Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 449

Two bodyguards tracked me down on the second day. “Holy Daughter,” 312 said respectfully to me. “Your parents are worried about you.”

“Let them worry,” I said, with a toss of my hair, and kept walking.

“They want you to come home,” 71 added. “They're concerned about you.”

“I don't ever want to see those monsters again!” I shouted. “I want nothing to do with Warlocks!” I put all my hate, all my disgust, into that word. Warlocks. I knew the stories: before the Demons there were the Warlocks. Petty men and women who sold their souls for power. People just like my parents.

I kept on walking; the two bodyguards stared stupidly at my back. I could feel their eyes as I walked down the road, west towards Tacoma then south. I walked until I became tired. There was always a helpful 'citizen' that would offer to let me stay in their house. When I was hungry, I ate at the communal cafeterias that provided free meals to their neighborhoods. I just walked and walked, down the West Coast, into Mexico, then I followed the Caribbean into the South. Every so often, a representative of my parents would find me, and try to convince me to come home.

I grew lean, hard. My feet became tough with callouses, my face darkened by the sun. When I reached the East Coast, I took a cargo ship to Europe. Normal citizens weren't allowed to travel, but I was a false Goddess, nothing was denied me. I was aimless, restless. Five years had passed without me even realizing it. Why was I walking? Everything was the same. The people were all the same slaves.

I needed to free these people. I needed to atone for my parents' great sin.

I tried to find allies, to stir up the population. Sometimes, I'd find a man or woman that had some passion, some spark that hadn't been beaten out of them by my parents, and I would latch on to them, clinging to them as tightly as a drowning person to a piece of flotsam. I'd take them as my lover, and we'd pass the weeks talking, plotting, trying to find others to help us.

It always ended the same way—they would be unable to change, to break free of my parents' control, and I would grew melancholy and walk. I desperately wanted to be with my family again, but I couldn't ignore the monstrousness of their Theocracy. If I could just find a way to restore Liberty to mankind, I knew I could go home.

We'd be a family again.

I walked the world, traversing every last continent save Antarctica. I was immortal; time didn't matter. I looked eighteen, even though I was thirty, then I was thirty-five. It was hard to care anymore. When winter came, I went south; when summer came I would go north, or further south. I once stood at the tip of South America, staring at Cape Horn, and remembering the stories I had read of great sailing ships battling the elements as they rounded this point, and the terrible storms that would assail them as the Europeans explored the world.

When my melancholy was at its strongest, I contemplated suicide. Once, I stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon, gazing down into red depths and the blue Colorado snaking through the canyon. One step. A few years later, I sat at the edge of Victoria Falls, watching the curtain of water fountain into mist and thinking I could just swim out and let the current take me and carry me from this life. But then I'd remember I was bound to Mother. If I died, I would just wait in the Shadows with all those chained to my parents that had died.

My thirty-ninth birthday passed as I walked the Jordan River and reached the Dead Sea. I floated in the warm, salty waters, trying to wash clean my parents' filth. I had just broken up with Barakat, a beautiful Arab youth. He was sixteen, his skin the color of rich coffee, and his eyes full of life. I had let myself again foolishly think I had found the one person that would care about what my parents had made of the world, and then he had come home, excited that the aptitude test had selected him to be a farmer.

“I thought you wanted to be an Engineer?”

“I did,” he shrugged, “but the Gods need me to be a farmer.” He smiled broadly, that beautiful, happy smile I fell in love with.

“So be an Engineer, don't let them choose,” I told him.

He frowned. “But they need me to be a farmer. The Gods know, Chase.”

My love died, like it always did, and I had walked and walked, following the Jordan River south until I reached its terminus—the Dead Sea. As I lay floating in the Dead Sea, I thought about drowning myself in the warm, salty embrace. After hours, I lost my nerve, and swam back to the shore and kept walking. South, into the Arabian Peninsula. I followed the Red Sea Coast for a week—I was in no hurry, my life had no meaning—when I came across a sign that pointed to a mountain called Jebel al-Lawz. A single word was spray painted beneath the mountain's name—Hope.

Hope. I had been without hope for over twenty years.

I followed the road. It lead to a low, conical mountain. It was really more of a steep hill than a mountain. I had grown up in the sight of Mount Rainier rearing up like a monolith, looming over you every day clad in the blue-white majesty of its glaciers. Jebel al-Lawz was a squat, ugly, red mound, rising out of the desert, the summit blackened like it had been engulfed in flames.

As I neared the mountain, maybe just a few miles away, I passed through...something. It was a warm membrane of energy that gave way before me, enveloping me in golden light for the briefest instant, and then it passed. I blinked; the valley around the peak wasn't empty anymore. Tents—colorful and ranging in shape, size, styles, and materials—were set up. They were pitched haphazardly, with no thought or planning.

People walked about. They were different. No-one dressed similarly, people laughed, children played. As I walked closer, I realized these were people who lived. What was this place? Who were these people? They saw me, and a hush seemed to fall about them. They began to gather, watching me with cautious faces.

“H-hello,” I hesitantly said. I felt a little afraid of them. I had never been afraid of my parents' slaves; they would never have been able to harm me. But these people were free. I could see it in their eyes, in their postures, in the way some viewed me with hope, some with skepticism, or fear, or distrust.

The crowd parted, and a rugged young man and a young woman stepped out. The man was fit, sturdy, with brown hair and blue eyes, his arm around the woman; she was round-faced, a beautiful, welcoming smile gracing her lips. Her face was framed by braided black hair, coiled about her crown; reassurance filled her green eyes.

“You're not their slaves?” I asked, chewing on my lips.

“No,” the man smiled. “We are the last free men and women. I am Doug Allard, and this is Tina, my wife.”

The woman, Tina, smiled, and threw her arms around my neck. I relaxed. “I've been searching for this for so long,” I whispered, my eyes brimming with tears.

“And we have waited even longer for you to arrive, Prophetess,” Tina whispered back.

“Prophetess?” I asked, pushing away from Tina. The crowd had grown larger, more than a hundred, and they all stared at me with...hope. I shivered despite the heat.

Doug nodded. “You are Chasity Glassner?”

“Yeah.” I looked around. These people were free. There were others that resisted my parents' evil. Hope bubbled inside me. Had I really found what I've been searching for? I pushed down my hope, trying to temper it with caution; I had been disappointed so many times. “What is this place?”

“The refuge,” Tina answered. “For forty years Doug and I have waited in the wilderness for you, gathering those who were not satisfied with the world, with your parents. Excluding the children, we number one hundred and forty-four; seventy-two men, seventy-two women.”

I swallowed, “Why are you waiting for me?”

“To guide us, to renew the Gift of the Spirit to mankind,” Doug answered. “To free the World from bondage.”

I'd found it. Relief ballooned inside me, along with hope. So many years of walking, of doubt and bitterness, had finally paid off. “So why do you need me for that?”

“You are the daughter of two Warlocks,” Tina answered. “You have rejected their lifestyle, and turned your back on evil. Only you can perform the prayer of Rapha.”

I frowned, not recalling that prayer from the Magicks of the Witch of Endor. “What does it do?”

“Gives back hope to mankind,” Tina answered.

“My wife and I are the last Priests living. Your parents hunted down the last few of us, the final threats to their power,” Doug sadly said. “But we have done our duty, and hid while your parents dominated the world, all for this day.”

The Magicks of the Witch of Endor talked about Priests and Priestesses, men and women granted the powers of Heaven to fight Warlocks and Demons. “So you need my help to exorcise my parents?” I asked, smiling. That would free mankind.