Trinity of Aether: Book One: Charge of the High Priestess

Prologue

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Before today Evangeline had never been invited to attend her mistress at the Council of Haven. As excited as she was, she couldn't stop herself from talking. She was giddy, almost nauseous with anticipation, and as her handmaid laced the outer bodice of her favorite violet dress that complimented her golden eyes so well, she imagined the home of the protectors of the many realms: Haven. She fussed with the braids in her long black hair, finally removing them completely and shaking her hair out into a long, wild mane of ebony. She didn't want to appear to be trying too hard.

Like a child, she ran to her mistress's chambers, her slippers pattering across the cold, marble floor, echoing throughout the deserted palace. Skidding to a halt in front of the doors, she rapped her knuckles three rapid times and burst through, her face flushed from both running and the excitement.

"Mistress," she called out, "It's time. We'll be late if we don't leave soon." Her eyes searched the room and stuck on the aged woman who read on the chaise longue before the great window. The graceful woman's vibrant red haired was streaked with grey, giving her the appearance of a clever fox. A knife and a crown were featured on the black cover of the book she held. Macbeth. Evangeline didn't know it.

Eyes crinkling with wrinkles, her mistress, the High Priestess of Earth, smiled over the frames of her spectacles. Behind her, the great window allowed a spectacular view of the cliff side beyond with its lush greenery clinging to the vertical slope. Uncountable thin ribbons of water spilled over the cliffs, some following careful paths down the rocky face, others freefalling into mist and cloud.

"You know how I lose track of time, my love," the woman's voice was so airy and light with her age that Evangeline had to almost refrain from breathing to hear the soft words.

Evangeline huffed impatiently, running to her mistress to drag her from the lounge, then to the closet to pick out a formal gown.

In record time her mistress was dressed and ready in a loose white slip of a dress that trailed behind her. There was such elegance in her simplicity that Evangeline now felt childish in her corseted purple ball gown. There was no time to change however, so a now very uncomfortable Evangeline fidgeted with the buttons of her dress. She and her mistress held hands.

For a mortal, the journey to Haven would take centuries, possibly millennia, travelling blindly onwards through the void of space. With access to two of the many planes of existence, Evangeline and her mistress were by no means mortal. So now with hands clasped together and with a slow deliberate carefulness, they ascended in their astral forms, leaving their flesh and blood bodies below.

As they glided upwards and out, travelling faster now, Evangeline looked down on the palace of her mistress, now supersaturated in the soaking colors of the astral plane. The clouds below her seemed to shine bright whiteness from within while the flowers and fountains of the palace garden quickly became pinpricks of color far beneath her. Exiting the outer layers of the atmosphere, she saw the stars shining all around her in a soft, velvet field of black, blurring together as the two women raced ever faster through the cosmos.

The tunnel of her vision with its blurred edges of starlight began to clear as they neared Haven and slowed. As they descended, she recognized the similarity between Haven and her mistress's own palace. Clearly, the palace had been created in imitation as a much smaller satellite of Haven itself, but she had seen no structure on Earth or elsewhere that could match the splendor that lay before her now.

The massive edifice rose from the green earth, reaching its long, stony spires towards the heavens. With uncountable tall, slender stained glass windows and the large, circular rose windows of an old gothic cathedral, Haven refracted a rainbow of color in every direction. The light stone of the building was matched in each ornate sculpture and every fountain that was scattered on the emerald grounds. Even from this height and distance, Evangeline imagined she could smell the heavy fragrance rising from the expansive gardens. With only a few moments to admire the setting as they descended, Evangeline scanned frantically, trying to take in as much of its grandeur as her eyes could manage.