thirty-two #4
Mira stood back up, her hands respectfully clasped to her chest. “Why did you bring me here? Why are you telling me this now? It can’t be because you want to distract me.”
Nerilis turned toward her, his own hands still behind his back.
“Your mother’s research is related to this room. On Arrah, she discovered a correlation between the marked auras and the thinness of the veil. Wherever tainted auras congregated, the veil was thinner. She wanted to know if it was the Void tainting them,
or if the taint was ripping open holes in the veil.”
Mira’s throat threatened to close. “And…?”
“I don’t think she discovered anything conclusive yet. She was more upset about the tainted auras. And since the… event… she is convinced that it is all related. And somehow related to her. To that night when she came to this place against her will.”
“What happened when you caught up to her?”
Nerilis rarely showed his daughter any emotion beyond mischief and irritation, but tonight, he allowed her to see the tired gaze of a man who had been much too young when he ascended to his station.
Being High Priest really ages your soul, I guess.
Her father was barely a millennium old and would still be one of the youngest High Priests ever if he ascended now.
“I held her, and cursed the Void for trying to take her away from me.”
“Dad… what happened that night?”
The door to the Sanctuary slammed shut. Mira was startled, but the lack of response from her father implied it was his telekinetic doing. Whatever he wanted to say, it had to stay here, between them.
“Your mother doesn’t talk much about it,” Nerilis said, “but I believe the Void was calling her Home that night. But instead of snuffing her soul in her sleep, it wished for her to Ascend.”
“Ascend…” Mira gasped. “You don’t mean…” She thought of the painting in the hallway, of the stained glass window in Harksplit. The creator dancing life into the universe.
“Suppose so.”
“Ma!” Mira held one hand to her mouth. “The High Priestess?”
It was another legend baked into their history.
Well, it was actually a prophecy left from the First Epoch.
When the Void becomes unstable, it will bring the unknown creator’s greatest avatar back to the mortal world, her sole purpose to mature among the mortals and Ascend to the Void as a pure soul…
The High Priestess was a symbol of love, integrity, and hope—her existence was also the harbinger of an impending apocalypse.
Could Joiya be…? Really…?
“Your mother has a dark side to her,” Nerilis said, interrupting Mira’s thoughts.
“She is a font of tenderness and creativity to all of those around her, but she harbors guilt. Shame. She denied the call of the Void. I don’t know what happened that night, exactly, but she was released and returned to become my wife. I almost lost your mother that night…
I don’t know what kind of world this would be had that happened.”
“Why doesn’t she tell me about this?”
“Because you are her miracle child. The child that should have never existed.”
“She said…” Something returned to Mira’s memory, of something Joiya had implied only a couple of months ago. “She said that Sulim was my soulmate, Ba. I know you didn’t know her, but she was really… I was gonna… throw everything away for her, if I had to.”
“I know. That’s what soulmates make us do.”
Tears crowned Mira’s eyes, and she pushed aside the horrible images—and the wonderful—of Sulim, the woman who had been ripped from her heart and taken the other half of her soul back to the Void.
“Ma said she and the others had tainted souls. I had never seen her so anxious about it before. But if Sulim was my soulmate… and her aura was tainted… then…”
Nerilis slowly nodded. “Your aura is tainted as well, my daughter.”
Mira didn’t know what to say.
“My educated hypothesis is that a tainted aura implies something has gone ‘wrong’ according to the Void. You live when you should not. You have followed a diverging path that you should not have. Perhaps it’s the latter for your soulmate and her family… as for you…”
“I should not have existed.”
“No, Mira. You should have died with your mother. Which makes sense if she is the High Priestess in her purest mortal form. It could explain her hyper-fertility, despite never once praying to the Void for a child—of that, I believe her claims. It would also explain the endless miscarriages.
Why would the High Priestess be allowed to reproduce? How could a singular child be born to God herself?”
“God?”
“I’m not telling you to fear your mother,” Nerilis continued. “If anything, love her more than any other mortal creature in this universe. She has sacrificed our future to have you.”
“You say this so blasely!”
“I have had all of your life to contemplate what this means. Part of the reason I dedicated myself so fiercely to this Temple is because I yearned to understand what happened that night. I had to elude your mother’s machinations against my understanding. I had to forsake my familial duties to study,
to sermonize, and to prepare for the day when we suffer the consequences of her mortal selfishness. Now, I know that she has protected me from many of the foolish things you have done, my daughter, but you are your mother’s child. You may be something more than either of us fathoms.
Perhaps I keep you at a distance because you are a part of something that the Void has plans for, and I do not wish to have my heart broken.”
“Ma would say you’re also just a shit father.”
“Yes, well…” He blushed a little, shuffling his weight between his feet. “I may not effuse affection toward you, but know that I keep watch over you. Even when you are toying with esoteric sorcery from the Old Ways and getting yourself sent to prison for a decade.”
“Oh, Ba…”
“And cavorting with human women. Married human women, I hear.”
“Ma told you!”
“Actually, Ramaron did. He wanted to make sure I had all of the facts, because he knows that misinformation is rampant in a High Priest’s ears.”
“It’s not like I planned it, you know. I just… I fell for her instantly. I barely thought about her being human, let alone… attached.”
More tears slowly fell down her cheeks. “The way she looked when I found her! Just blood everywhere, Ba! It was like… it felt like…”
She searched for the right words until she finally reached beyond Julah and grabbed the most vulgar forms of Basic. “A punishment from God.”
“Perhaps it was, my daughter. Your beloved was not meant to live in this world. The Void was righting a wrong.”
“Fuck the Void.”
Her voice trembled with the quickening rage of her heart.
Here Mira was, finally discovering what actual love was from someone the Void had kindly chosen for her.
Their time together would be short, but meaningful.
Mira would eventually bereave the tragically short life of a human soulmate and find a way to move on.
Maybe it would free her heart to try new things—maybe she’d even marry other women who had similar, but not exact, auras to her.
Maybe she’d marry a male friend and don the mantle of Lady Dunsman in good standing with Yahzenian customs.
She would never forget the Gardiahs; Arrah would always hold a special place in her heart.
Revenge still tasted potentially sweet, but right now? She yearned for her father’s sympathy.
“I know,” Nerilis softly said. “I wish I knew what else to say to assuage your pain, but I do not. If I imagine losing your mother in this room…”
Mira took a step forward. “Ba…”
For the first time in her life, her father lowered his arms to his sides and allowed her to crash into him, burying her face in his chest and pretending that she was once again a little girl, small enough to sit in his lap and feel safe again.
He wrapped those arms around her. Stiff, but malleable to her whim.
“I don’t know what will happen now,” he said against her ear, “but be strong. The Void always has a plan.”
They were either the words of the High Priest or her father. Either way, Mira would take them.