Jess reached for the Pure Crown with a steady hand.

“How many do you think you will bring back?” the Gold Chair, Hawrendrin, asked as he watched Jess place the weapon of the Whites on her head. The entire Sept, and many more Prophets, had gathered in the Chamber of the Weapons to watch what Jess was doing.

“I don’t know,” Jess replied, adjusting the feel of the near weightless weapon as it rested on the tip of her brow, held in place by a few strands of her sandy-brown bangs.

Every time she wore the Pure Crown she couldn’t help but feel the absolute sense of awareness it gave her. She could feel the energy of the Red Chair as he popped his knuckles with a swift crack. She could sense his excitement over the idea of training someone with the skills Speakers possessed. The Gold, for all his surface-level calm, was awash with worry, concerned over what he thought was a waste of time. More than this, she instantly became aware of the existence of all the people in Pinnacle, lives burning like a million candles behind her eyes.

“Can you see them?” Jake, the Red Chair, asked and tapped the handle of his red-bladed hatchet.

“I haven’t had a chance to look yet. Please, I need some room,” Jess said.

“Give the Matriarch some room,” Hawrendrin said, and stepped back, waving his arms in long, slow motions to indicate that the others should copy this act. The Prophets all recognized this and allowed Jess a reasonable amount of breathing space.

“Blesser,” Jess corrected the Gold, though she knew he would ignore it. “I’m the Blesser, Hawrendrin.” The choice of titles had always irked Jess, and the Gold’s continued reluctance to cease calling her the name past leaders of the Sept had been given.

Jess considered the position of Blesser a much higher calling than that of Matriarch. The fact that she was the first Blesser to become Matriarch, and the first of both to be from a planet other than Sevens, did not mean she should give up her former, greater title to please the members of the Sept. That was what she believed. Hawrendrin, and many others, thought otherwise.

“Forgive me,” the Gold said with no meaning behind his words. “Is this enough?”

Jess looked around the heavily occupied chamber, saw all eyes locked on her. She knew that even if she had changed her mind she wouldn’t be able to walk away, not with so many people staring at her like that. She took a quick glance at the pedestal where she had removed the Pure Crown from. Law and Heartsflame, the sword and dagger compliments to the white crown, lay on top of each other on the black stone that read the mission of the Sevens Prophets.

“Unite in Peace,” Jess read the message Infinity had left on the stone, and closed her eyes. In an instant, she reached out, channeling her thoughts and her very existence into the power of the Pure Crown. Her mind leapt out through the high, narrow Pinnacle and up into the hazy atmosphere of Sevens, sped impossibly fast through space and solar systems and stars till even the galaxies flew by in colorful streams. Had she not kept her mind focused on her goal, the impossible magnitude of the infinite vision would have maddened her, a constant risk with using the Pure Crown for such a task.

Traveling through space and matter with instant, mind-bending speed, Jess finally saw the planet and dove her thoughts toward it. “Mother,” she heard herself say, a sound close but echoing light years from where her mind traveled. Through the thick clouds and over the rushing oceans of Mother’s surface, the Blesser of the Prophets reached out to the life on this planet.

Millions of souls, lives, even thoughts washed over her. But she didn’t know where the people she was looking for would be. Few did. In fact, no one had contacted them, to her knowledge, in decades. So over the vast plains, thick forests, and dune-strewn deserts her mind raced as she felt the shared thoughts of the Mother-Dwellers around her, till a feeling so powerful it made her shudder washed over her mind.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“What is it?” Hawrendrin asked, his voice on the other end of the universe.

“They’re… singing,” Jess said, joy smothering her heart, the feeling akin to a warm fire on goose-pimpled skin. “I’ve found the Speakers.”

A twitch of her muscles sent her mind flashing toward Sevens, this time the journey being made in an instant as she opened her eyes and looked at the Prophets gathered around her in the Chamber.

“Where were they?” Jake asked, his hand nearly shaking on the handle of his hatchet.

“The Speakers do not like their location to be widely known, Jake.” Jess barely held back an exhausted sigh as she lightly lifted the crown off her head and tossed her hair back in order. “If my mission is a success, there is no need for anyone else to speak with them.”

Hawrendrin grunted in reply, crossing his arms over his chest as he cast a glance toward Jess she couldn’t quite interpret.

With a slow, delicate motion, Jess replaced the Pure Crown on the pedestal and waited till the three weapons, reunited, drifted above the surface of the stone and returned to their floating positions. Jake kept tapping against his hatchet’s handle with each slow movement Jess made.

“When will you be back?” the Red asked.

Jess removed her white pen from the silver clip on her wrist. It was made of bone from the tusk of an Ierilan mammoth, held together with metal that had turned a polished white when the tool had been blessed the day Jess became a Prophet. She held it in her open palm, watching the curious looks the Prophets in the Chamber gave her as the pen started to glow with a dim light.

“I will be back when I find what I want,” Jess said, unable to hold back a sigh. She took a quick glance around the Chamber, hoping no one interpreted that sigh for what it was. The pain of what she’d done was too close to her. But she couldn’t let those around her know that. She was the Blesser, the Matriarch as well. That’s why she needed to find the Speakers.

Closing her palm and eyes, Jess thought of the place on Mother and disappeared in a blinding white flash.

Fire blazed in a green clearing that sent dancing embers drifting high into the star-filled sky. As Jess blinked the contrast of the night into her eyes that had just come from the well-lit Chamber, she saw dozens of figures running toward the flames.

The Prophet stood at the edge of a wide creek, bubbling waters flowing over smooth stones and the thin blades of a waterwheel. The creek ran along the far side of what appeared to be a small, hut-strewn village. One of the huts, a clay-roofed structure, burned alongside another, smaller hut with flames reaching high and bright enough to light up most of the valley-like clearing.

Dozens of people ran toward the fire carrying buckets of water collected from the stream, along with small pumps that fed short hoses with water. The sprays hit the flames and steamed against the blaze. In the chaos and confusion of such an event, Jess perked her ears for the normal cries of pain and orders to direct the fire crews. She heard none.

Silently, the men and women ran toward the fires and worked to douse the flames. Jess saw a man, most likely in his twenties and carrying a wooden pump, run up to another, older man. The man, not alerted to the younger one’s presence by any means Jess could see, turned around to face the one with the pump. They exchanged a moment of eye contact, then ran together toward the stream, the young man pumping and the older man directing the hose.

One individual, a man with a soot-covered face and singed white hair, stood directly in front of the flames. His motions made him look like a musical conductor, pointing and raising his hands as he darted around the warm, green grass. For all the direction it looked like he gave, Jess couldn’t help but see the smile on his face, and on that of others. It was an intriguing feeling and idea, watching what was happening, and only delayed her action a moment.

Her wrist raised at eye-level, Jess reached out with her White powers and set a shield over the top of the fire. Like a glass cover set on a burning pan, she lowered the shield on top of the two buildings. In seconds, the lack of oxygen suffocated the flames till they dimmed and were snuffed out with a whiff of smoke.

Bathed in eerie quiet, the only light in the clearing was the glow of the moon and a few flickering lights inside scattered huts and cottages, along with the brilliantly shining Prophet-blessed pen Jess held in the air at her wrist. Before she could cease the use of her power, every eye in the village turned their gaze toward the Prophet as her spotlight of a weapon blinked away and she stood with as much grace and dignity as a White could muster.

Well, Jess, the Prophet thought, you sure know how to make an entrance. Stand your ground and don’t make excuses. Remember why you’re here.