thirty-nine #3
Soft, tender, and fiercely protective—the High Priestess gazed at her with golden eyes and black hair that ruffled in the breeze of the Void.
And behind her, even more unfathomable, were the slightest glimpses of a large eye hovering above them, watching, waiting, and whiling away the epochs until it was time to destroy, to create again.
But the High Priestess was at peace with this cycle.
She held Sulim’s arm, cupped her cheek, and smiled as if to say, “I’m proud of you.”
Instead, she said, “Please, help my Mira. She is the missing part of my very essence. I left her behind to fulfill my final duty. Only you, the soul plucked from the Void to be hers, can help her. She cannot be alone… just like I cannot be alone. It is the curse of being ‘us.’”
“I don’t understand.”
“No. To be human is to be simple, directed only by the onus of being alive. But you are still as powerful as a julah, if you believe in your own innate divinity. You are all my children since the dawn of the Void.”
“Mira…” It was like Sulim knew that name, but the woman herself danced at the edges of her memories. She is the woman of many names. And the more names Mira beheld, the more destructive the forces that followed in her wake.
“My cursed child. My harbinger of horror. My one, true hope.” The vision before Sulim flickered. “You must help her. You must heed the signs I send. The destruction coming to this world is vast and immediate. It has already touched another of your worlds. The war is fought in countless more.”
Those lives flashed before Sulim’s eyes, including the world where she died a glorious death against Nerilis Dunsman—ninety-seven times.
Sometimes she was a baby. Sometimes she was a child screaming in her mother’s breast.
Sometimes she was a grown warrior doing her best to save her people.
Every time she went down, she rose again in another body, willing to fight again until the war to save the Void, to save all of existence, was won.
“I will send you back to a world on the brink. You can save it. You can save many worlds. Give her something to live for. Take my place, and be the one who guides her.”
Sulim was swallowed by the golden light, her throat constricted and her illusion of a lucid dream crumbling around her—slowly, sweetly, like melting candles.
Yet she gazed into those golden eyes, fighting the instinct to hold onto her Mother, and found her voice.
She spoke on behalf of every Sulim fighting the war in every derivative of creation.
“You’re all the same one, aren’t you?” White changed to black; gold grew brighter. “The High Priestess. There is only one.”
“Only one creator. Only one Void. Many, many worlds.”
She was slammed back into her body, gasping, sweating, and nearly falling out of her bed.
Sulim caught herself against the bedframe in her tiny room, the air conditioner sputtering above her as vertigo threatened to knock her head against the bedside table where she kept her communicator, her clock, and the few pleasurable items she was allowed in a dump like this.
Her bedroom door slammed open. She snatched the dagger she kept beneath her pillow, leaped to her feet, and prepared to defend herself.
“Put that thing down.” Sonall stood in her bedroom doorway, her spare bedroom key dangling in his hand. “It’s me.”
“Why the hell do you have that!” Sulim tossed her dagger onto her bed before she cut herself, but her brain was still adjusting to the reality of her very own life, let alone what was happening in that life. “I didn’t give you that!”
“Yes, you did.” He pocketed it right in front of her.
Although she swore he went to bed the same time as her, the man was dressed and energetic enough to suggest he had been up a while.
What time is it? Her digital clock said it was the middle of the night.
“When you got this room. You gave it to me in case something happened. Well, something’s happened.”
Sulim rubbed her eyes. She was dressed in nothing but a short nightshirt, but it was more important that she brace her pupils for the light Sonall soon turned on than attempt to look decent in front of him.
“What is it?” she asked with a gravelly voice. “Is it the chief?” Wasn’t she in the infirmary? Or had Sulim hallucinated about that, too?
“No. We need to go to the Temple.”
“What? Why?” What did he know that she didn’t!
Sonall looked her right in the eyes, his blue ones turning a strange green in her diluted nightlight. “I just had a dream about the High Priestess. Something tells me that you did, too.”
Sulim was speechless. So much so that he had to come over and check her for a fever before pulling some of her clothes out of her dresser.
She soon got the point. Without a word, she got dressed in front of him while he rambled about a holy vision that commanded him to go along with whatever Mira said. That he was one of her soldiers.
“Not exactly thrilled about it, but…” He sighed as she finished pulling a shirt over her torso. She then searched for her necklace, tucked inside a small box on her nightstand. “Now it’s your turn to share.”
She didn’t know where to begin, so she told him on the way there.