The Order of Ja’el — Chapter Six

A Weekly Sci-fi Fantasy Story Series

Read from Chapter One here. Prefer audio? Find my podcast links here.

Vlad awoke as the newly crowned King of the Sky Colonies, disappointed. He’d hoped he would feel different. From his dreams, however, nothing had changed. His mind shot to the same thought he had each morning when his eyes opened.

Tamana, where are you…?

It had seemed that Vlad’s sister was cursed for all her life. Their parents had kept her away from mostly everyone as a toddler when she began making claims that she could hear Ja’el’s voice. When asked at royal gatherings where the young child was, the family hashed together a story of strange threats on Tamana’s life as a direct attack on the parents. They claimed they needed to keep her secure. In Igo, given the aggressive disposition of the royals towards the Order and the people, such threats were not entirely unusual to receive.

Vlad never believed Tamana until he, too, started to hear Ja’el some five years ago. It had then confounded him that Tamana was able to heed Ja’el since birth and what it could possibly mean. Yesterday, he finally learnt what she was.

A Siddhi…

Squeezing his eyes shut, Vlad tried to escape the memory of the events that led to Tamana’s banishment to the Earth. When Tamana had turned eight, she became obsessed with the Order, claiming again and again that the priests and priestesses were “a pack of liars and deceivers.” That sort of rhetoric might have been safe to utter around the family as they all hated the Order. When Tamana claimed she needed to tell the other royals why — and of her ability to hear Ja’el’s voice — their parents began to see her as a growing liability.

Vlad had pleaded with Tamana so many times to end her fantasies, especially when he saw the growing concern on their parents’ faces. She’d loved him enough to try to hide it from him, but she couldn’t resist the shudders that overcame her body when those whispers filled the air. Vlad would curse and leave the room when he saw them, with Tamana begging for him to simply listen so he could hear Ja’el too.

When Tamana hit adolescence, it soon became difficult to keep her locked away. With a soft spot for his younger…