by Jamie Magee
Of course, it was not that easy. Though his childhood had surrounded him by magic and his boyhood with shamans and great powers of nature, he had never once encountered lore as rich as those near Toril. Their gods were angry and demanded sacrifice.
At that point, all Scorpio knew about lore, in general, was the power and truth behind it came from the believers. If the belief is rich, the power of the unknown is unstoppable.
Even though he and Toril were standing on the same patch of land, their nightly bouts were as close as they could be, her soothsaying mother made sure of it. “You will consume each other, fool!” she’d rage.
Too late, was exactly what Scorpio and Toril’s matched stares would say as they gazed at the other taking in the silent mystery that the other truly existed.
“This power of flesh will awaken those you are not ready to fight. One touch and I will slay you myself.” The mad woman declared.
“Would that not be foolish? Why not let us fight what we awaken first,” Scorpio slyly responded, still believing nothing could end his life. Nothing short of the misery of not having the female in his sights a thought away.
“Alone you will fail. It’s bad enough you will be wounded by the gray witch,” the old woman glowered. “You are charged with harvesting from a salted ground. May the gods see a way that has forsaken me to aid you.”
Scorpio never understood what the woman meant, from the best he could tell Toril didn’t either, back then they could only speak a word here or there with their minds, and at best it was a vague whisper. What he did gather was that Toril believed her mother’s fears and she believed them because of the actions of her brother. A male long since gone from their lands, but a threat Toril let keep her prisoner. “He will destroy me. He is the power my mother fears.”
“I won’t let him,” Scorpio would promise. No man of flesh could dare raise fear in him. One of power? Scorpio had yet to meet one that made him back down. He doubted Toril’s brother could be a threat, even if he had the same electric feel Toril had. Not when it came to protecting what was his.
Day in and out the soothsayer cursed Scorpio for being so close, to appease her, Scorpio would move a bit further back. It never worked; the woman stared at the sky as if she thought it would fall at any moment. Her doing so only gave Scorpio flashbacks to his boyhood, to his parents doing their best to hide their discern as they did the same days before the sky truly did rip open.
Lying in the camp he’d made one night, Scorpio felt a blade stab into his side. He jarred up ready to pull it out but found nothing. The pain was unreal, like nothing he had felt before. He could feel it consuming him, paralyzing him.
Sure the soothsayer had cursed him, he stumbled toward her home determined to break her neck with his own hands. Enough was enough.
When he arrived, he didn’t find her standing over an altar sending hexes his way. Instead, she was frantically hovering over Toril as she suffered the same pain he was enduring.
“You’ve done this!” the soothsayer warned. “Too close.”
Scorpio wasn’t close enough as far as he was concerned. Scorpio staggered to Toril’s side and pulled her up into his arms. It was their first flesh-to-flesh touch. Pain or no pain, it was the sweetest moment of his entire life. They stared at each other taking in the reality of the power between them—a vibration that threatened to pull them from the reality they were in. He leaned his forehead to hers aching with the rawest of every emotion. Feeling her close gave him the calm he needed to focus.
“We have to stop it,” Toril grunted through the pain.
There was no discussion or debate; they both knew the pain was not here, but somewhere else, happening to another. It was not their pain, but it was their call to stop it.
He held her tighter as they both slammed their eyes shut and let thoughts latch on to the agony and followed the trail to its creation.
It was a male. A face Scorpio had never seen. Watching was doing nothing but prolonging the life of the agony. Together they merged into the flesh of the male.
His broad shoulders tensed as his back arched off the table he was on. Men, at least twelve, were holding him down as they chanted low and dark. There was a blade in his side and a cloth in his mouth. Runes were written all over his body in his own blood.
One man would’ve been hard pressed to win the battle at hand, but this male was no longer one. Inside of him, he had an immortal warrior who was defending a female he had sought for years. Toril was far from along for the ride. Not only was she skilled in magic, she had learned from Scorpio himself the actions of a warrior. She was formidable, to say the least.
With a grunt, the male struggled with new strength. Shocked and sure whatever spell they were in the midst of was working, the men wavered. It was a fatal mistake. Now possessed, the male rose and fought with his bare hands, breaking the necks of everyone who came near him.
When those in the room fell, Scorpio and Toril moved him out of the chamber, and then from the stone castle. They ran until running was possible for the body they were in. They finally rested at creekside under the natural shelter of a massive trees upturned roots where they laid down. Just before Scorpio felt himself fading, the pain in his side that had grown numb left as the dagger was pulled from the ribs of a male.
The weapon returned with them.
Back in their own bodies they found daylight spilling into the room. The soothsayer was mad with confusion. All around them were the remains of failed spells. When she saw the dagger in Toril’s hand she tensed, and then began to shake. In the next breath, her eyes had rolled so far back into her head that only white could be seen. Before Scorpio’s exhausted mind could grasp what was going on, the soothsayer lunged at Toril and took the dagger from her, then did the unthinkable. She nearly beheaded Toril.
One second Scorpio was catching his breath, the next he was soaked in his female’s lifeblood. Frantic he foolishly thought if he held the wound closed he could stop the bleeding, stop death from stealing this female he had crossed worlds to find.
She died in his arms.
For hours he didn’t move, didn’t listen to a word the soothsayer said as she scurried around him. She would die in time, as soon as he rose from his grief. In his mind, he could hear the same haunting voices that were always too distant to understand, he could feel their panic and grief.
Nothing they knew could help him now. Nothing the shamans had taught him could aid him. Further and further his mind raced back, then it came to him.
When his mother had tucked him in the night of her death, she had caressed his face trying to hide a worry he could sense. “Blood of my blood, soul of my soul, you are everlasting, empowered by greatness and tyranny...” her next words were a low chant as her fingertips moved over his lips spreading them just so, he felt a rush of heat and exalting energy. His mother bit her lip then leaned down and kissed his. He could still taste the blood, the one drop that moved him into a deep sleep and caused him to wake blind to the emotions that had always swarmed him.
Scorpio was no fool, he knew he lacked the power and knowledge his mother had with the arts, but what did he have to lose? He rose above Toril and began to speak, “Blood of my blood...”
The soothsayer stilled behind him, watching and listening as the same words left him just before he bit his bottom lip and leaned in to kiss the blue lips of Toril. Blue fire swarmed from him, and as it did Toril’s body tensed and lifted for a mere second before it crashed down. Scorpio collapsed to her side.
When they both awoke, days later, there was no blood, zero evidence there had been any agony at all. He would never forget how blissful and calm he felt when he looked into Toril’s amber eyes. There are many sensations that leave an everlasting mark. But the feeling of all your worst fears and hells being washed away in the blink of an eye are most powerful.
If only he could have stayed in that one moment, if the victory of bringing back this mysterious woman was the last thing he felt, he would h
ave died a happy, an accomplished man.
It wasn’t. Clearly. The soothsayer in all her broken words sent them on a crusade. “All of you are here now. Brought by a force that can not be questioned—for they are strong enough to erase time.” Her stare grew grave. “Bringing you here, in one world has made you easy prey,” she warned. “None of you are ready, but the pair of you will fair the best. Find them, hide in the open, never close, but close enough. NO touch.”
Her last warning was even more chilling. “Each death brings you closer to your own, the mortals are not to be feared, it is the beast that empowers them, mocks them. He is in the eyes of all.”
My brother, Toril had warned.
Their quest was simple. Find those they sensed, teach them what they knew—learn what they knew, grow a silent army to defeat a power they all sensed encroaching.
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. The soothsayer had told Toril and Scorpio to travel separately, she’d said gods and powerful witches would sense them together and would strike. Doing so only put Toril in danger. Her immortal life was never threatened, but when a female wards off rape and robbery and leaves dead warriors in her path, word spreads, faster than fire.
Before long, Toril was hunted, just as her soothsaying mother had predicted. As Scorpio fought for her, he became known as well. On the other side of their lives there was no rest either. Night after night they would dream of other battles in lands they had not been to, and rescues like with the male they had saved happened often.
Weary as ever they wished for an end before they ever began.
Then Reveca Beauregard happened. Her and her meddling magic disturbed any plans the pair of them had to find all the members in their Throng and prepare for a battle with evil. Ever since then it had been a game of damage control.
Season Three: Volume One
Episode Two
Chapter One
The beginning of the end, the endless days they were, haunted Scorpio. There was so much he wanted to change, even more he never truly understood.
Toril was never the same after the gray witch, also known as Reveca Beauregard, began her predicted hunt to destroy their Throng. To this day, Scorpio still doesn’t understand why Reveca had a vengeance for Throng’s, or why she denied knowledge of them, then claimed ignorance for all the acts she had done against them.
No matter where Scorpio and Toril ventured to find someone they knew they were connected to, Reveca, if not Zale beat them there. They’d watched the sky rip open and pull one of their own into its dark grips, and seconds later the gray witch daggered another. They’d seen warriors they had tried desperately to connect to fall on the battlefields and she commanded them to fight on. The list of curses and threats, blind or on purpose, was endless.
Talon changed everything.
He was one of two they had watched die on a battlefield and had assumed to be lost. When Scorpio woke on the steps of Zale’s castle and looked into Talon’s eyes, he thought for sure he had been sucked into another realm, one of second chances.
Talon standing close to him, even though Talon had no idea who he was or what he was once capable of, gave Scorpio had all the power he needed to break free from the sickness Reveca’s magic had chained him with. Before then, Reveca’s magic had left Scorpio adrift. Each time he tried to fully embody his own vessel, the taste and fire would drive him out.
Talon was a miracle and a curse. If Scorpio or Toril had connected with him before he had died and awoken the natural magic in him, immortality—pure, sweet, godly immortality, would’ve been his. Instead, he died mortal and was raised by magic that only buried who he truly was deeper inside his stubborn mind. The magic coupled with his loyalty to Reveca kept Talon out of reach.
There was only one way to bring him into the fold—Scorpio had to earn his trust, the trust of brotherhood. Naturally, it wasn’t something anyone could accomplish overnight in any climate. The breath of a powerful witch complicated the task even further.
Visiting another soul was complicated. Visiting one who had no background in any of the mystics was even harder. Even though Scorpio often dreamed of the life Talon had, each time he tried to reach out, Talon would block him. It was frustrating then, disheartening once Talon confessed to Scorpio he had been a haunted man since the first man he slew.
“I was nearly dead, one too many strikes in the same place were spacing my head. I knew my day had come.” Talon’s dark eyes hazed over. “Then...then I don’t know, brother. It felt like the surge of a deadly storm consumed me. I was new again, better than new. I fought the man who had beaten the life outta me with strategy and moves I’d never used or learned.” Talon’s pause was long and reflective. “When his lifeblood spilled over my hand the voices came. My penance for the sin of death.” Talon dropped his head and moved his hands together as if he could still see and feel all the blood his lifetime had spilled. “Of all the fucked things I’ve seen and felt, that moment is still raw.”
Talon went on to tell Scorpio that the feeling of being possessed drove him to the edge of sanity. “I begged for death on the battlefield. At worst, I’d slay my enemy. At best, they’d slay me and the haunts inside my soul.”
Talon thought his profession had left him haunted. What he didn’t know was the Throng was not aware of him until he was in danger—when his soul screamed out. They only sounded and felt like a punishment because Talon feared rather than explored the unknown.
Telling him as much was something Scorpio had rehearsed time and again, but never managed to say. After all Talon had seen and lived through he still had little trust for the unknown. Very few could bed a witch night after night and still be a skeptic, no one ever accused Talon of being common.
When Talon’s mortal death happened, Scorpio was in his own battle with Toril, trying to free a stolen soul in their Throng. The calls of Talon’s soul were so loud and fierce they had no choice but rush to defend him. Protect the living, fight for the taken...
They rushed to defend Talon, but it was too late. He was in the clutches of Reveca, she had trapped him in a seal between life and death. Talon could not hear them anymore, and they had no way of merging with him, the link was broken. Scorpio had every reason to believe Reveca and Revelin were one in the same. Revelin had done the same in the past—caused a male to vanish from the mortal realms.
Like the devil they were sure she was, Reveca found Scorpio years later. In her wake, there was a wall between Scorpio and Toril. A total mind-fuck that pushed Scorpio to question Toril when in the past he’d never had reason to doubt her, her desires and emotions were his.
Toril swore he was a prisoner of the witch and until he was free, they’d never be the same. She told him what she thought he needed to know about their personal wars, nothing more.
Scorpio’s only peace was how closely Toril followed him and the Sons. If the distant scent of honeysuckle and wildflowers ever grew faint, he would find a reason to slow the Sons down until Scorpio felt the sensations flood his soul once more.
Before Scorpio was tainted by magic, it felt like he was always walking at Toril’s side. Afterward, all he could do was watch, use every sense he had to scope the dangers before she ever came close to them. It wasn’t enough. There were too many periods of time where his senses lost her.
Day by day, his senses grew in strength, but not fast enough to assure either of them Scorpio could shake the hold the witch had on him.
The inevitable happened, foot soldiers were sure it was their lucky day when they came upon a beautiful woman alone in the wilderness. Toril struck first, and retaliation was instant. Fourteen were against her.
Ironically, it was feeling her pain that helped Scorpio detoxify himself further from Reveca’s magic.
Scorpio fully came into focus as his lethal intentions took hold. His body was rested around fire, but his soul had surged fifty miles south. The phantom he was broke five necks before the others felt the chill of his presence. The smile Toril gave him struck
his soul so deeply he felt fire burn through him.
As he started to fight the men who were left behind he caught the fading smile on her lips, the sorrow there. When it was over he chased after Toril, she was going the wrong way, further from where his body was with the Sons.
When Scorpio turned to Toril, the sight of her amber eyes flooding with tears unearthed the darkest emotions he’d ever felt in his life as an empath.
“She’s within you, I thought it was a dream,” Toril’s broken stare trailed over his image before she had to look way.
“This is why,” he raged. “This is why you need to let me in. We can not trust this way!”
Scorpio was sure if Toril’s soul flooded him he would be rid of the fire Reveca had put in him, rid of all the useless enchantments.
Scorpio’s argument was simplistic. They had combined their vim night after night for so long that neither of them could chance going any longer without feeling the rush of the other. “I want you yes, I crave you, but that is not why I beg for this. I need you to be strong, safe. I need to know I’m inside you, empowering you. I need you to do the same.”
Toril would look at him like a he was a blue-balled teenage boy with only one motive. Fucking maddening. How could she not feel what they were doing to each other all in the name of fear?
“I can not trust her, nor you,” Toril said with a nod to the shades of fire brushing every so often across his image. “I see the fire of her magic in your soul, and still you beg me to fall into the demise that is killing you!”
“I’m surviving! I’m trying to get Talon back. You don’t understand how bound he his to the witch.”
Willfully Toril lifted her chin. “Then it is time for you to be you and me to be me.” Her voice quivered. “Save him. Prove me wrong. I pray you do. I hurt too...”