Imperial ((Imperial) Web of Hearts and Souls)

by Jamie Magee

  “Nice vocabulary,” Mazing said to him with a playful glare.

  He shaded a smirk. “Did you not tell me to chillax an hour ago?”

  I could not hold in my laugh. When you linger with the dead from across time, you pick up a few words. I kinda adored slang, and I was a bit stoked that they were acting normal with each other again.

  “Let’s do this,” I murmured once the light mood between us began to fade.

  Chapter Ten

  I gazed at the dim streams and called forth the image that Vade had given me of Silas, then carefully stepped forward and touched the wall of water. As the rush of my energy met this sacred spring, it rippled and a low rumble was released. When the water became still again, I saw my lost Fated Escort.

  It was not a pleasant sight. Silas was in The Realm on the third level. There were masses of beings around him. He was in a raging war with two others. Black smoke, which was the sign of pure evil, was filling the air at toxic levels. I could sense a mix of aromas that belonged to other kings among those Silas was fighting.

  My sharp intake of breath caused Rasp to question me.

  “Eyes,” he stated evenly as he and Mazing stretched their long, lean muscles, a silent gesture that stated their warrior essence was flooding to the surface.

  “War. A horrid war in The Realm. He is surrounded. Two other Witnesses are with him.” They could not see what I was seeing in this spring.

  “What do the adversaries look like?” Rasp asked.

  “Men. Black suits. Not formal, but nice. They are moving in uniform. With each that fall, more descend.”

  He nodded once, as if that were nothing odd.

  I had a problem here. Every ounce of my being wanted to send one thought to those men in suits and smite them where they stood. But if I did so, whoever their king was would know that I had. I wasn’t even sure that with the restraints on my power that I could do such a thing, or fight the consequences of that act.

  “Whom do they belong to?” I fumed.

  “Several. I wouldn’t even call them real,” Rasp stated. “The Realm is infected with evil emotions. Those emotions have manifested these famished beings. They have no solid connection with their sovereign because the acts of the kings have been mingled.”

  “How many could I kill before the kings would feel it?”

  “In a single blow?” Rasp questioned, raising one brow. “A thousand or so.”

  Both Mazing and my eyes grew wide. That was a massive number for any race of beings.

  “So what are they, like, clones?” I supposed that was the right word I was searching for. This was all new to me. Before I left, every being was precious; it was almost like these men were designed to be soldiers, yet they were poor versions of them because it only took one swift blow to end them.

  “That is a nicer word than what I was using,” Rasp said, glaring at the wall, waiting for me to give him an order.

  “Which was?”

  “Assholes.”

  That made me smirk, in turn taking the edge off those protective emotions that were seizing my soul.

  “What? I’m G-rated compared to your rush,” Rasp stated, only letting half a smile break through his warrior composure.

  No doubt there. Vade was poetic around me, but not so much in his closed circle. I believe the term is ‘cusses like a sailor.’

  “I can kill a thousand of these beings and no one would know?” I clarified.

  I could not get over these men. They were like savage animals. If they did manage to get their grip on Silas or the two with him, they didn’t really fight; they just breathed in. They were starved beings, the walking dead of all creation.

  “He is fighting that many now?” Rasp questioned, not wanting me to push the limits of my hidden return.

  “No, maybe a hundred or so.”

  “I can do that for you.”

  “I know you can, but that is not the point.” I analyzed Silas as he fought. Silas was so graceful, without any clear emotion; only duty. Not surprisingly, he was pristine. No filth fell upon him; only a few marks were on his clothes. No sweat or blood. He had been truly risen, and his human form was more than amplified now, taking away physical pain, the need for sleep or food, along with almost every human need that could be thought of.

  “This is what we are going to do,” I announced. “I’ll freeze the scene, stand inside a barricade of energy with him, alone, while Rasp cloaks us.”

  “You should not be alone with him on your first meeting,” Rasp’s tone offered little room for compromise.

  “Right. I’ll stand with you,” Mazing added.

  “No,” I ordered. “He deserves to see me as one, as all the others before. I will not let him feel invaded.”

  “Then what? Bring him home? What about the two Witnesses with him? Will they fight us?” Mazing said, clearly disagreeing with me. She wouldn’t feel that way if she could see him, sense him. Silas was mine. He would not attempt to hurt me.

  “They should be wiped,” Rasp all but demanded.

  Sovereigns and Firsts could not only stop time—as long as good intent was in place—but they could also wipe the memory of themselves from whomever they spoke to. Rasp didn’t trust Witnesses, but I had seen too many of them in the Veil. They brought no harm unless it was called for; it was their sacred oath. Usually, they were too focused on those in their care even to notice you. Eventually, I would have to take the memory of Silas from those with him, but in this spring I could see how he was leading them, how in some way he was teaching them. I wouldn’t do that just yet.

  “We will see where this conversation takes us. Like everyone else, he deserves time to mull over this revelation. Maybe even more time considering that I’m about to tell him that the enemy he fights is in his soul.”

  “No, it is not,” Mazing said with a growl. “He fights evil and poor kings.”

  Rasp nodded once to agree. “And we have no time. He has already made more than one advance against our line and left the threat in the air that he will attack again.”

  “I will take any motive he has to attack away the second he hears my reasoning why he cannot,” I blatantly stated.

  “Silas is not like any other you or any sovereign has been called to. He was born rogue. Might as well be a wild animal,” Rasp warned.

  “He is not either of those. He’s been abandoned, and now I will bring him home. Now he is found.”

  “Tread carefully, sovereign. I will be but a breath away whilst you speak with him,” Rasp stated in that deep, powerful whisper of his. There was a reason why Vade trusted Rasp to watch over me: Rasp was downright deadly when the need arose. Creator help whoever crossed him or attempted to hurt the ones under his watch.

  Rasp knew better than to kill Silas, that it would in turn be a blow to not only me, but in some way Vade, but that didn’t mean Rasp wouldn’t take Silas to the brink of death.

  Which was exactly what would not win me any favors in this situation. Not happening. No, we were going to be nice and smooth with this. Get right to the truth in a sensible, adult manner.

  My attention turned back to the image of my Fated Escort which was reflecting in the streams before me.

  Silas’ eyes were like warm honey, the scent of my line and the color mine became when I was in bliss, yet he was nowhere near bliss. I could see wrath in them. I could see it ripple off his being. He was mine. No doubt there.

  “Time to come home,” I whispered to him as I reached my palm for the spring. Majestically, it opened the essence of its power and pulled the three of us within it.

  For a split second, I heard the roaring sound of war, but that ended. Now I was alone, staring at one of my Fated. Rasp and Mazing were feet away, but they were cloaked just outside of the energy sphere I’d placed around Silas and me and could not hear or observe this long overdue reunion.

  Silas glared at me as he crouched in a warrior’s stance and waited for me to make the first move.

  I could no
t stop staring at the perfection of him. I had several strong boys in my line, but Silas had something more to him. Some kind of old pain deep in his essence, one that the emotion of wrath found comfort in. I wondered for a moment if before my mist found him he were an abused child, as I was in human form. I tended to attract more than a few of those to my line.

  “Silas,” I said evenly.

  Slowly, he stood from his crouched position as his honey eyes grew wide for an instant. His jaw rippled with obvious emotion.

  This was normal. When we came to the ones that called us, when we spoke their name for the first time, their soul faced an awakening. It was harsh because it was so quick, because the ideas and thoughts in the mind were not discovered, but placed there. Their heritage, the basics of it, was placed there.

  Right now his senses were opening, and he was recognizing my scent within his essence, the scents of the other kings; he was taking in those little hints the universe gives every day and seeing them in a new way.

  Each that falls within a line knows from the first breath that they take, at least the soul does, each of the senses Silas was devouring now. Which is why the first sight of their sovereign is an epic moment for them. The veil over their eyes is lifted, and they feel the power that we are swell within them.

  His stance remained still as his warrior body flexed. Slowly, I began to circle him, taking in all that he was.

  If our paths had not been altered, I would see every mark on his soul, every path that led him here. It would allow me to understand him and ensure that as he rose into a petal, that he was cared for properly. I could ensure that his personal demons never haunted him, but that he learned to face them and use that emotion to endure the charge given to all Escorts.

  It was different with him. Around his essence there was armor, the armor all Witnesses had. I could see cracks in this golden seal, but his essence, who he was before he became one of my Fated Escorts, was blind to me, making this all the more challenging.

  “You are magnificent,” I finally stated as I stood before him.

  Silas held his head straight forward. His eyes angled down to me. “If you leave me now, I will not kill you,” he said firmly.

  “You have too much fight in your soul to seek death.” The certainty in my voice caused his firm stance to break for an instant as he evaluated me. I’m sure he was looking for a reason that I was so confident that I could hurt him. I was a third of his size, at best. “We are connected. My death brings yours. A blow against me is a blow to yourself.”

  “It is not your death that brings mine,” he said under his breath as a smirk echoed across his addictive image.

  That phrase caused me to push into his mind and find why he assumed such a thing. I could see her, the girl he adored. She was beautiful, a powerful light. She was utterly devoted to one of Vade’s Fated Escorts. Oddly, that was not my opinion, but Silas’. He knew this girl did not feel the same as he. So…why did we have this issue? Why would he fight for the rush of one girl if he knew she would never return to his arms? How could he almost want it to be that way? Want her to stay in his past? There was only one reason I could think of: one of the other sovereigns had toyed with him, managed to recognize that wrathful rage within him, his heritage to my line, and aimed him through circumstance right at Vade’s line.

  What a mess. A pointless mess. Well, I guess its point was to end me, but it all seemed too complicated. Cowards. Using our children to do their bidding.

  “She is not yours.”

  Silas lunged forward, but without a thought my essence seized him. “You know that to be true. Otherwise, it would not offend you so.”

  “I know that though I can smell warm honey around you that you are also saturated with that sickening aroma of mint. That you have every reason to say untruths to me,” he said all too coolly.

  “Open your mind. When you do, you will see that harming you could never be my intent.”

  He glared as he breathed in deeply. Before this moment, he had never noticed the scent of anyone’s essence. It was so new to him that his emotions were evaluating them before clear thought could place them in his mind correctly.

  No doubt mint was not appeasing to him. No doubt he now knew that was the scent of the boy that stood between him and the girl he cared for, yet wanted at a distance. I knew that his time with her would not even qualify as a fraction of his existence. Something told me he recognized this, too.

  “You belong with us.”

  “I am not evil,” he said with a murderous glare.

  “Neither am I. I exist so those emotions cannot form.”

  He glanced around him, remembering not only the fight I’d halted so that I could speak to him, but also all those before this time. Now boastfully smirking, he said, “Then, sovereign, you have perished.”

  “More than once.” I let my words linger as I shelved the wrath that was swelling in my soul. “Which is why your course was unnaturally altered. You have been played. A pawn in a war that started long ago.”

  “Am I? Or were you?”

  “Oh, I was played. I’m aware.”

  He held his head back as his now hooded eyes looked carefully down at me. “You are an illusion of this Realm. A reflection of my deepest fears.”

  “Fears that told you that you are in the wrong place.”

  “No. I fight evil. That is my place.”

  “Have we not spoken these words already? Neither am I.”

  He moved his head from side to side. After taking in a deep breath, inhaling my scent once more, he spoke. “Say, ‘LOVE.’”

  I cringed.

  “You know I cannot.”

  “I know that you are evil,” he stated with audacity.

  I had to find a way to explain this to him. I tried to remember how it was explained to me, but the sovereign that took that liberty, Xavier, was not someone I wanted to bring into this conversation, especially since I could see that king surrounding the girl Silas adored.

  “Listen to me,” I said firmly. “I died defending our line. My First. My death was a cruel ploy, and in that ploy my essence was released to be claimed by less worthy sovereigns. You are the only one that fell with the reign of Witnesses. The others are entangled within a deep web that very well could bring extinction to our kind. I cannot feel or say the word you speak for a sacred reason, and it is not for the sake of being evil. It is for the sake of preventing it. Our race rises above the majority and consumes emotions humans cannot hold within, for if they do they create evil.”

  “They do not create anything evil. Escorts do. Those rotting souls I was fighting just now do.”

  “Some do. Some kings have lost their path and crossed a line that never should have been crossed. I know that. But your line has not. The line that carries the scent of mint has not.” I stepped forward, holding my stare with him. “Your actions, your misplaced devotion, will ensure that the last pure Escorts will fall. That you will fall.”

  “I’m not one of you.”

  “What did you see when I said your name?”

  He looked away, as if it were too much to remember. “Agony.”

  “A lie.”

  “A truth.” His glare returned to me. “I will admit to you that I have never felt whole or in the right place, that I have known forevermore that I have slipped through the cracks and remained unclaimed, but I will be damned that if after all this time an Escort dares to claim me—dares to tell me that I have no right to be on the course I have chosen.”

  That armor around his soul was still hiding his past from me, but his words and thoughts were revealing his reasoning.

  Wrath consumed me as I saw them. Vade was wrong: Silas wasn’t claimed by a Witness, he was saved by them. The cycle of life landed him in the vastest, yet youngest dimension, into near savage times. Xavier had found him in human form and placed him head to head with Vade’s Fated Escort.

  Mother Nature took charge and death came, but Silas was risen, saved. The girl in que
stion pulled him up into the life he leads now.

  I was in debt to that girl because I knew that if she had not saved Silas, there would be no line of mine for Vade to have found and brought under his care. The loss of a Fated Escort was nearly as painful as the loss of a First. It seems my fellow king had attempted and failed more than once to end me and Vade, and with each new attempt they wove a web around our lines, skillfully causing us to aim the barrel of the gun at our own hearts.

  “Xavier,” I seethed as my wrath rippled the energy seal we were in. I held out my arm, knowing that Rasp would be looking for any reason to come in here. He could not see me, but he would sense the command to halt.

  Disgust consumed that beautiful visage of Silas. “That is my evil. A king you serve with.”

  “Served. A king that brought my death. If you want vengeance for him, seek it for that reason.”

  “I seek it for more than that.”

  “A girl that has compassion but does not find a rush with you.”

  “She did at one time.”

  “That would be a fever, son. Fleeting and powerful, but not everlasting.”

  “You have no idea how long it lasted.”

  “I have watched the cycle of life more times than I could recall to you. That time was not nearly enough for you to have this unrest.”

  “My life—the girl I love—has nothing to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me. You must stop your fight against the boy she adores.”

  “Why? So he can kill her? So I in turn die? Therefore taking away the last defense against evil?”

  “The only way for you to die would be to harm him. When you strike that line, you strike ours.” That was the simplest way to explain this to him.

  Silas moved his head from side to side with a disdainful glare. “Because you love that king, because his wishes are more important to you than whoever has the foul misfortune of having you lead them.”

  I almost slapped him, but I held back. “You think I would place you in harm’s way?”

  “Obviously,” he said as he held out his arms to point out how evil The Realm was now.