But what was it? What had she done to him? What exactly had she told him? What had she asked? The memory ran from him like desert rain over salt flats; brief and fickle and storm-torn, shivers of thought that sank into nothing. He caught only fragments, droplets that evaporated the moment he reached for them. They left only a crust of meaning — Oracle. Time. Wait.

Why him? Were oracles not some special, super rare, high-level magic stuff? Did she truly think he could do such a thing? Why would she? She had said they would speak again. What would happen when that moment came?

And did the others know? Did the guards understand who she was? Or was it only Yu — because he had heard her? Bubs, Deltington, and the guests in the common room; none of them had reacted when her voice struck. They had shown no dread, no awe, not even a glance that betrayed recognition. No one had reacted in any way, while the sheer magnitude of her PRIDE and POWER and PURPOSE had driven Yu into collapse. The unbearable force of her presence had unmade him.

The memory made him sick, more sick than he already was. It made him shake all over. Yu remained bent over the table and left his face buried in his wings. Like that, it took several rattling void breaths for the worst of it to pass; wet, broken, muffled gasps pressed through the mask. At last, the spasms waned and he steadied himself. He stilled his legs, reasonably, and released enough tension to rest his upper body on the table, at least partially, gradually.

Yet he could not shake the conviction that even someone who knew the image could not have endured the revelation of her being. No one could ignore such a condensed eruption of presence. It had been so much stronger than the deflection pulse. At least the krynn should have reacted, with how intuitive and impulsive he was. The borman, bound to his human, should have broken through the door the instant he feared her harmed. But no one had moved. No one had felt. No one had seen. No one had heard.

It had been only Yu.

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