Tablet of Destinies (20 page)

The ultimate sacrifice — the descent into the physical — is never an easy passage, but it is the only means for release from this spiritual antechamber you have constructed for your soul's refuge throughout your unexpected death. I am
Destiny, come to collect you … if you care to embrace me, I shall cushion your passage forth.
The Deva spread his wings and arms wide.

Tory's heart welled to bursting point with emotion, as she moved into the celestial being's fold and the Devachanic world melted away.

 

Psyche has found her,
Sacha informed Maelgwn, who clearly could not believe what he was witnessing.

Inside the stretched gut of the male Deva's being was a rainbow corridor into the ether, at the end of which Tory stood, alongside the Lord Master Taliesin, amid a throng of children of every human tribe.

‘Are you sure we are doing the right thing?' Maelgwn felt a little guilty hauling Tory back into the strife of the present.

Sacha cast his sights down over the celestial event taking place within his person and then looked back to the concerned husband with an ironic look upon his face.
Pretty sure.

All things considered, in retrospect it did seem a stupid question. Maelgwn looked at the body that Psyche had abandoned in order to seek Tory's soul-mind in Devachan and was astonished to note that the seventeen-year-old girl lying on the table was fully human.

‘Lirathea?' He stared at the girl, bemused that he'd missed out on the entire youth of yet another of his children.

No,
Sacha corrected.
It's just the atoms that form her outer layers. Her deeper essence remains in Devachan
.

In a streak of light, Psyche came shooting out of the etheric tunnel her brother had created and her fiery spirit floated down to join with the body that she'd left on the flight deck of their deep space craft.

Under normal circumstances, this vessel would require a full complement of twelve crew to operate, but the Devas' aptitude allowed Maelgwn to execute this mission alone.

The features of the Deva remanifested in the girl and she began to glow with celestial radiance as her eyes opened.

‘What happened?' Maelgwn asked softly, not meaning to harass Psyche back into the physical world, but he had to know. ‘You weren't gone very long.'

On the contrary, I was gone for ages.
Psyche smiled, sensing the anxiety that Maelgwn felt.
Rest easy, Father. She is on her way back to us.

‘Praise the Goddess.' He breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed into a seat to gather his wits. Strangely enough, he found himself smiling, for he wondered: ‘Was it the memory of me that persuaded her to return, as you thought?'

Psyche was tickled by his curiosity, sensing his deep love for his wife.
I had no need to persuade her so,
she advised and seeing how disappointed the man was, she thought she'd best explain.
Your higher self got there ahead of me … I should have known you'd be there to rescue her from a crisis.

This surprised Maelgwn greatly, although it pleased him to know he was on the case. ‘Well, that's one worry solved. Still, I don't see how you plan to locate her. She
isn't wearing anything on her person that we could track.'

That's not exactly true.
Sacha closed the passage into the fourth dimension and his floating form resumed its normal physical appearance.

We can sense the location of the Tablet of Destinies, because it is made of the same etheric material as we are.
At that, Psyche floated into the air to get her bearings. Sacha made a move towards their deep space tracking console, which contained all the star charts for the galaxy.

What is your feeling, Sis?
Sacha queried, as his sister closed her eyes and began slowly turning to get a fix on which direction the Tablet lay. At last, Psyche stopped still and Sacha called up the star charts for the direction she was facing. She then held her hand downward at about a 45-degree angle.

Trajectory angle from Kila's orbital plane is forty-one point four degrees,
she advised, whereby Sacha called up the maps for all the systems in the appointed direction.

As suspected, our path to her is going to be treacherous.
Sacha glanced back to Maelgwn.
There's a hell of a lot of space debris throughout the entire area.

Maelgwn approached the Devas to view the charts for himself. ‘Any idea how far away she is? Or, more importantly, how long it will take us to catch up with her?'

She's too close for a wormhole stabiliser to be of any use.
Sacha cocked an eye to calculate.
If this vessel can travel a parsec per second,
which was equal to 3.26 light-years
in open space,
it shouldn't take us any longer than about four standard days, Kila time.

‘But surely she'll get pulverised if it takes us that long to get to her!' Maelgwn objected.

The Allied Logoi have incredible timing.
Psyche placed a hand on the man's shoulder in comfort.
And, having taken into account all the factors surrounding your wife's return to life, the Logoi will ensure that she does not return to her earthly vessel before she is delivered safely into the right hands.

‘Could I not just will myself to her?' Maelgwn reasoned, looking for a way to speed things along.

And what if she's still in pieces?
Sacha posed as a deterrent.

‘Is she?' Maelgwn shot back in distress.

Sacha's expression became grave, and he nodded.
You cannot hope to speed up that which the Allied Logoi have so carefully planned … why would you want to? Why can you not trust that all is as it should be and will unfold in accordance with the will of the divine?

‘Because,' Maelgwn was aggravated by the delay that was keeping him from his search for Zabeel and assisting his fellow Chosen with the current strife on Kila, ‘I fear that the will of the divine might not be in accordance with the best interests of my kindred.'

You know that is not the case,
Sacha gently encouraged him to admit.
You have known for seventy years what the true intent of the Allied Logoi is. And you are not the only man alive capable of greatness.

Maelwyn was shocked that the Deva could read him so easily, even with the thought-wave neutraliser he wore.

While you remain on Kila you are a crutch to those around you,
Sacha lectured.
You must leave your fellow Chosen to their own devices in order for them to realise their own divine potential.

‘So what am I to do for the next four days?' Maelgwn whined, unsatisfied with his lot.

Sacha shrugged.
I guess you'll just have to put up with our boring conversation.

The thought brought a smile to Maelgwn's face — the acquisition of knowledge was always pleasing to him.

 

Noah located his wife in the midst of evacuating her staff and supervising the removal of all their field equipment. He followed Rebecca as she stalked around the large campsite shouting orders, and informed her of the quest the Governor and the Dragon had asked Noah to undertake.

‘As much as I love you, Noah, I'm not going anywhere with you right now.' She rolled her eyes and continued with her duties, unable to believe he was serious.

‘These are the Governor's orders, Becky,' he pointed out. ‘And you'll only be sitting around back at HQ anyway, so —'

‘I'm not going back to HQ,' she insisted.

‘But the Governor has ordered all of KEPA to withdraw,' Noah argued.

‘Rhiannon, Robin, Jenny, and a few of the other KEPA department heads are going to head to our main base inside Shutura Crevice. I'm going too.'

Shutura was the well-concealed headquarters of KEPA, built inside a large mountain crevice. The crevice
was halfway down a sheer cliff face and opened into a large body of water. The pool had eroded and deepened the crevice over the aeons into an underwater cave. Upon discovery, it was deemed the perfect place for a submerged operations base for wildlife protection. The base was located in the wilderness close to the action, but it did not intrude on the pristine landscape. Hence the name SHU-TURA, which in the old Nefilim and Atlantean tongue meant ‘most supreme mountain base'. The Shutura Crevice was located more or less on the opposite side of the planet to Chaliada.

‘All our main wildlife monitoring systems are there, along with the equipment we'll need to launch a counter-defence,' Rebecca added as she finished packing her equipment and possessions. She began loading it all into a mini-shuttle which would deliver the gear to a larger shuttle that was transporting everything to Shutura. ‘You've proven you have a good aptitude for wildlife defence. Why don't you join us?'

‘Now hold on just a minute.' Noah took hold of the bag containing her personal possessions to prevent it being taken elsewhere. ‘Haven't you been listening to a word I have said? These are the
Governor's
orders.' She appeared unmoved by his insistence. ‘You were the one who told me that you would accompany me on this quest, remember?'

‘We were at leisure then. At peace! The
Governor's
stand has changed everything!' Rebecca was infuriated by his persistence. ‘Any second now the Pantheon are going to declare open season on all the animals inhabiting this planet … they are
my
responsibility, Noah. For Goddess sakes! Don't you care?'

‘And what of the human inhabitants of this entire galaxy? Where do they figure in your equation?' he retorted sarcastically.

‘They are not about to be slaughtered.' Rebecca appealed to reason, wanting to avoid an unpleasant argument.

‘No!' he barked, annoyed that she would not budge on the issue and refused to see the big picture. ‘They
are
being slaughtered!'

One of the members of Rebecca's force rushed towards the couple, but came to a standstill a short distance away, sensing the tension in the air.

‘It has begun, Commander,' he informed, once Rebecca gave him the nod to speak. ‘In the great northern forest, north-east of Kila … they're killing everything with gas.'

Rebecca's tolerance level reached zero. ‘Then we have to find out where the hell they're storing the toxins and figure out a way to dispose of it.' The soldier nodded and ran off to collect his team. Rebecca looked at her husband and reclaimed her bag from him. ‘I'm sorry, Noah, but I've got to go.' She leant forward and kissed him, but he did not kiss her back. Rebecca stepped away to look Noah in the face, disappointed in him. ‘I really thought you of all people would understand.'

‘So did I,' he replied, feeling just as thwarted as she.

‘I guess we were both mistaken.' Rebecca turned and walked away from the quarrel.

‘Looks that way,' Noah muttered to himself, and disillusioned with the universe, he decided not to pursue her. ‘I go it alone, then.'

 

The molecules of her subtle body calmed to a synchronised vibration as the being's embrace enveloped her. His wings enclosed her inside a celestial cocoon where only the Sacred Triad held sway: the Logos that was her soul-source, the Silent Watcher, who was her higher self, and the sacred spirit, Fohat, that formed the thread that spanned the vast expanse of evolution between the parent soul and its infant, maintaining the lines of communication between them.

Inside the cosmic womb, her unborn soul was sedated against the uncomfortable process of drawing forth her spiritual triad of life atoms that had retreated via her heart centre into the permanent atoms of her causal body at the time of death. Her lower material triad of atoms had dissolved along with her lower etheric bodies, as she'd transcended beyond their threshold on her inward spiral, and this ethereal matter would be gathered unto herself as fresh life atoms were created during her outward spiral back into the physical. So although her earthly memories were lost, any information pertaining to her higher consciousness would survive inside her higher triad of permanent atoms for reference in the next life.

Tory lost all sense of herself inside the haven the Deva provided. She was aware only of a wave-like sensation rushing over her being, gently at first and then, in a great rush of awareness, her consciousness began expanding, rippling and swaying in a sea of tranquillity and joy. Here she had no questions, no worries, no fear; there was no past, there was no future,
no cause and effect, no destiny or fate, only the complete bliss and oneness of an eternal moment in the presence of the divine.

This cleansing rapture ended abruptly as she was wrenched from the beautiful life force and spat forth into existence in a flaming ball of fire. Every fibre of her being cried out in agony upon separation. The large swirling celestial body, around which she was now in a spiral orbit, was her soul-source. She was but one of zillions of stars taking the outward journey into the realms of matter in order that her unrealised potential might evolve through interactive experience of cause and effect, which could only be experienced on the physical plan. Upon leaving her soul-source, her ego had been cast into the only true Hell in existence — the physical plane, a region of sinners, trial and pain, where every bad thought and act was subject to Karmic Law and would be atoned for. She, like all of the Star Born, was paying the ultimate price for the ultimate prize. Her separation from her soul-source would be long and arduous, and this inner knowing induced the ultimate sadness. And yet, her will to succeed for the glory of the divine was absolute; her will to live and participate in the great scheme of creation was all-consuming.

You were not alone, as you are not alone now or ever. I have been with you for all time.