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Raven had been forcibly put into an eerily silent room once more, all but hauled there by two hulking brutes who had informed him that he was to stay put until told otherwise. While his anger was still burning like the surface of the sun, he had been more than a little tempted to challenge that order. The only thing still keeping him from acting on the impulse was the thought that it would probably have gotten him a well deserved beating. Some uncounted time had passed, and his only too real and potent anger had since gone cold, leaving a sick kind of feeling in its' wake. His male pride might never have allowed him to admit it, but not long after that he had very nearly broken down into tears, and really wasn't entirely sure why. While the unexplained outpouring of grief had not faded entirely, there had been more than enough time for other less pleasant kinds of feelings to come pouring in, filling the void left by his anger. He had been such an idiot, acting like the pompous twits he had insulted and shunned so often in his past. He couldn't even think of why he acted as he did, but this did not change the fact that he had gone against every single principle he had held onto in his past. He had blithely tossed away so much of what he had prided himself on 'not’ being during much of his life, ad he had undoubtedly stirred up trouble when there was more than enough of it to go around already. While the self-centered, bratty little voice was, perhaps, part of the problem, and might try to claim that LeShana had been the one to start it, it could not force him into believing he had been right to return it in kind. It was this thought that was at the forefront of his mind when the door to the small room suddenly opened. Solair entered first, along with the man who seemed to be lingering in her shadow at all times. She smiled at his backwards glance while he remained standing before the one window in the room. While the man stopped near the table, Solair walked over to stand next to Raven near the window.
"We would like to talk to you." She began softly as she stopped next to him. "Unless you'd like to continue acting like a spoiled little monster." He was just about ready to decide that he was in no mood for a reprimand and tempted to get pissed, when the figure behind him spoke up in rumbling tones.
"Don't tease him Solair, he hasn't had an easy time of it either." He reprimanded her softly.
"I'm sorry." She added, resting her hand on his arm. Raven fought against the urge to pull away from her, and the flood of emotions and information started to pour into his mind. He tried to block out the rush of the images that came in, but couldn't. Solair seemed to realize something was wrong and pulled her hand away as if she had been burned. One image stuck in Raven's mind was that of LeShana reduced to tears.
"What did you do to her?!" Raven accused, instantly ready to be outraged for some strange reason.
"Nothing!! She's fine and in bed." She replied, her expression quickly changing to one of surprise.
"Then why was she crying?" Raven replied threateningly, more than ready to attack someone despite the fact that he and LeShana hated each other.
"She'll be fine." Solair assured him. While he very much wanted to argue or start yelling, something about her stopped him. He might not know much about these people, but he knew without words that Solair would not lie to him, though he wasn't entirely sure why he felt this way. "Why don't we sit down." Solair suggested, gesturing to the table and the empty chairs. Raven sat down with the greatest of reluctance, intensely aware of the sense that they were about to drop a bomb of some kind on him. It did not even need to be said, it had been something that had hovered over him for the last five days, like a black storm cloud that promised rain. And now he could sense its' presence, all too close and ready to unleash its' fury on his overshadowed little world. Solair took the seat closest to him, then made several false starts to explain herself before she finally stopped, clearly feeling intensely uncomfortable about something. > Raven looked towards the table top, embarrassed that he was hearing what was obviously supposed to be a private conversation. Raven's head snapped up to find both of them staring at him.
"We apologize Raven, we forgot how powerful your gift of telepathy is, you can't help but hear us." Solair apologized in a soft whisper. "I think it best if you did get Vosthan, he might be able to make a better start then we can manage."
"Would you like something to drink?" He offered, Raven nodded soundlessly as his voice seemed to go silent all at once. The other male took one look at Raven's face and seemed to decide in that moment not to ask what.
"I should try and make some sort of start." Solair told him as the door closed behind the stocky man. "What do you know about us?" She asked him, keeping her voice soft.
"Well.. not much that isn't a jumbled mess of tangled, second hand information." He whispered back to her. She made an encouraging sound, so Raven tried to recall all the bare facts that had either been hinted at or implied in all of the stolen documents. She confirmed some of it, informing him that none of them were from Earth and that they were all there trying to peacefully integrate his world into something bigger. She was just about to offer him something more, or perhaps open up that big bag of mysterious and let him peek inside, when the door opened again. Vosthan stepped inside with Destin following behind, carrying a tray of glasses and a half empty bottle. He set the tray down, then emptied the bottle into the glasses before distributing them, each only half filled, to all of them. Raven took a sip and felt the comforting burn of something strong wash down the back of his throat.
"I ask only that you listen to me." Vosthan began softly, seeming to take great care in picking his words. "I know that what I have to tell you will seem strange, and you will no doubt find it hard to believe me. But I swear that everything I am about to tell you is the truth, or as close to as one might come without spending a lifetime to review the details."
"Accepted." Raven whispered back to him, since the heavens knew he had seen enough strange things already.
"Let me begin by saying we are not from Earth and that none of us were born here. We come from a place called the Salak'patan. It is a magical realm that consists of a massive numbers of planets, each connected by a set of magically created hallways and doors, each leading to one of the worlds within our realm. These passages through what you might consider space, are called rather uncreatively, ‘the Halls‘. Our group is from the Center, it is the planet that sits in the exact middle point of the entire Salak'patan, and houses the core of the spells that create the interconnecting labyrinth of passages. Our group is part of a policing force, we are there to enforce law and order and to insure justice is served." Vosthan paused, his eyes becoming unfocused as he seemed to plan out his next thoughts. "More than a hundred thousand years ago, before the time when the Center was founded, there was a war. A horrible war that raged across the entire expanse of the Salak'patan. Rival factions fought over riches, lands, and power; we call this time the Mage War. These factions had terrible weapons of mass destruction, capable of annihilating entire planets, or simply obliterating the life force of a world, which would severe that world from the Halls. The latter is what happened here on Earth, and it has caused this world's long, slow decline. In the closing days of the war, a weapon of such a design was used here as an act of vengeance by one of the rival factions. Those people that had not fled the approaching armies, now found themselves trapped on a slowly dying world with their link to the halls destroyed. They carried on as best they could, slowly forgetting the existence of the other realm." There was a pause as Vosthan caught his breath, using the break to take a sip of the contents of his glass. "Eventually, back in the halls, the war came to an end, and after a time a treaty was signed by every planet yet discovered. Three things came out of that treaty: One, the Center was formed to enforce the peace, Two, weapons of mass destruction, including guns, were banned, and Three, a political process was put in place at the Center to help stop conflict before it escalated to war. These laws are still enforced fanatically,
and even if the ideologies have changed, the underlying laws have not."
"Magic is used for almost everything in the Salak'patan; it powers our cars, lights up our cities, and serves just about any other purpose I can name. In accordance with the treaty, we use edged weapons, such as swords, knives, and bows. Primitive weapons they may be, but far less dangerous in trained hands than guns, much less untrained hands." The other man interjected into the break of flowing words. Having far too often heard stories of children finding their parents' weapons with tragic results, Raven could only too readily agree to those kinds of steps to prevent danger.
"Now let's skip ahead to the present." Vosthan agreed as he again took up the driving force of the conversation. "Twenty years ago, a group of scientists and some of the most intelligent minds in the Salak'patan, were gathered together to try to discover a way to restore the planets that had paid the terrible price of the Mage war. They did what no one had done before and succeeded in finding the means of achieving that long sought after goal. For the last ten years, the Center and other agencies have been searching for the planets that had lost their magic so long ago. Seven years ago, we approached the Earth governments with the offer to restore what they had lost. They would have to agree to follow the laws of the treaty, which they did, and since then we have been moving ahead with the restoration efforts. Three years from now the restoration of Earth's magic will be completed, at which time, Earth's governments must comply with the accords of the treaty. It will not be easy, since the people of Earth are very much set in their ways, but our hope is that the promise of new lands and new peoples will help to motivate them. To gather this force, the Center has agents in every country, searching out gifted candidates that can be trained to help in Earth's defense. Unfortunately, fear is driving many of the governments on your world to take drastic actions to achieve this goal, and I fear that the efforts of the Center to encourage compliance with the accords that are at the heart of our peaceful society have seen set backs and innumerable delays." Vosthan paused, staring deep into Raven's eyes as if seeking some mysterious thing Raven knew nothing about. "However, this does not change the fact that you are the most gifted person we have found yet. So powerful, in fact, that training you here on Earth would be dangerous."
"Thank you, Vosthan, I think we can take it from there." Solair interjected apologetically. Vosthan gave Raven one last strange look before he stepped quietly from the room. "There are more complications in your situation than we originally thought. You… um.. you.. have life-bonded with one of our number. It's.. ah.. how should I explain this." Solair paused in thought, glancing over at Destin as if the answer might be found in his eyes. "It is a profound connection, a spiritual bond that links your heart, body, and mind with another person. Your current state of unrest is a direct result of that connection snapping into place. It will not last for very long, I can assure you of that having experienced it myself. But it is a rare gift and at times a terrible curse, it all depends on the day you and your partner are having."
"You will eventually end up sharing your thoughts and feelings even more closely than a regular telepath. You will act more like one person than two at times." Destin chimed in, picking up the conversation right on the heels of her words. "You will not feel the full effects of this bond for years, but I tell you it’s more than worth it. However, until your bond settles, you two are going to go through hell. The formation of the bond is very unsettling emotionally, spiritually, and magically. Your gifts being untrained as they are will make it even more upsetting."
"Life-bonds are supremely rare and very much desired. For the.. ah 'hopeless romantics' of our society, few things are more in line with their wants and tastes as a bonding such as Destin and I share, and the bond you will one day share with LeShana. You're lucky, as are we, to have such a bond." Solair told him softly as the two of them smiled at each other lovingly as the looked deep into each others eyes.
"You share each others' pains and pleasures. The connection is so deep that if one person dies, the other does not survive their bonded's death." Destin warned darkly.
"Most people search all their lives for their bond mate, but most do not find that person. It is, as I said, very rare, even among a vast collection of gifted people liked those at the Center." Solair added with a small smile for him. "LeShana has always been a bit jealous of bonded couples, so I am happy that she has finally found the one that belongs to her." At the mention of LeShana's name, Raven was overwhelmed with feelings, and for a split second he was looking through her eyes. She was in a small room sitting on a bed looking up at Vosthan. Raven shook off the sensation and returned to his own head.
"I barely even know her, much less can I spend more than two minutes in the same room with her without one of us being in a killing rage. Plus, I don't love her, and she hates my guts!" Raven replied, finally finding his voice. Solair gave him a sympathetic look as she reached over to pat his arm.
"I don’t know about that." Destin remarked, sounding almost amused by the entire situation, very much to Raven's deep annoyance.
"I would like to tell you a story, Raven." She whispered to him. "When I was a little girl I lived on Dego, that is my peoples' home planet. I always dreamed about a small boy, he was an only child, just like me, but his family was a group of travelers, never in the same place twice. He came to me in my dreams, and sometimes during my waking hours. I was but a child, I had no idea what this meant to me or to him, but I knew with all my heart that he was real. When I was eight years old, there was a vast celebration on all the planets that my people occupied, because a new Empress had just taken the throne after her mother stepped down. Traders flocked from all corners of the Salak'patan to come reap the profits of the celebration. And I had reached an age where I was deemed to be responsible enough to go out on my own. When my parents gave me permission to go, I was so excited that I ran all the way to the fairgrounds. As I wandered the fair, I met a small boy, his family was too busy selling their wares to notice that he had slipped away. I knew the moment our eyes met that there was something special between us." Solair paused to join hands with Destin across the table. "We knew without words that we belonged to each other. We were not old enough to question the meanings of this bond, and we had no reason to think that our parents would think it wrong. We were innocent, but when our bond was discovered it was not taken well. Do not get me wrong, my people honor the life-bond above all others, but a Segor bonded with a human was not well received. They believed it to be some kind of evil portent, and thought to rid the world of us before some disaster would happen."
"My family had been traders for generations, and they did not like the thought of one of their children being gifted." Destin interjected with a darkness that hung heavily in his eyes.
"We were saved by a Center agent who would not stand for two children being killed simply because they were not the same race and were life-bonded. He saved us and brought us to the Center, where we would be safe from any retribution." Solair paused and the pain was clear in her voice, the lines of her body and face. "There we were befriended by a small girl named Sione." Solair continued stoically, even as Raven's heart stopped beating in his chest. "She helped us adjust to this new place and quickly became our best friend."
"Our professional lives are not without dangers, even today there are those who will use our families against us. So when we decide to become agents, we choose new names, ones that are lacking in family history, our records are hidden, and we do not contact our families without caution." Destin added in a low rumble.
"When Sione, my bonded, and I started our training. I took the name Solair, my bonded partner took the name Destin, and Sione took the name LeShana." Solair paused for a long time as she let all of that sink in.
"We would like to apologize, first of all. We invaded your privacy and read your journal entry." Destin told him seeming to realize how unwelcome thi
s news would be in Raven's thoughts.
"We know that what we have told you is a lot to absorb, but no one expects your instant comprehension. We are sorry about the rough handling earlier… had we let the two of you carry on as you were, you might very well have started a riot among everyone else. With your new bond eroding any sense of control either of you might have, it is best that you at least remain inside here since its' shielding will keep anything from leaking past the walls. But if you need something or if you want someone to talk to, ask whomever is outside the to bring one of us here. We’ll check in with you later, as will Vosthan." Solair told him softly.
"How's LeShana doing?" Raven asked quietly.
"I'll go check. While I’m out, I will see to it that someone brings a bed in here, and something for you to eat." Destin replied, and slipped out of the room.
"Are you all right?" Solair asked him as the door closed.
"Just tired and confused." Raven whispered, not real keen on the idea of going into the details.
"It will pass." Solair reassured him softly.