There are some who believe that those who have visions have a gift. Call it second sight, precognition, ESP, sorcery, hallucinations... from time before time, knowing things no others could guess at has ruined the seer more than it has benefited.

A cynical prophet?

Even the Bible is littered with them. 

It was not a gift, this ability to see where others could not.

It was a curse.

It had been a curse my whole life. Only, I had never known what it was... I had thought it was only messages from my mother. Two years before she died, they started coming to me in terrifying frequency and then they would fade to nothing. But the thing that scared me most of all was the dawning realization that my mother was not controlling most of them.

The difference between then and now is that now, I control them more than they control me. Yes, the revelations come to me within visions at the spiritual sites. But they are not the only things I am capable of seeing.

I had not told Maximus. I did not want him to fear me.

People do, you see. They fear you when you are that different. They fear you when you know things that you cannot prove or explain... and then when those things come true, they begin to distance themselves from you.

I would never have told Max. Ever. There were so many things I had not told him. But escaping from Ephesus brought with it the involvement of Jacob, the Delphic priest who knew all these things I had never told Max.

How do you begin to reclaim the beginning of your time with someone who had become to me what Maximus had?

"The number seven is always important," Jacob said to me softly.

I glanced over to where Max dozed, soft in the dry warmth of filtered sunlight through an olive grove.

"Seven golden candlesticks," I said in reply.

"We have five now."

"We will not get the other two."

"Perhaps they await us at ..."

"They are with the others. But, Jacob, do you not see? The candlesticks don't help us. I don't need them. But the others do need them. All we have to do is keep one away from them. We should send them out with some of the priests, scatter them."

"The others have a name, Eris. Use it and it holds no power over you. The longer you avoid this, the stronger it becomes."

I stopped and looked at Jacob. He seemed both old and young to me. He knew so much and yet he really knew so little. I got a mental image of the pile of documents I'd burned in my mother's sanctuary after reading them. I thought of her sitting there, all those years alone, leaving behind her these scattered bits of information about the force she knew threatened her daughter.

Much of her writings I had not fully understood at the time. I was gaining a different perspective on all of it thanks to the visions from Gaia. "My mother knew they were hunting her to get to me. She called them the Nicolatinas."

"The Order Of The Golden Dawn. As told by St. John."

"Fallacy. Mysticism. Theosophy. They have no right ..."

"They need not have a right, Eris. They have a belief."

"Why would they seek to kill me? What has the Oracle ever done to them?"

"She predicted their last fallow period. They fear the next one. They fear it may never end. That it may be the dissolution of their order. That it may come in a cataclysm."

"I haven't seen that. At least, not yet. It seems to me that I'm being prepared for a vision that will take all my power to absorb. It's as if I must be brought along in increments, to learn how to really give in to the visions."

"Your mother would have trained you... if you had lived with her."

"It still seems so unbelievable to me... that it all revolves around this one group? And even if it does, why does my line of oracles seem so worried about the fate of the earth itself?"

"It's always confusing until it's in context and you have the benefit of stepping back. That's what I am here for... to guide the interpretation. It is my particular calling. It's why I was called to Patmos and why I knew you would go to Ephesus. My duty is to attend you in your trance, to hear your words, to help you interpret their higher meaning."

"And another thing ... this group, the Nicolatinas? If they are so certain they already know what I will foretell regarding their sect, then why ... Jacob, if they know it's coming, if their own texts tell them it's coming, then the Oracle is nothing."

"The last dark period for them lasted 180 years. It was foretold by the Oracle of Delphi. Their belief is that the Oracle knows more than just when it will happen. That she also knows the sequence of events that will lead to it. If they can disrupt the prophesizing of this, the events may not begin."

"My mother believed there was another purpose. That they seek to have the prophecy for themselves direct from the oracle. And if they do, then they find out the events and they can disrupt those events and thereby prevent their destruction. But they're wrong. I think that's what Gaia means. That they will interfere and their interference is what will really cause their destruction... and that perhaps, this is what leads to a greater catastrophe that harms the earth. Who knows but that what they're doing right now is what really leads to their destruction ... the oracle may have never had anything to do with it if they'd left us alone."

"Either way, they seek you. And they will not let you live, Eris. How could they? They seek to stop the line with you. Even if they do not prevent this dark period, they prevent any future ones if there are no more oracles."

"The oracles do not cause the events they foretell. They simply see them."

"But if the oracle is part of the chain of events... Don't you see that is their reasoning? Stop the oracle, stop the prophecy, stop a key event. It disrupts the future before it begins."

"Men always think they can change the future if they know it. But sometimes, the future needs to be known in order to come true. Sometimes, the efforts to prevent the future are the future as written and simply make it all come true."

Nights are the worst. I have begun to have dreams. He sends them to me, seeking me. Now that he knows it was me inside his head in Ephesus, he believes he can reverse the process.

Maximus brings me awake each time. I know it frightens him, to witness the way this unknown enemy can hurt me like this.

Tonight, I clung to Max with the knowledge that this enemy's ability to find me was getting stronger. It was one thing to be aware his mind sought mine ... it was another thing to realize he might have been learning how to move into my consciousness as I had done to him.

He revealed his name to me tonight. Rudolf.

St. John characterized Pergamum as the place where Satan was enthroned. It was also the seat of the Nicolatinas sect, whom he reviled for eating meat they'd dedicated to their pagan gods.

But they became much more than this.

My mother's study of them said they are a secret order that some believe were so closely entwined with the Masons as to have control over their vast treasures. There are even those who believe they somehow caused the downfall of the Knights Templar. There is a struggle between those groups; the ancient knights and the ancient pagans. Is it fitting that the Oracle somehow stands between them? Perhaps poised to destroy one or both?

In Pergamum, we sought the Temple of Trajan, now in ruins but still magnificent in its resemblance to the temple at Acropolis.

"They will expect that we will be at the Church of Revelations in Pergamum," Jacob told us as he drove down roads edged in brown-red rocky dirt.

It had taken us three days to progress from Ephesus to Pergamum. On the way, we had passed through Thyteria, a small city close by what had once been a thriving community that had held another of St. John's churches. Jacob had been sure this was a place where I was destined to find yet another spiritual site to gain another prophecy. But I had felt only a deep agitation and wariness. I knew the Nicolatinas had a group there, hunting us. Maximus refused to let us go in, despite Jacob's entreaty, when I said I did not believe this site called me.

It had been to Pergamum that I was destined to go next. I felt it within me as we neared the hills that sheltered it.

We arrived about midday and went directly to a monastery where two of Jacob's fellow priests awaited us, having made these arrangements to prepare for us as soon as Jacob alerted his order that he had found the oracle.

It was an uneasy moment when I met Elijah and Silas, the two priests. I had been exhausted that day, simply overwhelmed with a deep fatigue. Maximus had let me drowse in the back seat of Jacob's car during most of that day's trip. I had overheard the concerned conversation between Max and Jacob ... as if I was a child in need of constant supervision lest I take on some task far above me. By the time I met the two new priests, I was irritable and their attempts at proving they had taken every precaution to protect me from those who hunted us served to do nothing so much as to make me wish to be left totally alone.

Inside the room they had arranged for us, I peeled off dusty clothes and climbed into the bed. I was so tired that I could not even be bothered with getting beneath the sheets. But it was so warm out that I didn't worry about it.

Sometime later, I felt Max draw near the room and then enter it. I knew he was standing there, watching me sleep. A part of me loosened and longed for nothing so much as his touch. Another part wished him to stop hovering. But when he gently tucked me under the sheets and kissed my forehead, I felt the weight of his love of me as if it was a cloak that would always keep me safe, warm, protected.

"Don't go," I whispered to him as he rose, only his fingers to linger upon my shoulder.

"Sleep. You look so drawn." His voice was soft, as if he sought to lull me into oblivion using just the sound of his concern.

I turned over and reached out; my hand found his and I dragged him down toward me. When he decided to relent, he climbed in over me. His body sheltered mine, covering me, holding me.

"Thank you for worrying about me. But I'm just worn out from everything that's been happening. That's all."

His lips nuzzled into my neck; he wiggled ever so slightly over me, bracing himself on elbows so I wasn't crushed. "Are you sure that is all that is happening between us? You and the priest Jacob seem to have secrets that you have decided I may not share."

"They aren't secrets."

"No? You sit away in a corner with him, whispering together, fast as thieves. When I near, you go silent."

"It's just... It's just that he knows things and I know other things... when we compare them, we've begun to think that maybe this puzzle makes more sense to us."

"Things like what?" he said. When I hesitated, his hand came between us and he began pulling the sheet down. It seemed an instinctive move to gain comfort, the way he held my breast lightly and caressed it all the while I felt him growing hard as he shifted above me.

"Jacob suspects you know more about what's going on than you've told us," I said. Maximus went completely still above me; he almost seemed to not even breathe. "He figures you got help after coming here and that however it was you survived, flourished even, in those years... that it's important and that we should know about it. He thinks whoever was helping you... that you should tell us."

His voice, when it came, was pitched very low and was uncompromising in its menace. "And what do you suspect, Eris?"

"I know only one person that I would bank my very life on... you, Maximus. Everyone else is suspect to me except you."

"Yet you believe I know something I should tell you?"

"No. I believe that you have told me everything that is important."

He raised his head and looked down into my eyes. One eyebrow rose; he gave me a curt nod as if to acknowledge that he'd seen something there that told him I was not lying.

My fingers stroked over his neat beard, scratching in ever so slightly just to linger there in contact with him. I rose up and kissed his lips lightly. Against them, I whispered that I loved him, deeply and utterly.

His kiss seared into me; I felt a surge of hormones and desire for him. It didn't matter to me that we were both dusty from our long trip; that we neither of us were fresh... all I knew was a ravenous hunger for him that seemed to give me a body filled with energy where I had been in a stupor a few minutes earlier.

We wrestled his clothes off; he wanted me to go slower; I wanted him to go faster. I climbed over him even as he was trying to kick his jeans off his ankles. Before he could stop me, I placed him at my opening. He hissed in a sharp breath as I drew his tip through my wetness and then began sliding down over his shaft. I gave a soft cry when I finally lowered myself on him; it had taken me several tries; in and out, waiting to catch my breath and adjust for his size and urgency; my fingernails digging crescents on his chest.

In the pause, he rose to meet my body; pulling me closer to him; bending his legs around me to give him purchase to thrust up each time he would help pull me down as he gyrated under me and I over him.

Neither of us spoke; we simply watched the other. Even our lips did not meet. Our open mouths panted for air as they came so close but did not connect. I saw this look pass over his face at one point; like he was looking at me and knew... knew something he feared was too close to coming true.

I reached for him, drew him tight to me, my arms wrapped around his neck and head; my cheek leaning against the top of his head. Just holding him while I felt him let go of the emotion he'd been holding in check. His face was buried in my throat; I felt his mouth open and he let out this sob, just one, like despite all his efforts, he just could not hold it in. Then his arms wrapped around my back and he gripped me so tightly as he pumped in, out.

We came, just like that, wrapped together... me comforting him; him needing me.

Late that evening, we woke and shifted.

"I was sent to you by Apollo," he said, his voice hoarse with the remnants of his nap.

"I know."

"He is not the only god who is concerned about whatever is about to happen. He is simply the god concerned with the oracle's line."

"So there are other gods involved? Why don't they help us, then?"

"They cannot really affect this modern age when so very few believe in them as they did in my age. Eris, they watch this world, this modern world, but their powers don't exist in the way they once did."

"So they are reduced to watching? How pitiful for them."

"Even those who can only watch, they can affect us. One of them helped me, it's true. She is the one who taught me about this modern age as I was between the worlds, between the past and this day. And once here, she has guided me and helped me move among the modern people."

"She?" I leaned up on my elbow and smiled down at him. "Why should it not surprise me that a woman helped you?"

He shook his head but then grinned, this manly pride he cannot take the effort to conceal came upon his face. "It was Venus herself."

"Venus?"

"What's wrong? Eris? You look so... surely you have no quarrel with the Goddess of Love?"

"My name...Damn, Max. It can't be a coincidence." I sat up and hugged my knees in as I looked away from him. "My mother told me once in a vision that she named me very specifically. That there was a reason and someday I'd understand it... and that it would make sense. And then in one of my recent visions, she reminded me that she'd chosen my name to show me who I was..."

"Don't cry. Eris, please... A man is helpless before his woman's tears." He curled his body around my hips; I felt his kiss upon the base of my spine.

"All my life, I resented that she'd named me after Eris, the goddess of discord. Can you imagine thinking that your mother believes you are nothing so much as a troublemaker? She told me Turan was a family name... but it's more than that."

"Ah. Yes. Turan. I had always wondered if you knew..."

"Turan was one of Gaia's daughters. In those pre-Roman days, she was one of the earth goddesses the Etruscans worshipped. But she was also the bridge between Gaia and Venus... Turan was that time's goddess of love; she was Venus' predecessor. I understand now something Gaia said to me in the very first vision on Patmos. I am the bridge, you see, between the ancient Earth Goddess Gaia, the later Roman gods such as Venus and this current time."

"Why would this make you cry?"

"Add in the name Eris... It's a conflict, you know? And it's also a judgment on who I am from my mother. Between Eris and Venus... it's all in me... the opposing forces of discord and love. I see what my mother was trying to tell me. I bring chaos into the life of the one I love."

His fingers played in my hair. He did not seek to comfort me beyond that. I looked away from him; on the wall across from the bed was a crescent made of inlaid tile. The tile that formed the crescent was an iridescent blue; the tile around it was varying shades of greens and browns. The design was so subtle that until that moment and in that particular light of sunset, I'd not really seen it.

"The mix and interplay of religious and mystical symbols... have you noticed? Or am I seeing patterns only because I look for them?" I asked him. "We follow a path laid down by a Christian saint who had his own revelations that even he said had been sent as much by the earth as by his God. I am receiving visions from a maternalistic earth goddess whose line was essentially overthrown by a male-dominated race of gods and goddesses. They in turn were dismissed in the struggle with a paternalistic monotheist-based religion."

"Crosses, stars, crescents... candles... churches, temples, altars... Etruscan goddess, Roman and Greek gods, Christian God, in a land with many Muslims... But perhaps you are right - all this was there, but only now we see them."

"And we met... remember? In that one particular pilgrimage site that had been drawing Romans long before Christianity and now calls Christians. And we ended up joining together, Maximus, in that one place where the mystical becomes reality. In Finis Terrae."

I turned to look at him as he sat up and leaned against the headboard. The sheet slipped down his chest to puddle over his groin. He brought a knee up and shifted into a position of comfort. And then he looked at me; just looked.

Even in such an unguarded state, after making love with me, all pretense stripped from him, no robes of rank or cloaks of distinction... he is still a man with an aura.

Dignity. That is what he has. A certain gravity that is lightened by his comfort with his own emotion when he is with me like this. 

There is also an unbending honor, a masculine sense of responsibility, an intelligence and wit.

Perhaps he is not a classic male beauty; he has interesting flaws... for instance, each of his eyes can hold a different expression at the same time, which can almost be disconcerting, as if you're seeing a duality of nature within him. He has scars that testify to the warrior he was and is. He can have a harshness in his carriage and in his expression that make you uneasy, waiting on him to erupt. He can be brutal in his movement; yet he has a fluid grace even in those times.

He is not a pretty boy. He is, however, a devastatingly virile, sensual man. I prefer a man like this. I prefer a man who is man enough to be a man... and confident that I will be a woman.

"I never thought I would love again," he said softly, his voice deep, his eyes on me. "Eris, you need to know this and face it secure in the knowledge that I do love you. The gods did not simply pluck me from my time. They brought me here from Elysium."

"I know some of it but... I had thought... I had always really imagined that they took you before you died... But that would mean..." I shook my head at him. "You were dead? And they offered you life again?"

"I was in the afterlife, yes. I was newly crossed. But the offer in return for agreeing to this duty was not about granting me a new life. It was about giving me a chance to redeem the one thing I did while alive that I felt dishonored me."

"This is more about you having a second chance... to make amends? To do it right? I don't understand... you said you were brought here knowing you would guard the oracle. That it was your duty."

"Indeed... Eris, stay, please. Let me simply tell you my tale. I will tell you everything."

This is how I learned of his former life from his lips. I'd never probed him on it before; all I'd known of his boyhood, his life in the Roman army, his servitude as a gladiator... that knowledge had come courtesy of a vision from Gaia. I had never probed Maximus for I believed I did know all I'd needed to know. Now I learned his side to this... he'd been no ordinary officer but a general. That he'd miscalculated the loyalty and honor of others who tried to kill him, did kill his family... That he'd sworn to avenge his family's death by killing the new Roman emperor even as he struggled to survive as a gladiator. That he'd died doing that but that he'd also accomplished a higher purpose for Rome by giving it back the chance of a better future free of a mad tyrant.

"My God." I had tears in my eyes as I pictured him, dying even as he fought to kill the man responsible for killing his family. This man before me, so proud and so invincible to me... to comprehend how low he had been brought, how only a man such as him could fight back and single-mindedly find the way to perform the duty of gaining vengeance for the horror done to his family. I could see this in him, this ability to have been wounded that deeply by feeling as if he was the cause of the death of those he most loved.

"What are you thinking, Eris?"

"You died. I just can't comprehend... dying and... what happens when you die? Do you really go to Elysium?"

"Yes, I did. I was with my wife and my son... Selene and Marcus. But only for a moment. And then Apollo came to me."

There was a look on his face when he said their names. A look he wanted me to see... the love he felt for them. Eternal love.

My eyes dropped from his. "Being with them in Elysium was your reward for what you'd been through. Whatever could have induced you to leave them and do Apollo's bidding?"

"He promised me that this was to be my chance to protect, with my own life, another person to be entrusted to my care... just as my family was my responsibility, so too was the oracle."

"I see," I whispered to him, stroking the sheet before me, still avoiding his eyes. "That was, after all, the driving force behind your decision. I remember you saying that once. So, if you keep me alive, then you are essentially making up for not being able to do that for your wife and son. Somehow, that does seem the type of bargain a god would make with a mortal."

"It was more than that, Eris. How could I have said anything but 'yes' to him? He came to me and asked me to perform a task for the gods. It was an honor; it was also my duty. No one else would have done better than I."

My eyes came to his. "No, I don't suppose so. Apollo chose well for his champion."

His hand stroked down my thigh. I put a hand on it to keep it still as it reached my knee. "Ask me anything, Eris."

"I don't think there's anything to ask."

He sighed. "Do you believe in my love for you?"

"Yes." I looked at the crescent and then back at him. "But I also see that they come first. Your wife and your son. I guess I just never really thought about the fact that you must be anxious to finish this duty so you could be sent back to another woman. I know that's childish of me, but it's my honest reaction."

"This is why you had to know, Eris. It is true that I never wanted to love you but I did not fight it when it happened. I believe now that the gods intend to grant me the favor of remaining here with you for my natural life. It is my wish, in any event... a life with you, Eris. I don't want to leave here... not yet..." He slowly crawled over to where I sat; where I sat trying to put all this into perspective and to understand if I was happy or sad to realize he trusted me so much to have told me all this. When he reached me, his hand at the back of my head drew me toward his lips. In a hoarse voice of such emotion, he whispered, "Not yet, not yet... Love me, Eris. Love me for the rest of our lives."

"I will love you for eternity, Maximus."

A short time later, we joined Jacob, Elijah and Silas in the monastery's dining area. By then, the monastery's monks had long since eaten and left en masse for evening vespers. Elijah served us goat stew he had saved for us, along with hearty rye bread and goblets of clean, sweet water.

As we ate, they laid out for us the plan for the night.

We were going to the Temple of Trajan only under cover of darkness. Six of their brother priests had arrived at the monastery while Max and I had slept. That meant there were now ten men protecting me.

"It won't be enough... not for long, anyway," I said quietly.

"More are coming tonight. We begin gathering here, Eris. Tomorrow, we'll leave for Istanbul. Others will join us there. This is where we have the best chance to organize and prepare."

"Why Istanbul?" Maximus asked brusquely.

"We have a safe house there. Even as we speak, our people are gathering in preparation for what may come from the Nicolatinas," Elijah answered. "You must learn, Maximus, that we have guarded the oracle since Apollo first placed her at Delphi. We are grateful for the role you've played thus far, but it is time to allow those charged with this higher duty for the Delphic Oracle to take the lead."

Max stiffened beside me. I glanced at his face in time to see that eyebrow crook and that arrogant chin tilt he did when he wanted it registered that he'd just been challenged by a lesser man. He never felt the need to actually rise to the bait because eventually, his time would come to correct the insult to his honor.

"I go nowhere without Max's approval," I said. Elijah and I locked eyes until I finally glanced at Jacob. "If I have to go it alone with Maximus, I have no qualms about that. You either cooperate with him or we take off without you. Leave me a phone number where I can call you when we get done with the revelations."

Jacob's face broke into a slow smile. "That won't be necessary, Eris. We are all in this together. However, I believe that once Maximus learns of the shelter this safe house provides us, not to mention the facilities for training the men to his standards... well, I believe he will agree to our suggested course of action."

"I leave that decision to Max."

"Later, priest, after we return from the temple, I will hear your plans. If I find no fault with them, we will proceed in that manner," Maximus said softly.

And so there were eleven of us who made the night raid on the temple. Maximus directed where each priest stood watch and gave them instructions on how to call for help or raise a more general alarm.

There wasn't a one of us out there who weren't aware that the Nicolatinas had some understanding of the places we might have been that night. It seemed that each place Gaia was sending me for another revelation was tied into one of St. John's seven Churches of Revelation. Yet, each ancient city we went to, the actual place where I communed with the earth and gained a spiritual connection in order to have the revelation, each of these places was more associated with a Roman god than an early Christian church.

They might have been fooled in Ephesus, but they would not be fooled much longer... if at all.

Jacob and Silas came with me into the temple itself. Silas had already swept an area he felt was promising; but I searched with eyes that knew the clue I sought was the color blue.

There was a slight wasp of blue vapor that I saw almost from the moment we climbed the stone stairs in silence and stood looking over the ruins that were still guarded by columns. The vapor, I discovered as I came closer, seeped from a break in the foundation stones.

I stood over the vapors and saw the beauty of the earth's power rise within the mist. Sinking to my knees, I reached for the blue...

"Mother Gaia, I am here with you again."

The earth, Gaia told me, is in peril. As are you and your progeny. 

Artemis stood at her side; I learned who she watched over. Venus appeared; I recognized her as the woman who'd been at the London airport lounge with me, talking to me before Maximus arrived. She had been there just because she wanted to see me, the oracle.

And then Gaia swept them all away by plunging me into the depth of the vision for which she had brought me to this temple. All around me, people fled a wall of water. And Gaia told me to watch, bear witness, prophesize this to people... the inhabitants of this place had transgressed the law of nature by defiling and abusing the earth. Rocks were thrown up from the deep and then great geysers of water seemed to break through the earth around me. I did not run; I was not afraid for me, but I was very afraid for those who fled. It was wrath they fled, the outpouring of a higher power's wrath.

From the waters, I heard the prophet. The sea was lashed to fury by merciless winds. A mighty hand controlled the waves, restrained them with the control of an infinite power, the prophet said. Humans... the prophet derided their weakness; they were but worms of dust glorying in supposed wisdom and strength but opposing the universe as if the Gods could be ignored, as if any God, whether the One or the many, were not the only shelter where men could hide without fear.

Do not forget religion and faith exists for a reason; that beliefs are honed in the fires of time, Gaia told me. There is a purpose.

With a start, the vision of the future was taken from me. And that curious view of the present was before me as I was lifted up and felt the now-familiar transport away from my own body. The first time this had happened, my spirit had become one with Maximus, bearing witness to his defeat of the first attackers, the ones in Patmos. The next time it happened, in Ephesus, I had somehow gone further and I had gone into that man's body... the man I now knew as Rudolf, the Nicoltina who led the hunt for me. This time, I hovered, as if floating serenely above the cares of time and the bindings of gravity to the earth. I saw myself, stretched out, prone upon the stone floor of a temple in the dust of the ages.

Just before I left the vision, my mother appeared to me. Keep watch, she said, for the price will be dear. And I saw a vision of Maximus holding a golden chalice. When I looked at my mother for an explanation, her eyes closed and I saw a tear drop down her left cheek.

"It's safe, Eris, you may come out of your trance now," Jacob said to me.

I have no idea what I told Jacob and Silas while I was in the trance. I only know that when we left the temple to rejoin our guardians, neither Jacob nor Silas would speak to the others when Elijah asked them about the vision's message. When I first saw Maximus, I lost all semblance of poise and simply ran to his arms. I was so relieved that he was all right after what my mother had shown me.

It was a solemn group that stole back to the monastery. 

Inside the bedroom we'd been granted, Maximus and I sat up for a long time as I whispered to him the story of that which I could tell him of that night's vision. "Whatever is going to happen... it will be there. In the temple... it will happen when I am in the trance."

When I finished, he said, "We must go to Delphi. And we must not delay. Our only chance is to get there before them."

We sat cross-legged on the bed inside that monastery and held hands while we contemplated the hard road ahead. Any illusion I had, it was being swept away.

"I'm scared, Maximus. I don't think I can do this," I said to him, my eyes seeking his.

He placed his warm palm upon my face, cupping my cheek. "I will protect you, my lady. As long as there is a breath left in me, you will be safe... and you will be loved. And even when Elysium's gates open for me, I will still love you, Eris. This love between us, it lasts forever."

I felt tears running from my eyes and cascading over his hand. He made soothing noises as he opened his arms and let me sink into where he could hold me. "It happened in Ephesus," I said through choking sobs. "Artemis came to me in that vision... I knew she was there to help me... it wasn't until she came in this one, too, that I finally realized why she's watching over me... it's why I've been so tired and so moody..."

"Our child," he said softly. "Artemis watches over your womb as you carry our little girl."

"The next oracle."

"Our child." He gripped me in tighter. "My daughter. I swear to you, I will not fail either of you. The gods have given me a second chance. I will not waste it."

How long we stayed like that, taking strength from each other, I do not know. The only thing that really roused us was Jacob knocking at the door. When Maximus let him inside our chamber, Jacob looked between us.

He didn't want to speak. I wanted to comfort him; there was really none to be given out. Instead, it was as Max said to me... that we all had to do that which we were ordained to do. Together, he said, we are strong and we can defeat those who oppose us.

"They must have the seven golden candlesticks. With them all gathered together, they have the essences of the seven revelations," I said to Jacob. "They have two already; we have five. Whereas they must have them all, we do not. We only need three with us in Delphi."

"So it is written about Delphi and its relation to the number three."

"Jacob, you must choose two men... two trustworthy priests... everything depends on them keeping the other two candlesticks from the Nicolatinas," Maximus told him softly. "If they find us in Delphi, they will try to take the three candlesticks we will bring with us for the rite. If they were to have gained the other two, and to thereby have them all... Rudolf will attempt to be the one to gain access to the vision meant for the oracle."

"This is what my mother most feared, Jacob. Even beyond my death, she feared this... that he would learn the vision's entire message and then be able to affect the future... to doom everyone to something we won't be able to warn them about if it's not me to get the message from Gaia."

"We must be bold, Jacob. Now is not the time for half measures," Maximus said firmly. "You must trust me, as I must trust you. We both want the same thing. But Eris has been warned all along that one of your number may betray us. So choose wisely, Jacob."

"Perhaps I am the one she was warned about. What assurance do either of you have that it is not me who would betray you?" Jacob asked, his face drawn... his sense of loyalty to his fellow priests written frankly within his eyes.

"It was you whom Gaia guided to find me in Patmos. She chose you," I told him.

There was so much coming at us now. We faced the Nicolatinas, a dark force that sought to end the oracle's line by employing one of their own, a seer of great power... and this was Rudolf, who'd begun to haunt me... Rudolf, who had his own ability to see visions and to project himself within others... Rudolf, who would show no mercy to any of us now.

The prophecy had to be made by the Oracle; it was the only hope that the priests might learn and spread its message, might take whatever steps Gaia would dictate, to avoid whatever cataclysm the vision in Pergamum warned of.

And now, within my womb, I carried the future of my own line... the next Oracle... possible only because of the love of a warrior out of time.

Deep within me, my darkest fear... that the visions always included a prophecy meant just for me. My mother feared for Maximus. I refused to lose him.

On every front, our only hope was to travel to Delphi without interference from the ones who hunted us; to have safe time there for me to enter and leave the trance.

Maximus said our best chance was to convince the Nicolatinas that Delphi was the last place I was heading; that they must believe that I would travel first to the other three cities that held one of St. John's Churches of Revelations before being ready to go to Delphi.

He devised a plan to make it appear that the Delphic priests in the remaining cities were preparing for my arrival, that they believed I was still making the rounds of the revelation churches. He instructed Jacob to have the priests who'd been stationed at the remaining three cities to become just a bit more obvious, to make it appear they were preparing for the arrival of a large group of the priests... and of the Oracle. He wanted them to be prepared to defend their position, as if I really was there or expected. It meant a sacrifice... Jacob said the Delphic priests would not fail in this.

As for Delphi, Maximus felt certain that Rudolf would surely have some vanguard of his organization keeping a sharp eye on the area, guessing we'd be there eventually. He began to draw plans from memory of the site; by the time we reached Mt. Parnassus, I knew he would have a strategy to improve our odds of not only getting in, but also getting out.

Jacob sent word through the safe house in Istanbul for his order to gather in Athens, where we would enter Greece again. A small contingent of three priests would go ahead of us to observe Delphi and report on any sightings of Nicolatinas.

The last time the order had officially and openly attended an oracle in Delphi, it had been 362 AD.  There was a palpable thrum of electricity among the priests at the prospect of returning to Delphi with the Oracle.

We left the monastery an hour before dawn. Two priests entrusted with the candlesticks left at the same time we did, but they did not travel with us and they did not travel together. Each was dispatched to a sacred site where the priests' order had the expectation of sanctuary and help from others of their kind. One was going to Japan; one was going to England.

As for us, it was not to Istanbul or any of the remaining Churches of Revelations that we ventured.

We were bound for the one place I had known we would go all along. We were bound for Delphi; we were bound for the final revelation.