by L Travern
"First One," one of them. "A Herald Candidate has been found."
The First Prophetess smile died. "Explain."
"A... A traitor... She..."
The Overlord was having trouble speaking, and the First Prophetess realized she been so surprised, she had unwittingly let out some of her aura escape her control. How could a mere Overlord resist the aura of a Saint? It was understandable that the woman could barely breathe.
"Thanks," the Overlord said after the Saint suppressed her aura. "An Oldest Youngest betrayed us in the Temple of Western Valdia. She ran from us, resisting imprisonment, even going as far as hurting the warriors we sent to bring her back. We had no choice but to sentence her to death and send an executioner team after her. However, the team was stopped by the Immortal Crusade. We lost three Eminences in the battle."
"Nothing you said makes sense to me," the First Prophetess said. "Where is Valdia?"
"The Ralphian Republic ended about a thousand years ago," a second Overlord explained. "And about eight hundred years ago, the Valdian family took firm control over a small region of the old republic. That's also when a Prophetess Envisioned that we should place a temple on its western region."
The Saint nodded. "Why was the Oldest Youngest branded a traitor?"
"Her Life Candle turned black and burned entirely," the first Overlord said. "When we tried to reverse time to see what had happened in there, we found out the Time Stream in the Hall of Candles had been completely destroyed."
"What did you find once you fixed the Stream?"
"We couldn't fix it," the Overlord said, ashamed.
The Saint frowned. "Did any of the five of you try?"
"I did," a third Overlord said. "I'm the most accomplished of us in dealing with Time Disruption. But I failed."
"Did you ask the Timelords for help?"
The first Overlord frowned. "Sorry, First One, but we saw no reason to."
The Saint sighed, disappointed. "Did she ever admit to being a traitor, or gave out reasons for leaving her Temple? Or did her actions ever suggested she might betray us?" When some of the Overlords shook their heads, she continued. "Why didn't you consider she might've been Chosen? That would explain why she would not come back to a Temple unless ordered so by a member of the First Council. Did any of you try to talk to her?" Not even waiting for their denial, she kept going. "When did my laws became optional?" She couldn't hide her anger anymore. "I explicitly said no one should ever be judged in their absense, so that their memories could be read! How many of my children have you sentenced to death like this?"
"But, First One, she resisted arrest!" The first Overlord said.
"So she should be killed for it?" The Saint stopped restraining her aura, and the Overlords felt as if the world was trying to crushing them. They fell to their knees without resisting it. "What if one of you gets blackmailed, and is forced to keep away from the others, while an enemy blackens and burns your Life Candles? Should you be killed for it, too? Oh, I know what you're thinking. No one would dare do this to you, but she was a Youngest! She should be cared for and protected! Every one of my children is valuable! And you try to kill her without investigating it thoroughly?! How dare you?!" She was yelling at this point. "Answer me! How many died like this?"
"T- Three," the First Overlord said.
The Saint retracted her aura, and her voice came out frozen cold. "You will all deliver yourselves to the Time Prison for three days." They paled. Each second in the Time Prison felt like an eternity. They would probably all come back crazy from it. "Because you're also my children, I'll be merciful. I'll send a golem to give you a whipping each day."
Those three whippings would be the only indication they would have about the passage of time. They would wait anxiously for it every day, feeling tortured the more they waited, and then feeling a release in the terrible pain the golems would deliver to them.
Mercy? The First Prophetess had no idea what that word really meant, nor did she care to learn. No one killed her children and walked free.
At least they didn't beg for forgiveness, else the three days would've turned into three weeks.
"I'll personally go fix that Time Stream and solve the issue about the Youngest later," she said. "For now, tell me, why did the Immortal Crusade kill three of our Eminences?"
"We didn't know at the time we sent the team," the first Overlord said with a dispirited voice, "but the traitor-"
"She's no traitor until I say so," the Saint interrupted.
"Sorry, First One," the Overlord replied and bowed her head apologetically. None of them had risen after they were forced to kneel by the aura. "The Youngest had allied herself to a boy who's being investigated by the Immortal Crusade on the suspicions of being possessed. When our team arrived, she was beside him, and the Crusade considered our actions an interference to their laws. They got into a fight, and three Eminences died before they could activate their escaping treasures."
"Who exactly killed them?" She asked with murder in her eyes.
Chapter 37 - On Prophecies
Chapter 37 - On Prophecies
"Queen Overlord Bloodvine's Extended Agent," the Overlord replied. "The Queen is the current Warden of the West, the one responsible for the investigation."
"I'll kill her later," the Saint said as if it wasn't something that would enrage the Crusade and bring war upon the Temple of Time. But for her, it didn't matter even if another Saint did it, no one killed her children! "And what does any of this have to do with a Herald Candidate being found?"
"The girl who found the Herald Candidate... It's the Youngest we sentenced as a traitor."
She couldn't hide it anymore; she let her disappointment appear on her face. "Even if it's just a false Candidate, it's the first in our history, and it counts as an important mark. It's likely that the Youngest was framed by a power who didn't want us to find the Herald Candidate. Either that or our enemies want us to believe so. What about the other three girls, I wonder? What could they have done for us if you hadn't killed them?" She sighed and changed the subject. "Do you have any idea if anyone ever learned I became a Saint?"
"We believe the world is still ignorant of it, First One," another of the five Overlords replied.
"Good. Call back the pursuit of the girl, then you can deliver yourselves to the Time Prison. Don't worry, I'll personally deal with everything."
She looked at the direction of where once stood the Ralphian Republic and directly teleported there.
A Herald Candidate being found in such strange circumstances... It reminded her of her own strange experience when she received an error message telling her to disregard the Vision that showed her that one day, the Herald of Time would come.
Afraid, she had hidden the real importance of him to the Prophetesses and the world and even completely disconnected the creation of the Prophetesses as an organization to his coming. No one but her knew the only reason she created the Temples was to find him one day.
As she appeared above the old capital of the late Ralphian Republic, she thought about the images she had Envisioned. He brandished the time-space itself like a sword and stormed the River of Time with mayhem. He severed reality and brought everything back to origin. He conquered the Seven Continents, and only seven, for he destroyed the other two.
He would kill the ruling Immortals and bring that world back to a pure state, and in his wake, he would leave a trail of blood and pain.
He was the Herald of Time, for he would bring that world back to a time before the mages existed.
And Time forbid anyone ever found out about it. She had to get to him before anyone else, or everything would be lost.
* * *
Immortals didn't dream, for even when they slept, they kept their minds – including the unconscious one – under control. You never knew where an attack might come from, and arts that invaded and controlled others' dreams were common in lower levels of power exactly because weak people didn't know how to adequat
ely protect themselves.
But that night, for the first time in a very long while, Matthew dreamed.
* * *
He was back on Earth, sitting under a tree. It was lunchtime on his freshman year at school, but he had learned the hard way that he wasn't welcome to sit with anyone else.
They weren't especially mean, they simply avoided him. If he sat with any of them, they got up and sat somewhere else. If he tried to start a conversation, they would just 'remember' something else they had to do somewhere else.
All of that was because of a simple conversation he had had with the girlfriend of the school bully, a boy called John Grint. Matthew saw her by coincidence when he first arrived at the school and didn't lose any time in trying to get close to her. She was beautiful, after all, and he had had some luck with girls in his old town.
However, Grint saw it. Contrary to Matthew's expectations, no fight issued. Instead, he became the persona non grata of the town. Absolutely no one would talk to him, and that included the girl. The influence of the Grint family was that encompassing; no one wanted to go against the boy's order of shunning Matthew from all social circles.
Six months had already gone by since then, and Matthew kept to himself. That day was going on just like any other, but then, the bully appeared, and he was walking straight to Matthew.
Matthew stood up, fear holding him by the guts, his back to the tree. He wasn't skinny, but the bully was almost three times his size, and all of it looked like a muscle.
"You faggot!" Grint said, punching Matthew's stomach. "What the fuck did you do to my girl?"
The punch made Matthew lose his breath and instinctively bend down. But Grint was having none of that and pinned Matthew's shoulder to the tree. "Answer me, bitch!" And then, he slapped Matthew in the face.
"W- What?" Matthew whispered, doing his best due to his lack of air.
"She broke up with me, you piece of shit!" Another slap. "She said I was too fucking cruel with you!" Slap. "Did you think so, huh? Did you cry because of my cruelty?" Slap. "I'll show you real cruelty, you son of a bitch!" He punched Matthew hard on the nose.
Matthew could do nothing as he was beaten up. Even his feeble attempt at protecting his head only earned him a broken arm and even more pain.
He didn't understand anything. Kara Summers hadn't talked to him since that day, and just like everybody else, she didn't seem to care a bit about what was happening to him. Why would she break up with Grint so suddenly?
As he lost consciousness, he could do nothing but wonder what the hell was going on.
* * *
Matthew woke up to the smell of pancakes.
There was no cold sweat, no accelerated breathing. He had long since gotten over those memories, and all he felt was a mix of pity and gratitude towards Grint. Pity, for that boy had been but a product of the environment he had been raised on. Gratitude, for, in the end, all that violence, both social and physical, had been partly responsible for Matthew finding his path towards immortality.
The five of them had slept in an upwards slope, tall stone walls to both sides. Mark was showing small signs of claustrophobia, but from what Matthew had read, they would soon get to one of the more dangerous areas of the pass, where there were no natural walls to protect them from attacks by all sides. Which, for Matthew, was a good thing.
"Good morning," Matthew said. "This is smelling good."
"Good morning, young master," Mark said. He stood between Matthew and Sara in the narrow passage, so he kept sitting to not block the boy's vision towards Sara.
"Thank you, young master," Sara replied, as she made bacon pancakes. "I remembered you liked to eat this when I worked in your house."
"Good morning, Herald," Helina said with a voice filled with veneration.
Lo also replied with a "Good morning" of his own, albeit with much less enthusiasm, while Shadow One just kept quiet.
"So, Helina," Matthew said, "tell me about this Herald of Time thing."
"Of course, Herald!" She said excitedly. "It is a Minor Likely Prophecy that states-"
"You already lost me," Matthew said. "Minor Likely Prophecy?"
"Oh, sorry! When Prophetesses receive Visions, they can be both an immediate order, like me being told to protect you, or a telling of the future. Those who are ordered to do something become Chosen, like me. Tellings of the future are called prophecies and are classified based on their impact upon the world and when they will happen.
"On their impact, we have Sacred Prophecies, that can change the whole world and are only known by the person who received it and the First Council; Major Prophecies, that can change an entire continent, and are only known by the person who received it, its Temple, and the Councils; Minor Prophecies, that can change a small region, and anyone can know about them to some extent, like on how to identify their coming; and Passing Prophecies, that will change only a small community or even a few people's lives, which are also known by all to some extent."
"Wait," Matthew interrupted. "If this Heraldry of Time is only a minor thing, why do you know about it?"
"Because it was Envisioned by the First Prophetess! All of her prophecies are studied and memorized by all Prophetesses. No one knows what you're supposed to do, only that your coming was Envisioned four thousand years ago, a few years after the founding of the First Temple, and the establishment of the Temple of Time." She said excitedly. "You know, if everyone knew what you're going to do, it might affect the Rivers of Time, so all prophecies are kept on a need to know basis. Anyway, most Prophetesses dream of one day identifying a prophecy from the First Prophetess; it's a great honor!"
Matthew frowned. He knew he his soul had been kept suspended on the Void for a long time as the system waited for his incarnation conditions to be kept, but because he was in the Void, a place devoid of both time and space, he had had no way of knowing how much time had passed in the world outside. He would be able to find out when he became an Overlord, but he hadn't expected to have been kept 'on the freezer' for over four thousand years!
"Is it common for Minor Prophecies to take four thousand years to complete?" He asked.
"No! And this makes yours special since it's the only Minor Prophecy to have ever been classified as Likely!" Seeing his confusion expression, she explained: "As I said, prophecies are also classified on when they are expected to happen. Imminent Prophecies are, like the name says, bound to happen at any minute. Close Prophecies are expected in a short period of time, usually within ten years. Possible Prophecies should happen within a couple of hundred years. Anything over than that and the prophecy is classified as either Likely or Unlikely depending on the analysis of the First Council."
Matthew had never been one to like prophecies. Their scope was limited, usually to a planet, and they were finicky at best, useless in most cases.
Chapter 38 - Asserting Dominance
Chapter 38 - Asserting Dominance
Take a prophecy about the end of the world, for instance. With enough knowledge about the political and economic undercurrents of the world, even without knowing everything there was to know about every inhabitant in the planet, it wasn't difficult to guess that a huge war might be on the way within some hundred years. Even if one of the powers involved might change how it did things, there was so much involved in such a huge happening, that too many threads had to fail to unravel to prevent the rope from snapping and the world ending.
If it was going to happen anyway, what was the good of prophesying it?
Now, take a prophecy about a stripped cat named 'Tom' being born on a farm. It could be reasonable to make such prediction based on intimate knowledge about the cat's parents, the farmworkers, the animals and insects that might or not interact with the cat, the kids who liked to kill cats in the region, and so on. But only if it was to happen in a few months at most. Anything over than that, and way too many things could go wrong and prevent the prophecy from coming to fruition: the farm could be burned, the cat's parents
could die, no one might be around the farm to name the cat 'Tom,' one of the fore-parents of the cat might decide to leave the region, a locust plague might happen, among many other possibilities.
Again, what was the meaning behind prophesying it, if it might not even happen due to minor details?
But as little as he liked prophecies, they came from the Universal Core itself. No one really knew why it sent Visions to some people, but it did, and ever so rarely, it had its uses.
"How did you identify me?" He asked.
She smiled. "It has been Envisioned by the First Prophetess, the Herald of Time will come," she recited like someone who had repeated those lines multiple times, "He shall brandish time-space like a sword, and sever reality as one who knows all secrets of the universe. Treat him well."
He frowned. The second part was vague enough that it could mean multiple things, and the first part could be accomplished by anyone who had enough knowledge on the Laws of Time and the Laws of Space and knew how to create spells.
However, it was likely him. He had used a technique in his previous world to create a similar blade in multiple occasions, so it fit his knowledge on prophecies that the Universal Core might use that fact about his past to predict what he might do in the future. Severing reality was too broad to define, but 'one who knows all secrets of the universe' could only be him.
Well, it could be an incredibly powerful being who decided to travel to this shitholy planet, but the likelihood of anyone that powerful doing so was minimal. It was nothing short of a miracle that a former Origin Immortal like him was here, and he didn't expect even Prime Immortals to also come one day. Anything below that, including Immortals, simply couldn't be considered to know all secrets of the universe. For him, it was already a stretch to even include Prime Immortals.
