Oracle: Prologue
Visions of Mist and Blood
Estimated Reading Time: ~5 Minutes
Estimated Audio Time: 9 Minutes, 35 Seconds
A Foreword:
Welcome back to Sphyra!
While A Bargain to Become explores identity, parenthood, and the bargains we make with the monsters in our lives, Oracle was born from a different place entirely.
At its heart, this is a story about faith, grief, resurrection, and the impossible question that follows every loss: “What would you do if you had the chance to bring someone back?”
In many ways, Oracle is my attempt to wrestle with my own unresolved grief following the loss of my step-brother. It is not his story, but it is a story shaped by the questions his absence left behind.
I hope you enjoy this journey into the western reaches of Lesaya, where ancient gods stir, old wounds refuse to heal and the dead do not always remain dead.
Content/Trigger Warnings:
This story contains human sacrifice, graphic violence and blood, religious extremism and cult activity, death and grief, body horror, psychological distress, themes of resurrection and mortality and war and its consequences.
In Memoriam
For D.S. Millaway
Gone too soon. Beloved still.
A regional map to help orient the reader within this portion of Sphyra.
An author-read narration of the text for those who prefer audio. (Recommended to listen as you read!)
ORACLE
A TALE FROM SPHYRA
BY: C. T. F I N N E Y
🙨
Prologue
M A Z I R
The oracle was dead.
Her body lay bare at his feet, amid the old shrine to Bau, her own goddess—her blood still freshly dripping from the blade of his athame. His hand shook and the bile within him churned; the disgust of the act itself.
It had all happened so quickly within visions of mist and blood, heated breaths and the chanting of the five robed acolytes surrounding him.
His knife had cut into her throat, sinews resisting then giving way in a slide, slick and wet, and the blood poured over his hands and onto the stone tablet, filling the intricate channels carved into its surface.
He looked at the young girl’s face, stone cold-eyes not yet closed: the horror of her last few breaths etched across her face like stone.
Hysteria rose in Mazir’s chest even as his tongue continued the incantation.
There would be war for this. The Granthari tribe would come to the gates of Blackveil and raze the city to the ground as retribution for the murder of their princess.
No.
Breathing heavy, he raised his arms high above the stone dais. Rivulets of blood ran from his hands to his elbows and dropped slowly onto her body.
Not murdered. Sacrificed
For her.
Time-worn memories swept across his mind like a desert storm.
He saw the sand-choked alleys of Al’quifaar, a forsaken village, founded by banished apostates of Rii’said’s creed, where he had been exiled in his youth.
He saw the starving face of his mother—her body emaciated—and smelled the stench of her dying breath.
He saw the sneers of the Rii’sadian nobles and heard the jeers of the crowd as the Concord decided his fate: to be banished into the Forgotten Sands for the draconic magic that pulsed within his blood.
From that day forward, he had heard the black-shadowed whispers of her call.
Vengeance.
The word rolled through the recesses of his mind like a rain of clarity.
No. Not murder. Justice. The payment for a bargain made, he thought again, this time with resolve: this act was for his wicked goddess.
This was retribution for the pain of Al’quifaar—he would be the savior of that forsaken village from whence he came.
All these thoughts he used to try to repress the rising mania in his chest and the sinking weight of the consequence of what he had done that he felt anchor to the bile within his gut.
This was his destiny.
This was the beginning of the vindication of Al’quifaar.
As the incantation swelled to its climax, the circling acolytes collapsed into convulsions of wretched ecstasy: screaming, moaning, and praising the name of Urkhamet—the Dragon Queen—that nearly forgotten shadow cast over the history of Sphyra whose name dripped only in whispers from the lips of fanatics in the shade.
A low, guttural thrum resonated in Mazir’s graveled voice as he spoke the last words of the abominable rite.
Silence fell over the din. A stale, humid wind blew through the shrine.
Nothing.
Nothing except for the gasps of the cultists and his own heavy breathing. Was all of this for naught? Panic arced across his chest. Had he just plunged the Veil into war for nothing? He had been promised. He was certain he had heard Her voice clearly. Had he imagined it?
Suddenly, he felt it.
His tainted blood was a fuel that ignited into flame. An intense heat crawled beneath his skin: though the air around the clearing of this abandoned shrine of the goddess Bau was cool and crisp, Mazir felt enveloped by an overwhelming heat.
Sweat began to bead across his body until it flowed from every pore. He shut his eyes against the intensity of the heat. Scales slithered across the insides of his eyelids. With a gasp, he opened his eyes.
The blood pulsing from the Oracle’s throat began to move. It twisted around the Oracle’s body to pool at Mazir’s feet. It fanned outward, spreading against the dais, into a circle, and within that circle was Mazir, his sacrifice, and the six-headed sigil of Urkhamet rendered in rivulets of enchanted blood.
The moment the circle closed, Mazir’s tongue twisted with the taste of ash and iron. White-hot pain seared across his body.
His shadow unfurled—growing impossibly large—cast by the ancient braziers that had been lit at the ritual’s conception.
Two great wings erupted from Mazir’s shadow, spanning the breadth of the clearing.
The cultists bore witness. Gasps of awe and reverence burst from their throats, and they babbled whispers of praise to their wretched goddess in a forgotten tongue.
Some fell to their knees—some writhing as if stroked by an uncontrollable fit of ecstasy—some dancing as though their feet and arms moved against their own accord.
And still the shadow spread. Mazir felt the iron grip of talons closing around his shoulders, pressing into his back; the sting of claws piercing his flesh.
His body began to tremble uncontrollably. His blood was like lava, and he felt a whisper shift like molten rock through his marrow:
The path is open.
The acolyte’s chants and babbles erupted into a crescendo of absolute chaos—they writhed and screamed loudly in their forgotten tongue—some fell to their knees and began rending their own flesh.
The air around the clearing grew hot and humid.
The stones of the earth surrounding the outer hedges of the shrine began to rumble. The ancient and cracked statue of Bau that stood above the dais began to weep tears of blood.
Steam rose from the dead oracle’s blood, lettered into the sigil of Urkhamet, then slowly began to bubble and boil.
The air smelled of brimstone and the acrid taste of sulfur filled his mouth.
Something like sacred fire rolled through Mazir’s marrow. The sacrifice had been accepted.
The acolytes collapsed to the ground, limp and lifeless.
The earth grew slowly still.
The sounds around the clearing softly died down.
The blood around the dais hissed as it began to cool while the smell of brimstone dissipated and the taste of sulfur in Mazir’s mouth languished.
Silence filled the grove as dawn’s first light began to creep over the province of the Veil, behind him.
Just down the mountain, into the foothills of the Veil, dawn painted the early morning sky in lavender and blood red, and the first songs of the lark and the mourning dove filled the air over the quiet village.
Mazir stood silently over the body, and a sinister smile cracked its way to the corner of his mouth.
So… she kept her word…
Thank you for reading!
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I’ll see you by the fireside,
—C.T. Finney
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May 11
Hello all!
Honoring our “Fireside Friend” (Founding Subscriber Tier) of Tales from Sphyra
Last but not least, check out and subscribe to our valued “Tales from Sphyra” Fireside Friend, Stephen Thomas , whose current work, “In the Day of the Flood”, is available here on Kindle and in paperback! This story is a sweeping symphony that I can’t put down, backed by incredible research, and filled with so much soul. Read it for free on his Substack, claim it on Kindle, buy the paperback—whatever you want to do: just read it.
"Not murdered. Sacrificed. For her." That's the whole thing, isn't it, a man relabeling what he's done so he can live with it. And letting the ritual seem to fail before she answers was a smart move, the panic made the payoff hit. The dead oracle's eyes that won't close stayed with me too. Strong, ominous open.
This is gorgeous and I could not stop reading. I am so used to thinking through and writing futile sacrifice that an ANSWERED one takes on fresh potency. This book is going to be fabulous.
A semantic detail that gave me joy - the right-hand downstroke on the R is so faint it almost makes the letter look like a capital Rho. I loved that!