Hello, just a few notes before we get started. "Spirits of the Past" is an excellent full-length anime movie originally titled "Agito the Silver-Haired"...no, wait, that's a different Spirits of the Past. This one is a fan fiction centered around one version of the central hero character from the Guild Wars series. Rather than portraying events from the game, however, I'm dividing the story between events before the game proper started, and set considerably after. As a general rule, odd-numbered chapters (such as this one) will be set in the past, and even-numbered chapters in the future, although there may be specific exceptions - those will be noted in these, well, notes, as well as in the place-and-time crawl at the top of each chapter.
A couple more thoughts on why I am writing this piece - they say that the only way to improve your craft as a writer is to write, and they're right, whoever they are. To that end, I appreciate honest criticism of my work, especially of things like writing style, word choice and sentence structure, et cetera. Commentary on things like characters and overall plot are also appreciated, although generally speaking saying "So-and-so isn't like this in the game!" isn't helpful. If nothing else, piping in to say "Hey, I read this" is always fun. I do ask that any feedback be courteous in tone - saying my writing is rubbish is perfectly acceptable, saying I am rubbish is not, and I will trust you to understand the distinction. I can be reached by leaving a private message here, or by email at . I look forward to hearing from you.
~~~ Chapter 1: Ancestral Spirits ~~~
Strait of Malchor, the Bay of Sirens, Tyria
1562 (Canthan Calendar), Season of the Scion
Kasumi sat cross-legged on the meditation mat in the cramped cabin and concentrated, focusing her mind as the instructor from the monastery had taught her. One by one, she pushed away her outer senses. She closed her eyes, and the cramped cabin around her faded into darkness. She closed her ears, and the howl of the rising gale quieted to silence. She focused farther and pushed away the taste of the morning's ration of rice, and the mixed scents of tar and aged wood and the unwashed sailors. She felt the whisper of silk and the rough straw mat and the rougher wooden boards beneath her, and these too she pushed away, leaving her in stillness.
"To master the outer world, one must first master the inner world." That was what the instructor had said. Her name was Quin, and she taught at the great monastery on Shing Jea island. For a fee, her parents had hired Quin to tutor young Kasumi in the art of meditation, the beginning of the study of magic, while they summered on the island and waited for the autumn trade winds.
That was what the instructor had said, and "Stay in your cabin, Kasumi" was what her father had said, and so she sat in her cabin and contemplated the inner world as the storm built around the ship, heaving now from to and fro as the waves whipped higher in the gale despite the wind finder's best effort to calm the raging elements. So she sat, and focused, and pushed away the ship and the sea and the storm, and gradually she became aware of another presence in her tiny cabin. Her eyes snapped open. "You must always be watchful, Kasumi" was what her parents had said, before, and young Kasumi was nothing if not dutiful. The room was empty.
Again Kasumi closed her eyes, and pushed away the sound of the gale, the taste of the rice, the smell of the sea, and the feel of the deck, and again she felt a presence with her. With her, and yet somehow terribly, terribly distant. Distant, and yet oddly familiar. Familiar, and somehow comforting.
"In times of trouble or sadness, the ancestors will be there to guide and comfort you." That was what great-grandfather had said. Great-grandfather had been very old, and very wise. Great-grandfather had died last year, while Kasumi and her parents were away.
Kasumi could remember the worry in her father's voice, and the frantic activity of the sailors as the sudden storm arose around them. Kasumi was young, but she was old enough to be afraid. She thought of great-grandfather and reached for the comforting presence, and the presence spoke.
"Can you see me, child? Can you hear me?" That is what the presence said, and eyes tightly closed, young Kasumi nodded, and she knew why she had thought of great-grandfather. "I can hear you, sousofu," she said, and then she thought that perhaps the spirit could not hear her across that terrible distance between them, not if she spoke the words aloud. "I can hear you, sousofu," she said again, this time in her thoughts, in the inner space she had created by pushing the outer world away.
"You must find the captain." That is what the spirit said. "You must tell her," and the spirit whispered something to young Kasumi across the distance between them.
She nodded. "I will," she thought at the spirit. Kasumi was nothing if not dutiful.
"Go now, souson," the spirit said, and it seemed less close now, less comforting. "Remember that the ancestors are watching over you."
Kasumi was alone in the tiny cabin once again, and her great-grandfather's words held firmly in her young mind, she opened her senses. The wind was roaring, now, and the ship pitching violently back and forth, but she had learned to walk a rolling deck before she learned to walk dry land. She reached for the cabin door and hesitated. "Stay in the cabin, Kasumi," was what her father had said, but he had also said "honor and obey the ancestors". After a moment's indecision, she opened the door and stepped through.
The ship was pitching violently now, back and forth, back and forth, and the shouted commands of the boatswain on deck struggled to be heard amidst the howling winds. A sailor rushed past, nearly running down young Kasumi in his urgency as she stepped forth from her cabin. She resolved to be quick, and to be cautious.
She made it nearly to the ladder before she was spotted by another sailor, he clinging tightly to a fixture against the roll of the deck. There was a moment's recognition in his eyes, and then another moment an older Kasumi would have recognized as calculation, weighing the life of a ship's passenger and the daughter of the ship's master against his own danger. "Shōjo!" he called out, and loosed his death-grip on the wall.
Kasumi ran, leaping to the ladder with a rabbit-like grace born of youth and desperation and a brief lifetime as much spent between ports as in them. She made it to the top of the ladder just as the sailor's heavy footfalls reached the bottom, one tar-stained hand narrowly missing her ankle.
The sea was a roiling cauldron of sound and fury, the deck rail-slick and treacherous, the winds as unpredictable as they were swift. Below on the maindeck, sailors rushed to and fro, drenched by rain and spray, lowering the great ribbed sails and fastening lines, a carefully synchronized dance amid the chaos of the storm. On the upper deck stood the captain, a woman whose lined face spoke of years in wind and salt-spray. The captain wore a long coat of reinforced leather, and bore a long straight sword in the style of land-locked Ascalon. She had been an adventurer once, and fought pirates and monsters and seen dragons. Kasumi had heard the sailors say so. She had wanted to ask the captain what a dragon looked like. "Do not bother the captain, Kasumi," was what her father had said.
Beside the captain stood runners, waiting to carry her orders to the boatswain and sailors below. Beside the runners stood the wind master, his hands weaving in complicated gestures, his brow furrowed with strain, his face salt-drenched less from the storm than his losing battle to keep it at bay. A wind master was an elementalist who could create a wind for a becalmed ship. She could also summon lightning and thunder, and talk to fish, and make a wind so strong she could fly. The sailors had said so. Kasumi wanted to talk to fish too. "Do not bother the windmaster, Kasumi," her father had said.
The bow of the ship lurched downward as it struck a large wave, and the deck beneath her shuddered and groaned. "We need to flood the rear compartments!" That was what the captain shouted as Kasumi reached the top of the ladder. The other man beside the captain hesitated a moment. This man was dressed in fine silk, a faint glow betraying its enchantment against the ravages of the storm. Like the wind master, his hands were smooth and uncalloused, the mark of a merchant rather than a tradesman. It was his cargo in the rear compartments, bolts of silk and sealed clay jars of Canthan spices bound for the markets of Lion's Arch. It was his cargo in the front compartments as well, and in the compartments in between, for the man was the ship's master.
The man hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Do what you must to save the ship," he shouted, and at a gesture from the captain two of the runners released the rail and staggered for the relative safety of the below decks. The ship's master took a half step closer and clasped the captain's arm, drawing the latter close. "Do whatever you have to. My daughter is on board."
The captain shook her head, her face grim. "These waters are treacherous in the best weather. In this storm? Pray to the gods we spot a cove. If they do not answer, you can soon take it up with them in person."
A cove. That was what her great-grandfather's spirit had said. Great-grandfather had also sailed these waters in his youth, smuggling rice wine and tiger skins into the ports of Kryta. The ladder beneath her shook as the sailor below started to climb, and Kasumi darted forward, almost slipping on the rain-slick deck and buffeted by the winds, which seemed to come from every direction at once. She reached the captain just as a great wave crashed against the side of the vessel, washing over the high deck, and wrapped young arms around the captain for balance against the rushing water. The captain took a half step back at the unexpected embrace and looked down, her eyes wide in shock. "What are you doing, child?!" she shouted.
At this the ship's master looked back, and as another wave neared the ship dove forward onto his knees, wrapping young Kasumi in his arms against the torrent. "Kasumi! I told you to stay in the cabin!" That was what the ship's master, her father, said.
"Both of you need to get belowdecks, now!" the captain shouted over the wind.
Kasumi's eyes opened wide. "No! I promised sousofu! He said there is a cove! I promised!"
"You spoke to grandfather?" her father asked in shock.
Kasumi nodded solemnly. "I closed my eyes like mistress Quin taught me and focused, and great-grandfather spoke to me. He said there is a cove." She paused a moment, her face scrunched in concentration. "He said it was north, and close. But the compass will say west."
The captain nodded, once. "The straits of Malchor play havoc on lodestones." She looked with skepticism at the ship's master. "Does she speak with the ancestors often? She seems far too young." Kasumi's father shook his head, still holding her tightly, and the captain sighed into the wind. "If we hit a reef instead, we're going down. But if we stay out in the open we'll get battered to pieces. I'd rather meet the gods having tried than not." The captain paused another moment, then grabbed a runner and gestured at the five sailors in the stern, struggling to hold the rudder true. "New heading! Bring us about!"
The captain looked down at the ship's master and his daughter. "It's in the hands of the gods now. But your daughter may just have given us a chance."