Gavrial
Something was very wrong. The tether that connected my soul to Sable had snapped. I had felt it deeply since the night I broke her curse. Our souls, our destinies had become entwined as one. They had become two strings braided together in an unweavable mess. A prophecy foretold unraveling. I did not feel pain but only this vast empty void as if my soul mate had just been ripped out of existence. That was impossible, unfathomable.
The wood floors cracked as my knees collided with the hard oak. My sword clattered to the ground as my hands found purchase in front of me. Everything around me slowed to a halt. I tried to inhale only to find the air around me was gone. Arbor appeared in front of me. His mouth was moving but all I could hear was the vast void of silence. My hand clutched my heart as I rolled over onto my back trying to ground myself. I grappled to regain a sense of the world around me. As the strangeness ebbed his words became clearer.
"What happened?"
"She- She's gone," I tripped over my words trying to comprehend this new well of emptiness I had never experienced before.
"Who's gone? Gone where?" he made a show of looking around the empty training room.
The doors clattered open with Belenos charging through them in haste. "You know; you felt it?" he said stopping in his tracks at the sight of me on the ground.
"Know what?" I asked turning to glare at him.
"Not you too. What in the fires of hell is going on? Who's gone?" Arbor questioned us.
"Sable," we both said breathlessly.
***
My fist banged against the wooden door abandoning the knocker entirely. My fear and rage were rolling off of me in palpable waves. The hour was late and travel took us two days to arrive at Atropa Hall. We had been lodging at my manor temporarily on the way to the Tower of Caelum. We had planned on freeing those trapped, in hopes they would join the ranks of the small clan of witches, warlocks, seers, and oracles we had already recruited. That plan was currently on hold until we could figure out what happened to Sable.
A mousy-like serving girl opened the door with a lantern showing the sleep still clinging to her like an essence all its own. Her eyes widened and the sleep shirked back from her features at the sight of three very imposing men.
"The hour is late. What has happened to bring three strangers to the door?"
"We have very direr news to deliver to the mistress of the house we are old friends of hers and have ridden for two days straight just to give her the message promptly." I jumped right in taking the lead.
"The mistress is not in. It will have to wait until she returns." The serving girl went to shut the heavy door. Her weak frame struggled just enough for me to wedge my foot in the way and grab hold of it before she could close it.
"Please, it is very important we speak with her," I said.
She looked at me with half fear and half annoyance at my audacity.
"It is fine Marry. Let them in. We have a long overdue conversation." Marry's grip on the door slackened and I pushed it back revealing the red-headed figure I was all too familiar with. Standing deep in the shadows of the hall's entrance was Tovias with a slight grin on his strangely handsome face. He wore silk pants and a matching robe that was left open revealing his sculpted chest. I hated him. "Don't you think, Gavrial?"
"Yes, I do, Tovias." I tried to mask my shock but I wanted him to know I too knew who he was. I remembered the scrawny young boy who used to turn over beds at the inn I had stayed at several times. Now he was the man currently basking in the pleasure between my little witch's legs when it should have been me.
Marry stepped back leaving way for us to enter. Tovias left his shadows and glided down a side hall like a phantom. His movements were all too smooth sending chills and worry down my spine. I had no idea what kind of creature he was but I knew he was made from darkness; the darkness that lived in Sable.
"What the fuck is he?" Belenos whispered noting the strange way Tovias moved about like a grimreaper.
"You're the seer, you tell us," Arbor quarried.
"I can't see anything about him. Only darkness is his future." Belenos sucked his teeth. "I don't trust him," he whispered.
Tovias's broad figure turned into a sitting room that was not empty. Inside was another man who was whose steely blue eyes immediately locked onto us with hatred. "Oh great her kidnapper, her rapist, and- I'm sorry. Who are you? Do you even know Sable?"
Belenos didn't miss a beat. "I'm the seer and just because I haven't had my cock in her doesn't mean I'm not eligible to sit in on this meeting. Even though I think being strung up naked and spanked by her should be a qualification." Everybody seemed to have somebody to glare at now. The staring contest only lasted a moment before the stranger burst out laughing.
The tension shifted and we all found ourselves a place to lounge. Belenos sat nearest to the fire in a lounge chair. Arbor and I took the couch while Tovias sat at the bar his friend was tending.
"Who goes first?" Belenos asked being his awkward self.
"I think Sir. Judgment over there should go first by telling us who he is," Arbor interjected.
"He is Sables," Tovias explained as if it were as simple as that.
"He is Sable's," I mocked. "What does that even mean?" They both decided it was the perfect time to sip their drinks in sync.
"She collects Knights like a jeweler collects gems," Belenos observed. We were all glaring at him now. "What? Don't look at me like that. You all know you can hardly resist her. It has been woven into your fates." It didn't appear as if anyone in this room was happy to hear that.
"Alright seer, if you know so much then why don't you just tell your friends who I am?"
"And miss all the fun that could be had with a big reveal?"
The man gritted his teeth, disdain evident on his features.
"These games bore me. His name is Sorran."
The very man slammed his glass against the bar. "Now why would you do that?" He questioned his friend. Tovias just shrugged as if the whole thing was inconsequential to him.
"He was never going to tell now that I'm here," Belenos predicted.
"You were her first love," I stated. "What the fuck are you guys doing just sitting here drinking when Sables missing?" My rage was fired up again and I could no longer sit here pretending like everything was just fine.
"Missing? Tovias, is she missing?"
"No, Sorran. I don't believe she is."
"I think she's exactly where she wants to be," he bantered back.
"And where the fuck is that? Because I felt my soul split in two when she went where ever the fuck that is."
"She's with the God of Darkness," Tovias said examining the dirt under his nails.
"That's who not where," I fumed.
"His realm of course." Tovias raised his glass to Sorran allowing him to fill it to the brim again.
"How ominous the games you like to play are." Belenos stared into the fire a sheen of sweat building on his brow. "I can not peer into the lives of the gods. Especially Gods not of our realm. She is lost to us."
"She's not lost. She will return to us," Tovias informed.
"How could you possibly know that?" Arbor asked.
Tovias turned a looked at me. "Because I'm no longer of this world but of hers. I exist because she exists. I breathe because she breathes. I see because she sees. And I see all that her eyes grace and I know all that her ears hear. She will come back to us."
I shivered at his declaration. Not because he loved her more than I but because his soul was more deeply woven into hers than my own was.
Belenos was up on his feet glaring at him."She is lost to us as we knew her. You have no idea what she will go through with a God of Darkness. One who she doesn't even get her power from. Lucifer will reign hell down upon us all for letting her fall into the hands of a god. A God who could rival the Dark Lord's power." He gasped in revelation, his finger touched his chin, a thought so strong it halted his rant. "The prophecy ever-changing, yet not. With so many implications. This is why The Beldams are collecting us. None of us can see what is truly to come with the interference of gods." He plopped back in his seat breathing heavily and contemplating the ramifications.
Arbor snorted. "If those crones are so old and wise, why don't they know it's a god?"
"The gods have never intervened before," Belenos said shakily. "And this god is not of our realm if Tovias is to be believed." His hands ringed through his hair. "No seer, no oracle, or crone would have predicted this. We only have the prophecy and we must move forward with the assumption that he is the dark path she was predicted to go down."
We were all stunned into a stupor of silence ruined when Tovias opened his mouth again, "I think the darkness might just save us all from this Hell."