Here is the story you have all waited for, The Tale of the Magisterium Soldier! Unfortunately, it will be short- I plan for it to be about five chapters long- but I hope that it will encompass the major points I want it to. Read it, and tell me what you think about it, because this tale is very close to my heart, and I'd like to see if it touches others the way it touched mine (my futile attempts at sentimentality seem so comic… oO)
Disclaimer:I claim only the characters, and I have attempted to create a setting that is believable in the world I am setting it in (which was created by Phillip Pullman in the His Dark Materials trilogy.)
Part OneI wanted to fight; I wanted to be the famous hero of the Church. But when I was a child of twelve, it seemed like nineteen- the age you had to be if you wanted to join the Magisterium's forces- was millions of years away. My mother and father were firmly against the idea of me going off to kill people, because they were truly pious people, and if they hadn't met each other, they would have gone on to become a nun and a priest. They tried to raise me as a spiritual child, but the Masses we would attend daily were so boring that I would fall asleep, and when I was allowed to go out and play, I would play War with my fellow urchins.
The only things that I can remember from attending Mass was that the Authority could be very vengeful, and that he had lots of wars fought in his name. But those two images- an angry Authority in the heavens and a bloody battlefield where the soldiers were martyrs- they stayed with me throughout my childhood, and will likely stay with me for the rest of my life, even though it's likely to only last a few minutes longer.
I can't die yet- I need to tell you of my past, don't leave just yet- oh please, don't go. You'll stay? Thank you, I shan't take much more of your time. My childhood was the trigger for all of this, my medals there on my chest, the death of my dearest love, and my blood and guts spilled all over the grass here.
"C'mon, Arrio! Let's play Commander Aloysius an' Lord Moned!" called my friend Delwin. I was halfway out my window, and knew that any moment Mother could come barging in, ordering me to get inside, telling me that I couldn't go outside except for Masses for a month. But that didn't stop me. Not even my dæmon Natalya could stop me.
"I'll be out in a minute, Delwin!" I shouted back. Natalya shifted from the shape of a nervous meerkat to the form of a sleek falcon as I swiftly threw my rope of knotted sheets out my window. A quick shimmy down this creation allowed me to reach the rain gutter, and Natalya flew the sheet-rope back into my room. Then I climbed the rest of the way to the ground and caught the long stick Delwin had thrown to me.
"I wanna be Commander Aloysius this time, Arrio, 'cause last time you got to be him," Delwin proclaimed, brandishing his stick.
"Sure, Winnie!" I said, calling him his sister's name.
"Don'tchoo be callin' me that!" he shouted. I just laughed at him. "Fine then, we'll fight an' I'll win an' be Commander Aloysius!"
We whacked at each other with the sticks, landing hits, raising bruises, and filling the air with the sound of sticks cracking against each other. We would have continued for the rest of the day, but my mother discovered my escape and waved in our direction. "Arrio, young man, get in here right now, before I decide to come down there after you!"
I made a face, rolling my eyes, letting Delwin see, but not my mother before dropping the stick and running inside. "Coming, Mother!" I called.
"We need to go, Arrio," she said, magically at the foot of the staircase. "Your father and I are ready to go, and you're out playing barbarians with that no-good Delwin. Go fill your leather rucksack with clothes, grab a few books- no, I want you to bring all your schoolbooks as well as some of your favorite story books- and run out to the boat, where your father's waiting. Hurry now, boy, we need to go." I tried to pause and question her further about our sudden, unannounced impending departure, but she whisked me up the stairs, and I quickly did as she had ordered.
I somehow managed to get my bags down the stairs, and Mother helped me carry them out to the boat. Father quickly started the engine, and the smell of burning fumes filled the air. As we sped off down the riverside, I heard a whistling sound and whirled around in time to see a gyropter drop a large bomb onto the suburbs of the neighborhood where we lived.
"Mother, what's happening?" I asked, turning to look at her. But her eyes were filled with tears, and her body wracked with sobs. Then I looked at Father, who was standing at the controls, his shoulders shaking; his gaze was fixed on the great river ahead of us. "Father?" I asked, my voice choked with tears, for I felt the weight of a sudden sadness settle on my shoulders, as if I could never be happy again.
"Keep your head down, Arrio," he ordered. "The British Rebellion is trying to make war the Church of England. Don't worry, the Magisterium soldiers will win, and we will be able to move to London."
And thus was my first brush with the idea that the Magisterium's soldiers were invincible and mighty, always saving the country from ungrateful rebels. And when the British Rebellion was crushed, I informed my parents proudly that I wanted to serve the Church. Their mouths made round O's of surprise, and I still believe that they thought that I had decided to become a priest. I think they would have preferred it to what I announced next: "I want to become a Magisterium soldier!"
My parents sighed, and they looked at each other, disappointed. "That's a violent life, Arrio," my father said gently. "You kill people, and those who you kill may have powerful friends that will kill you."
"I don't care if they try to kill me," I proclaimed. "I'll kill them first."
"Arrio!" my mother cried, distressed. Her squirrel dæmon chittered angrily at Natalya, and Mother looked at me with disapproval in her eyes. "You go to your room this instant, young man. I don't want to hear another word about these violent desires!"
I ran out of the room, Natalya close on my heels. My bed had never looked safer. "Natalya, how old d'ya think we have to be to join the Magisterium's soldiers?" I asked rebelliously, fuming after Mother's scolding.
"Nineteen," Natalya replied, boar-shaped. "But I betcha that if you grow a beard when you're seventeen you'll be able to get in."
"I'm gonna run away, 'Talya. Gonna run away and be a soldier."
"And I'll be with you, and we'll be the bravest war hero commander and dæmon in the whole wide world," she said, supporting me, as I knew she would.
I sighed, and then climbed upon my desk. Knocking aside the wood ceiling panel in my way, I stuck my hand up and scrabbled around until my fingers found what they were looking for- a copy of Commander Aloysius's Life, written by Commander Aloysius himself. I reverently placed it on the desk and tried to peer into the dark space where it had been hidden. Natalya helpfully switched into the form of a small albatross, and managed to lift me the rest of the way up. I looked around, and the light pouring through the cracks and spaces in the paneling caught against something dark and metallic.
I grabbed it and pulled it closer to me. "Natalya…" I whispered shakily. "Is this what I think it is?"
She lowered me to the desk and shifted into the form of a curious marmoset. "My God, Arrio. Where'd you get that?"
"It was in the ceiling. How'd'ya think it got there?" I asked, climbing into the chair, laying the discovery carefully on the desk next to the book.
"I dunno. Lock the door, quick, so your parents won't see you with it," Natalya said. "Is it real?"
"I think so," I replied before locking the door.
It was a pistol. A ten-chambered pistol, a type made only for the rebels, and the Magisterium destroyed every single one that it could find. They were illegal for some reason, and I had a feeling that our new home once was something more than just a home. I lifted it, and found it both heavy and light at the same time. Spinning the chambers, I managed to trigger the spring that allowed you to add ammo into them. There were ten bullets already in there, with ten more back-up bullets loaded in behind them.
"Natalya!" I said. "Shift into something small and good with dark spaces and look for more stuff up there!"
She nodded, and I stood on the desk once more, carefully avoiding the book and pistol, in order to give Natalya more room to move around without stretching our bond. As I waited impatiently for her to return, I eyed the door warily. Finally Natalya returned, and produced her discoveries- packs and packs of bullets for the pistol as well as a holster and a cleaning kit.
I took them all from her quite greedily, and laid them out on the desk once I had clambered back to the floor. "How do you think they got there?" I asked Natalya.
"I dunno. Some Rebels prolly used this house as a hideout back during the Great British Rebellion," she said, reiterating her earlier reply as well as voicing the idea I had thought of earlier.
"Maybe they'll come back for them!" I cried excitedly.
"We shan't be able to give this stuff back to whoever comes looking for it, 'cause they'd have to be Rebels to know about this stash," she replied.
And that's when I heard the footsteps on the long staircase to the upper floor, and I knew exactly where those footsteps were coming from. Natalya helped me quickly replace the ceiling panel that I had dislodged, and I remembered just as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs that my desk was a roll top desk. Swiftly, I pulled the top down, leapt upon my bed, grabbed my Bible and opened it up at random. I had opened it up to the Book of Revelation and just managed to digest where I was when my father (I had learned to tell who was coming up the stairs by the way the stairs creaked under the weight of whichever parent that was coming.) knocked upon my door.
"Arrio?" he said. "Can you come open the door for me?"
I mentally cursed myself for forgetting to unlock the door, and Natalya switched into her most innocent and expressionless form- a vibrant dragonfly as I opened it. "Yes, Father?" I asked.
"Why was your door locked?" he asked me, stepping into the room.
"I wanted to read my Bible without being disturbed, sir. I figured that maybe Mother would like it if I managed to memorize some new passages," I lied smoothly.
"What passages did you manage to memorize?" he asked, trying to see if I was telling the truth.
"Revelations chapter nine. Would you like me to recite anything from it for you?"
"Verse twenty two, if you please, " Father requested.
"But Father," I said. "There is no verse twenty two of Revelations chapter nine."
Father grinned. "I was just testing you, son. I wanted to make sure that you weren't lying to me. Why don't you recite verse seventeen?"
I nodded, and without hesitating began, "'And this was how I saw the horses in my vision: the riders wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur; the heads of the horses were like lions' heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths.'"
Father smiled slightly, pleased. "Very good, Arrio. I shall tell your mother to make chicken-kettle-pie for supper. She'll be pleased to hear that you've added to your studies." He left, taking care to shut the door quietly, and I flung myself across my bed.
"I thought we were dead," Natalya said. "How did you remember all that?"
"Simple," I said. "I memorized it back during the Rebellion, hoping that the Magisterium could fulfill the prophecies. Mother never knew, because she hates the Book of Revelation, because it is so depressing and violent."
I walked over to my roll-top desk as Natalya flicked into the form of a lemur, and I pushed the top out of my way. "Do you know if there are any loose floorboards?" I asked her.
"I checked a long time ago. There aren't, but there's a huge space inside the headboard of the bed," she replied. "Large enough for all this stuff we've found." She gently pried open the headboard and I saw that there was a large space heavily insulated, large enough for our booty indeed. Quickly, we managed to place all our discoveries inside, and a quick trip to the pile of moth-eaten blankets provided a helpful cover upon which I placed the book on Commander Aloysius and other books that I read for pleasure.
After I had replaced the panel hiding my treasure trove, Natalya and I went over to the window. I could see the local children out at play, and I wanted to join them. "Why don't we go out and play?" I asked Natalya. She grinned, and we ran downstairs, and a quick word to my mother freed us to go out and play.
I hope you've liked the story so far- no, the next chapter isn't so boring, and Arrio is several years older in it, so you won't have the cute little boy that you had in this chapter. I made this chapter a bit longer than I have made the chapters in my other story, but I think this might be the shortest one in this story… mwahaha- you'll suffer from my long chapters. Review, please. I think I will require at least one review a chapter to keep it going, I just wanna hear what you guys think… I really feel unloved at the moment, and reviews would make me happy! (you must make me happy, or else I will be sad oO)