Book One – Chapter 8

“Can you?” Yves’ words had asked her when facing the Vicha.
“I understand that you want to do something,” his voice had acknowledged.
“I know you can’t do anything,” his body had solemnly stated.

Midnight had wrestled with the weight of his words. In the face of an overwhelming foe, the battlefield was, for her, a physical space shrouded by the uncertainty of time. She lived and fought in the present, perpetually and intuitively re-evaluating her course of action as her present morphed from second to second, ever again shifting into a new present with new circumstances and new insights about her opponent. For Midnight, it was the aftermath of the fight, not the initial throes, that revealed the impact of her actions, whether she could do something.

However, she acknowledged that wizards thought differently. Her wizard had repeatedly displayed a foresight that she did not possess. He had the ability to transcend the immediacy of battle, to envision the end before the first strike. She had last witnessed this prescience when they had crossed the bridge from the lighthouse to the mainland. As winged beasts descended upon them, Midnight had sought refuge within the bridge. She had felt the beasts’ strength and fixation on each other, sensing the crustaceans’ hostility towards the magic yield to primal survival instincts. She had strained to impart these instincts and insights onto Yves, knowing he did not possess them, and she had felt that he understood. Still, he had rushed off the bridge. And Midnight had followed because, in the same way his humanoid senses recognised only a fraction of what the present unfolded for Midnight, she needed to trust in what her wizard envisioned about the future.