“Hall of the Protectors?” I questioned out loud.

“That’s right.” The cloaked man, Kai, lowered his hands down to his sides, “You should feel honored. An Exotian hasn’t graced this hall in at least fifty years.”

However, I didn’t feel in the least bit honored. Rather, I felt angered by my lack of knowledge of the situation. “Why did you bring me here?”

He blinked at me blankly, not understanding the question. “You don’t know? Everyone like you is brought here. They haven't taught you about the Seeress of Exo? How old are you that you don't know?”

“Seeress of Exo?” I racked my brain for such a thing. I did not learn such a thing in high school. Nor in secondary. I thought back to my primary years and I finally found it. The legend of the Seeress of Exo.

Kai seemed delighted as he saw the look of recognition on my face.

The Seeress of Exo. She guides and rules over the Protectors, or the proper name would be Guardians, so that they may move forward down a path for the good of all of Exo Planet. Sound familiar now?

I nodded in response to his question.

The Seeress possesses the ability to read minds, both thoughts and images, and the ability to see oncoming events through her interaction with the Guardians. Through this, she has the ability to alter events for the prosperity of Exo and her people.

“So what does that have to do with me?” I asked, still wary of him.

He scoffed sarcastically.

What does that have to do with you?

He mocked my question in a sing-song manner.

You do realize you’ve been reading my mind this entire time, don’t you?

My eyes widened and I shook my head no, denying his question. Though of course that was a stupid move because I was simply acknowledging his thoughts, thus proving to him I could indeed read the thoughts of others. But this other stuff he was talking about, I definitely had never done before. I had never seen the images in someone’s mind, only heard their thoughts that were word based, nor had I ever seen the future.

No Exotian has displayed this ability for decades. There has thus been no Seeress for decades and the politicians of Exo, the Council, have forced the Guardians under its control. But now, we have found our Seeress and no longer must we blindly follow a path to an unknown destination.

“That has nothing to do with me.” I protectively gripped onto my bag, my eyes scanning the room, looking for any means of escape. “I’m not anyone’s Seeress.”

I know what you are-

“Stop it!” I yelled angrily at him. “Speak to me with your lips! I don’t want your voice echoing inside my head!”

His eyes softened and no longer could I see the person who first brought me here. His eyes looked at me in adoration. “Your highness, Seeress of Exo, we need you.” He reached out to grab my hand as he kneeled to the ground and looked at me with determined eyes.

I yanked my hand away from him, “If you let me go now, I’ll forget everything that happened here. I won’t tell anyone about you or this place.”

He stood up from his kneeling position slowly and bowed to me, “I can’t do that.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I sprinted off in the nearest direction I could go. He didn’t move from his spot, something I found odd. Still, that didn’t stop me from running in between the pillars. I found a door on the south end of the room and quickly ran to it, he was still not chasing after me. When I reached door, I found there was not a handle, but a switch on the large door made of a type of gray rock I could not distinguish. There were carvings around the large switch in the middle. I tried hitting the large switch to no effect. I glanced back to find Kai still in the middle of the room before returning my gaze to the door. I banged on it in frustration.

“You’ll only hurt yourself doing that you know.” Kai’s voice was right next to my ear. I whipped around and ducked away from him, trying to look for another door out of this weird room.

I ran straight forward, through the middle of the room, when I turned, I didn’t see Kai there anymore. I turned back forward to find him right in front of me. I screamed, half frustrated, the other half shocked. I ran around him again, ducking behind a pillar quickly by weaving around it using my hand. My fingers felt an indentation of some kind on the pillar and when I touched it, a symbol blurred to life and lit up.

I quickly backed away from it and focused my eyes on Kai. He was standing in the middle of the room, then with a poof of air, he evaporated right there. I stared wide eyed at the place he disappeared from only to have him reappear less than two inches just in front of me the same way he had disappeared.

“This is not getting you anywhere, Seeress.”

I pushed him away and shook my head no. That’s when I heard the sound of moving rock from the south of the room, where the door was. It must have opened. Before Kai could react, I quickly ducked around the pillar and ran back into the middle of the room, my plan was to sprint straight for it. Unfortunately, after around four running steps, a wall of fire scorched the ground and lit up in front of me.

I fell backwards, hard onto the stone floor. Through the flames, another figure in a cloak walked near me. The figure was not hooded and yet again was male. He glowered down at me from his side of the flame wall. When he raised his arm, the flames got higher and burned with an intense fury. I scurried back, away from the flames. He took a step closer and they spread farther in towards me.

“Chanyeol, stop it.”

Kai’s voice said from behind me. The other man, who I assumed was Chanyeol, narrowed his eyes at Kai, “Who is this Exotian? If she is trespassing she must be dealt with properly. Is she why I have been called here?”

I gulped down, not wanting to know how he would deal with me.

“She’s our Seeress, Chanyeol. The one we’ve been waiting for. She’s the one who activated your pillar and called you here.”

The flames died down almost immediately and this Chanyeol character studied me seriously from afar, not wanting to get close as if I could do any damage to fire wielding and teleporting pyschos.

Seeress? Our Seeress? I don’t believe it.

I looked up at Kai and gave him a pointed look, “See! He doesn’t believe it either. Just let me go home!”

Chanyeol’s eyes widened in surprise. I covered my mouth quickly, noticing what I had done. Kai felt smug at the reaction, “I told you.”

You can read my mind?

I shook my head fervently then felt like smacking myself. Chanyeol took a step closer, eyeing me more intently and much less murdering as he had been doing before. After a moment, his deep voice echoed inside of my head.

She is our Seeress.

“I’m not!” I yelled at him. Apparently, that was enough proof for him. He quickly went to my left side and kneeled down beside me. He took my hand from the ground and held it in his with much more care than needed.

“Your highness, I apologize for my behavior.” Chanyeol’s head lowered and he didn’t dare look me in the eyes as he squeezed my palm. I wiggled my hand away from him.

“I’m not your Seeress alright? Please let me go home. I just want to forget about all of this.” I urged the two of them.

It was Kai’s turn now as he kneeled down on the right side of me, “Today, the Council wanted to strike fear into the people because there had been talk of an uprising against them. They set up an explosion near the subway stop and told us, the Guardians, to observe and count the number of deaths. You were intended to die in that crash. I was intended to count you as a casualty. If you had not read my thoughts, you would have been tossed around as the other passengers had been but instead you clung to me. You lived. It is because of me that you survived. Because you could read my mind, you survived. Because you are our Seeress, you survived.”

I paused and thought for a moment before making eye contact with him, “If I had died, it would have been because you did nothing to stop it. No,” I curled my hands into fists in my lap, “all of those people died because you did nothing to stop it. You knew it would happen and yet you did nothing?”

Kai took a hold of one of my curled up fists, “Enable me, no us, to do something. As Guardians, we must serve the one’s who lead Exo. Without the Seeress, there is only the Council.”

Chanyeol took my other hand into his once more, “Become our Seeress and guide us so that we may do what we were born to do: protect this planet and its people.” 

I did not like this. Not in the least. This Seeress business was too much for me to handle all at once. All of this talk about the Council controlling the minds of people was obvious to me of course but I could not imagine them blowing up a subway train in order to enforce control.

Was this really why I could read minds though? Because I was the Seeress of Exo? No matter who else I met not one shared my ability. So was this really all true then? Was the child’s tale real?

If so, these two men were Protectors, no, Guardians of the tree of life. They were responsible for making sure the planet remained prosperous. And if I was their Seeress, I was what enabled them to do such a thing.

I looked up and locked eyes with the two of them, both of whom held onto either one of my hands, caressing the back of it with their thumbs softly, “It doesn’t make sense for me to be your Seeress. I just graduated highschool and I’m struggling to earn money as a waitress to pay for university in order to receive a degree in business. You could find millions of other girls like me out there. I’m not some beautiful, all-knowing, all-powerful Seeress.” I had remembered the stories. The Seeress read minds, told the future, and was undeniably a beauty.

Chanyeol gripped my hand tighter, “Alright, so you can’t accept it just yet, that does not mean you can’t try.”

Kai nodded and his face formed that same smirk I had seen when I first saw him; as though he already knew the outcome of all of this, “We will take you home for now and give you time. You will definitely meet the other Guardians. There is no doubt in my mind your instincts will make you accept your fate.”

I laughed on the inside. Soon, this would all be proven to be a misunderstanding. There was no way I was the Seeress of Exo.