Prophet's Journey

  Prophet’s Journey

  Prophet of the Badlands Book 1

  Matthew S. Cox

  Prophet’s Journey

  Prophet of the Badlands Series

  © 2019 Matthew S. Cox

  All Rights Reserved

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual living persons, places, or a powerful demonic polymind composed mostly of anger and suffering are purely coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author.

  Cover art: Jackson Tjota • Cover formatting: Alexandria Thompson

  Interior art by: Ricky Gunawan

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-950738-00-7

  ISBN (paperback): 978-1-950738-01-4

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1. Sand Flower

  2. Stop

  3. Picnic

  4. Five Years

  5. Ghosts

  6. The Voice That Speaks False

  7. Smoke Trails

  8. A Long, Long Walk

  9. The Dead Village

  10. Riding the Ospi

  11. Gatekeeper

  12. Connect Three

  13. Banished

  14. Home

  15. The Trial of Royals

  16. Sky Monsters and Silver Men

  17. Wheelbot

  18. Sacred Halls

  19. Royal Pain

  20. Kinda Like Mom… Not

  21. That Didn’t Take Long

  22. The Vee-Eights

  23. Enough

  24. Deal

  25. Contaminants

  26. Force Escalation

  27. Upgraded Technology

  28. Lieutenant Raines

  29. The Great Forge

  30. Disassembly

  31. Override

  32. Faceplant From Fifteen-Hundred Feet

  33. Limping Along

  34. Queen Kye

  35. Alternate Route

  36. Child

  37. Sigma Six

  38. An Accord With Darkness

  39. For Their Own Good

  40. In The Dark

  41. The Cost of Change

  42. The Goddess Awakens

  43. No Longer

  44. Wrong Turn

  45. Little

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books by Matthew S. Cox

  Author’s Note

  Ever since I wrote Prophet of the Badlands, readers have often contacted me asking for more of Althea’s story. (Usually after they discovered Archon’s Queen is not a direct continuation from Prophet). I’ve been wanting to write a spinoff with her as the main character for a while, but it would need to be set after the end of that series, so I decided to wait until the final Awakened book came out before writing this.

  Prophet’s Journey is a continuation of Althea’s story, set after the events of the Awakened series. The following contains spoilers for those who have not read it. Please consider at least reading Prophet of the Badlands (if not the entire Awakened series) before this book.

  The Awakened series

  Prophet of the Badlands

  Archon’s Queen

  Grey Ronin

  Daughter of Ash

  Zero Rogue

  Angel Descended

  1

  Sand Flower

  Hope had finally taken root in Althea’s mind, though she didn’t quite know how to deal with it.

  In her old life, staying in one place for more than two months would’ve been an unusual surprise, either pleasant or awful depending on the surroundings. That she’d been in Querq for about six took her into strange territory, stirring new thoughts and emotions she’d never confronted before, most especially the sense of having a real home, a place that not only offered safety and comfort, but one where she wanted to be, not simply appreciated for being a less cruel state of captivity.

  It didn’t matter that she looked nothing like Karina or Father, pale and blonde to their rich brown skin and black hair—she loved her adoptive family fiercely. So much so that a moment of intense fear had turned her healing power into a weapon.

  She still felt guilty about causing Hector pain, even if he had tried to kill Karina.

  Lately, her sister had been talking of Althea’s birthday. Before arriving in Querq, she’d guessed at being twelve, but she had recently learned that the biological mother she never knew fled a research facility only eleven years ago. No one had a clue as to her exact birth date, so she might actually be twelve or still eleven with a few months to go. Father decided they would officially recognize her birthday as the day he’d found her exhausted and near starved while out hunting.

  She smiled at the memory of the emotions he gave off when suggesting that date. Her new life as a person with a family instead of a captive wanted only for her powers did begin that day, even if she had some bumpy spots to cope with soon after. This new life did, however, come with one downside: she would remain officially eleven until next year. It made no sense why she disliked being eleven and not twelve so much. Perhaps because she had spent so many months thinking of herself that age. She stuck her tongue out. Father had probably done that on purpose so it took even longer for her to become sixteen. He had insisted she not ‘do anything’ with Den until that age.

  Not that she had any interest in being wifed, but she had become somewhat curious at the idea that a woman could possibly want to do that. Over her years of being stolen over and over, passed from one raider group to another, she’d seen slaves get wifed and not one of them wanted to. Well, a few truly broken souls aside, none of them did. Den believed that women who weren’t even slaves would somehow want to be wifed, but she couldn’t imagine it. He tried to claim that it happened because people in Querq had babies… and laughed when Althea had asked him what babies had to do with it.

  She’d always believed women just sometimes had babies when they wanted one. Den seemed to think that wifeing had something to do with the process. And true, a few slaves she had been around had babies while held captive in the raider camps. Women raiders had some too, but at least they enjoyed being raiders so their desiring a baby didn’t seem surprising. At the time, she thought it strange that slaves would want to have a baby in such an awful place, but if Den was right…

  Perhaps being alone wasn’t good. Her thoughts went places she didn’t like. The other children in Querq all attended the school, while the ones too little for that had gone down for their naps. For reasons she couldn’t understand, the town elders didn’t want her going to school with the others… yet. It had something to do with her barely being able to understand the frozen speech. Father called it ‘reading.’ Some man the Zero police made her talk to for an ‘assessment’ said she had the mind of a six-year-old. She’d gasped in horror at that, as she most certainly did not steal any poor little kid’s brain. The woman helping him talk to her thought she might have been carrying ‘mental trauma,’ and didn’t believe her when she held her arms out and said she didn’t have anything but her dress.

  So, for the time being, Althea had to cope with the awful little glowing tablet thing that called her stupid whenever she didn’t say the right words. It showed her frozen speech, or sometimes pictures of things, and she had to do the telling of it. Half the time she’d say the right word, but the machine still yelled at her. Like, if it showed a gato, she’d say gato, but the stupid thing wanted her to say ‘cat.’

  She didn’t so much care if she learned the same things the other kids learned, she just wanted to be with them. Being alone made her sad. She should have been home at that moment getting frustrated at the ‘learning machine,’ but after going to the farm to visit Karina for their lunch break, Althea had taken the scenic route,
in no hurry to have a fancy electric tablet from the bad city tease her for being dumb. Yes, finishing the lessons on the device would allow her to maybe go with the other children to school, but she did not like that awful little thing.

  It talked to her like she was five years old.

  “Apple. Ahh-pell. Good.” She raspberried. “No, it’s a manzana, not a stupid ahh-pell. Who cares if I know the words?”

  Althea meandered down a dusty street at the northwest end of Querq, following the wide stone path marked with the faded remains of yellow stripes. In the Before-Time, cars walked on these strips of rock that the ancients somehow shaped to their whim. People from the bad city had cars, too… some flying into the sky like birds. All the ones the Zero police brought out here flew, so they didn’t use the roads. The Watch had two cars they called ‘pickups’, but only used them for emergencies and never bothered to follow the roads.

  She didn’t go to this area often, so it still felt new enough to be worth exploring. Being this close to the wall at the edge of a village would once have made her wary of raiders trying to steal her. The Old City that surrounded Querq had lots of bad things like bonedogs and the enormous millipedes. The only safe passage through the ancient ruins went to the main gate, and a small group of raiders trying to steal her would not go right to the front door. But now, she didn’t worry about raiders anymore. Even if they did show up, she would protect herself.

  Two main reasons allowed her to tolerate captivity for most of her life: one, she had never understood the concept of a true home, so didn’t feel a sense of loss when moved from place to place. As long as she could still help people, it didn’t matter where she went. Secondly, she had been too afraid to use her powers that way.

  Some other Scrags—native denizens of the Badlands—had magic, too. Most of the tribals called those with such abilities ‘mystics.’ They could know people’s thoughts or give them commands that they couldn’t resist. Officer David with the Zero police had explained these things she thought of as magic were called psionics, powers that came from the mind. Althea could also make people do things. However, Mystics terrified raiders and peaceful villagers alike, and even normally friendly people would often attack them on sight. Worse, common legend said the only way to truly kill a mystic was to burn them alive. If merely shot or stabbed or poisoned, the mystic would come back from the dead and wreak terrible revenge.

  Althea didn’t want to be burned. And that fear had kept her from using her gifts to protect herself from enslavement—though she feared being wifed even more than being burned. Forcing subtle changes in her captors’ emotions often proved enough to convince them not to keep her tied up—her second biggest fear after wifeing—but if anyone looked at her the way they looked at the harem women, she never hesitated to tell them to go away.

  Everyone in the Badlands knew her as the Prophet, the great healer, the child with the blue eyes that lit up like stars. Her eyes always glowed, giving away her identity to everyone who saw her, telling them they had found the greatest prize. She didn’t know if the Scrags’ fear of mystics would overpower their fear of harming the Prophet, but she hadn’t wanted to take that chance. She once thought if people learned she could control them with Suggestion, they would kill her.

  But, Althea had found confidence and strength. In having a home, in having a family she loved and would do anything to protect, she promised herself she would never hesitate again. If anyone tried to take her away from this place, she would overwhelm them with fear and make them run away, or throw them into such a deep pit of sadness they could only sit there and cry until the Watch arrested them.

  She held her arms out to either side for balance while walking heel-to-toe along one of the old painted yellow lines, pretending the paving was a big hole and she had to cross a narrow rope. When the paint ended, she stood normally again, and grinned. It felt good to play. It felt even better not to worry about being taken. Most of all, she adored the people of Querq treating her like any other person—well mostly. They still respected her as the Prophet, but neither worshiped her nor caged her. Except for that one middle-aged woman who constantly bowed and tried to kiss her feet, but Guadalupe lived in her own little world.

  Off to her right, the giant, decaying forms of Before-Time buildings appeared as twisted shadows in a sandy haze. The Old City surrounding Querq often hid beneath a brownish mist, neither fog nor true sandstorm. She knew The Many lurked close, seething in anger at the world that continued in spite of his suffering. Though the entity often appeared as a decrepit old man, he claimed to be made out of the souls of everyone who died in some long-ago great war, the war that separated the now from the Before-Time.

  Althea paused at a spot where another road crossed. A box on a pole with three colored lenses by the corner made her think back to being lost in the bad city far to the west. An angry man had jumped out of a little car that almost hit her, screaming and calling her stupid… just like the teaching machine.

  I don’t want to be a hood ornament.

  The three light things here didn’t work, all remained dark. Since that angry man had yelled at her not to walk when the red one lit up—and the red one presently remained off—she shrugged and kept going. Of course, none of these road lights in Querq ever lit up. They probably had in the Before-Time, though.

  She tried to picture cars on the road here like in the city beyond the wall of fire. That, too, had been a lie—or at least a misunderstanding. No wall of flames stood at the end of the world to keep people away from the place the Ancestors go. She had seen a big metal wall at the edge of the horrible city, though assumed it existed to keep people trapped inside. It didn’t seem possible anyone would want to be there. However, some of the Zero police who visited Querq did miss it and wanted to go back. Maybe to people who always lived there it wouldn’t be bad, but Althea had only scary or sad memories of the place. Her time in the ‘modern’ city had been an overwhelming flood of negative emotions, so loud she had to concentrate on not letting them consume her.

  Picturing working cars in Querq didn’t seem right, so she scrunched her nose up and stopped trying to daydream. She didn’t really like the fancy city stuff the Zero police brought either, thinking it would turn her home into a small version of the bad city. But, some stuff she had to admit was nice. Like shampoo. But not cars. The bad city had too many cars and too many people.

  “Everyone in them was so angry. Cars must make people angry. That’s why they have the button so even the cars yell at each other. Beeeeeeeep.” She made a silly face, then sighed, pitying the poor people stuck inside cars. Honestly, those machines scared her. She didn’t understand how they could make a person’s emotions go from calm to wanting to murder someone in two seconds.

  Officer David with the city police tried to explain to her that not everyone in the big city was always angry or sad, but he hadn’t felt what she’d felt. He, too, had the power he called Telempathy, able to read or change other people’s emotions, but nowhere near as strong as her. That Awakened word flew around whenever they talked about her. It meant something about her being stronger. Her Telempathy made her far more sensitive than he could understand. In that city, people who didn’t even know each other threw off so much anger while sitting in their cars they reminded her of raiders about to kill. She cringed at the truth she’d sensed less anger on some raiders when they did kill.

  She paused to trace lines with her toes in a wash of sand across the paving, smiling as she created the vague suggestion of a flower. Taken by sudden inspiration, she squatted, using her fingers to add leaves and more detail to the petals, then some grass on either side of the stem… and a happy bee about to land on it.

  Her little drawing filled her with joy, the perfect complement to a nice sunny day.

  A sudden, stiff wind fluttered her long, blonde hair and white dress, eroding her flower and the poor little bee after a moment, scattering it to loose sand that drifted along the pavement in tiny whorls.

/>   Althea frowned. “Why do you have to be so mean? Why do you hate it when people are happy?”

  2

  Stop

  She squinted around at windows and doors, certain the Many had sent that wind to destroy her moment of happiness. He didn’t respond, nor did she feel any dark presence nearby. Sometimes wind is just the wind, said Father’s voice in her mind. The buildings on the right side of the street held little but debris, as they formed part of the village’s outer wall. Blue-painted metal ran across at roughly twenty-five feet off the ground, a walkway for the Watch.

  To the left, all the buildings held family homes. In the Before-Time, they’d been something called shops. She understood some of the frozen speech still visible here and there in fading paint or broken signs.

  Althea approached a window with white letters. “En… tist. Entist? What’s that?” She traced her finger around a shape that resembled a tooth, only bigger than a potato. She clamped both hands over her mouth, wide-eyed at what scary magic might be able to make teeth grow to that size. Good thing the Before-Time magic had stopped working. No one here could do that to anyone’s mouth.