Happy
The sun was rising, the large hourglass that was on the wall of the main hall gave its customary turn.
A new day began in the Underworld.
Happy placed the tray with his breakfast on the rough stone table before sitting with his friends. Fish and milk, that morning. How surprising…
Happy was a hellcat.
Some hellcats had the task of collecting the souls of the deceased and to take them to the underworld. However there were many kinds of positions for hellcats. That didn't mean that only hellcats composed the Underworld, no, but they were the ones in larger quantity and did have a working hierarchy under the King of the Underworld.
At the bottom of the hierarchy there were the soul collectors, who had the task of collecting the souls and to take them to the néant.
Soul collectors worked in teams too, and Happy was lucky that he could be with his friends. They were a bit of a diverse group, both ready to put the others in trouble or to stand beside them when things turned bad. Yes, they'd been through a lot already.
And what an eclectic mix they were with Happy, Carla, Panther Lily, Lector and Frosch. They had a certain reputation in the Underworld too. Mostly with both the guards and tribune workers – which was understandable as they interacted more with them.
Because the hierarchy for hellcats had five different levels. And, the higher the level in the hierarchy, the less cat-like would the hellcat be. The opposite worked too as, the lower the position in the hierarchy, more cat-like would they be.
So, at the bottom were the soul collectors. These were very cat-like hellcats. They had a lot of work to do and possessed some magic that would allow them to become invisible in the mid-world or acquire any shape they wanted.
Next came the tribune workers and the guards. The tribune workers' main occupation was to take the souls to the right places. They were intermediates. And the guards were there to enforce the King's law, as well as to make all the processes happen without much trouble. There were some souls that could be quite feisty and so the guards would have the competences to take better care of them.
Next came the organizers and transporters. The organizers, as expected, organized things. Worked on the bureaucracy and made the hard work that would facilitate the soul's judging. And with them were the transporters who took the souls to their resting places, after the judging. Be it in the Underworld or the Overworld.
The judges presided the weighing of the souls and they were the ones who vocalized the decision as to where the soul would remain for eternity.
And at the top came the advisors to the king who would sometimes act as ministers and be responsible for some area, if the King so decided. This class of the hierarchy was the one that had a more human-like semblance and they were fairly powerful and wise.
The Underworld was a complex place – it was easy for one lone soul to get lost – as there were many layers to it too.
In the first layer, which was called le néant, was the void. It was an empty place where the soul collectors left the new souls, waiting for their turn to be judged.
The second layer was called le circle and it was heavily populated by the hellcats. In it, the most important structure was the tribunal, the very important place where the weighing of the souls took place. The souls, which from the reaping and their stay in the néant had a puffy cloud-like shape, would acquire the mortal shape of their owners for the weighing.
The third layer was very important, la cour, because that was where the royal court was held. It was in this one layer that the King lived too. It also housed the more bureaucratic positions to the hellcats.
Finally, the fourth layer, la profondeur, was the deepest and the actual place for bad souls to be placed. It has in itself three subsections.
Autem was the place where a large river flowed. It was for the souls who were tainted so that they couldn't live in the fields of gold but not so bad as to earn the worst kind of eternal damnation. Thus the souls in autem floated in the river and were condemned to see their failures over and over again.
Duo was the next level and there was no more water in there. It was dry and warm, filled with jagged rocks and unending cliffs and abysses, expanding infinitely both up and down. It was what was considered the middle area. It was the place for people whose soul was up to half tainted by the person's misdeeds. It was the place for the fire and brimstone, for the physical torture and where the lesser demons – which were creatures that were indigenous to only that area – did those acts. Duo was divided in smaller areas and the souls would be thrown to each area according to the darkness in them. The brutality of the torture would increase the darker it got. And no matter how bad the treatment to a soul was, when the hourglass that ruled the Underworld turned, the soul would be intact and ready for a new day of torture.
Finally, tribus was the lower level of la profondeur. It was the place that was reserved for the worst types of souls. The ones where the taint permeated most of the soul. It was the place for the ultimate punishment. Because souls were sentient, they had awareness and so they were locked away in solitary confinement. And whenever one soul was getting too lost, the hellcats would bring them back to awareness and so the cycle continued.
Every now and then, the hellcats teams would rotate through the various layers of the underworld. Because, there was the possibility for a hellcat to climb in the hierarchy so the King had it so that the lower levels learned more.
Happy didn't have a problem with the King. He had been ruling the Underworld since the great Guerre de la Désordre and, in Happy's opinion, doing a good job.
It had been King Lyon who had ended the war and set the laws that were now in place. It had also been thanks to him that the hierarchy for the hellcats had been created.
Happy gnawed distractedly on his fish. It was his favourite food but wasn't tasting all that well to him. His team had finished a rotation on duo and, as usual, it was being a bit difficult for him to adjust. It was always hard to adjust after all the screaming. Of course that it was slightly better than the heavy silence from tribus. That one clung to his fur and it felt like he couldn't scrub it clean. Not until too many showers. And Happy wasn't the biggest fan of showers.
So, he was still adjusting. And being back with his team in the main hall was a good help as his friends were always fun and a good distraction. A good way to return to normalcy.
The fact that their team was going to return to usual soul collector stuff was also something for him to look forward to.
He took his time finishing his fish, trying to find some motivation in the food. However, contrary to the usual, the food didn't brighten his mood. Or comfort him all that much.
He didn't even notice that his friends had paused in their conversations, and were looking at him, expectantly. Only after Carla's elbow to his side did he snap out of his musings.
"What?" he asked in confusion.
"I said, are we ready to go get the missions?" Carla repeated her question.
"Oh. That, yes. Let's do it." Happy said as he stood and held his tray. His friends followed, a bit slower but with an air of strangeness around them.
"Sorry, I was just thinking." Happy said after they left the hall and were heading to the Portal des Missions, the place where both tribune workers and organizers battled paper bureaucracy on a daily basis – and came to the other side with the missions necessary to hand to the soul collectors.
"It's not like you… to think." Panther Lily said teasingly and trying to get a rise of Happy.
"Ah. Ah… shut up!" Happy threw his tongue out.
"Someone can't take the truth…" Lector said from behind them and that set Frosch into a fit of giggles.
"We're here for you. We're your friends." Carla continued. "We've all noticed how weird you get after we come from la profondeur. It's not easy for any of us. But you have to talk to us too. Okay?"
"I know that." Happy replied, a bit of a snap to his tone. But he caught himself and repeated, softly, "I do know that."
"Come. Let's go see Marl, she'll have something for us. We need to get busy." Carla said encouragingly.
The five friends waited in line with the other soul collectors who were waiting for their missions. When they finally got there they were welcomed by the happy tribune worker.
"Good morning, my dears. How are you all today?" she asked as she rummaged through the stacks of files. "Aaand here are your missions for the day." She said as she handed out the files to each hellcat. "Good luck today."
"Thanks." Lector called out above his shoulder as they started heading out.
The team of soul collectors caught the vortex portal that led them to the place of their mission.
As soon as they emerged, invisible, they were faced with a scenario of destruction.
"What was this?" Panther Lily asked surveying the area.
"Looks like a big earthquake." Lector answered.
"And it looks like we have a lot of work ahead of us." Carla stated with a sigh.
The five hellcats split up then. Each going their separate ways, quickly coming in and out of the vortex and being momentarily followed by the small ball of energy that the souls were.
They worked tirelessly and before long their shift was over – and so was their work.
All the souls that needed collecting had been led to the néant.
And the team had assembled back in the mess hall to have their evening meal.
Happy was feeling much better now, after having spent the whole day busy with work. It had felt good to be above ground, feeling the breeze ruffle his hair as he came to and fro the vortex. The soft glows of the souls had been a good way for his balance to return.
They were silent, wiggly clouds that floated beside him as he flew above the desolation, as he crossed one of his friends who was equally accompanied.
Happy sat at the rough stone table, his tray filled with a big serving of fish and waiting for his friends. They seemed to be taking their time to get to their table and Happy sighed. Well, a new day was done.
Thankfully it had gone better than the previous set of shifts. They still clung to his consciousness. He just would never feel comfortable being stationed in tribus, that he knew.
His friends were too slow and as they got to the table Happy was about to get up and leave. Time to get to his quarters.
"Happy," a voice called, coming from a sconce that just opened in the wall. "Come."
Happy looked at his friends before squaring his shoulders and heading to the darkness of the sconce.
You have a new mission.
A/N: Written for the FT big bang on tumblr.
A big thank you to Selenba for the amazing art (I'll update this).
To mdelpin and becausesin my deepest thanks for the beta. Though the remaining mistakes are all mine.
Go read the other big bang entries, I guess?