by M C Ashley
“I am not like them!” I shouted. “I protect people from things like them!”
“Good, then we have nothing to fear. Follow me.”
Mara walked away from me without another word. I stared at the death mark and huffed as I walked over to Mara and caught up with her.
Who did she think she was comparing me to them? I knew how to control myself. Not like them. One feed and they were hooked, dhampir or vampire. Me, I’d tasted power and resisted it as best I could. I was better than them. I had to be—I was the good guy.
“Here we are,” Mara said, standing still.
I looked at her and then the door. There was a doorknob on the left side of the door, which struck me as odd, since I recalled it being on the right. Shrugging to myself, I reached out for the doorknob, as I swore I saw the hint of a smile appear on Mara’s lips.
The moment my skin touched the doorknob, a massive surge of electrical energy surged through my hand, and spread to every corner of my body, knocking me backwards into a pile of atrophied scaffolding. I coughed and blinked weakly. My body told me to just give up and lie down on the floor.
Password is needed to enter Sentinel Azarel’s quarters, a disembodied voice said from the direction of the door.
“I…hate…you…all,” I said, feebly pushing myself up into a sitting position to stare at the door.
“Having fun?” Mara asked.
“No. Whose stupid idea was this? Who puts a password on a door that—Oh, the entrance of the Fortress, but that’s different! This is my room!”
“This is the only room that I know of in the entire building that has been encoded with a password.”
I coughed harshly. “Who in the world thought this was a good idea?” I asked, throwing my hands in the air. “Certainly not me! Someone could’ve been killed by that energy blast if they tried to use the doorknob—friend or foe! We have children running through the Fortress!”
“Had,” Mara corrected. “Obviously there would have been countermeasures if such an incident occurred. Your still being alive means it might be able to read your genetic code. It seems that this must have been a counter against your gaining access to the room if your body was possessed by an outside force.”
“Of course,” I said, forcing myself to stand up. “Because that makes perfect sense for me to booby trap my own door! The one I enter when I try to go to sleep and might be too tired to remember a stupid password!”
“It is not without its flaws.”
“You knew this was going to happen! I could’ve died!”
“No, I expected you to remember the password. Obviously, this was done in the time in which you cannot recall your past. Besides, Zea and I have both tried to enter the room and suffered no more than you.”
“Oh, of course. Let’s not even bother trying to warn the idiot who can’t remember where he was a hundred and seven years ago. Such hospitality. Why did I ever bother leaving my old life when I could be treated like such a king in the future?”
I stood up and held a fist up at the door. “Screw you!” I shouted.
The door said nothing in response. I moved forward and reached for the doorknob again, saying, “I’m Magnus Blake Macbeth Azarel and I command you to open!”
When I touched the doorknob again, the exact same electric shock happened to me and I found myself precisely where I’d started. Grumbling incoherently, I got up again and jumped up and down, as Mara suppressed laughter.
“What kind of base treachery is this, you stupid, gorram mahogany imbecile!” I roared as the door swung open.
Password accepted, it said, allowing me to see into my room for the first time.
“One wonders how effective a password is if it has to be yelled by a child at the top of their lungs,” Mara said, grinning.
“Everybody’s a critic,” I said, shaking my head.
I gazed inside the room, finding it to be surprisingly intact. I surmised that no one had been able to enter it, given the password, so even if the Sanguine Collective had tried, they would’ve been killed or disabled by the room’s security system. Now that I was no longer in pain I kind of liked the idea.
To the left of the entrance was my bed and, to my surprise, it looked as if I had just left it the day before. There was no dust on it, no sign of dilapidation, which made absolutely no sense, since the floor was covered in it. A mirror on the right side of the room was drenched in dust, yet the bed was spotless.
I approached it and found a letter lying on it. Curious, I picked it up.
“I am sorry, Master Azarel, but I was only able to extend the invocation over your bed,” I read. “It will last for some time, but everything else will decay. I look forward to seeing you when you return. Love, Ariel.”
I gazed at the letter for a moment. “Curiouser and curiouser…”
I placed the letter on the nightstand, which had seen better days, but looked as if it would still be intact enough to do its job.
“Who is Ariel?” I asked. “And what was she doing in my room?”
“I do not know,” Mara said. “Perhaps she was a friend.”
“Who was cleaning my stuff?” I looked at my left hand’s ring finger and gazed at the skeletal dragon ring. “I wonder…”
“There are no records of Blake Azarel being married to an Ariel.”
I frowned. “That’s the kind of thing the Archives would mention. We try to take genealogies seriously. Besides, I’d never ask my wife to call me ‘Master’ anyways.”
“How progressive of you.”
“Would you mind helping me clean?” I asked.
“And so chivalry dies.” Mara laughed when I frowned. “I will help. It was one of the reasons why I came. I have been cleaning the Silver Fortress ever since we came here. As you may have noticed, it could use more than one person to help clean it.”
“Meaning I clean this with you now, then you clean with me later.”
“Precisely,” she said, producing cleaning supplies from nowhere. “Whatever else may be said about you, one could not say that you were not sharp.”
We set out cleaning the room. I went to the bathroom, eyeing the black mold that had covered, well, everything.
“Zea will be coming soon to check on your wounds,” Mara said. “She will show more restraint than last time…clothing-wise.”
“What a relief,” I said.
“I may be asking a lot, but please do not be so harsh on her.”
“And why not?”
“Zea is quite adept at discovering the emotions of another person,” Mara said, dusting off a bookcase. “It is one of the rare talents she possesses, particularly when she is in the middle of healing a patient. It is also something that she cannot control, as it often makes her feel the same emotions as the person she is in tune with. Your…issues made her upset, so she tried to exorcise these negative emotions by getting you to realize you felt this way in the first place. It does not excuse her actions, but you must realize she did it only because she cares for you.”
“That’s a lot of care from someone I’ve just met,” I said, wiping off the dust from my dresser.
“Were you in a better disposition, would you not do the same?”
I nodded. “Yes. I—I don’t like it when people are hurt.”
“An admirable quality, but as we have noted, it has its downsides.”
“Have I always been this impulsive?” I asked, more to myself.
“That I cannot answer. This is the first time we have met as such after all.”
I turned to her and sighed. “Yes. I’m sorry. I was thinking out loud. I’m very confused right now.”
“I am not surprised.”
“Mara, why don’t you look me in the eyes when we talk?”
Mara turned to me and tried to avert her eyes from me, but I followed them and we met. “I have my secrets to keep, Guardian Azarel,” she said, as I felt the truth behind her words. “They must remain so until the time comes. Look at me and believe that
I mean you no harm by not sharing what I know. There are things that some were not meant to know. That is my duty as Archivist.”
I nodded. “Then keep your secrets. I won’t ask about them.”
“Thank you,” she said, turning her back to me.
“You know, you’re a lot different than the Archivist I’m used to,” I said, returning to my cleaning. “Sensitivus tactus!”
The dresser responded to my telekinesis by rocketing up into the air and breaking into pieces the moment it hit the ceiling. Clothes that had managed to survive intact in the dresser fell apart at the seams and collapsed into useless material.
“I see subtlety is not one of your strong suits,” Mara said, examining the damage.
I chuckled and massaged the back of my neck. “I can hear my mother scolding me now,” I said, biting my lip when I remembered she was dead.
“Your telekinetic invocation needs work. You rely too much on brute force. Even by using words with a softer connotation you fail to craft a weaker telekinetic wave. You have not changed it seems.”
“Pardon?” I asked, looking at her.
“Administrator Vivas wrote in the Archives that you were unable to control your own strength in invocation, which often led to brutish force when you tried to invoke the simplest of powers into action.”
“Yeah? She was one to talk. ‘Oh, look at me, Blake. I can recite the definition of cacology and say you used it too much in your speech, but I can’t hold onto a guy for more than a week at best, because I always wanted to push things too quickly and scared the poor thing off.’”
“Are you quite finished?”
“Yeah. Just needed a moment to rant.”
“It would be best if you kept such feelings about your past friends to yourself.”
“Oh, I was only teasing. She was a ditz, but Administrator Vivas knew her stuff. She was always a good friend. If I ever needed to learn anything, my dad always sent me her way and she drilled the lessons into my thick skull.”
Mara nodded. “If that is all, I will allow you to retire for the night.”
I nodded and Mara exited the room. I looked at the bed and rubbed my eyes as I got into the covers and drifted off to sleep.
2
My friends and family were staring at me from the other side of a canyon. I was standing on the edge, looking down into the black-filled void. Akemi was holding Brian’s hand. They shared a loving look and waved at me. My mother and father crafted an elaborate water and light invocation that lit up the sky on the canyon’s other side. Atanasio stood side-by-side with Rica, as he left her side for a moment to stand on the edge of the canyon.
Before my eyes, the gap between the two sides seemed to come closer to one another, until there was less than an arm’s length distance between Atanasio and me. Atanasio greeted me with a warm smile, his eyes seemingly full of life, as he beckoned me forward.
I reached my hand out, only to find that I was shaking the hand of a man I had never seen before. His handshake exuberated confidence and strength that took me by surprise. I stepped back involuntarily, seeing that my family and friends had disappeared and that the scenery had changed into a lush and beautiful rain forest. All over the land, wildlife called out in celebration of their existence and trees grew to massive heights, stretching far above each of us. A river filled with reeds flowed in front of us, guiding the water far beyond what I could see as the forest expanded.
The man next to me let go of my hand and smirked, his eyes watching me in interest as I took all of it in. He had dirty blond hair that ended around the tip of his ears; hazel eyes that glimmered in the sunlight, with the flora around us almost making them look green; and stood almost head-to-head to me. The wind flowed around him, but didn’t appear anywhere else for some reason. His skin was tan, but he had a glowing aura around him which made him look almost white. He appeared to be about thirty-eight years old, but something told me that he was far older than that.
“Hello, Blake,” he said, grinning madly. “My name is Nathaniel David Parker.”
“You?” I asked. “You’re the one who talked to me earlier.”
“Very astute. That I am.”
“Where are we?”
He held out his hands. “Your mind. Your dream. Anything that you imagine comes into this place.”
“My head? We’re in my head?”
“The very same.”
“Sorry, but I’ve been at this whole supernatural game for a while now, and even I’m skeptical about entering dreams. If anything, this could be an elaborate lotus eater machine you’ve devised.”
Nathan chuckled. “Then think about something new. Don’t say it out loud. Guard your mind from me. Visualize the change and make it your own.”
I don’t know why, but my first thought of a new location was Baker Street. I had it down pat too—the fog, the night reigning supreme, and even a poor widow opening the door to Sherlock Holmes’ residence to ask him to solve a mystery for her.
“Interesting choice,” Nathan said, nodding. “Satisfied?”
“The other place was better,” I said, as the scenery changed back.
“Good, because I was the one who designed it.”
“What? You just told me it was my dream.”
“Yes, but designed by me. It’s what I do. It’s the first thing I was able to do.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple, this is your mind that we are currently in right now. This place has been formed from memories of locations you’ve seen before, but I was the one who ultimately placed them here, because I can control and enter dreams.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I had to get your attention somehow.”
“I don’t know what your game is, but no one controls my mind.”
Nathan rolled his eyes and didn’t bother to enter a defensive stance. “Listen, kid, paranoia’s useful in this line of work; I’m not faulting you that, but you really need to learn to calm down.”
“You enter my mind, change my dreams, and tell me to calm down!”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you so nonchalant about this?”
“Because you can’t touch me.”
“Yeah, well I can use your true name and do whatever I want to you,” I said, balling my fists. “You shouldn’t have revealed that to someone who’s been Christened.”
Nathan let out a short laugh and smirked. “You can try, son. I’m as far above you as a typhoon is to an ant in its path.”
I smirked. Nathan had unwittingly given me permission to take control of his body by asking me to try. Technically speaking, I wouldn’t be breaking the Laws if I took control of his body, as in my mind it would be helping him by discovering who he really was. A Sentinel’s life was all about exact words, so I had to use this to my advantage.
“Nathaniel David Parker, I command you to—!” I shouted, right as a massive surge of energy ran into my head.
A thunderous wave of pure force entered my body and flung me backward toward a thicket of reeds. I felt a coursing pulsation running through my nerves, sending every part of my ability to sense touch into overdrive. For the briefest of moments, I could see Nathan’s true self—a man cascaded in a brilliant ever flowing river of the purest light I had ever seen in my life. Even though I had just attacked him, he was smiling with a grin that cooled down every bit of anger I had ever felt in my life. He looked at me with the warmth and love of a father. In that small amount of time, my worries were no more, because I knew God was in control.
When I collided with the reeds the peace vanished. All I experienced was intense pain all over my body. My mind burned like it was on fire and my bones screamed as if broken. Even my skin pulsated in pain, as if hundreds of daggers were striking me.
I vaguely heard Nathan approach me as he said, “Balm of Gilead.”
The pain left my body immediately. I gasped involuntarily. Healing invocation took time—even th
e best invokers needed a few minutes to completely end people’s pain and suffering, but he’d done it in the blink of an eye, and without touching me.
I looked up and saw Nathan sitting beside me.
“What are you?” I asked.
“His emissary,” Nathan said. “And no before you ask, I’m not an angel.”
“It had occurred to me to ask.”
“Even though the Gray Forum has very few reports on angel sightings.”
“Yes, but—how do you know that?”
“You’ve already heard the answer to your question.”
“Then that stuff I heard from Mara’s true?” I asked. “You helped found the Gray Forum?”
“Yes,” Nathan said. “Although the records are a bit false. I was there, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. The other founding members of the Gray Forum were also a bit more resourceful than they gave themselves credit for. And we had a spare.”
“That’s still ten of some of what were the strongest sorcerers in the world. That’s quite an impressive feat.”
“Oh, I’ll be the first one to tell you that. Modesty’s not one of my strong points. It’s a character flaw.”
“So where have you been? Why did you leave them behind?”
“Because I have other worlds to deal with besides yours. I have a responsibility to protect the entire omniverse. Besides, I have restrictions on what I can and can’t do.”
“Restricted by whom?”
Nathan furrowed an eyebrow. “Who do you think?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”
He chuckled. “God.”
I blinked twice. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“The God?” I asked.
“The one and only,” Nathan said, smiling warmly.
“You actually talk to Him?”
“No, but I talk to one of His messengers.”
“An angel?”
“That’s what angel means.”
“Oh forgive me for not knowing the definition of a common word.”