Imperial (Insight #8)(5)
By mere accident, one of the seven pulled too much energy one fateful day and when he did, he felt a rush of power. He felt knowledge. He decided that he didn’t want to be equal with anyone, not even our Creator. The war was born then. The death of our reality began. Instead of taking what was overwhelming for the souls to feel, we took more than our share.
Seven deadly emotions belong to the reign of the sovereigns: anger, grief, fear, shock, trepidation, obsessiveness, and exaltation. I know exaltation seems odd, it’s not the ‘Oh, I’m so happy emotion;’ it’s the winning the lottery emotion. Sounds great, doesn’t it? But what is not great is the fall once that emotion leaves. The soul is an instant addict and will search endlessly for it once more. Not finding it sends the soul plummeting into despair. Whoever said that there was no such thing as too much of a good thing had clearly never felt that emotion. Souls mistake exaltation for bliss, the one emotion we were all meant to feel constantly but rarely do.
Seven emotions, and eight of us. I was the youngest original, so clearly I had no say. Vade, the soul that emanated the aroma of mint—the soul that was my fever, at one time my rush, divided his reign with me. His emotion was anger. And with anger, there is a mass of other emotions. Wrath and rage, to name a few. Those were emotions that I knew all too well, emotions that any abused child knows very well. Wouldn’t my mother be proud of me now? Not.
A power struggle began. The sovereign Escorts began to invoke the emotion in their charge, each trying to grow their lines to the point where they could claim supremacy over all emotions. Some even took human roles so they could not only consume the emotion the moment it was created, but also ensure that the emotion had reason to be manifested. It was quite horrible, actually.
That war was the catalyst that landed me and my First here. Mazing was lured in by lust. Because she was captured, the only act that could be played was war between my line and Xavier’s. But my line was young. Our numbers could not even begin to match Xavier’s. Beyond that, I’d taken a stand against Vade, my rush. I told him that together we held the majority and we should sway all originals back to the life our Creator had envisioned for us. He vehemently disagreed. Therefore, I could not count on his line for any defense.
Vade had zero sympathy for Mazing. He often stated her birth into my line had divided us.
That was foolish. He was just jealous. Her birth proved I was a sovereign, not a chosen fever for him, the oldest and said to be the favorite of our Creator. Vade, the great stoic King of Anger. Vade, the boy that I had met at my deathbed, the boy that I thought was everything at one time.
I took the only course of action I could live—or rather die—with. I went to Xavier’s throne and offered a compromise. Offered that the line of war would not be drawn—that we could end this misunderstanding without any loss. I proposed a dual, one that only Xavier and I would fight in. Dying fighting seemed to be honorable enough for me. And if I did so, Xavier would not have to worry about any backlash from my line, or others for that matter. He could easily state he was defending himself if he were ever challenged.
Xavier despised Vade, so I knew the odds were in my favor. The divide between Vade and me had not been broadcast to anyone at that time. It was too new. In fact, I remember still having Vade’s scent all over me as I approached Xavier’s throne with my challenge.
Of course, Xavier wanted to bargain with me. He asked me to become his fever, at least to portray that for one millennium. He knew that would weaken Vade to the point where he could be overtaken. Sovereigns were highly territorial. I refused to be bartered as property to Vade—or anyone else for that matter. I declined.
Instead, I left the challenge of the dual on the table and added that I would disburse my line, meaning that no one, not even Vade, could control the souls I left behind. They would not be able to control them simply because upon my release, they would forget my existence, their heritage.
This was a win for both Xavier and me. He would not worry about my Escorts returning to Vade—a sovereign’s energy that had my essence laced within his—and I would know that the fate my line blindly chose would not be their end, that they were set free to live out human lives as they wished.
Xavier’s only counter was that both Mazing and I take our own lives as we bowed at his feet. No dual. Just a simple submission.
Everything and everyone can pass through the cycle of death. It is just harder to kill some. There were only a select number of ways to kill any sovereign, and suicide was one of them.
My line came to mind as I knelt down. Souls in my care. Souls that were divine to me. They deserved their freedom, and I would be damned if Mazing, my First, faced death alone.
At least Xavier was a gentleman about it. A poison glass of red wine was given to each of us. A swift, painless death. One that should have released us in the same manner that we had released our line.
I should be at a slumber party right now, braiding hair and painting nails, not taking up residence within the Veil with the Reaper as one of my closest confidants. But who has any say in this universe? Not this sovereign, that’s for sure.
The fact that Vade’s scent and Xavier’s were one and the same in the Escort I’d just ended meant one thing: they were working together now.
Vade had crossed the mark. He’d ignored every plea in our final argument and joined ranks with the other sovereigns, which meant my death was in vain, that the one line—mine—that could have restored the sovereigns to their purpose had been disbursed and their sovereign was imprisoned within the Veil.