, inlaid with a certain type of crystal that threw rainbows all across the clearing. Oracle approached the great steps slowly, amazed, staring up at the largest crystal he had ever seen at the peak of the domed roof, through which light shone, illuminating an altar within. Oracle entered the shrine with reverence, but he had not found the shrine alone.