Sentinels of Creation: A Power Renewed

by Robert W. Ross

  I’ve seen this man live a life of sacrifice, trial, and tribulation. It’s my responsibility to ensure that the Sentinel’s power endures and I saw that it could not without a dramatic change. Micah endured this lonely existence cut off from both earthly and spiritual love, but by enduring it, he limited his ability to transcend my original expectations. So, I used the freedom I was given in the narrowest of areas, the succession of power. Only there, where I was charged to ensure continuity regardless of cost, was I free to interfere as deeply and directly as was needed. I had seen Micah’s need for family and love wax and wane over the years. I saw it manifest in many forms, but the strongest of these was when he lived his wish in the world of dreams. That night, 14 years ago when those dreams fused with his Sentinel powers and were given form, I was there waiting. While he sleeps, Micah’s power does likewise, lest dreams and nightmares result in dramatic impacts upon the waking world. I removed that protective mantle at just the moment when he called his daughter into being within the dream. I knew that creative act would seek out the only acceptable vessel for such love and want. Only the human soul can contain both in such abundance. I watched as his desire and need gave form to the power and saw it lance upward and pierce the guff where souls are conceived of human parents. There, your parent’s love brought you into being and at that moment, so too was your soul infused with a splinter of Micah’s power.

  I knew you would be needed for Micah’s successor to prosper and exceed what Micah had been able to achieve absent the support of one such as you. I went to your mother and told her she had conceived a daughter and that you would be born with a mark that she could use to confirm my words. I told her that agents of darkness would seek to destroy the one who bore that mark because such a person would give the new Sentinel strength and support that was withheld from Micah. Withheld not from malice, but from yet another erroneous angelic act made by one too ignorant of human nature to realize the need for companionship and mortal love.

  That is why your mother bade you keep your birthmark secret and why she took that same mark upon herself. She made herself the willing target - the sacrifice for those who would do you harm. She epitomized the agape love a mother has for her child. A love born of sacrifice.”

  Raphael turned from Shannon to look at Micah as he struggled to maintain the shield. “She is not for you, my old friend,” Raphael said softly as tears gathered in his eyes. “I orchestrated her birth not for you, but so that he who comes after you would not have to suffer as you have. She carries a sliver of you within her and with that she can do things that none could do for you. She can, if she wills it, support and defend the man who takes up the burden you are so near to setting aside.”

  The shield collapsed and Micah slumped forward, eyes reverting to their normal color. Raphael stood, eyes now ablaze, looking quickly about the room, alarmed.”

  “Are you two alright?” He asked, “Some great energy was just released. I can feel its residual effect and it seems I have lost time. Why are you both staring at me like that? What has happened?”

  “Raphael,” Shannon began, clearly flustered, “You were just telling me that I-”

  Micah reached over and placed his hand on hers. “Raphael, don’t you remember my old friend? You were just telling her your age old views on destiny and freewill.”

  The Angel paused a moment looking at Micah. “Oh, well, that explains why you look so upset then. You never agree with me on that subject. He sat down again. I always have a hard time recalling it when we discuss that; I wonder why that is…”

  Shannon looked from one to the other, wondering at all that must have transpired throughout their centuries together. She leaned down, gently placing a kiss on Micah’s hand as it held her own. She gave him a sad smile, stood, and walked out of the cottage.

  Shannon continued to sit on the large rock, eyes closed, mind open to the world around her. Micah had taught her how to do it. Meditating, he called it. She didn’t do it very often because the feeling was so disconcerting. She only did it when very upset and the world felt like it was closing in around her.

  The world was large when seen through her mind’s eye. So large, so peaceful, yet so very odd. She could see herself sitting cross-legged on the rock at the edge of the river, as if she were hovering from above. Micah had told her that she wasn’t really seeing herself, but that her mind created the images to give order to all she sensed around her. She called it her mindscape, this place to which she now retreated. Everything around her was crisp and clear. The river rushed by as fish darted within, animals moved about in the woods nearby, and birds flew into her field of awareness. The mindscape only extended a few hundred feet around her, but within it, she had almost complete knowledge. Beyond those three hundred feet things became indistinct, as if the world was being covered in a thick mist. If she concentrated, she could detect faint movement within this area but doing so for any length of time usually gave her a splitting headache so she avoided it. Beyond this misty area, all was blackness and no amount of concentration gave any inkling into what might be happening within or beyond. She had learned to simply ignore the blackness and pay very little attention to the mist. Nothing out there was her concern. Her world was her mindscape and within it there was peace. Even violent things seemed peaceful to her when viewed from that vantage. She remembered one time when a stag had raced into her field of awareness followed immediately by a small pack of wolves. She felt the stag’s desperation and the wolves’ determination at the same moment. She watched as predator and prey danced their deadly dance. When the wolves had cornered the exhausted creature and their alpha went for its neck, Shannon looked on with peace and understanding. The world depended on this harmony between predator and prey, just like it depended on so many other opposing forces. Had Shannon seen this outside the mindscape, she would have been horrified at the violence, and in desperate fear from the wolves. Not so within the mindscape. All was as it should be.

  Movement within the mist. Deliberative movement in a direct line towards her. Shannon’s full attention snapped to the misty point and remained focused and waiting. She was not alarmed. She was never alarmed within the mindscape. She just waited.

  Micah stepped out of the mist and into the fullness of her awareness. He looked very different. The old man was wreathed head to toe with ribbons of green energy that played about his body. Interesting that she had never seen that before when he approached her within the mindscape. Something had changed.

  She noticed how old he looked. Strong, yes, but so old as if the years were weights laid across his shoulders, making it hard for him to stand. Yet he stood straight despite the weight of those years. Shannon felt his emotions. That was new as well. They were a torrent of conflict; no harmony. He was sad and hopeful; angry and compassionate. He gave off regret and resolve in equal measures. Micah was still a good ways off, walking through the steeply wooded hill from his cottage to the river where Shannon sat. She knew he couldn’t see her yet, she knew that, but his thoughts were preoccupied with her.

  Shannon watched as Micah took the last few steps between the trees that obscured his view of the river. He stopped just outside the tree line, staring at her as she sat motionless upon her rock.

  She shuddered within the mindscape as she felt his emotions shift abruptly. The conflict vanished and she felt her entire world shudder again as his focused attention rested upon her. She felt tears form in her closed eyes as his emotions poured out to her. Love. Protect. The emotions pierced her mindscape and the entire construct threatened to collapse around her. She knew it would be impossible to block his waves of emotion so, on instinct, she incorporated them into the mindscape itself, releasing her own equanimity and feeding her newly embraced emotions back into it as well. The mindscape grew still and strong once again and she saw Micah’s eyes grow wide as he felt the now two-way emotional connection.

  Micah began walking toward her again and Shannon turned her attentions back to the entirety of
the mindscape, enjoying the new sensation brought about by fusing the peace that was inherent to the construct with the newly incorporated emotions fueled by both Micah and herself.

  Shannon always found time to be quite tricky within the mindscape. She once thought she’d been meditating for hours, then discovered only minutes had passed. There was also one time, early on, where she had begun her morning by constructing a mindscape, intending just to hold it a few moments, only to realize that those moments had encompassed the entire day.

  Micah sat down beside her on the rock. How long he’d been sitting there, she could not say. It felt like a long time and his posture suggested the same, but she knew such things were not to be trusted. Shannon made to speak, forgetting for a moment that she had no form within the mindscape. Her body remained still and silent, eyes closed facing out over the water.

  “I will not enter,” Micah said softly, “Truth be told, I’m not sure I could if I wanted to, but doing so would carry risks that are best left untaken.”

  Shannon remembered him telling her that before. Never invite another mind to share this place, he told her. Should you ever find another mind within, collapse the mindscape immediately. The mind is a solitary place and is not meant for others. The lessons skipped and skittered through her consciousness. When she directed her attention back to Micah, he was no longer on her rock.

  He had made a small fire just behind her and was idly adding small twigs and sticks to the flames. That was curious. The day was warm and he wasn’t cooking anything - why the fire?

  Within the mindscape she took a long, formless, breath. She knew it wasn’t a real breath, but it was what she had been taught. As she released it, she closed formless eyes, collapsed the mindscape, and opened her physical eyes on the world about her.

  Sensation flooded her body - mostly pain. She was very stiff and one of her feet had fallen asleep. She looked up. The deep dark of a moonless night made the starlight sparkle all the brighter.

  “How? How long?” she asked.

  “Dawn is about two hours off. You’ve been in there quite some time. I’m not surprised, no doubt you had much to consider.”

  She felt a stab of panic and missed the peace of the mindscape immediately. “Oh no, Father…”

  “It’s alright. It’s alright, Shannon” Micah said quickly, “I’ve spoken with him. I told him I was leaving tomorrow and asked if he would give you leave to help prepare the cottage for my lengthy absence.”

  Shannon felt her breathing steady and she stiffly swiveled herself around to face the Sentinel, extending her legs and rubbing blood back into her sleeping foot, grimacing at the tiny pinpricks of feeling.

  “Lengthy absence,” she said, “Permanent absence you mean, right?”

  He nodded. “So it seems.”

  Neither said anything more for a long moment and Shannon slid off her rock, tentatively putting weight on her now wakeful foot. She walked a few paces away, looking out over the water.

  “What happened to Raphael? Why didn’t you let me ask him about what he did to me…to us?”

  Even without the awareness granted by her mindscape, Shannon could feel the frown in Micah’s voice. He sighed, “He wouldn’t have understood, Shannon. What I did, cutting him off from all creation like that. It created a trauma so great that he suppressed even asking me to do it. I don’t know what would have happened if your question had brought that reality back to him, but I suspect it would have been all kinds of bad.”

  Shannon spun, turning away from the river, voice rising. “He had no right to do what he did!” she shouted. “It’s a violation! I don’t even know what I am now. He said I have a sliver of you inside me. What the hell does that even mean?”

  Micah flinched at her curse and spoke so softly that she could barely hear. “He had no right and it was an invasion.” She saw the firelight sparkle in his moist eyes as he continued, “He invaded my dreams and used them to give form and substance to a plan he thought necessary even though that plan violated your very soul.”

  He stared at her. “I’m sorry.”

  “You did nothing wrong, Micah. You have nothing to apologize for.”

  He laughed softly. “No, you don’t understand. I’m sorry that I can’t bring myself to wish he had done otherwise. This intrusion into freewill - this violation. This horrible act resulted in the most amazing and beautiful gift I have ever seen. It resulted in you, Shannon. For the first time in my long life, I just wish I had more time.”

  Shannon walked back and sat down with Micah before the fire, taking his wizened hands in hers. “What am I?” she asked again, this time softly and without her previous rancor.

  Micah turned to look at her and smiled, leaning over to place a kiss on her forehead. “You are as you always were. Strong, beautiful, brilliant, and fierce. You are my flame haired little wolf, and I love you like the daughter I never had. Part of me lives in you and I pray that, in time, you come to accept that as a good thing despite how it came about.”

  “I can’t believe you are just going to leave me with all…” she motioned to herself, “this. It’s not like I can talk to Father about it.”

  “No!” Micah said quickly, “No, you are right about that. You must never speak about any of this. Not with your father, or Donal, or Liam. No one. Your mother gave her life so that you would be hidden from those who want you dead. The best way to honor that sacrifice is with your silence.”

  “So, I just sit with this magical sliver in me? To what end?” She snorted.

  “I wish I knew, Shannon. More than anything, I wish I knew the answer to that. I can only assume that it’s something that will unfold when you meet…him.”

  “Him? Him who?”

  “My successor. The one to whom the Sentinel’s mantel will go.”

  “So he’s near?”

  Micah shook his head, “No, according to Raphael, he’s just about as far away as a person can get. In fact, as I understand it, he hasn’t even been born.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. This just keeps getting better. Shall I look for a star to lead me on to where the magical baby Sentinel is going to born?”

  Micah smirked - his aged face cracking with lines. “Apparently, you will be long dead before he is born.”

  She stared at him, expression completely flat. “What?”

  “Yes, that was my reaction as well. This is one of the many things today has revealed to me. Do you recall my telling you of how I could rip open a portal and travel quickly from here to there? How I used that to find your mother when she fought the skin walkers?”

  Shannon nodded silently.

  “Well, and this is the really special part, evidently I can do that through time as well.”

  Shannon took a deep, calming breath. “You can travel through time and place?”

  “Apparently.”

  “But you don’t know how to do this?”

  “Not the slightest idea how to do it, no.”

  “But you are going to do it anyway?”

  “Well, Raphael is going to do it. He knows how. He was there when God set all these rules up, so he has a better idea how to take things apart or bend the rules. I don’t understand it, Shannon, but it seems I would have to in order to use my abilities. Look, I understand fire. I understand how to make it, how it acts, how it doesn’t act. Because I understand it, I can do really remarkable things with it. I thought I understood time; it flows forward. The day starts, it continues, and it ends. That understanding allows me to affect it, make it flow a bit faster or a bit slower. Evidently, time is a bit more complex than that. According to Raphael it can be folded and ripped in addition to bent, but I have no earthly idea how. Doesn’t really matter, though. As I said, Raphael knows how and he’s going to bend, fold, rip or do whatever he thinks needs doing to get him and me to the same place as my potential successor.”

  Shannon gave Micah a sly grin. “The one who will be born after I’m dead?”

  “Long dead…six hu
ndred years from now - give or take.”

  Shannon threw a twig in the fire. “I’m pretty sure being dead six hundred years is going to reduce my effectiveness.”

  “Unless…” began Micah, “he can rip time and come here.”

  Shannon’s eyes widened. “Why would he be able to do something that you’ve been unable to do for the couple thousand years you’ve been doing whatever it is you’ve been doing?”

  Micah laughed. “Raphael says he’s smarter than me.”

  “Raphael needs to develop some tact. Are all Angels so incredibly inept?”

  “No idea. He’s the only one I’ve ever met. But, according to Raphael, he’s the epitome of human connectedness, at least from the vantage of the heavenly hosts.”

  Shannon whistled softly, “Wow…that’s hard to believe.”

  “Yes, well, be that as it may, supposedly my successor has a better grasp on the rules that hold creation together and thus will be better able to take them apart. Science is quite advanced in his time and he is one of the smarter people of his generation. All that comes together in a package that results in a Sentinel that could rip time and come to you.”

  “Great, well, something to look forward to. Why would he even think to do that.”

  “I’m going to tell him to do it, Shannon. I will extract his promise. I told Raphael this. I will not pass on the power unless that man assures me he will come for you, explain what happened to me, and protect you as needed.”

  “I can take care of myself, Micah. Besides, according to your Angel, I’m supposed to be supporting him.”

  “You are supposed to support each other, and I’m going to make sure he lives up to his end. That’s all.”