Revelations (Song of Sophangence Book 4) Read online

  Revelations

  a novel

  by E.I. McAllistair

  Song of Sophangence

  Book#4

  Revelations

  Song of Sophangence, Book #4

  Copyright © E.I McAllistair 2021

  Editor: E.I. McAllistair

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  If you would like to share this book with another person,

  please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it

  was not purchased for your use only, then please return

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  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction based on real-life locations,

  organizations, and institutions.

  Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.

  1

  From the bathroom, Phavian hears a resounding scream that takes him by surprise. He had been sitting on the floor in the same position that Anaar left him, trying his best to figure out what he could do to help. Usually Anaar’s emotional woes were a result of something between the two of them, so he had very little experience needing to comfort him in a time of need. Rushing toward the bathroom to investigate the sudden outburst, he throws open the door to see a naked Anaar still screaming.

  “Ahhh!!”

  For some reason Phavian had expected something else, so when Anaar turned to him still screaming he could not help but scream back.

  “AHHH!!” After realizing Anaar was completely naked, his hair snaking down his body as if it were an organic suit, accentuating all the angles of his body, Phavian stopped screaming quite abruptly.

  “Oh, hey, all of this is looking really good…”

  Somehow Phavian’s typical horny commentary was enough to snap Anaar back to reality. His screaming stopped and he simply stared at Phavian with vacillating looks of bewilderment and disdain.

  “Sooo… Why are we screaming?”

  Anaar picks up his suit, attempting to melt into it with his Aqueous form as normal, but he is shocked to find instead of turning into the translucent human shaped living water, his skin becomes strangely rough and somewhat hard, yet surprisingly flexible. The suit responds to his shift, but he immediately drops it to the floor as if it had become an extremely caustic acid.

  “What in the actual fuck?!”

  Phavian, who had been watching the entire scene with a mixture of anxiety and lust, also jumps backward at the strange occurrence. “What the shit was that?!”

  “Why are you asking me?! I don’t know!”

  “How do you not know?! You did it!”

  “Why are you screaming?!”

  “Because I thought that was what we were doing!”

  The two men take a moment to compose themselves, and Anaar picks up his suit from the floor. Trying again, he finds he melts seamlessly into his suit like he always had. Once it was on, he turned to the mirror, doing a number of spins to make sure everything seemed to be as he expected it. Satisfied, he takes a deep breath in an attempt to calm his pounding heart. Together they walk back into the bedroom and sit on the bed.

  “You want to tell me what all the screaming was about?”

  “Wait a minute. I need to check again.”

  Phavian watches as Anaar closes his eyes and retreats into himself. After about five minutes of silence and very visible disgruntled expressions from Anaar, he slightly jumps as Anaar suddenly screams again.

  “What in the fuck is Assimilation?!”

  Phavian knew that of the two of them, he was by far more prone to foul language. Even if Anaar did curse, he was not usually one to drop the heavy words without a serious catalyst. To hear him in such a state of foul-mouthed confusion was beyond strange to him. It was not until he realized what Anaar said was a question, that he had to respond in turn.

  “Wait what?”

  Growling in anger Anaar puts an immediate call into Maggie. It had barely rung before she picked up.

  “Anaar! Oh my god, you are okay! Are you back?! What are you doing? I was about to have dinner with Ryn and Zen, but I can totally bail.”

  Mumbling to himself as an aside, Phavian is beyond impressed. “Damn she is a down ass bitch. Just dropping other people no questions asked…”

  “I am back, and everything has gone to shit. Can you come over?”

  “Of course! I was almost to dinner so it will take me a bit-”

  Hobb, can you ping Maggie’s Vizer?

  “Certainly. I question your intended use, even if it is technically within my protocols-”

  Hobb!

  “Coordinates sent.”

  To Maggie’s shock, a portal opens for her directly to her side. When she sees it, she peers through, notices Anaar and Phavian, then immediately rushes in. Directly from the portal she hops onto Anaar, squeezing him with much more force than she anticipated. Phavian looks on with annoyance as the small woman showers him with love.

  Grumbling to himself, “Now when I try to do that shit, I get knocked over the head…”

  Maggie finally releases Anaar, pushing Phavian to the side and squeezing into the small space between the two. Sighing with exasperation, Phavian moves over, allowing her to comfortably sit down. Kicking off her shoes, she pushes herself backward into the middle of the bed, forcing the two men to turn to face her direction.

  “Okay, tell me everything. I have been waiting for what feels like years! How did things go? Did you guys figure out what is going on? Oh I just can’t wait to hear about this! Never go without contacting me for so long again!”

  Anaar and Phavian look at one another, with Phavian giving him a motion that he should proceed. “Did you tell Ryn and Zenia that you weren’t coming to dinner?”

  Maggie’s mouth drops open as she immediately begins fumbling with her Vizer. After a few moments she looks back up smiling happily. “All done! I would have totally forgotten. By the way, I can get used to this instantaneous travel thing. I had gotten used to how far away everything was from each other but with this…”

  “I got first dibs!”

  “Says who?!”

  “Says the one laying down dick! Pretty sure boyfriend beats out best friend in priority.”

  “I’ve known him longer!”

  “By like three days! That shit doesn’t-”

  “Can both of you just shut the fuck up?! Now I know why Ripp acted the way she did.”

  Maggie and Phavian both pout, Maggie shooting Phavian a withering glance that seems to place all the blame on him.

  “So first things first, I found out that my mom is not my biological mom, and she knew nothing about Yefferson.”

  “What?! Are you serious?! Brighid is so sweet though! What are you going to do now?!”

  “Maggie, she is still my mom. Just because I found out she didn’t give birth to me, doesn’t change anything.”

  “I suppose you have a point. I guess I didn’t think about the fact that this is all very new for you.”

  “On top of this, I met my actual birthmother and found out I’m ethnically half Niukonska of the Osage Nation and half Persian. I technically knew most of this, but the details were an added touch. My birthmother’s name is Yatik, and she is the High Shamaness of the entire tribe.”

  “Is that like a big deal?”

  “It is beyond a big deal. Apparently there has never been a High Shaman before her and her title confers the status
of royalty on our family.”

  “Whoa, that… is intense. So… she is like the queen?”

  “I didn’t talk to her much about that. I can get the details later, but I don’t think it necessarily makes her a queen, though she did mention if I were a part of the village, I would be something akin to a prince, so maybe.”

  “This woman, Yatik, she is the one who gave you up. How did you even find her?”

  “She was very good friends with my mom, so they hatched the scheme to make me officially my mom’s child by birth to keep me safe. They had been in communication sporadically over the years, so I was able to get a rough location to search. After that it was me wandering around until I found the village.”

  Maggie looks perplexed for a moment and then blurts out what she is thinking all at once. “This doesn’t add up. How does your mom just so happen to be completely in the dark about Yefferson? Didn’t you come out at the same time? Shouldn’t she have had both of you?” Looking to Phavian, “None of this makes sense right?”

  Phavian for once was particularly in tune with Anaar and it was his turn to be the voice of reason. “I’m pretty sure he will tell us if you stop interrupting…”

  “Thank you Phavian, that is correct.”

  “That’s right! Score one for me! Give me some sugar!” Phavian pokes his lips out expectantly only to be met with a disgusted look from Anaar.

  “Moving right along… You are correct in thinking the timeline and circumstances don’t match, Maggie. Yefferson and I were born two months apart.”

  “How is that even possible?!”

  “Yatik gave me a whole explanation that I won’t bore you with, but basically I didn’t want to come out, so instead I just recreated my placenta and amniotic sac.”

  “You could do that kind of shit as a baby?! No wonder you were able to damn near bring me back from the dead.”

  “I’m sorry to keep coming back to this point, but I still don’t understand how the two of you got separated, or that you were given up as soon as you were born.”

  “I guess I did somewhat skip ahead in the story. It is beyond absurd and complicated. My father was some incredibly powerful Earth Affinity, so much that his cells did not break down like normal, causing him to be long lived like a Water Affinity. From what I understand, he is the direct descendant of slaves, and lived during that time. He received a prophecy saying he and Yatik would bring about a child that would be powerful enough to reshape the world. He captured my mom, raped her and thus Yefferson and I were born.”

  Maggie gasps with horror and her eyes began to moisten though she did not have words. Phavian on the other hand was following the thread quite well.

  “You said a child, singular. There are two of you. How does that play into the prophecy?”

  “Well, I should probably mention my mom was supposed to be barren, and she also has the ability of Prophecy. She saw the same thing until she had Yefferson and then the prophecy changed to account for the two of us.”

  “So what, she thought if she split you two up, the prophecy wouldn’t come true?”

  “Actually, yes. When Yefferson was born, she left him at the clinic without even naming him, and attempted to lure my father away. Instead, her wet nurse got killed and she escaped with me. According to her, if she kept me, the prophecy would still somehow come true, so she gave me to my mom.”

  Maggie was still having a hard time coming to terms with Anaar’s conception, but Phavian was doing well enough for the both of them to continue along with the questioning.

  “Yefferson gets raised in the system then, and you get a family. That is why he hated you and wanted to kill you and everyone around you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Fucked up reason to hate someone, but I guess we all have dumb shit we do.”

  Maggie had finally recovered enough that she could ask questions again. “Where is Yefferson now?”

  She could have had no idea, but her question set Anaar back on the path of guilt and self-loathing. As he crumpled sideways onto the bed, she immediately began stroking his head. When she found he was not stopping, she looked to Phavian, leaning into his ear to whisper.

  “What? Did I say wrong?”

  “Yefferson is dead. Anaar killed him.”

  “Isn’t that good though?”

  “Anaar doesn’t think so. He feels like he took the most extreme path and nothing I could say would get him to think otherwise. He was like this for over an hour when he first got back. He went to go take a shower, and out of nowhere I heard him screaming. I don’t know what that was about, but he was okay and seemingly distracted by something else until you just brought up Yefferson being dead. I say good fucking riddance, but seeing him like this makes me feel otherwise.”

  “What do we do?!”

  “Why are you asking me?! You are the one who set him off again! He was worked up about something else until you made him feel like shit again!”

  “How was I supposed to know?! From the sounds of things, he seemed fine! I have never seen him like this!”

  “Yeah, no shit! I’ve been trying to console him since he got back! Thanks for breaking him again!”

  The two continued on bickering back and forth in whispers while Anaar laid crying into his pillow. Phavian had finally gotten fed up with the exchange and pushed Maggie to try her hand at pulling Anaar back from the hole he was in. Lying down beside him, she stroked his head and spoke softly to him.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know things… went the way they did. From what I understand, it was very painful for you. I would never intentionally bring that pain onto you. You know that right? You called me over for something important. I don’t know if you have told me what it is, but I’m right here okay? I’ll be here as long as you want me here. For now, just let it out.”

  Unlike Phavian, Maggie had been dealing with the fallout of Dan’s breakdown for some time. Because of such, she had become much better at simply being present and supportive rather than trying to solve whatever problem had arisen. Whereas Dan often tended to jump headlong into rash decisions and she had to stop him and then work with him afterward, it seemed Anaar had already made his mistakes and thus she was now in full damage control mode. Phavian watched as within ten minutes she had gotten him to stop crying and he was sitting back up, ready to talk again.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

  Maggie immediately put her finger to his lips, silencing him from what he was trying to say. “Don’t you do that. Don’t you apologize for being human and having feelings. We all break down sometimes. That is what you have us for. You will never have to apologize for needing a shoulder to cry on. If everyone else in the world abandons you, know that I will always and forever be there.”

  “Hey! What about me!?”

  “Will you shut up?! This isn’t about you! Where is Codi when you need her…”

  The banter between Maggie and Phavian for some reason brought a small glimmer of happiness into Anaar, something that he thoroughly needed. He understood what Phavian meant, but it did not make it any less funny as Maggie scolded him. Though it was slight, he let out a small chuckle, the beginnings of a smile peeking through his tear-streaked face.

  “There he is! There is the man we know and love!” Maggie pinches his cheek as she beams at him. “I get this is hard for you, but I can only imagine you plan to tell the Headmistress about everything that happened. If you plan on being able to get through this without breaking down every time, we need to get you through this, at least partially.”

  Where Phavian had failed, Maggie’s logic found purchase with the person that Anaar was. Instead of trying to tell him that what he did was right, she reminded him that he had already made his choices and he would have to live with them to give reports to others. Though it did not make him feel better about what he did, it had the effect of appealing to his since of rationality which made it easier for him to bear. Nodding gratefully, he calmed himself as he did his dut
y to take ownership for his sins.

  “Thanks Maggie. Losing Yefferson hurts in a way I have never known. Even though I did not really know him, it felt like I knew everything about him. That only makes the fact that I am the one who killed him that much worse. If I am being honest, I still have no idea how I did it.”

  Not sure if he should ask, Phavian tried anyway, hoping that if Anaar relapsed, Maggie could bring him back. “What do you mean you aren’t sure how you killed him? You said he wasn’t immortal right?”

  “No, he wasn’t immortal, but he was completely invulnerable. I fought him for so long, hitting him with attacks that would have utterly obliterated any normal person, and he didn’t even blink. I understood what you meant about hitting him and shattering your arm once I truly tried attacking him.”

  Releasing a sigh of relief that he did not cause another breakdown, Phavian continues. “Well if you said nothing you did affected him, how were you able to hurt him, nevertheless… you know…”

  “It is strange… It is as if my mind remembers two different events. So Yatik told me that the same way I had my darkness, Yefferson has light. According to her darkness consumed light. I would have thought light illuminated darkness, but maybe they are the same thing.”

  “So what does that mean? He had moments like you do when you go all… freaky?”

  “That I couldn’t tell you. Much like you, he harbored a strong hatred for Water and Air Affinities.”

  “I wouldn’t call it hatred…”

  “Whatever. He resented me enough just knowing I grew up with my mom while he was an orphan. When he found out I was an Air and Water Affinity he just seemed to completely snap. From then I couldn’t get much out of him by way of conversation.”

  Maggie chimes in, curious about what Anaar had said earlier. “You mentioned remembering what happened to you in two different ways. What did you mean by that?”

  “Right, well I was able to use the darkness inside of me, the first time I have ever done it on command, but when I struck him, I could have sworn it did nothing. At the same time, I distinctly remember a different set of events where I was in some void, and when I hit him, he poured light from his body. Whichever is the real event, I passed out, something that has been happening a lot lately. When I woke up, he was just… gone. I couldn’t feel him, I couldn’t sense him with my Affinity Detection, he was just gone.”