Destiny's Kingdom: Legend of the Chosen (24 page)

"I'd rather have my gift be something more interesting. Like moving things around with magic like Aazrio does or riding horses like Trina."

"Well your riding skills are coming along just fine. I thought you were brilliant the other day in the meadow when your horse took off running, when you least expected it."

She looked up at him, her wide eyes blue shining jewels. "You saw that? I didn't think anyone was there to see that!" Avalon smiled warmly at the young girl who charmed him so, who knew so little about how much she would affect the world someday.

"There are many things I see, and many things I know. All that's important to you is also important to me. Not only the things that lie ahead in your future." A shadow flickered over the light in her eyes, and Avalon quickly spoke to remove it.

"Don't worry, Clea. Many years lie between now and the time the riddle will come to you again. Many years, with a lot of magical and carefree times in between."

Clea snapped from her haze when the leyline ended and the ship was thrust into open space. She pressed the panel back into its place and pulled herself along the cable to the end, grabbed hold of the top bar of the service ladder, which led to access of the main engines, and squirmed out of the straps. She hung for a moment by her hands, looking down on the area below, then swung her body over to get footing on the ladder and climbed down. The cable that spanned the ceiling retracted from throwing a switch in a floor panel, and all evidence of the ceiling access was erased. Clea looked at her wrist chron. It was only five minutes travel time until their final nexus point would take them home to Bethel. She had the wild inclination to change their heading, set a course for another part of the galaxy completely. But somehow, she did not. The muscles in her arms and stomach burned from all the stretching and bending she'd been doing during her manual memory unload, but not nearly as much as the emotions were burning over her exchange with Quade. Perhaps she remembered the words Avalon had told her incorrectly. Maybe she'd get back and he would tell her that Quade had found out about P'cadia somehow in his travels. It couldn't possibly be the prophecy that Avalon had slowly explained to her over the course of her life. Couldn't possibly be an event such as that.

CHAPTER 17

"T
he gods know that someday a group of Chosen will succeed." Quade stood outside now, the din of writhing, feasting spawn all around him.
 

"Only 'tis all too often reluctance or denial causes the Chosen to wait until it is too late," Mimic's voice sounded in his mind. Echo darted in front of Quade's eyes as he looked down and behind her, he saw the grass beneath his feet turning from green to dead.

"Do not let it be too late for your world, Quade. You still have time."

"How much time?"

"Three days. Perhaps four."

"Three days?!" Quade stared at Echo, shocked.

"Perhaps four."

"Three or four days! After all that I've seen?" He looked around him, overwhelmed at the speed in which the planet had come to lay in waste, and sunk to his knees on the ground. Echo followed him down but there was still no sign of Mimic. "Again and again the Chosen battle and die. How, within this, am I to see hope?"

At no time did we promise you hope.

“Then why did you come to me if there is no hope?!” He looked at Echo though it was Mimic who spoke to him inside his head.

We come to you because it is the way of the gods' plan.

“Ah, yes the gods' plan! And the two of you, emissaries of those gods. The gods who created this hopeless scheme! How can the gods allow this to continue? Why do the gods not stop the destruction? Why do they not stop the death?”

"Who are you to question the gods!" Mimic's angry voice sounded in Quade's head but in an instant she appeared before his eyes next to Echo, hovered in front of him and then dropped to the ground, growing in size until she stood face to face with Quade in his seated position on the dead grass. "You must never forget they are the gods, Quade! Though now perfect they were once young and flawed. 'Tis balance they seek to establish at last. So perhaps this is what they had intended all along."
 

Quade shook his head. “I don’t seek to question the gods, Mimic. But if the gods themselves will not end the SanFear and instead give that power to mortals, why not give me the power to blink them out of existence? Why not give me the power to stop them with but a thought?”

"Why not give you a fiery sun to hurl at them and the power to raise the dead to do your bidding? Why not allow you the power of creation itself? The gods strive to achieve a balance. In making the SanFear they made no balance,
 
they gave it no limits and thus it grew too powerful. In giving the Chosen such power that you speak, it would again disturb the balance. So the Gods at first made the Chosen small. And with each defeat they made them stronger. Eons would go by countless Chosen would fall but they grew in strength gradually."

"It is true Quade, what Mimic says. The gods set out to right the wrong they made. They looked upon all they created and found the need now to not create, but destroy."

"But even in destruction, there is creation. The creation of the Chosen."
 

"The Chosen few!" Quade's voice was angry, his eyes flashed. "Few Chosen amid millions, billions who have died!"

"Yes, but unto those Chosen few the Gods bestowed the power to end this strife. To wage this war and win, to bring balance to that which had been made in disproportion."

"It is an impossible task." Quade looked at all the destruction around him, the smoldering ruins which had only moments ago, been a living, breathing planet, living, breathing people and plants, animals and objects. Now the ground was grey and char, dust scattered everywhere in the wake of the blackness that now shadowed the sun. Quade rested his face on his knee and covered his head with his arms. "So much death and destruction…and what am I given to combat it?" He felt the tickle of something falling against his skin and was only vaguely aware that it was the falling of leaves.

"Quade you must have faith."

"Have faith?" He looked up indignantly, outstretched his arms. "Have faith in what? The gods who curse me to battle this unvanquishable foe? The gods who have given me nothing but grief?" He stopped short as he looked around, saw that he was surrounded by the familiar terrain of Bethel, the sun warm on his face, its dreamy quality surreal enough for him to realize he was still in the vision, but tangible enough for him to recognize the familiar quality of the air.

"The gods gave you life Quade, gave you this planet that you love, that young woman that you love…" Echo had shrunk in size again, flitted to perch on Quade's knee.

"What price do you put on their future, the price of your judgment of the gods? To what end?" Mimic had disappeared but he recognized her voice from behind his ear.

"Have faith in yourself Quade, again, you must trust us. Have faith in your Chosen. Their powers are mighty and a force to be reckoned with. Your powers alone are beyond what you now know."

"Powers? What powers? I've no particular power, I can't even harness magic. And every time I come within visual distance of this force, this thing you call the SanFear, my body collapses in on itself. Some power, to be able to see this entity I have no ability to defeat, can hardly bear to stand in its presence."

"Once together the Chosen will lighten that burden. This is why you must find them, find them all! Your sickness will be a thing of the past and once united the powers of the Chosen will ascend to inconceivable heights."

"How do you know this, if you've never seen success? How do you know of the Chosens' powers being so mighty when all they've done is fail?"

"How do we know? We do not question the gods as do you. And there have been times, times long since past…"

"So close, Quade. There was once a time when a group of Chosen came so close they almost succeeded."

"It was indeed a triumphant time for the Chosen."

"And in turn the darkest day for the SanFear."

"Those Chosen were made to pay mightily for their success."

"What did they do that brought them so near to victory?"

Echo's voice was pained. "'Twas a horrible thing Quade, what we must show you…"

"You hesitate to show me this, after all that I've seen? If my bearing witness to this horrible thing means that I might easier save my world them I'm prepared to see what there is to be seen. Show me!"

Quade had never seen eyes so intense as the eyes of the man who stood against the blazing light of the setting sun, on the top of a tall structure that could've been a castle or an abbey, the powdery white stone constructed in a beautiful design. But all that there might be glimpsed on this mountaintop land fell away from Quade's interest as he stared at the old man's gleaming eyes, and before he turned his head to see what it was the man was staring at, Quade already knew it would be the SanFear.

Two women stood at his side, one old and one much younger, not even into her twenties, by Quade's judgement. They sang a song that whispered on the wind, a melody which was sweet and mysterious in yet another language Quade did not understand. It was a haunting sound, and the man drew his hands together, breathing in a pattern that somehow matched the strange song the women sang.
 

Not very far behind the first SanFear came a second, and though ripe with curiosity, Quade dare not whisper a word lest the spell be broken by the mysteriously sung tune the women continued to create. As the SanFear drew closer, the man shouted a word and flung his hands forward. From his palms a showering of glittery dust filled the air, sparkling with the light of the setting sun, and the women's voices lowered to a quieter tone, barely a whisper on the still air. The man stood tall, his eyes still intense as he watched the SanFear come closer, and as it entered the space where the glimmering dust hung suspended on the air, he began to chant quietly, under his breath. An incredible thing happened then, something that, in all the visions Quade had been subjected to, he'd never seen happen. The SanFear changed in appearance, in the winking of a second, took human form. The man crossed his arms over his chest and continued to mutter his strange words, and the SanFear, now looking for all the world like a puzzled human, stood before him. The second SanFear came up quickly from behind, and the man who chanted did not flinch though Quade could tell that he watched it from the corner of his eye.
 

"This group of Chosen had magic like no other; powers so strong, their determination so deep and so profound, they were able to change the appearance of that which was not even real in their world." Echo's voice was a whisper in Quade's mind, as though she knew somehow that Quade was captivated and silenced by the awesome power these Chosen possessed.

"Can we learn to do this?" Quade's voice was barely audible, he was so humbled by the presence of these mighty people.

"The magic in your world works differently, Quade. In all worlds, magic has changing elements and qualities. What power they have is not the same as the power your Chosen have in your world."

"These Chosen used their magic to first change the appearance of one SanFear and then cloud the mind of the other, somehow making it believe that it's fellow brethren was merely a human."

As the second SanFear reached the group of Chosen, without a moment's pause it entered the false body of the human that the magic users had created, in an instant turning it to dust in a squealing snap of the air.

"If they could have gotten all four together in one place at the same time, their success may have been imminent."

"Alas, that was impossible, as the SanFear were in two different places. Two of them here, and two in another part of the galaxy."

"So originally, there were four."

"Yes Quade. For more millennia than you know, there were four. With the destruction of this one, there were three."

"And for that many millennia once again, the thee have remained."

The SanFear that remained hovered on the air, its shapeless, inky form seeming for a minute confused, and then it began to close in on itself, and Quade somehow could feel its anger, feel the intensity of its rage as it crumpled into a shadowy ball of blackness. All at once, it splashed forth in an explosion of hatred, filled the sky with its darkness, then came back together in its ghostly form. If it could've bellowed, Quade knew that it would, if it could've effected these triumphant Chosen, Quade knew it would've shredded them piece by piece.

"It cannot affect the Chosen themselves Quade," It was as if Mimic knew what he was thinking, though her voice was gentle as she explained. "But they are clever and they are stealth and the rage they felt from the destruction of their brethren was beyond any rage you can possibly imagine.”

Images came then, in a barrage of destruction, vengeance. People screamed in languages he’d never before heard but somehow understood and every life taken, every Chosen fallen, took some of his own breath until once again he collapsed to his knees. The scene around him smoldered, piles of dust and ash swirling lightly on the air.