Chapter Seven
A Promise Made
The long black cloak with its hood conformed to her body under the pressure of the cold icy wind that threatened to steal her warmth from her, just as the sight of the destruction around her had already crushed her heart. Ellanara walked alone through the rubble of the past, her past. It seemed like it had just been yesterday, when all of this had existed, but it wasn’t.
She was truly alone. Gone were all her friends and loved ones. Those who knew and understood her best and would never have looked at her, as these people did and yet she would save them, as that was what her purpose here was for. Ellanara walked down through the remnants of Thunder Ridge into the valley to step through the snow strewn pathways of the village.
She stopped in the village’s square, not because one could see it was such, but because she knew the village’s layout by heart. She gazed upon the pile of rubble that was perhaps the saddest of all, the Chapel. There would be no one to rebuild it this time as in times past. She dropped to her knees uttering a cry of loss for not just the Chapel, but everything she had held dear in her life and that was now gone for forever.
“God I can’t do this alone! I can’t! I don’t even know where I’m going! God please help me, because this is all too much for me!”
She fell forward onto her face in the snow crying brokenly, now that she was out of the view of others and free to express in full emotion the sorrow that she felt overwhelmed by.
Complete peace overwhelmed her at once and she lay quiet and listened.
“I have not forgotten the righteousness of your father’s before you nor have I left you to be alone in despair. I have provided a guide for you and he will direct you to a new home that I have set apart for my faithful. He is alone, even as you are separated from those around you. You will be bonded to him and together you will be one. Your two great houses will be one and your peoples shall become one. Trust Me in that I know what is best for you and that you are priceless in My sight.”
The voice of her Creator stopped and she whispered into the snow, “I will do even as You command me Lord, but how shall I know such a man?”
“You will know him by his ways. He is faithful to me, even as your father was and as you are now. He is the greatest warrior that has walked any of the lands of My creation in over a thousand years, which is how long I’ve kept him a warrior out of the bounds of time. It has been as if but a day to Me, but for a man alone the time has caused him to grow weary of life itself. You will change all that as you give him a reason to live and to hope for the limited years of a mortal life once again. Now listen carefully Ellanara. Get the rings that your brother has kept for you and the sword of your father. Give the sword to your father’s heir, Loric, which I’ve raised up to help you and to continue on your father’s legacy. Take the stone from before you as a remembrance of all that I have said lest you doubt in your mind and stray from the path that I’ve set you on.”
The snow melted before her eyes to reveal a flat stone laying on top of the old cobblestones of the old village square. On the stone was inscribed a passage from the Bible. It was Psalm 23 written by King David in another place at a different time, but with an eternity of meaning. The stone at one point must’ve been located in the meditation garden of the Chapel, as part of the wall or one of the many boulders that had been inscribed with the words of God. Ellanara’s fingers closed about it tightly and she got to her feet.
The stone seemed to warm in her hand and once again she heard the voice of the Author of her creation speak, “Build a new Chapel in the new land that I shall give you and teach your children and the people My ways and it will go well with you and your descendents will be blessed for generations to come, if they remain faithful to Me and walk in My paths. There is not any obstacle to great that I will not overcome for you, nor any way that is too hard, for by Me all things are made possible.”
Tears steadily dripped down Ellanara’s face, as she felt humbled beyond all words could express in the midst of God’s presence upon her in her gravest hour of need. Her lips quivered with the passion she felt, “By Your Grace and loving mercy I will accomplish all that You have set me to do and more. My Lord God I worship and adore Thee and I will keep no other gods before me. For there is one God, and You are He the great I AM. Into Your hands oh Holy Father I entrust my life, my dreams, and my hopes for the future. May it go well with me for I have chosen to serve the Lord all of my days and through whatever trials may befall me. Thy will be done in my life, even as my life is poured out before Thee. Shape me into a vessel that will bring You honor, even as my father did before me!”
All communication seemed to cease and Ellanara feeling far more positive than before because of her encounter with God, turned away from the ruins of the Chapel and made her way up through the ruins of Thunder Ridge not really seeing the devastation around her, but rather the future that was opening up before her and her people.
In the not so distant future in the old galaxy of worlds, from which the Vallians once fled from.
Rain dropped from the broken ceiling to splatter on the hard stones of the floor sending little droplets of water scattered across the dusty plain of someone’s forgotten home. It had begun to rain, but then I had known it would ever since I’d seen the sky this morning out the broken section of the wall I stared out of continually. How long had I been sitting here….three days? No, today would be the seventh day.
Seven days gone adrift, while I had just sat here and watched time go by. Surely there was some good I could have done in that amount of time other than to just sit here and do nothing? But of course there was something I could have done that I hadn’t. One more opportunity that had slipped me by, which only added to the guilt of the many other missed opportunities I had experienced in my existence of boundless limbo. Time without end, with too many sad moments to count much less relive.
I was feeling sorry for myself again, which was also wrong to do, but it was hard not to. I wanted to die, but God had been silent to my pleas other than for the constant, “Patience and Trust.” Over and over I heard that phrase and it seemed to still be the lesson that I could never learn. No matter how long I waited I was always impatient for my wait to be over, no matter how long I seemed to live I couldn’t trust God to end it soon enough.
My situation was pathetic. I was pathetic!
Come on, get up and do something, anything, my soul urged me, but rationally I thought, do what? Having a seemingly unlimited existence such as mine wasn’t the joyride that I knew that many would think it was. The struggles of a mortal life were enough to drag even the stoutest of souls into the grave and I had been alive the span of many such mortal lives.
Life didn’t get any easier with more time on one’s hand to do with as one pleased. If I started something positive such as a friendship I was stuck watching that friend grow old, while I stayed the same. That had been the way it had been with my wife.
Never again!
It was true that I could enjoy the pleasures of life such as the comfort willingly offered to me by so many women over the years, if I had so chosen to, but I had not. Just because the years of my life appeared endless was no excuse to live any less moral than the ways of my father’s before me.
Fighting and striving to maintain a moral existence and be seen as righteous in God’s eyes was hard enough to do in a shortened lifespan, but the length of my struggle made me want to go crazy. I had longed for the peace of deaths, but it was kept from me.
Pain was not kept from me however. I had watched my wife die an old woman childless and embittered toward me. Those of my friends, who had survived the destruction of our lands and people I had also watched grow old and die and their children after them and so on and so on.
I avoided making friends any longer, just as I avoided women. It was to tormenting to form a relationship of either kind, as I already knew how it would end, with their death’s years in the making, while I watched it all unfold.
Why had God cursed me so? I asked myself not for the first time and as always I never received an answer other than the constant mantra of, “Patience and Trust.”
I had done nothing to merit this seemingly eternal torture of mind and emotion. While I was tired of my long life I did have a purpose. A purpose that I was grateful to have, but one that made it little better to continue on alone of spirit and body as I was.
I was the Guardian and sole protector of the scattered remnants of my people. My people now numbered but a few thousand, while I was alive they were free to continue living and upholding the traditions of our people. Boy met girl, relationships flared, unions were made, and some at least found happiness for a while despite the shattered history of our condition.
While I was able to keep my people alive and free I had long since given up hope of anything more than that. For the past three hundred years or so my people had not been hunted by the killers of our once proud nation, the Orlandian’s.
The Orlandians had stopped hunting my people, when it had become clear to them that for every one of my people they killed I would in retribution kill 100 to 1000 of theirs. When the Orlandians had stopped hunting us I had stopped hunting them, which had left me but with little worthwhile to do other than what I was doing right now. Watching time go by, unable to change the fate of my diminished people.
I knew the Orlandian’s would not keep the tenuous cessation of hostilities between us for forever and knowing so gave me a savage joy, because it meant that I could kill them again, which was one joy I did not grow tired of. I knew introspectively that it was not good to think so hatefully, but it was just how it was. Maybe I was going crazy.
I surely must be, if I could value the continued safety and peace of my people less than the joy I received in killing my sworn enemy. A moment of shame for my thoughts caused me to blink out of my silent trance. In my trance like state I hadn’t really been seeing anything. Now with fresh eyes I looked out through the broken section of wall overlooking an even more broken and deserted city. It was the same view as ever and it depressed me as it always did.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a Sarpatton viper slithering toward me across the floor. It was trying to escape the increasingly damp floor caused by the dripping roof leaks above. My hand flashed out and I crushed the serpent’s head between two of my fingers and with the flick of a wrist I threw the contorting body of the viper out of the open section of jagged wall in front of me. The snake’s body lay twisting on the ground, as the torrential downpour beat the pavement hard outside, even as I reflected on the uselessness of my actions.
The bite of a Sarpatton viper is enough to kill a full-sized adult, but if it had bitten me it would have had no effect whatsoever. I should know, as once lured by the Orlandian’s into a trap, I had fallen into a pit full of them.
There had been no reason to kill the snake other than that I didn’t like them and that I wished they were all dead anyway, if I could only find a way to eliminate all the vipers at once. The thought was a parallel consideration of my constant struggle with the Orlandian’s.
It was a thought, dream really, that was much easier said than able to be accomplished in any form of reality. During a period that had lasted several hundred years I had thought and planned of nothing else but accomplishing such a goal. But the part of the equation that I could never factor out was the risk to my people’s survival of such a revenge quest on my part.
If I failed to eliminate the Orlandian’s in one fell swoop they would out of sheer spite obliterate the remaining traces of my people knowing that they were all that I really still cared about.
If I could but remove my people from these series of worlds and take them somewhere else where they could start all over again, while I stayed behind to ensure the utter destruction of the Orlandian’s I would have done it, but that option was gone from me now as well.
The only place that my people would be safe were the mysterious Haven Worlds of legend. But I had no ship to take them there and none of the Orlandian ships could ever make the journey, as the worlds were very far away.
Even if I did have such a ship I no longer had the map keys needed to find the Haven World’s, because my father the King had foolishly given them away, as he lay dying a millennium ago. It was an old problem of what to do that I fought over and over in my head and bitterly I admitted that I still did not have an answer, but I refused to give up, because if I did my people and our way of life would perish and the enemy would have won.
I stared out into the hard rain searching for an answer. I did something then that I hadn’t done in a long time. I got onto my knees and bowed my head and was real for a moment with my Creator, who I believed in, but was mad at.
“Lord, if there is a way, I pray that you would let my people go free and find the Haven Worlds, with or without my help. Please do not let our name perish forever from those numbered under the heavens of Your creation. Forgive my anger toward You, as it is Your right, as Master of all creation to do with Your created works as You please. I ask…… I beg You of this fervent wish of mine yet one more time! I fear for the future of my people, if a way of escape is not made. Can a people live without hope? Be merciful on us Lord for we have ever been your servants from of old.”
I’d said the words with all my heart, but as for an answer I still received nothing. Bitterly, I confessed to myself, while still on my knees that God’s will for my people must be to perish. Who was I to stand in the way of His mighty will?
I looked up and out into the pouring down rain, the day’s dreary state being a fit companion for my thoughts. My eyes widened, as the rain stopped, as if it had never been and the brightness of the sun shone full on the crumbled remnants of what had been my father’s capital city and the pride of our Sallaconese Empire.
Such a change in weather was different from anything to be expected in the normal range of natural weather fluctuations on this world. I had never seen such an abrupt change of weather like this before in all my lonely years and instinctively I knew this must be of the Creator’s doing. I stood up in excitement and as I did a warm wind gusted through the hole in the wall and knocked me onto my back.
Fear filled me. God would surely now kill me for all my insolence of thought against Him for so many years now and even though I wanted to die I regretted making my Creator feel so angry toward me. I waited to be burnt from fire above or have my breath released from me.
Nothing happened and cautiously I sat up. Something caught my eye that was resting on my lap and I looked down and beheld the beauty of a blue throated fire flower blossom. I picked the delicate flower up with a sense of awe. No such flowers grew anywhere near the old city. Where had it come from and what did it mean?
I got back up to my feet and this time no gust of wind knocked me to the floor. I approached the broken down wall and stared out into the deserted city wondering what was different. Wondering what God was up to. A dark shadow appeared overhead and I looked up and as I did I beheld a great ship barely gliding just over the top of the ruins not making so much as a whisper of sound, as it glided along overhead.
I had never seen such a ship, but I knew beyond a doubt that the ship was not Orlandian.
Strangers?
I glanced at the flower in my hand, which is when I sensed something else or to be more correct someone else. Someone who could think and use everything of their faculty just like I could and I recognized the softer outline of thoughts, as those belonging to a female.
I watched the great ship touch down to the ground at the edge of the ruined city. I lifted the blossom to my nose and smelled its musky sweetness. What strange tidings this day had brought. I would pay these strangers a visit tonight. Perhaps there was yet hope of a positive change for not only my people, but also for me. I hoped so. Something had happened beyond what I could’ve expected and I felt excitement flow through me at the prospect of something unknown and new to discover.