Of prophecies and omens

Erinara

“So you’re telling me that within the kingdom of crests, your entire life and potential is decided by factors out of your control? And that counts for every single person?”, I asked, slightly bewildered.
“Pretty much? There are some options, but for the most part you’ll be stuck with what you got”, Jin replied matter-of-factly.
“Options such as?”, I inquired.
“Either by achieving something incredible, like a war hero, or by being chosen by fate through a prophecy.”
‘Ah, the prophecies. Of course’, I thought.
“Are prophecies a dominant part of culture in the kingdom?”
“In a way, yes. They aren’t common, but they can instantly shift your life around.”
That they can, for sure. I don’t like prophecies. Almost all of them are lies, purely made up to control people. Does Jin know that, I wonder. I decided to probe.
“Who is responsible for the prophecies in your nation?”
“The mystics”, Jin replied, “They were the ones who found me as a farmhand in order to inform me of my fate.”
Jin the repeated the prophecy he was given.

“A lad to be found, by duty unbound, 
a farmhand once, the evil confronts, 
standing his ground, he shall be crowned”  

All I could really gather was that just about everything in this ‘prophecy’ was jumbled words that could fit just about every male citizen who ever worked in a farm. The parts of the prophecy saying ‘duty unbound, evil confronts, and standing his ground’ all were completely subjective. The part saying ‘he shall be crowned’ could be laid out to be a wide variety of things too. While it was true that many years in the past, before the war even, rumors of mages with the ability to use divination magic in the kingdom of crests existed, no proof was ever acquired. It was highly likely all of that was simply stigma. Just in case though, I commented on it.
“Divination magic has been mythified for generations in the land of warlocks. Did you see these mystics use any magic?”, I turned away from the runes I was working on to face Jin and let shadows slither around my arms, “What I’m meaning to ask is, can you confirm if they had magic abilities?”
Jin furrowed his brow in contemplation. After a while sitting like that, he said: “I can not.”
‘Chances of it being anything but a hoax are slim at best then’, I thought. I already expected as much when he had first talked about the prophecy a week ago.

I was going to follow up on asking him about these mystics, but decided against it upon seeing his face. It appeared like he was completely checked out mentally, deeply lost somewhere in thought.

Jin

Erinara asking about the mystics made me heavily reconsider my experiences. The kingdom of crests didn’t use magic at all to my knowledge, and yet, any prophecy given is taken at full face value. Only Erinara mentioning that tales of divination mages existed gave me a small semblance of hope that the prophecies handed out contained a kernel of truth.
Because if they didn’t… 

I remembered the time the mystics sought me out a year ago, when I worked as a farmhand. They brought a missive in the name of the council of crests. 

‘The council is not your friend. They aren’t even an ally to their own kingdom’, the writing of my master’s letter ran through my mind. If it wasn’t destined fate, why else would I have been ‘graced’ with a prophecy?
I forced myself to think back, trying to find anything that could shed light to this idea, though I couldn’t come up with a suitable answer.
Fyor Eaglecrest even wrote that the war had ended, and the battles were instituted by the council of crests. The insinuation popping up in my brain ran a cold shiver down my spine.

Was there even a reason? Or was I just seen as a means to an end?

I noticed Erinara’s cloaked visage staring at me.
When I met her gaze, she asked: “You okay?”
“Yes, sorry”, I flashed a quick smile, “I was just thinking about what I knew of the mystics.”
While that was true, it was far from the entire story.

To my relief, she didn’t follow up on my statement with a question, instead remaining quiet.
“Does the land of warlocks not have prophecies?”, I asked to change the topic.
She took an entire minute to formulate a response.
“Prophecies don’t exist, at least not in the same vein as what you described your prophecy to be. We have something similar though, a concept called omens. They are tied to a magic attribute or physical traits, or, extremely rarely, both. It’s a sign of bad luck to be an omen. You can think of them as being seen akin to curses by the land of warlocks. Citizens containing omens are most always seen as outcasts, having to fend for themselves, discarded by society. The only way to get respect as an omen is to be a cut above one’s peers, proving one’s might with incredible power. After all, nobody would mess with a dominant harbinger of destruction, would they? That’s a recipe for disaster”, she explained grimly, “many omens aren’t lucky enough to even try to build power, though. It is common for an omen to be neglected, or, in very severe cases, outcast and even hunted.”

“Outcast or hunted because of magic?”, I asked.
“Yes. For example, once, a citizen discovered their magic attribute to be frenzy-based. He was quickly deemed a dangerous omen and exiled in order to protect the land. Unfortunately, the threat of the new environment was what made him use his magic in the first place. An entire region became unapproachable, as the very ecosystem itself was altered to recklessly attack everything and anything. The omen couldn’t survive his own abilities. Safe to say, all choices made were suboptimal.”
The land of warlocks was terrifying after all.

“I guess our nations aren’t that different in some things after all”, Erinara continued.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Both the land of warlocks and the kingdom of crests discard their citizens in extreme situations instead of finding a solution”, she paused briefly.
“An omen was being ostracized due to danger to the people, and then there’s you, the so-called fated hero with a death sentence looming over him for invalid reasons of fabricated treachery.”

My first thought was to explain that the kingdom had no way of proving that I wasn’t a traitor, but I pushed it aside almost instantly.
Erinara’s logic was cold, but correct. At the very least the land of warlocks tried to protect themselves. Was the kingdom of crests trying to do the same by removing me?
That line of reasoning got shot down as well, this time by Fyor’s letter. ‘They will do anything to remain in power, including silencing any forces opposing them before they can act… The council plans and schemes in the long term.’

“I guess you’re right”, I replied after taking some time to digest her words. 

It would be best for me to carefully reconsider my circumstances. I needed to analyze my situation better, and figure out what I could learn from Fyor’s letter. 
And once I did, I wanted to ask Erinara for her thoughts. Thanks to talking to her, I started seeing new perspectives. Not because she was challenging my beliefs or forcing me to change my mind, but because in a conversation with her I got new insight I never would have considered myself. 

I just hoped I wouldn’t hate what would get uncovered.