Page 84 of He Who Sleeps

"That's monstrous," Easton whispered. "They farm them like fucking dairy cows, bringing them in when they're ready to breed. And they did this to me? They...they..."

"Everyone, shut up," Finn was frowning. "I need to think this through." Rising from his seat, he paced back and forth across a rich rug that muffled the sound of his footfalls. "This doesn't make any sense," he said eventually. "What do the Elders have to gain by weakening the God when they gain their power from him?"

“Honestly I don’t know, Finn. The control, though...that makes sense.”

Rix leaned back, looking thoughtful. “Controlling what he gets, keeping him at their mercy... Yes, they do gain from him but...He gives but He doesn’t take away. Each of the new Elders, even my father, are captains of industry, politicians, fuck, isn’t Hartford a fucking gun runner?” He shook his head. “They don’t need more power, only to maintain what they have and ensure none surpass them.”

“Man has a point,” Emerson said. “And East...” he looked to Snake, “it says here all the mothers were aware who they were, what they were raised into. It wasn’t anonymous. And not all females from where they were raised were called to serve. Many worshipped Him on their own, in their own female led rites. Much like the school we went to. By all this information, my father wrote out they were loved, and in love, and never coerced into being with our fathers.” He smiled and looked up. “They had normal courtships, actually fell in love, and those actions served His purpose as well...”

"And the Elders just decided to shit all over that?" Easton's fury was clear in every line of his body. He was almost vibrating with the force of his rage, his muscles tense and strained. "They just killed your parents for the hell of it?"

“For control,” Emerson said. “And yours, I think. Well, your mother. My dad wrote that they finally found a fallen heir, but I can’t find anything past what’s written here about it. Your name, and where you were found, and the...” He swallowed. “State of you when you were finally brought in.” He held up a finger as he began to read.

“Visholu found the fallen heir two days ago, and I fear we were too late. We still aren’t sure how the hell he was spirited away, or how Glynnis ended up at the bottom of a ravine, all we know is he’s been traumatized, but exhibits much of what his blood gave him. Eye for an eye, those that harmed him are dead by his hand, as is proper, though on a personal note, Easton should never have had to deal with any of that. He is resilient, and I hope his future is filled with the love and care he should have had, as part of our order.”

He looked up, gauging his friend’s mental capacity. “There is more, if you want to hear it. Not much but...”

"Of course I want to fucking hear it!" Easton howled. "You have no idea what I suffered! You have...you had...the fucking..." He was hyperventilating and couldn't get the words together, terminating instead in an inarticulate howl of helpless and primal rage.

"Brother," Finn approached him, palms up, as though gentling a skittish animal. "Breathe. Brother, breathe. We're with you and we will raze everyone that had anything to do with this to the ground. I give you my word on that. They will suffer. But we need to be clever about this. Destroy it at the root. We need to figure out what happened and who was involved and for that we need calm." He didn't know who was more shocked when Easton fell into his arms, crying like the broken child he was.

Emerson got up, followed by Rix, gathering around their fallen friend and brother, and wrapped themselves around them both. They weren’t normally so tactile, but in this case it was needed. He felt horrible, always had about what Easton had endured, but if there was a way for true vengeance...

It was long moments before they let him go, and he leaned up, looking at Emerson expectedly. “You good?” he asked and Easton nodded. “Glynnis Ambrose was your mother. Daughter of Elder Harnis Ambrose, who was murdered the night your mother and you disappeared. It doesn’t say who your father is, though they think he wasn’t of the blood, and took you and Glynnis...” He got up and went to the journal.

“They had a lead, some guy from the town the Ambrose family lived, but he didn’t make it far. They found him in a motel, overdose. No you, no Glynnis. They found your mother a week later. They think you were taken from them both. They think someone killed Glynnis, and staged your would-be father’s death and sent you into the world. I’m sorry, brother. Glynnis and the Ambrose family were third cousins to Rix’s family, which is why you were placed with Stephan. Though my father thought you should have been placed with Finn’s family.” He looked down. “And Finn’s father fought for you. Stephen would have none of it.” He shook his head.

“Here’s the big thing. Dad thinks it all started with you. All of it. Because after Ambrose died things started getting strange, and others started either disappearing or other Elders were being appointed. It was slow at first but by the time you had been delivered back to us...a lot had changed.

“Here,” he continued, coming to sit with them all on the floor. “Dad references a Dark Path, one the priests warned over. A prophecy, where seven would gain the knowledge, the power to lead, to bring order to our Order.” He flipped a few pages. “The Dark Path would emerge when some would try to stop that though certain...situations, one being the birth of a brother not solely of the blood.” He frowned. “The Book of Prophecy... Rix, hand me that green book!” he said as things started to come together. “Thank you. The Prophecy of the Seven, here it is.” He began to read.

“The Seven will usher in a new age with He Who Sleeps, anointing their age with knowledge, and wisdom and untold power. Lo, beware that of the Dark, the quelling constriction seeking power above all else, for the few, not the many.

“Six of the Blood, a seventh that marries the waking world and that of his own blood. A conduit to His Direct Divine becomes the bridge to everlasting.”

He looked at them. “Now, I have no fucking clue what it means, but the three that went after Easton took twelve years to find him. Visholu, Tannet and Frane. They inducted Easton into The Order as soon as he had been born, and were honor bound to find him, but the tie to Him was weak because of the half blood, and those working against this.”

“Hang on,” Rix said, chatty and clearly annoyed. “We are part of a fucking prophecy?”

“Apparently. I hadn’t gotten through everything by the time you guys came through. You know my process, I skip pages and take tidbits then follow the fucking bread crumbs...”

“Then keep following because right now, people gonna die at Solstice.”

He nodded. “Dad says that when Easton came back, brought by the Warders, that’s what the priest’s called the three, the Elders, well some of them were happy and I think those were the ones that were killed. The others, the assholes in power now, weren’t and oddly they were the ones that insisted Easton be placed with Stephan, citing blood ties to physical family, but really ‘all our blood is the same, and serves him,’” he read from the journal. “It was then Dad was approached by the priests to hide this book, and write these journals with everything he knew. I don’t think they realized he didn’t know everything.”

“Fuck.”

“Apparently, and this is underlined, ‘our seven are the seven of the prophecy, as all of us are the same age, and the culmination of seven high families, full bloodlines, aligning the stars.’ I think they would have been the seven but Ambrose had a daughter, not a son, so the next generation was us...all seven of us. Three days after this journal was written, they went to their deaths.”

"Okay." Full of nervous energy, Finn was pacing again now that Easton was calm enough to be seated. "It's fairly obvious that the Dark Path is the way we've been raised to only kill. That's pretty fucking dark. And according to this prophecy, we're supposed to fix it. So my understanding is that we're supposed to destroy or remove the Elders insisting on the death-only path. I fully expect the priests will be on our side, given that they've supported the pact thus far. What I can't understand is why the Elders didn't shut us down when they knew what we'd started with Petra."

"Maybe they don't know," Easton said into the thoughtful silence that followed, his face still pale and ravaged by grief and shock. "All this time we've assumed the priests and the Elders are the left and right hand of The Order, but if the Elders are actively weakening the God, they're directly working against the priests, who exist only to support Him. Has anyone here actually told an Elder explicitly about the pact? Anyone?"

They all shook their heads, realization dawning that The Order didn't function as they had thought it did. "They must be wondering how we've gathered so much energy the last couple of years," Finn said. "The priests must know about the prophecy if they told Emerson's dad about it. They wouldn't have asked him to record it and hide the journals if they didn't expect us to find them at some point. So they'll be with us, but I'm guessing the Elders don't know about it at all. If they did, they'd have tried to kill us already."

"What are we actually talking about here?" Easton asked, looking up at Finn. "I mean, I'm going to kill all the usurping bastards that killed my family and left me in hell, but what about the rest of The Order? Who will take over from the Elders? Will the others even support us if we're the only ones that know about the old ways?"

"We need to speak to people." Finn stopped pacing and turned to Emerson. "Finish reading and make a concise summary of the information. We'll get everyone together this morning over brunch and talk about it as a group. We act as one. We make decisions together. And then if we need to gather support, we'll start contacting people we know and trust. We have a little time before we leave. Let's use it wisely."

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