No Rest for the Soul
Ch1: Beginning the next Great Adventure.
With a start he woke up in the middle of a grassy meadow surrounded by tall Hazel trees all around, similar to the ones back home, but this wasn't home, the forest were much thicker. He remembered everything that happened, right up until the Soul Reaper pressed the hilt of his sword to his forehead and all he could remember was the bright light and then he was in this forest, wherever it is.
He quickly padded himself down and saw that unlike his physical body he had no wounds and his clothes were also intact. He stood up to his full height of six feet and took full stock of what he was wearing. A sheepskin-leather flight jacket with his golden flight wings attached over the left breast pocket and flight trousers with a pair of well broken in black boots. "Well, at least I got to keep my uniform, but where the hell am I?" he mused to himself as he took a good look around.
There wasn't much to see, besides the thick woods and a solitary mountain to the west. As he looked north however he saw a number of thin grey columns of smoke rising up. Not the kind you'd see if they were regular forest fires, but the kind you'd see rising up from the chimneys of buildings in rustic villages.
He weighed his options, and decided to head in the direction of what he perceived to be civilization, plus he was also a little bit hungry. The trek took a few hours, and it was beginning to be dusk, so he stepped up the pace. Luckily there was a well travelled footpath that seemed to lead in the direction he wanted to go and soon enough he came out of the forest and the sight of a fairly large village came into view. The building were a mix of brick and wooden construction with a simple stone wall surrounding the perimeter.
However the village's most dominating feature was a tall castle that rose up from the northern point of the village that seemed to cast a protective feel over it. As he approached the southern gate he immediately noticed there were four guards there, wearing light chainmail-leather armour combinations with simple conical helmets on their heads with short chainmail wigs that looked to protect the back and the sides of the neck, covering their ears in the process, and were all armed with halberds, a long wooden shaft with an axe head topped with a sharp spike.
One of them spotted Thomas as he made his way to the gate. At first they seemed slightly curious and friendly enough until he came within thirty feet of them and immediately all four lowered their halberds into an attack posture.
"Halt! Identify yourself!" demanded the one that seemed to be in charge.
Thomas halted his approach and looked at them confused, which just seemed to aggravate the one in charge. "Identify yourself now, or you will join the reincarnation process before your time!" the same man demanded.
Thomas almost immediately put his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. "My name is Thomas Berisford, Lieutenant in his Britannic Majesty's Royal Air Force, and I only just arrived in this place. Can someone please tell me where I am?"
The four guards were weary of the newcomer in their midst, but suddenly a black butterfly flew up to the man in charge. His eyes locked onto the butterfly and he raised his right hand off of his weapon and extended his index finger. Immediately its tiny legs wrapped around it and its antennae began vibrating. The guard seemed to be listening to something coming from the butterfly, like a radio transmission, but Thomas couldn't hear anything, which continued to confuse him even more. Seconds later the butterfly let go and flew off and the guard immediately put up his weapon, followed hesitantly by the others.
"The lord of Avalon wishes to speak to you, stranger. Follow me!" the guard ordered curtly and Thomas merely nodded and began to follow him into the village, while another guard followed close behind him. The general liveliness he had heard as he approached the village was gone, replaced by both quiet curiosity and a little fear, which only served to confuse Thomas all the more.
I haven't done anything to these people. Why are they so afraid of me? Those guards looked friendly enough, but suddenly they considered me a threat. What is it with these people? And Avalon? I haven't heard that name since the time my mother tucked me into bed and told me those bedtime stories. He observed the village with a critical eye. This place does remind me of a medieval era town and the people match. Did I somehow get thrown back in time? No! I felt those bullets go through me, and I know that I nosedived into the ocean. I did die, and that guy in the straw hat told me he was sending me to a better place. This is heaven?
They soon came to the wide open main gate into the castle. It was set into the centre of an inward curving stone-block wall with high circular battlements at the ends of the walls and various slits for windows were set at two metre intervals in three rows along the walls. Arrow slits, he thought to himself. They walked through the gates, which upon closer inspection were made from the same type of stone as the walls with intricately carved wooden coverings. Decoration?
The wall was roughly five metres deep, but he soon discovered that the castle wall he just came through was only the first wall. The second one was another couple of floors higher, constructed with the same type of large stone blocks, but instead of being inwardly curved the walls were straight. On top of the battlements there were a number of soldiers that wore the same sort of getup as his escorts, but dispersed among the normal soldiers were a few people who wore the same kind of robes as the Soul Reaper who sent him here.
They quickly passed through the second set of gates, which again were at the core made up of the same stone as the walls, but this time were covered in steel with even more elaborate scrollwork inscribed into the metal itself. As they entered the castle proper the difference between the castle and the village it protected were in stark contrast. Where the village had a relatively well maintained lived in medieval wood and brickwork look to it, the castle interior was built up entirely of huge stone blocks which made up both the walls and the keep looked to be of white and black marble polished to a bright sheen. The keep itself was a tall square building with circular battlements at its four edges and a tall stone spire rose up into the sky from the centre of the roof.
Thomas looked almost in awe at the sheer beauty of the castle, and upon closer inspection of the keep's walls hinted of carved stonework, similar to the carving on the metal and wood coverings of the doors.
The guard following Thomas became a little impatient with waiting for him to get out of his daze and poked him in the back with the point of his halberd. "Keep moving!"
"Would you mind not poking me with the sharp end of that thing?" he asked heatedly, seriously tempted to just take the guards weapon. "That bloody thing is dangerous enough as it is."
The guard merely poked him a little harder. "Yes it is, and remember that I can still run you through with very little effort!"
Both anger and fear roared through Thomas's very being as he became extremely aware of the fact that the halberd's spike was dangerously close to his spine. Suddenly, without warning, a dark blue pulse of energy exploded out his back and propelled the antagonistic guard into a nearby wall which knocked the air out of him. The guard who was leading them turned back in surprise and raised his own halberd to attack.
"You're going to regret that!" he said before he charged at him with a yell and stabbed towards Thomas' chest.
Acting on pure instinct his body fell into the basic combat forms he was taught in basic training when he joined the RAF. He deftly avoided the guard's first strike by shifting himself to his right then used his left forearm on the shaft to push away the halberd and followed up with a punch aimed at the guard's nose, not noticing the faint blue glow that surrounded his fist. Before he even made contact something heavy began pushing down onto his back and stopped both combatants cold. The guard was forced down to his knees, while Thomas merely held his ground, feeling like someone just put a thirty kilo rucksack on his back, which quickly seemed to reduce in weight as he felt something, a sort of sense of both warmth and static electricity, power, well up inside him and looked around confused.
From out of the keep a tall man in robes and wearing a dark brown fur lined cloak with a silver fastener chain that went across his chest stepped out. Thomas' vision had gone slightly hazy, but he could still make out the slightly greying curly hair, moustache and beard and piercing steel grey eyes.
He looked at the two downed guards then focused his eyes on Thomas and cracked a small smile and a light chuckle. "I see that you have some strength in you, young one," he said as the pressure let up and Thomas felt the power inside him calm down. "Come into the keep with me, the others will see to their wounds," he continued as people in white robes, Medics? quickly went to the two guards aid.
Thomas followed the older man into the keep. The entrance hall of the keep was tall and ornate with circular supporting pillars that held the ceiling with intricate Celtic scrollwork worked into their surface. He followed the man up a circular flight of stone stairs that took him up from the ground floor to the first floor. They passed by a number of doors that went along one side of the building, until they came to a solitary door on the opposite wall which led to an expansive throne room. Alongside the walls were grey-white marble statues of various figures in various fighting stances, all wearing variations of the robes that the older man was wearing.
Thomas continued to follow him until the man stopped before the throne and turned back towards Thomas. "Welcome to Avalon Tower. I am Lord William Marshall, Lord of North Rukon District 30, Avalon."
Thomas could feel the aura of authority and command in Lord Marshall's voice and bowed his head in respect. "I am Thomas Berisford, former lieutenant of the Royal Air Force. Now, could you please tell me what this place is and why am I here?"
Lord Marshall returned the bow and sat himself upon his throne. "The Rukon districts, of which there are 160, with 80 districts in four directions, North, South, West and East. This is where souls come to live after their physical bodies in the Living World have passed away, like you yourself have done, and by your dress and prior affiliation you were a fighter pilot in my former homeland's service. This is merely the next step before your soul is ready to move onto the reincarnation process."
Thomas felt confused at the Lord's words. "And the power that I felt and used today?"
Lord Marshall smiled kindly. "That was the unconscious manifestation of you own spiritual energies, unrefined and barely controlled. If your fist connected with your target you would no doubt have killed him if I hadn't stepped in when I did."
Thomas' stomach felt a cold fear grip his heart at what he had almost done. "Do not worry. One of the duties as a Lord is to seek out people such as yourself and teach them the basics of how to control their abilities. A few go on to the Spiritual Arts Academy and become Soul Reapers. Some become my apprentices for a time, though I have only found a few worthy pupils."
"What is exactly a Soul Reaper's job?" Thomas asked.
"A Soul Reaper's job is to protect innocent souls from hollows, those are souls who have lost their heart and feed upon other souls to fill that void. They also purify hollows so that their souls may move onto the Soul Society. Soul Reapers are also meant to find lost souls and make sure that they move on so they may either come here or they move further along into the reincarnation cycle."
Lord Marshall rose up from his throne and began to walk along the statues. "These fifteen statues are of those students that I trained personally in my three hundred years as a Soul Reaper Lord. Each of them rose high in the Soul Reapers ranks and all of them acquitted themselves well. Three of them became Captains and Lieutenants of their squads. Sadly none of them are around anymore," he said as he walked by three particular statues.
They were of two men and one woman. One man had short spiky hair with an open robe that bared his chest with the number 69 on it and had a scowl on his face, as if daring anyone to take him on. The second had long flowing hair with a lethargic smile on his face, in complete opposite to the first. The third was of a young woman who had shoulder length hair done up in a pair of braided pony tails and wore elliptical spectacles over her eyes with a stern expression on her face.
"Kensei Muguruma, Rose Otoribashi and Lisa Yadomaru. They all trained under me before they left for the Academy. All three were strong and powerful, but were victims of circumstances that were beyond their control. You have the same potential as these three students of mine had when they first started. Will you learn to control your abilities, or do you wish for me to seal your powers so that you do not cause unintended harm to those around you? Choose carefully!"
Thomas looked up and down the two rows and statues and contemplated on his options. He always wanted to serve something greater than himself, and from what he had seen of what that Soul Reaper who sent him here could do, such as walking on air, appealed to him as a flyer. On the other had he had experienced war up close and personal and wasn't sure if he really wanted to throw himself into the fire again.
He turned back to Lord Marshall and nodded. "I will learn from you. Just tell me one thing first. Can Soul Reapers fly?"
Lord Marshall could only chuckle at that. "After a fashion, but first learn the basics before you try. I should warn you, my training regimen is not for the faint hearted!"
"Can't be much worse than combat flying and pulling heavy Gs in a Spitfire," Thomas said cockily.
Lord Marshall let loose a cruel chuckle. "We'll see after a few months!"