Imperial (Insight #8)(4)
Mazing manifested at my side right then.
“Glory,” she said quietly, looking into my wide eyes. I’m sure they were a mix of colors right now; a deep auburn with a ring of emerald green, and of course a warm glow of honey behind them. Each color represented a sensation. The auburn was the base, the green was a sign of rest or peace, and the glow was a reflection of being fed. Surely, the green was confusing her. I hadn’t felt peace in eons.
“Why?” I swallowed. “They are crossing lines.”
She inhaled deeply, trying to see what had left me bothered. Nothing ever left me this twisted. Well, one person did. And he was the source of my fading trepidation.
Mazing flushed with anger. “If that is not the lowest of all lows. Ass. That’s what he is: an Ass. The whole stock of em.”
“I dare him,” I seethed as my soul finally decided to listen to me and back out of its euphoric state.
All sovereigns could sense their lines at all times. Wherever Xavier was right now, he knew he’d lost a few of his warriors. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that the sovereign that carried the aroma of mint now also knew this Escort had perished. And he knew exactly who could have accomplished a task such as this with little to no effort, which also meant he now knew exactly where I was. Not good.
Chapter Two
Every soul has a beginning. A creator. Beyond the one that created us all. My Creator found me on my deathbed. A deathbed that I laid in at the human age of eighteen.
My mother was insane. I never knew my father. My mother had said that I didn’t know him because an evil spirit had left her with his seed, which in turn bore me. And because of that, she was beyond crazy. I doubted she ever adored me or even wanted me. More than once, she tried to drown me when I was too young to fight back. Something always stopped her. When I became ill, no medicine was ever given to my vessel. Food itself was rarely given to me. My mother stayed in a constant state of fast and believed I should, too, so I could repent for my birth.
My world was dying, as they all do from time to time. War had pushed both humanity and nature into nothingness. Disease was rampant. Almost as if the divine had planned such a thing, I became ill. Very ill.
Camps were set up to heal those that they could. Vaccines were given, and the strongest managed to live to die another day.
My mother refused to take me to any healer. She said the evil I was had brought our world to the brink of its demise. I knew if I did not flee from her that her insane mind would convince her to kill me before long.
I all but crawled to the camp that was three miles from our home; shack, rather.
Healers found me at their doorstep in the middle of a raging storm. I passed out before they were able to pull me in.
When I woke on a pallet of blankets on the floor, I saw a beautiful man above me. His eyes looked like the ocean, with white clouds passing within their refection. His skin was so pure. Even though it was clear he was aged he seemed flawless, perfect.
He was not who had captured my gaze, though. It was the boy that was my age behind him that had Jet-black hair and eyes that were like diamonds were fixed on me. Power and strength emanated through every inch of his body. From his broad shoulders to his lean warrior stance, there was a presence about him that refused to be ignored. The world vanished as I gazed into his being. The sweet, clean, powerful aroma of mint flooded through my soul, allowing me to feel the true desire for life for the first time ever.
I don’t know how long we stared at each other—it felt like an eternity. All I remember is my mother charging into the healer’s camp with a man she worshiped with. She had him carry me away, and as she did the image of the man and the boy vanished, leaving me to believe that they were an illusion of my sickness.
My mother cursed my very soul as we left, and the haunting alarms of our world rang out. We were being invaded. Our end was imminent, but she did not care to let me die without hearing her scorning words once more. She told me the end was my fault. That children and men alike would now perish because I had forsaken her.
They carried me to the nearest hilltop. Night was born in the core of the day. My mother lay behind me, chanting a prayer, offering me up as a sacrifice to the doom that was lurking.
She told me over and over to repent. To clear my mind and ask to be forgiven for my birth.
I did no such thing. Instead, I thought of those eyes that were a deep metallic grey with shards of light piercing through them. Those lips that curved into a disbelieving smile as his gaze took away all my pain. I imagined how they would feel against mine, how his arms would feel around me. I imagined a life where my mother's insanity could not reach me, could no longer cause me harm. With my last breath, my mind committed sins that would have surely put my mother in her grave if she had heard them. Yet, that is where we are all headed anyway.
A blinding light broke through the horizon and everything it touched absorbed into the great cosmos.
The next thing I remember was the Creator. He was there when I awoke. He was at my side for days, maybe years to come, silently teaching me.
When my hate for my mother was a distant memory, I met the seven sovereigns, all male.
The Earth provides everything that a soul needs, and sometimes more. Their purpose was to hinder the emotions that weaken the soul. It was an honorable purpose that never should have been challenged, but obviously an eternity of peace and equality was far too boring for the seven at my side.