That vague sense of something impending didn't stay hazy for long. One second Cerise could feel it, coming closer and closer but still out of reach... and then it hit her with a force so powerful she felt herself tremble and shake. Her entire body went rigid as hundreds of images assailed her mind at once, flicking through so rapidly that they were all just a blue of black and white and flashes of red...It was only through experience and sheer force of will that the Seer was able to make any sense of what she was seeing, and she bore her will down upon the vision like a hammer striking down, forcing it to take shape. With a low pained moan Cerise clutched at the table, knuckles white, nails digging into the wood hard enough to splinter it as the visions because to slow.
For a moment she felt as if they stood at some sort of crossroads, but instead of just one fork there were perhaps fifty, a hundred, maybe more, and each of them was an image of the future pressing down on Cerise's mind. They assailed her in rapid flashes, each flickering by faster than the last. The sound of screaming, a spray of warm blood across her face, the flash of wand fire, screams, fire, smoke, tears trickling down her cheek, a cry of rage, a scream of pain, and so many faces, over and over again, so many faces and so many emotions. Enraged, in fear, in pain, suffering, victorious, defeated, alive, dead, alive, dead. She bit her lip with a whimpering moan as all the possibilities flooded her mind. Hogwarts on fire, Diagon Alley covered in smoke, a dark graveyard lit up by the flashes of curses, a field she'd never seen before, drenched in blood. A man in a mask raised his wand triumphantly, a young boy huddled to the ground and cried, a group of young people thrust their fists in the air and cheered, a blood-splattered face keened in grief, a man sunk his claws into the body of a young woman and tipped his head back with a howl.
It was every possibility, each vision equally possible, all of them dependent on decisions as theoretically meaningless as the flip of a coin or the choice to go left instead of right. Meaningless and yet at the same time those choices were everything. These choices were life and death. Cerise saw it all, saw every possibility, and more than that, she felt it. Felt the white-hot flashes of pain, the hot burst of a curse against her chest, the slice of claws through skin, the feeling of blood spraying across her face, so much endless pain and she tried to bit down on her lower lip to keep it all inside, biting down so hard that she began to bleed, but it wasn't enough. She opened her mouth and screamed for it to stop.