Prologue

        

   The night was filled with the sounds of the dying, the wails of the grieving, creating a funnel of chaos in the middle of this warring mountain. The screams of pain and fear and the snarls of anger reached a crescendo of noise that echoed around the mountain top for hours after the young girl disappeared into the night, using the trees as cover to protect her from the vicious onslaught. The once sacred clearing was now a battlefield. The sound of bodies hitting the ground. The sound of clothes being torn. The sound of children crying for their mothers and mothers crying for their children. The sound of families broken. The sound of a town destroyed.

   Destroyed by hatred. Destroyed by greed. Destroyed by deceit.

   The sounds finally end after a night of fighting, a night of battle, and a night of bloodshed on one last battle cry, a sound of triumph and victory, that ends abruptly as it started as he, too, succumbs to his wounds. The smell of blood was strong in the air as the wind picked up and carried it across the world. The symbol of a broken covenant, the symbol of several more to come.

   So many horrible things came from this night. An entire town of people… dead. The town itself… uninhabitable. Too much bad energy. A result of a betrayal. A result of fighting. The result of a massacre. Two clans… ended. A Soulmate Union… betrayed.

   The sorrow for all of the losses was great, but the biggest grievance was the betrayal of the Soulmate Bond.

   The people made the choice to fight. They decided this was the hill they wanted to die on… or mountain, as it were. But the Soulmate Covenant? No. The Covenant should never have been treated in this manner, with this violence.

   The Soulmate Covenant was broken, and because of one pair’s folly, so were all of the remaining bonds between other soulmated pairs. One couple’s actions have destroyed numerous other relationships, turning love to hatred, lust to pain, friends to enemies. What once brought people together now turned them into even greater enemies than they were before! What once was a Goddess’s love song became a Devil’s playground!

~Nights Later~

   She had spent the nights previous wandering through the forest, searching for a safe place to park it for a little while. Without food, without sleep, without purpose, the young child was wandering with no real destination in mind. She had nowhere to go and nothing to go back to. She had been sitting on a log, taking a small break to rest her weary legs, when a voice came to her from out of the wind. The soft, lilting voice directed her, guided her, proved to her that she was not alone…

Find the Cabin the Betrayer Built; Bring Ink and Paper, my Child, for you are the messenger of the Covenant.

   Upon entering the makeshift cabin, there is a simple desk facing the wall, leaving no room for distractions. Off to the left of the desk is the front door, hand-carved to contain the symbols of both clans, and two open aired squares in the wall where window panes were intended to go. Off to the right is a half-finished kitchen and a kitchen island much like her grandmother’s. Lots of tools lay abandoned and scattered across the floor that were going to gather dust and never be used.

   The cabin was a work in progress but, until tonight, was always going to be finished within the next fortnight. Now, there is no one left to finish building. It was a gift from one half of a soulmated pair to the other, tucked away into a clearing in the woods. It was hand-built and hand-carved, a symbol of their love, their dedication to each other despite all adversaries. An incredible little cabin. Beautiful. Quaint. Made with love. It was a home, or at least, it should have been.

  A safe place to share and bask in their love for each other in a town that demonized the Soulmate Covenant. Not that it would ever be made a home now. Not that the family would ever have a chance to live here. The whole town had been destroyed by the betrayal, resulting in so much fighting that this delicate fourteen-year-old girl was the only survivor left from the little village on the mountain.

  The young girl sits hunched over her small wooden desk, devoid of all materials but those she brought with her, as she works with nothing but candle flame to drive away the darkness in the small, dank cabin that smelled of dirt and drying blood. This is where the girl made her name as the messenger of the Covenant.

  Just as the sun rises over the horizon and provides light to see by, her eyes dart back and forth over what she has already written. A gust of wind enters through an open window and snuffs out the candle without her notice, still carrying the scent of blood and tears. Her nose is scrunched. Her brows are pinched, and her slim, delicate mouth is pulled down into a deep frown. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but was wise beyond her years and has seen more than any child ever should. Her blond locks flowed down her back as she worked tirelessly through the night and into the early morning. The young girl works with such intense concentration as she enacts the will of the Goddess Freya, as she works to put the events of the last night and the history of the first broken covenant into writing. The girl never pauses to eat or sleep. She has no time, and the Goddess had kindly supplanted these base needs with a much greater one. A responsibility given and a story to share, the girl works on a piece of literature, that over generations, would evolve into legion.

   Her steady hand trails from left to right with woman-like grace and beautiful penmanship across yellowed parchment with a feathered quill. She transcribes the events that have irrevocably damaged The Soulmate Covenant. Her legacy, her duty, her responsibility was to share these events in hopes of changing future ones.

It was a day like any other… until it wasn’t. Nearly two hundred people entered a clearing one tragic night and only one came out. I was there when it was formed by two loves, and I was there when it was broken by the same two.

                                                                    The Soulmate Covenant

The Covenant is not to be taken lightly. It is as important as the air you breathe, the skin you live in. The Covenant has been around for millennia… among the cavemen and women, among the pilgrims, among the Indians. The Soulmate Covenant is the connection of two souls, the bridging of differences in the name of love, peace, and harmony.

Goddess Freya, Goddess of Fate, determines these pairings up on high. But the love between these two souls is nonetheless very real and very powerful. Love cannot be forced, even by a goddess. Therefore, The Covenant is but a seed that must be nurtured and watered to grow. The seed is planted, and it is up to the soulmated pair to tend to it. But if the wrong choice is made that intentionally harms part of the pair, that plant with wither and die.

The Covenant, without fail, brings together two people from warring clans. A way to create alliances and end the need to wage war among ourselves. Very rarely does a soulmated pair tend to be from the same species. It is important to note that not everyone is given a soulmate, and there is no clear trend to those who do and those who do not have soulmates. Thus, it a divine plan from those of divine nature. Who are we to question their plans?

                                                                       The Soulmate Bonds Effect

Those who have been lucky enough to find a soulmate have reported gifts or abilities that accompany these pairings. I have been fortunate enough to interview the three Soulmated Pairs within the vicinity of what used to be my home, one in my mountain village and two in the village at the base of the mountain. Due to my ability to recognize the connection between these pairs, I was the only one to know what this meant, the only one to see the Soulmate Covenant at work after it fell dormant in the late 1600s.

The first ability is that those who are connected have been seen to be nearly inseparable. This connection is more than just newfound love. These companions are opposites in every way. One may be quick to anger; the other may be a calm in a sea of adversity. One may be strategic; the other may be impulsive. One may be King; the other may be the servant. These connections are pervasive from every soulmated pair found to date. They are opposites, but each brings something valuable to the table. Most importantly, they make the other person better. These pairs foster their strengths while shrinking their weaknesses. Eventually, the two halves will become whole… with a single intimate act.

Based on a nosey young girl’s questions on the matter, it was found that soulmates could feel each other when in the same vicinity. A beacon, of sorts. This beacon draws them closer until they find each other. This pulsating warmth, that thumps relentlessly in the chest of the pairs,… is an encouraging nudge to follow the bond to their destined mate. This is often used to draw two souls together across distance, but it does not dim after this initial meeting. It grows stronger until one half of the pair can find the other half—no matter where they are. Although this warmth is able to be ignored, the loss of warmth leaves the person feeling hollow. Thus, tending to the seed is a must.

Soulmates have also been said to dream of one another before the official meeting, a priming for the connection that will form. A warning that they will be coming and not to run from the connection, but toward it. That first act of intimacy, often a kiss, once they find each other seals the connection, secures the bond between the pair. They are, at once, made for and only for each other. The bond, the affection, the love will grow the longer they are together.

But none of these touch on the what they can do after the bond has been formed, a consummation of their bond, but is also not my place to share such intimate details of the bonding nor would they give them to a fourteen-year-old.

                                                                                     History

The Soulmate Covenant had been dormant for years past when one prayer to the Goddess to stop the fighting was answered. It started slow with a couple of pairings in neighboring villages. There had been rumors of soulmates popping up among the villagers. These connections were revered, treated with respect, with sanctity.

It wasn’t long before The Soulmate Covenant founds its way to the Mountain and to a little village at its peak, the Mountaine Village. This one village, tucked away into the mountainside, was being fought over by two distinct clans, the Mountain Saloon Pack and the Sisters of the Path. A war between wolves and witches. The fighting had reached unforeseen heights, leaving the town in a constant state of battle.

No one… not even I could have fathomed the amount of disrespect these two clans had for The Covenant.

This story is theirs.