There was an air of festivity in the village. The king of the clan was about to have his first child, and by the size of the newly married queen, he would be a boy, an heir to the throne. They feverishly hoped so, for the alternative was unthinkable. Yet an undercurrent of trepidation and fear could be felt, but everyone did their best to ignore it, the forced gaiety adding some bizarre vigor to the festivities.
There had been a single cry from the hut and no more. The queen was proving she deserved her title. Minutes had passed, and still silence ruled, and to distract themselves, the men drank the wine which was plenty, the women danced and sang, the young men danced with the young ladies and the wrestling competition heated up.
A wail came from the hut, not loud but chilling in its pain and anguish. The queen had delivered, the first child but knew she was not done yet. The midwife felt the mother’s pain and wondered why fate had decided to be cruel to one so young and full of life, but philosophical debate had to wait. She had to ensure the mother lived through the delivery. The women shushed the young queen as she delivered her second boy. Then their horror intensified: She had delivered the second twin, and by the look on her face and the midwife’s stare, she was not done. She gave birth to a third twin.
Outside, only the cricket chirped then suddenly an owl hooted. Dark clouds swept the skies and in moments had the moon covered. Flashes of lightning filled the sky and it started to rain. Everyone started to scream, raw fear on everyone’s face. When they questioned each other later, each person said they were confronted by their worst fears: A ghost of a relative, loss of a wrestling match, never being married. Each was totally convinced it was real, it had happened.
Those old enough to know understood what had happened. They had come for the unclean: The king’s twins, and by the time anyone had come from their nightmares, which they thought had taken an eternity but had actually been less than half a minute, the twins were gone.
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A trio clothed in long hooded robes ran swiftly over the terrain, an understatement considering they were averaging about 80 kilometers an hour, each with a child on their back and a staff in the other. They were the Retrievers, an arm of the Akilians responsible for identifying and protecting gifted children. They were powerful and skilled enough to teleport or even run faster but dared not for two reasons: the well being if the triplets, and trying to avoid detection. That was easy enough to do at night when dealing with children of the light, the day dwellers, but there was information that Villy Fates had taken a sudden interest in newborns. When he took an interest in something, it usually ended up dead or worse, and any use of the dark matter would pinpoint their location. They assumed he had a Locator, an Akilian with the ability to know exactly where anyone was by any personal link: Their smell, clothes, pictures, blood, sweat, anything. The really gifted ones could pick up ether depletion in an area or ether burnout, and from the triplets’ burnout, it was best to assume they had.
They had an advantage though: they had been close by when the delivery took place, which gave them valuable time. Most priestesses and priests were Akilians, and the priestess of the village had informed them of a probable case of twins, because of the pregnancy’s size and mainly because she couldn’t read the child or children’s essence, or their matter inclination. In all her life as a priestess she had never failed to determine whether a child was a day dweller or an Akilian, and could do so simply by being in the presence of the mother or touching her. She had laid a hand upon the queen’s belly, which increased her sensitivity to a person’s essence and all she had felt was the mother’s essence.
During the first visit shrine visit when the queen had brought her offering, 3 months after inception, she had assumed the child was dead and thought nothing of it, hoping the mother would cope with the loss. Of course she couldn’t inform queen of her fear, for she would want to know how the priestess knew. She thought nothing of the matter until they visited the 6 months later to bring more offerings as was custom, and it was apparent the kid was growing, and growing fast. By then she knew 2 things and suspected a third: Her powers were still fine for she had read other unborn kids and people’s essence, the kid was still alive and from the pregnancy’s size, they were probably twins and somehow they both could their powers to hide their essence, or one of them hid both their powers. She had invited the Retrievers to be close by just in case they were Akilians, which she doubted because most Akilians couldn’t use their powers until puberty, but she had done and they were glad she had.
Somehow the triplets’ had tapped ether and caused a paranormal activity, in day dwellers terms. The midwife, an Akilian, felt as if her breath was sucked out of her, yet she was breathing. It was almost as if something tapped into her life energy, suffocating her. Then the feeling was in about 30 seconds. When she came out of the suffocation-like trance, it was as if a small choir had run amok. A toddler wailed, another giggled and yet death-like silence hung in the air. She realized suddenly why she was shocked: Each of the twins had been still-born, yet now impossibly, two were alive.
She went to pick them in joy then felt the crying twin’s skin. It was chilly. She checked the giggling twin’s skin. It was colder than that of his brother. Then she noticed movement in the third reed baby basket and went over to look at the child. He was deathly pale, and when she touched him, she shuddered and withdrew her hand quickly. He was extremely cold but the shudder had nothing to do with it. She had felt as if she had glimpsed at her own hell, and she felt the death-like silence more around him. The feeling passed quickly, and with it, the crying and giggling, all the twins falling asleep at once.
By now, the Retrievers had manipulated the timeline immediately they had felt the ether tap, swooped in and rescued the children. Had that not happened, it was unlikely the kids would have survived. For though the midwife was an Akilian, she also worked for Villy Fates and so had heard of the Trio prophesy:
When the world would be in the grip of the lion riding on vengeance wings and cloaked by abetting evil clouds as he rules over all lands on a throne built on human skulls and watered by the innocent’s blood.
When people have given up all hopes and cursed towards the heavens. Then shall a Trio enter the world, 2 of a kind.
They shall fight their way from Hades, and shall bear fate’s blade.
In that moment she had known Villy Fates was wrong. She had started towards the baby baskets with the intention of killing the triplets. Then the retrievers had changed the timeline, and everyone in the village, including the midwife, re-lived a small part of the most recent events in their lives, which unfortunately happened to be the visions, experienced by most as nightmares, caused by the triplets Ether tap. When the midwife came around, all she could remember was she had delivered 3 stillborn twins, and nothing about what they had caused. She assumed the Akilians had carried them off as they always did to maintain the superstition and would bury them. To the day dwellers, they took away the demon vessels and exorcised demons from them.
It could take several hours, years on never at all. The twin who returned was welcomed back to the community. She was sorry the were dead, for one of the could have been a Fatalist like her,her own protege, as Villy Fates followers referred to themselves
