Celine’s office, or rather her bedroom, was an absolute mess.

I stepped over a large box, which looked full of… clothes? Nightgowns? What were those things? Surely not bras…

“Sorry… uh… here. Here’s a chair, just let me move all this and…” Celine fumbled around as she unburied a small chair. One that had been getting used as a shelf. She knocked over a pile of books, which sent some dust into the air… and I wondered if maybe she wasn’t necessarily a filthy person, or a hoarder, but instead… just neglectful.

“Do you never clean?” I asked her as she finally got the chair free, and placed it in front of the other one. She had placed it a little too close for my own comfort, so I grabbed it and pulled it back a few more feet. The action caused some noise, since I had to push some boxes out of the way to do so, but I didn’t care.

“Well… I try. But I come and go so often and…” Celine sounded genuinely embarrassed, but I wasn’t having it.

“You’re a slob,” I said as I realized one of the boxes I had moved was full of shoes. Some of them didn’t even look like things she could wear, but instead boots for a grown man.

She giggled in a way that told me my comment had hurt her, but she wasn’t going to let it bother her.

Sighing at her, I rounded the chair and went to sit in it. I sat carefully… since I wasn’t sure if this dusty thing would break or not. Yet even as I let it endure my whole weight, it didn’t budge or creak.

A well made chair.

Respecting the chair for a moment, I barely noticed Celine rummaging around a pile of boxes nearby. She poked her head out of the mess, and then with a happy smile showed me a thick book. “I found it!” she said happily.

“Found what…?” I asked with a sigh. Why did she look so happy?

With more vigor than was needed, Celine hurried over to the chair opposing me and sat down. I noticed the way her gray robes curled and hugged her thighs and waist as she did so. Was she doing that on purpose? I’d never seen someone wearing such religious clothing make them look so… wrong.

She opened the book, and with a quick hand began to flip the pages. She mumbled as she read page after page, then eventually found whatever she was looking for.

“And then I ran out from the tall grass. To the man standing in the middle of the road. He had an expression of pure confusion, yet in his eyes I saw surety. Confidence. Safety, even. The moment I saw him, I knew I was now safe. That I was now in no danger. Yet still, I ran towards him. With the last of my strength, I fell past him, to the ground and onto my knees… and it was there that I met Vim,” Celine read aloud from a page, and my spine went stiff and cold.

Celine looked up from the book, and beamed me a happy smile… even as I glared at her.

“Yes. I know. Don’t tell you… but this already happened! I just… wanted to prove it. Do you want to read it to see? I wrote this years ago. About… thirty three years ago,” she said after looking back to the book. I noticed she had looked at the top of the page. Likely where she had dated it.

“No. I don’t want to see it,” I said simply.

Celine’s smile didn’t even flinch as she nodded, and then lifted the book a little… at just the right angle to show me where the said page was. “See? This isn’t even half way into it. Not even halfway through! And this is only one of them,” Celine said confidently.

I blinked… then looked around me. At the mess everywhere.

Half of the mess was books. Stacks and piles of them. Everywhere. At least a few hundred and that was just in this room. There was another room to our right, opposite of the room’s entrance, which led to a place with a bed. I had seen more piles of junk in there too. Which meant likely more books.

Surely not…

“Well no… these books aren’t all my dreams, nor about you especially. Only the white ones,” she said as she lifted the book again, to show me the color of its binding and cover. It was white… I wonder what kind of leather it was.

“I had not doubted you, Celine. Why show me this? Why tell me this?” I asked. I wanted to suddenly burn this place to the ground.

“Well… because I’m scared,” Celine then said.

Scared…

“Yes. Of you. But!” She leaned forward, and placed the book down onto her lap. “But not of you hurting me! Really! No… I’m scared of you running away. Leaving and I never seeing you ever again. I’m scared if I say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, I’ll have lost you to us forever,” she said.

I didn’t like how serious her tone was. Nor how desperate her glowing eyes seemed to be.

And even more so, the truth hidden in-between her words.

If she was saying stuff like that… it meant she had already seen it. Prophesied it. Dreamt it.

She’s seen me leave before. She’s seen me turn my back to her, and this…

“The Society,” I whispered.

She nodded heavily. “The non-human society. Although… honestly, we’re not just non-humans anymore. Nearly half our members are human, now,” she said with a smile.

On the way here, she had explained this place. To a certain degree. She had told me and Lilly all about it… how she had founded this supposed society here in Telmik, a city-state founded on the religion of some sisters or something. How it was a safe-haven for those like us. For non-humans who were tired of being hunted, or enslaved. Tired of being brutalized by not just the world, and the humans, but even each other.

A lofty ambition and honestly… not something I found any real fault in. But…

“I know. I know that you want to run away. Especially when I talk or even hint of knowing anything about you, or your future… but yet… at the same time I have to earn your trust. I must do it. I have to prove to you that I can play by your rules,” Celine then said.

“My rules,” I said softly. So she even knew of those?

She nodded, happy.

“Why… why tell me this? If you know me, at least that much, to know my aversion to your ability and what you are… why tell me it so openly? Why not hide it?” I asked her.

Celine’s smile turned into a smirk. “Hide it from you? Really? Vim… I don’t really know how you know about my abilities, or what I am, but I do know you have once faced, and defeated, someone or something like me before. It’s the reason you’re so weary around me, and why it takes you so long to make the decision,” she said.

Decision…?

I was about to say something, to ask what she meant by that, but she continued before I could.

“Also, if I had withheld this information… my ability, and stuff, then… when you found out later, it’d only result in you pushing us farther away. If not even invoking your wrath. We can’t survive either of those results,” she said.

“I’m about to push you away right now,” I warned her.

Celine didn’t hesitate to smirk. “I figured! In one of those instances, where I didn’t tell you until it were too late, you called me a deceitful… succubus? Which I’ve tried to look up and figure out, but I haven’t been able to, but from the way you say it in that dream it must be very, very bad,” she said with a tiny smile.

Huh… she had said that word oddly. Not wrong, nor mispronounced… but it was definitely something she didn’t know the meaning.

Yet she had heard it.

From me.

In one of her dreams. Of prophecy.

She nodded, likely noticing my thoughts on my face. “I heard you call me it in a dream. As I said… my dreams show me my own future. The powerful moments. They’re about me, and the important moments of my life… such as my deaths. Those are specifically very vivid,” she said with a strange smile.

“So… I called you a succubus, and then killed you?” I asked, trying to decipher her words.

“You didn’t want me to tell you, I thought,” she asked softly.

“Tell me the non-important parts,” I said.

Her strange smile turned into a wry smirk. As if she had just won some difficult battle. “The dream began during a battle. Between me and you. We were already to the point of screaming at each other upon its start, so I don’t know how it got to that point… or honestly, even the reason behind it. In fact I don’t even know where it’s supposed to happen. During my dreams I basically… live it out. I live out that moment. No matter how long, or how terrible. And as I do, I don’t realized I’m in a dream. I believe they’re real. Well… they are real, I guess. I live them. And that one, I don’t know where it happens, when it does, or even why… I only know you and I argue over trust and love, and then you call me that and then you kill me,” she said as she cupped her hands above the book, as if in prayer.

I gulped a dry mouth as I parsed her words. It lined up with the other dreams of prophecy I had heard of before. The same type of description. The same method. They lived the dreams, not realizing they were dreams.

As if they weren’t dreaming at all, but instead living out those moments before they happened.

And she said we had argued to the point I had killed her? After calling her a succubus? After arguing over love… and trust?

That was terrifying.

Celine then smirked. “We were also naked,” she added.

That made it less so, somehow.

“You speak as if I’ve killed you multiple times,” I said, doing my best to ignore the meaning behind what she was saying.

“Well… because you have? I should have probably realized this sooner, even before meeting you… but you don’t realize how… massive you are, do you?” she asked me.

“Massive…?” I shifted on the chair. Me? I mean… I weighed a lot, but I was far from massive. I wasn’t that tall. Muscular, but not so much it was obvious. I was nothing like that man outside. The one who was shy.

He was massive. That was massive.

“Yes. It seems you’re completely unaware how impactful your actions and words are to the world… at all. It actually concerns me a little. Maybe that is how the gods were too, back then. Maybe that’s why you killed them… If so, why do you replicate their faults? It seems counter-productive,” she started to think aloud, pondering something far beyond what I wanted to even admit let alone speak aloud.

“I suggest you learn to speak carefully,” I warned her.

She nodded and huffed. “Yes. I know. I’m sorry… I’m just nervous. We’re finally talking, for real, and there are so many possibilities and paths that we can take… and yet I have no idea how to choose any of them, or even which would be the best to take! It’s thrilling, yet terrifying all the same…!”

Once again she was saying stuff that bothered me.

“What are you doing here? Honestly?” I asked her.

“I’m creating a Society,” she answered without hesitation.

Although I had already thought, and sincerely believed, that there was nothing wrong with her goals and ambitions… I realized something very terrifying, because of it.

“You… who sees the future. What have you seen? What did you witness, to make you so desperate? To make you do something like this?” I asked her carefully.

Celine’s smile softened… and I noticed the way her fingers gripped the book on her lap. As if for support. “If I tell you, I’d be breaking one of your rules,” she whispered to me.

“Of that I’m sure. But my question stands. You saw something terrifying, and this is your attempt to stave it off, is it not?” I asked her.

She nodded, but said nothing more.

For the first time in a long time… I debated actually breaking my own rule. To let her tell me the truth. The real one.

But as quickly as I considered it, I let it die.

I’d rather the whole world burned than know the inevitable.

“You’re saying if this Society doesn’t work out… all non-humans could go extinct,” I whispered.

“Rather, if this Society doesn’t succeed… then yes, it’s very likely our kind will no longer exist as we know it,” Celine confirmed it.

Taking a small breath, I leaned back in my chair… and regretted it. The made a loud pop and cracked, and the backrest snapped off.

Glancing back, I stared at the broken wooden piece of the chair I had just broken. At least the chair I was sitting on was still intact. “Sorry,” I apologized to her as I turned back to face her.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

She smirked at me. “You’re so strong… even when you don’t mean to be. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure out how to get you to use that strength for the better of all of us. For the Society,” she said, unbothered… and not surprised at all by what had happened.

In fact she hadn’t even jumped or flinched at the sound. Even though it had been sudden and loud.

Which meant she had known it was going to happen.

She’s seen this moment before.

I gulped, and felt… for the tiniest moment, scared.

The moment faded quickly, and it was obvious why. Although she had the same power as the gods I once faced in battle, she didn’t have their strength. Or their lethality.

She couldn’t kill me. Even if she knew everything about me.

So then why…?

“Do you not fear it Vim?” she then asked.

You? Yes. I do. “Fear what?” I asked.

“The future,” she whispered.

I scoffed. Her? No. Her sister, fate, however was a different story. “No. I killed her,” I said, after a moment.

Celine flinched, and I realized I shouldn’t have said that. Not to her of all people.

The Saint found her nerve quickly enough, before I could, and smiled at me all the same.

“You’ve noticed it, haven’t you Vim?” Celine asked me.

I hesitated to answer, since I likely have. Whatever she was about to say, was something I very likely had noticed even if I didn’t want to.

“You mentioned it yourself. You hadn’t realized we still had so many left. So many villages. Yet the terrifying truth is it’s not enough. And those we have left… well… like Lilly’s village, they’re stuck in the past. Half of our people have not advanced a single step past their old ways. Still living as if slaves to their gods. All they do is kill, rape, and pillage. Without any thought of each other or the future. Then we have Monarchs wreaking havoc, and doing far worse,” she said.

“There’s always evil, Celine,” I whispered to her.

She shook her head. “It’s more than that, Vim. It’s inevitability. Inevitability brought on by pride. Do you want to know how many years it will take before we’re all gone? I can tell you. I can tell you the exact moment, the very second, the last of our kind fades away,” she said.

I shivered and shook my head. No. I did not want to know that at all.

“It’s already begun, Vim… look at those you’ve seen already. Half of them have chosen to mate and bind themselves to humans. Nothing that I fault, of course, but the result has been shockingly disturbing and quick. It doesn’t even take a single generation of these blendings to give birth to non-humans with lesser features, or traits, than their parents. A single generation. It usually takes dozens for a single trait to fade, yet the moment you add human blood to the mix it dilutes almost instantly,” Celine spoke quickly, and I noted the way she was staring into my eyes. She was terrified of what she was saying aloud, but yet at the same time… looked almost relieved to do so, all the same.

“Then why allow it?” I asked her.

“I’d never nip love in the bud like that Vim, who do you think I am?” she asked me.

I gestured lightly. “Then why complain about it?” I asked.

“I’m not! I’m… making a point. I’m trying to tell you how quickly our people will disappear, if we’re not careful. Not only have they begun to thin out in numbers, we’ve also had a steady amount start to go through extreme lengths as to blend in. As to hide and not be noticed. As if to become more human,” Celine said worriedly.

“Like Wincy,” I said gently.

She nodded. “Like Wincelia. She’s not the only one, Vim. A good portion of our members are like her. Those who have abandoned their heritage, just for the mere hope of blending in and being safe. It’s soul-wrenching,” she said, and I noticed her eyes had started to gleam a little. That was likely the same as being watery for a normal person.

Taking a deep breath, I shifted a little. I grabbed a knee, and squeezed it as I wondered what to say or do. “So…? If it’s inevitable, then so it is. I applaud your attempts, I really do… I’ll be honest, although I don’t necessarily like how you’re doing it with religion and faith… I have to admit what you’re doing is splendid. A true testament to both your wisdom and courage. So… why try so hard? And why sacrifice people if the numbers of non-humans is so dangerously low? Hadn’t those men with you in Lilly’s village been members? They’re dead. For what? A single girl? And you almost died too?” I asked her.

Celine took a tiny breath. “We had hoped to save more, Vim. And… we had also hoped to find you. Together. Also, there had been a chance you had never showed up. So traveling together was safer, for me,” Celine said.

Great. Now I felt like an asshole.

“And Vim… can you honestly look me in the eyes and not say a little girl is not worth the lives of three old folks?” Celine asked me.

Well…

Her smile died a little. “I forgot. You’re a warrior. One whose heart has been hardened by the fires of war,” she said gently.

“Hold on. I would have agreed. Yes. A child is important. And if you’ll forgive the… old fashioned way of thinking, I do indeed place women higher on the scales of importance. But you can blame my upbringing. Men back then were second-class citizens, after all,” I said.

She tilted her head at me. “Had they been?”

I nodded. They had been. We had been raised as soldiers. Generals. Warriors. Bridge builders, sailors, craftsmen, laborers… never anything of importance. Or rather, we’d not become things of importance until we had proven ourselves first.

You had to earn the right to be a real citizen. With your blood and sweat. Though never tears. Never the tears…

“I left,” I started.

Celine raised an eyebrow as I sighed and nodded. “I left. I ran away. To some islands… to the south. Deep in the sea, not far from where the ice begins,” I said. Her eyes narrowed as she listened, but I didn’t care if she understood or not as I continued, “I… don’t know how long I had been there. But I think it was at least a hundred years. Maybe even more. I returned recently… and met another Saint. Her name had been Yallsi,” I said.

Celine sat up straighter. “The mind reader? You met her?” she asked.

“You know her?”

She nodded quickly. “She had been… removed, from her sisterhood. For not being able to give birth. I had hoped to one day bring her here, if I ever found her. Where’d you meet her?” she asked.

I decided to keep that a secret, for now. I might one day need Yallsi, and her ability, against this woman before me… and I didn’t want her brainwashing her before that opportunity could be utilized.

Waving Celine’s question off, I pretended to get a little frustrated. “She told me of this nation. To the north. About the Monarch and humans who enslaved our kind. Which is why I came here. Or well, why you found me,” I said.

“Yes… you mentioned that. And yes, you will go there. You will,” she said, then smiled.

“Don’t tell me,” I warned her.

She nodded, knowing.

Sighing I nodded back at her, glad she was willing to play along with my desires. “I didn’t expect to find this place. Though I’m honest I don’t know what I expected at all. We used to have nations. Entire territories under non-human rule. What happened?” I asked.

“Time. Time and chaos. And our own making, as well. Honestly Vim… don’t you know what our people are like?” she asked me.

Well… did I?

She giggled. “Maybe you were too busy… but Vim… most of our kind are… well…” Celine hesitated, and then coughed. “Simple, to say the least,” she said.

Great. The way she had said that told me that she somehow knew. At least to a point. Did that mean she…

Did she know what I was? Truly? I had thought it earlier but…

“Simple,” I said, to return to the conversation and distract myself.

She nodded, and shrugged. “I don’t know what else to say. Have you really not noticed? Ever? You’re older than I am, and lived back when our kind were that numerous. You should have seen it clearly... though maybe…” Celine frowned as she pondered something, and then tapped the book on her lap with a finger. “Maybe… maybe we’ve started to decline? Maybe it started long ago, and now it’s worse. Maybe we haven’t always been like this, but rather have gotten worse. Has it been a lack of education, or something more? Lack of religion mayhaps?”

“Ponder such things later. Are you saying that non-humans have become so stupid they’re incapable of having nations or governments?” I asked her.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Not all of us, of course. As you’ve noticed, there are plenty that are just fine. But… then there are those like the men before. The ones who attacked Lilly’s village. A tribe of red apes, dead-set on killing everyone else. I’ve tried to negotiate with them three times, and not a once have they even been willing to sit and talk with me. All they do is go straight to killing,” she complained.

“If they’re that bad… why did you not let me handle them?” I asked her.

Celine blinked at me, as if realizing for the first time that such a thing had been an option.

“Handle them?” she asked me.

I nodded. “Well… duh? If they’re that bad?” I asked her. Hell, I was half tempted to go find them right now after hearing such a thing.

“And then… what? You wipe them out? They’re the last of their bloodline, Vim,” Celine said to me.

I frowned and shrugged. So? If they were going around wiping out entire villages and families then…

Celine closed her eyes and sighed. “And thus, your importance,” she whispered.

“Excuse me?” I sat up at her comment.

The Saint nodded with closed eyes. It was interesting the glow of her eyes… wasn’t visible at all behind her eyelids. Which shouldn’t be possible. Such a bright light source should make them glow, or at least brighter. It made it clear that the light in her eyes was not a natural light, but one of divine origin. It made me sick.

“I’m… I’m not perfect. I’m weak. I fail often. I stumble. I fall. I can barely protect myself, let alone those around me. I… will even lose someone special to me. So important, so precious… and I’ll let her slip through my fingers,” Celine spoke quietly, and little gleams of light leaked from her closed eyes.

I shifted, and became… very uncomfortable.

Hearing such words from someone who could literally see the future… was very concerning. In more ways than one.

“Yet…” she took a deep breath, and opened her eyes. She gulped, and her eyes grew brighter as she stared at me. “Yet, I have hope. Hope that such terrible fates can be changed. That such terrible dreams can stay the nightmares that they are,” she said to me.

Squeezing my knee tighter, I wondered what this had to do with why I was so important. Or was she saying I was the cause? Or the possible answer to those problems?

“I’m not capable of wiping out an entire race, to save others from the same fate,” she then said.

I blinked, and realized what she meant.

She didn’t need my strength.

She didn’t need my knowledge.

She needed what made me different from every other man. The one thing that separated me from every other great conqueror, or warlord. That which made me different from everyone else.

My willingness to do the unthinkable. Even against my own kind.

Celine nodded, and finally got her crying under control. The gleaming tears faded, and it was interesting to note that they stopped glowing once they fell off her cheeks. “The same cruelty we are trying to escape from. The same ferociousness that our people suffer from… I need it. We need it. We need the brutality of a man like you, to protect us from the cruelty of the rest,” she said.

I almost scoffed a smile.

Funny.

I’d heard similar before.

Last time I had heard it… I had believed it. I had thought the same.

The end result was anything but what we had expected.

“We need you. I need you. The Society needs you. We need the Soldier. The man who led an army against gods. We need the one who can not only protect us… but teach us. That can support us. Until we are able to stand on our own two legs… even if it takes thousands of years to do so,” she whispered her desperate plea.

“You need far more than a single man,” I whispered back.

“Oh trust me I know. But if I had to choose any singular man for this venture… it’d be you. And I’d choose you without any hesitation, over anyone else, without question,” she said.

“You’ve had conversations with me before? In your prophecies?” I asked her.

She blinked, and seemed bothered I had changed topics so bluntly. Yet all the same she nodded. “Dreams. They’re dreams. Not prophecies. But… yes… though never to this degree,” she said.

“Then you should know how much I hate those who can’t feed themselves,” I said to her.

“So you hate even babies Vim? Really? That’s very cruel,” she said.

My eyes narrowed at the Saint, who was now frowning in such a way that told me her statement had been completely serious. It hadn’t been some lame attempt at poking at my words and arguments, but instead genuine concern.

She was now actually worried I hated babies… and was the type of man to leave them to their death. Since that was indeed how she saw her little Society. As fragile as a newborn babe.

“You may be as vulnerable as little babies, but you’re not. You’ve got many full grown adults here, many much older than they appear. You’re not so feeble as to claim such a thing,” I said to her.

“Yet it’s not wrong Vim. Those here… and those who will eventually join, are all those who are meek. Weak of heart, and spine. Not warriors. Not hardened from the cruelty this world has wrought upon them, but rather broken and impaired instead. We are broken, not hardened,” Celine said.

Somehow she knew exactly what to say to make me feel horrible. Maybe she really had seen our future. Maybe she had spoken in depth with me far more than she was letting on… how could she know to say such things in such a way to me? Me of all people?

I had killed gods for fewer reasons than this.

Taking a deep breath, I shook my head. “I’m not ready to enlist in another war. Not yet,” I said.

“I know,” she whispered, seemingly willing to get over the baby thing.

It was time to go. Before she said something she couldn’t take back. Before I did something that broke more than my heart.

Before I knelt before her in fealty.

Standing, I did my best to not notice the desperate eyes glowing at me.

“Be proud of what and who you are. And what you are doing. You stand tall, Celine. Taller than most can dream of doing. Be proud. But… I have no desire to stand next to you. I’m a warrior, I admit. I can even be a general, or king. But I am not a preacher, nor a savior. I do not mind saving those in front of me, but what you would ask of me is beyond me. Not just my skill set, but my heart. I do not have it in me, I am sorry.”

Celine’s tears renewed… but she smiled all the same. “I know,” she whispered.

Suddenly unsteady on my feet, I wondered why her repeated answer bothered me so much. It had hurt to hear, somehow…

I had wanted her to argue. To make a compelling argument.

Yet she seemed more than willing to let me walk out the door behind me.

I looked around at the mess. Of her room. It was… rather telling. Her life was hectic. Just like this room. Yet she was trying to make sense of it. She was trying her best. She was giving it her all… and was even willing to put her life on the line to prove it.

Like those books. She wrote down her dreams. One would think it obvious, but was it? Honestly? And she spoke as if she saw many outcomes, and possibilities. Who knew the web of possibilities she continuesly had to try and make sense of. Odds are that was why she was so desperate. Why she seemed to fail.

She saw too much. And because she saw too much, she couldn't focus. Her ability was too much for her.

Not a surprise. The gods who had created such an ability had barely been able to handle it either. And she was but a mortal... although a long-lived one.

Yet... I had no choice but praise her, in a way.

She had been willing to die for Lilly and her village. She had been willing to sacrifice herself.

Far less was expected of most else. Far less was the standard.

Nodding, I looked back at her one last time… and decided to leave before I made a mistake.

Turning away, I stepped over and around the boxes and piles of books. I made sure not to step on anything too important, or break anything else. This poor woman had enough strife in her life. I didn’t need to add to it.

Reaching the door, I grabbed the handle… and realized she hadn’t said anything.

She wasn’t trying to stop me.

Frowning at her, I turned… and found a happy smile on the woman’s face.

“Celine…” I hesitated, since I didn’t know if I really wanted to know the answer.

She blinked, and more shiny tears fell as she waited. Patiently. For me to find the nerve.

“You’ve not invited me,” I said to her, after a moment of gathering my confidence.

She had invited Lilly. She had made it clear she wanted me to join, and to help her… but…

Not once had she actually asked me to do so.

“Because you’re not willing to join. Not yet. But… that’s okay. We have time. I have time. I will wait for you… as long as I need to,” she said gently, and blushed the entire time saying it.

Clenching my teeth, I bit down the response that had tried to claw its way up through my soul… and instead only nodded at the Saint who looked heartbroken, yet hopeful all the same.

Opening the door, I stepped out of it… without even saying goodbye… and left the Cathedral, Celine, Lilly, and the Society behind.