The fields were empty.
They were as deserted as they had been all day. Puzzled, but still concerned, he scratched his head. He crossed his arms and stared at the backdrop ahead of him. His watch gradually lessened as Vincent dusted off his pants. He prepared to walk back up the long hill toward the cabin as nightfall rolled over the landscape with a familiar, peaceful glow.
“Hello, Vincent,” from behind, a mild, yet foreign female voice said.
In one motion, Vincent jumped, turned, and summoned his sword of mystic energy. “Who are you?” He locked himself in place.
She calmly leaned over and picked a purple wildflower from the field, breathed its sweet fragrance, and closed her eyes before putting it in her hair. “I’m Revekka. I’m a friend, so you need not be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” Vincent scoffed. His translucent red blade droned as he cut the air. “You should be the one in fear.” He held the weapon with both hands, cocking it backward over the side of his head. “This is where you scuttle back to Malum like the vermin you are.”
“As you can see, I am unarmed.” Revekka looked at him curiously. “And I’m certainly not an agent of Malum or the Shroud.” She slipped her fingers together. She held her hands in front of her body.
His brows crumpled. “Yeah, right,” Vincent mocked.
“Look, your power to control the Artifex has grown weak.” Revekka pointed to his blade. The mighty weapon blinked and fizzled with all the flare of a defective electrical cord. “Even now, you could not protect yourself, or even her.” She nodded her head up toward the cabin.
A woman’s outline walked past the window from the other side of the curtains, while an appetizing scent bellowed from the pipe atop the cabin’s roof.
“Leave her outta this,” he commanded with a deep, threatening quality.
Vincent lowered his blade, keeping it between him and Revekka. He watched as his weapon, once trusty, phased in and out with a waning glow. His attention completely unfocused, to his dismay, the blade pulsed on and off several times before it dissolved into glassy splinters, and then into nothingness. The particles of his mighty weapon crumbled, dispersing along windy streams, briefly covering the field in glittery, sparkling dust, until the thousands of pieces from his sword had all melted from sight.
Revekka remained at a distance from Vincent. “You have lost your striker. It is a knight’s strongest protection, and it has failed you.”
“Are you gloating?” he attempted a witty remark.
“No, but knights are skilled craftsmen. They are masters of the arts.”
Vincent exhaled and pouted. “What does this mean?”
“It means you need to listen to what I have to say, for I haven’t long until I must go from here.”
Vincent, stunned by the loss of something he took for granted, vacantly eyed Revekka. He fiddled with his hands, not knowing whether he should put them in his pockets or down by his side. “I thought I’d have my striker forever. Well…you’ve got my attention, so make it good,” he narrowed his eyes, and insisted.
Revekka prodded, “Do you think I am still in league with Malum?”
He tightened his lips, gazed at the ground contemplatively and then back at her. “Maybe not, but then again, Malum uses many forms to gain an advantage.”
“Hmph,” she interjected mild contempt. “You have trust issues.” Revekka let go of her hands, swinging them by her side. “I’m delivering an important message, and then I must go.” Revekka was short on time. She wished to neither lead the Shroud to Vincent’s location, nor alert him that they were following her.
“Message…what message?”
“Earlier, you correctly estimated that I, another immortal, was near. Your senses have not failed you. Never doubt your senses.” The two shared an unspoken trust discovered in the other’s eyes. “I know your mother, father, and I knew your older brother as well.”
“What?” Vincent’s face turned red. “No, that’s not possible.” He carried an air of boasting. “What do you think you know of me?”
“Well, I know that you talk too much about yourself.” Revekka began tapping one finger off, counting her digits as items on a list. “You’re impulsive, bold, daring, brazen, and insolent.”
“Wow.” Vincent frowned. “That was impressive. You have any more nice things to say?”
“Yes.” Revekka deliberately sighed, slightly blinking as she did. “For an undisciplined knight, your skills are unsurpassed for a mostly self-taught person. And you’re driven by shame and guilt over what happened to Jak, when you should not blame yourself harshly for your brother’s death.”
Vincent squeezed the bridge of his nose. He casually wiped a tear, pretending to sniff at the floating specks in the air. “This, uh…” He was overcome. “This happens sometime. You know…the pollen and stuff.”
“I am not a knight. I am not a judge. I am an empath,” Revekka explained. “I was sent to this realm long before you were ever born, and I have been here for the last five thousand years.” She continued. “I have seen many horrible things, but also a few wonderful things as well. I have drifted through the world undetected, and never directly interfered, that is, until you were revealed to me. Never before had the source of all life contacted me.” Her dancing eyes became steadfast. “Don’t you get it, Vincent?” She uncharacteristically raised her voice. “It was your individual plight, your plight, Vincent, your misguided but redeemable plight.”
“My plight?” His tears dried. Vincent chuckled and grinned. “Is this some kind of joke? ‘Cause I have to say…” He placed his hand to his chest. “I’m not buying it.” He tilted his head and smirked.
Without speaking, Revekka looked askance with a sidelong hint of disapproval. Her eyes widened, and she examined his soul with a sort of reflective sincerity he could not dispute. “Did you ever wonder how you survived Malum’s brutal attack that day on the cliffs, high above the jagged, rocky coastline near the castle?”
His grin flattened. “How do you know about that?” His voice dropped.
“Because I was there.”
“So you saved us?”
“No, the fire that breathes life into everything, which resides under the castle, saw fit to preserve both you and Noemi.” She then waved her hand through the air. Revekka used her ability to recount a story in the breeze. The grass, wind, and leaves created an intense, but fleeting, silent moving image of past days for him to see. “I was there as a witness only.”
Like a movie, Vincent watched Revekka wave the thin air, which played out that day again before his very eyes. Intently he observed, this time as a third party, everything that happened that terrible day on the ocean cliffs. He visually recounted his battle with Malum. He saw Noemi thrust off the high cliff by the dark lord. He watched as he jumped over after her, and the vision simply ceased, evaporating into ashy particles, as when things are burned to a cinder.
At first, Vincent went silent.
Then he bubbled forth. “What fire? What are you talking about?” Emotions stirred, flooding back simultaneous conflicting reactions, along with more questions and growing annoyance.
Revekka, as always, quickly listened, yet spoke with a calm, graceful aura. Her emotions were tried and true, composed under all circumstances. “Not many immortals know of the Celestial Pyre, and fewer are ever contacted directly by a vision, so consider yourselves special.” She again quickly glanced up at the cabin.
Antsy, Vincent’s palms moistened. His thumbs fidgeted in and out of his fingers before he placed his hands in his pockets. “No! I can’t hear this.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and axed downward, slamming his eyes shut, then he gazed off to the side of her. “Let me get this straight. What you’re saying is that there’s this secret, what? This secret fire under the castle called the Celestial Pyre, which all life…I…I don’t even know how to
finish that sentence.” He cupped one of his hands, rubbing his mouth from the bridge of his nose to his chin rapidly, and then up again. “And if it’s true…” He shook a finger. “Why have I never heard about this before?” This both intrigued and provoked him.
“I detect doubt,” Revekka said. “No matter, what’s true is true.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ve heard so many lies by Malum and the others that I…” He stopped and gave a frustrated look to the side. “You wouldn’t understand.” He placed his hand over his forehead. Without another word, he started to walk away, up toward the cabin.
His back now opposite her, she offered more answers. “The Celestial Pyre gave a vision of the events on the cliffs before they even happened to you and Noemi.”
Vincent stopped, with his back still turned he said, “It’s too much…Go on.”
“Noemi and you, your hearts proved worthy, and so the Celestial Pyre gave me the ability to open an aperture just before you hit the water, and before that boulder Malum dislodged came crushing down upon the two of you.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “So.”
“So…what? What do you mean so?” Revekka was offended.
“So what does it all mean?” He cocked his head back at her from over his shoulder.
“I don’t know.”
Vincent brooded. “Great.”
“But I do know that you…she…doesn’t belong here. Immortals need a proper place to belong, and this isn’t it.”
Vincent groaned.
He looked straight ahead at the inviting cabin and started walking up the hill again. “I’m hungry. I’m going home now, and I never want to see you around here again.”
Yet Revekka did not give up. “What’s the first thing you remember after being plunged into the ocean by Malum?”
He stopped again. This time he turned around. “Noemi and I woke up on a beach not far from here, that’s all I remember,” he said with an utterly bothered aspect.
“As always, you can choose your path, Vincent, but if the Celestial Pyre did not have faith in the two of you, it would not have placed you gently on the seashore rather than dead at the bottom of the ocean.” She quieted, letting him rub his chin, while contemplating her last words. “Remember, we may be immortal, but we’re not indestructible.”
“What did you just say?” Disbelief overlapped his face.
“You are gorgeous and brave, Vincent, I see why she loves you, but you’re none too bright, are you?”
“Hey!” He arched his brows downward, stitching them together before releasing them apart.
Revekka restated herself. “I mean, you still have much to learn.”
He pursed his lips in a frowning manner.
She smiled innocently.
“Listen, Vincent, what do you think Malum will do once he’s destroyed the last of the knights?”
“It’s not my problem anymore,” with swift coldness he replied.
Revekka’s hands hugged her hips. She gave him an unmistakable stare of baffled disappointment. “Your friends are not your problem?”
“They turned their backs on us when we needed them most, so why should I care now?” He shrugged.
“Because in your heart, you are still a knight, young gallant one!”
“I never completed my training.” Vincent peered toward the sky. “Poor Jak was so fond of reminding me that I wasn’t a real knight at all.” Vincent examined his hands. “Hm. I guess I was just a kid playing games, wishing I had what it took to be a knight, to be a true Galinea, but I’m not. I don’t…”
Revekka urgently reached out. “Even the knights can learn from the two of you, or otherwise, the Celestial Pyre would have revealed this vision to them, for they were nearer when the event happened, but I traveled from the other side of the world for you.”
Vincent finally had pause. The words that usually rolled so easily off his tongue, stalled. His mind, so made up on all matters of life, now became open to another viewpoint. “It still doesn’t matter. Even if I wanted to have faith in your words, my abilities are gone, as you can clearly see.” He flipped his palms upside down, looking his hands over again.
She stretched an arm toward him, giving a closed mouth smile. “Nothing is ever gone. But they need to be strengthened. Remember, train to enhance your abilities, don’t suppress them. From practice to reflex,” Revekka repeated again, “from practice to reflex. And, Vincent, meditate and connect with the Celestial Pyre, and you will find where the road broadens once more. You will find your balance.”
He began to nod in agreement, but then shook his head with a skeptical hostility. “What if I just ignore all of this and do nothing, like I’ve been doing all along?”
“That’s your right, but we both know it’s just a matter of time before Malum senses the two of you are still alive, and at that point, there will be no one left to help you stop him, and you will lose what you cherish, this time forever.” Revekka’s eyes saddened, not for her, but for his sake.
From up on the hill, at the cabin, Noemi opened a curtain and watched Vincent. She angled her head to see whom he was talking to, but the person remained veiled from the window’s vantage point. The downward slope of the hillside curved outward, showing Vincent, but not Revekka. Vincent glanced up at the cabin windows, catching a glimpse of swaying curtains swinging closed.
His tone exasperated, he asked in partial defeat, “Why do you need me? Why don’t you go recruit the mongrels, you know, that David kid and his sister, Danielle. Didn’t they defeat Acerbus or something?”
“I’ll be honest, as I have been.” Her respirations nurtured deeply loud puffs of breath. “David James is an amplifier. Unknown to him, he needs others who are stronger than he is in order to summon his power. And Danielle, she thinks we have all gone away. She wants nothing to do with her heritage. She’s interested only in earthly things.”
“Well so am I!” Vincent crinkled his nose upward. “Can’t I have a life, too?”
“Yes.” Revekka rolled her tongue. “You can have a life, but even not making a decision has its consequences.”
“All right, go on.” Vincent sulked and shook his head from side to side.
“Have you ever wondered why all the hopes of a generation were placed on you and your young friends?”
Vincent remained expressionless. “No,” he lied.
Revekka pleaded, “Malum is the god of this world. Every knight who has confronted him over the past hundred and fifty years has died, that is, until you. Sooner or later, someone will have to fight him and win, and I believe that is you…Vincent.”
His lips parted. “What are you saying, that I’m what, stronger than Malum?” His eyes gaped.
“When the time is right, you will be.”
“No…no, that was just a fluke.” Vincent exhaled loudly. “I can’t defeat Malum. He’s too strong, too powerful. He’ll kill her!” Vincent averted his eyes. “I mean…me.”
“I know. And even with you, the battle may very well be lost, but we have to try.” Revekka drew her upper body back a bit. “Though you lack the stature of a traditional hero, and while you might not be the knight we expected, it’s clear—you are the knight we need! The knight we were waiting for all along. Yet we could not see it, but the Celestial Pyre read your heart, Vincent. It knew what we did not.”
“I can’t do it.” He bent his neck forward, nodding it from side to side. “You’ve got the wrong person.”
“Then become the right person,” Revekka swiftly replied. “Become better. Judge your own worth accurately, and you’ll see the truth.”
“Speaking of truth…” He peeked up at the cabin. “What do I tell Noemi?”
“The truth, Vincent, always the truth.”
Reluctant, he looked up at the cabin again. “But what if I…” Vincent turned back toward Revekka, but she
had disappeared from view. He charted miles of open fields. Vincent placed his hand as a visor, blocking out the late afternoon sun. He looked in each and every direction, yet she was gone. He sighed, viewing the cabin from afar. He stood there pondering what he should do next.
Like the proverbial coin, every account has two sides. While some try to
amend history on one side of the globe, strong opposition tears at the very fabric of reality, tugging and stretching at the foundations of all human institutions.
A system so sure of its checks and balances, has been weighed and dismissed by some, yet fiercely contested by others. Make no mistake, the world is not going to end, because it began its ending five thousand years ago. The present system is just a device, a bridge for the conscious mind, an illusion, a farce, a den of deception, a thinly veiled aberration of freedom and will, yet devoid of any true life, and thus, unfit for habitation.
The system does not involve any one particular race, religion, or government, but rather, a corrupted state of mind.
The system infects with disorder and confusion. It holds many down underfoot, yet raises up a ruling class of unqualified elite based on birth and currency. There is a delicate line between existing and living, between thriving and wasting time. The current system has been designed to cloud thought, to deflect scrutiny, and destroy individuality, replacing it instead with a form of mindless rebellion. For if one never knows who their true enemy is, the real fight can never be brought to them, and thus, never won.
That is why every human on Earth is controlled by the system. For it is here to subdue them. Petty riots, wars, social unrest, terrorism, patriotism, and cellphones, they are all devices used to cloud the senses by the architects of the system. Some of these tools have been used since the beginning of history and time.
The system is a dry gully, full of vanity and haughtiness, and above all else, the system will bring even those it exalts to eventual ruin.