Notes: Hi, everyone, I'm back!^_^ This is the first chapter and prologue, obviously, rewritten and hopefully, improved. I realized as I was writing this story that my goal wasn't being accomplished: as the introductory tale to Upperworld, I had to build the world first, and I simply wasn't doing much world-building.^^;;
So here it is: chapter one of Yami no Oozora (Darkness of the Heavens is the English title). Now much shorter, with more explanations and even footnotes (I'm insane, I know), I hope this time around YnO does what it's supposed to.^_^; The footnotes are there mainly to explain things that would be awkward to explain in the story, or to generally inform readers about customs, traditions, etc. in Upperworld. So I do hope you read them.^^
The prologue is unchanged, btw, because it was the only part I liked from the old version.-_-; Pretty sad, isn't it? Ah, whatever. Go read.^_^
Standard disclaimers apply, FYI.
The darkness stretched on in all directions, curling
and wrapping around tall, wide-trunk trees.
For nearly anyone watching, the forest would have proved to be the least
welcoming piece of scenery. But for the
lone figure rushing frantically down the winding path amidst the trees, the
dark was a sanctuary.
Stumbling
from pure exhaustion, the figure staggered blindly to one side of the path, and
then crashed through the underbrush with no attempt at silence. His breath sounded harsh and too loud to his
ears, but he couldn’t help that. As the
stubborn branches snagged his clothing and scratched his face and arms, only
one thought crossed his mind.
Keep
running.
He
broke past a small wall of bushes and found himself in a clearing. The light of Beryllus filtered through the
few overhanging branches and their leaves, feathery in the dimness, shining
with particular clarity on the rough dirt ground. He stared for a moment, numbly, at the soft, serene light, his
face still obscured in shadow. Then,
with a half-sob forcing its way out of his throat, he whipped around to melt
back into the darkness of the forest.
“Where
are you going?” A quiet voice floated
from the clearing that had been empty of people mere seconds ago.
A
scream of pure undiluted panic tore past his lips. “NO!! No!!! Stay away!!
Stay away!” The figure broke
into a frantic run away from the clearing.
“Don’t
go. Our master requests your
service.” The same quiet voice
continued, unperturbed.
No
matter how hard he ran, he could still hear that voice, always right behind
him, relentlessly following. He tripped
over a protruding tree root and collapsed in a pathetic heap on the ground. “No no no…help me…” He mumbled, clutching at the grass and the
dirt.
In
almost no time at all, a wall of light slammed up from the forest floor,
slicing toward him and engulfing his prone figure. Then, as abruptly as it came, the light faded, taking with it the
immortal who had tried to escape.
Daitra’s
darkness took over the forest floor, obscuring any signs of intrusion. But the light of Beryllus danced softly upon
the silent treetops, flitting down once in a while, as if daring the forest to
reveal its secrets.
The Sentinel of Lost Souls leaned
back, sinking into his comfortable armchair, and crossed his legs
casually. His ruby-red eyes, gleaming
softly with some inscrutable expression, took in his surroundings with a
nonchalant glance, before settling upon the three points of candlelight in the
ornate, golden candelabra.
He had been in here for a very long
time, waiting. The room he waited in
was large, and though in reality not overwhelmingly so, its size was enhanced
by the sparseness of furniture. His
armchair, colored a deep, soft burgundy, was placed with its back facing the
only door; an identical piece sat directly opposite him, currently without an
occupant. That would be where the souls
were invited to sit, when they came.
Between the two armchairs was a low table, bare of all decorations save
the candelabra he had fixed his gaze upon.
The usual visitors to this room
would, if they were in the state of mind to notice, see a fireplace on the back
wall, the marble mantel gleaming with a pearl-like dullness—a fireplace never
used, for the owner does not need its warmth.
Or its light, for that matter, which is provided by the candles, fixed
to the walls in their holders, illuminating the room so clearly that it was unlikely
they were just ordinary candles. Thanks
to that very illumination, every detail of the wooden paneling gracing the
walls where they met the ceiling could be seen. Following the paneling around the top of the walls, a visitor’s
eyes would travel downward, and note with some surprise that there were small
paintings within elegant frames decorating the walls as well. Or at least, one would have to assume they
were paintings, for the subjects—whether landscape or portrait—could never been
seen. In the back left corner, an
old-fashioned oaken wardrobe stood. But
what its contents were, visitors never knew, and never asked, having of course,
more pressing matters to deal with.
The usual visitors to this room—the
ones he was waiting for—were the lost souls of mortals, who drifted to this boundary
between life and death, seeking guidance, vengeance, answers to their
questions. And he was here to provide
them with what they sought, being the Sentinel of Lost Souls.
The tiny flames on his candles
flickered merrily, in reality an extension of his own power, just like
everything else in the large room. For
a moment the Sentinel remained very still, eyes on the dancing flames, his mind
relaxed and floating elsewhere. The
room where wandering souls gathered was eerily silent.
Then slowly, without moving, the
Sentinel willed his power to spread, stretching from himself as the epicenter
and extending outward to the darkness beyond the door. His invisible energy swept around the
vicinity, probing and searching for a familiar feeling: the presence of a lost
soul. He found none, and within seconds
the Sentinel had gathered his power back within himself, where it lay quietly
like a smoldering fire.
The Sentinel sighed on a note which
hinted at relief, and then smiled. He
loved his work, but once in a while it was nice to take a break from listening
to bewildered, furious, or terrified mortals narrate their tales of woe. Once in a while, it was nice to just sit
here, and think.
The candlelight flared and dimmed
alternatively, dancing to a song of random patterns that he enjoyed, because it
was so soothing to watch. On a whim, he
pulled some fond memory from the recesses of his mind, concentrated, and sent
the images of that memory into the flickering flames. Almost immediately the fire on the center candle flared up, just
as the other two were extinguished, along with every other candle lighting the
room. Within the center flame, the
Sentinel saw his own memory rising out of the light burning yellow on the wick—
He
was floating a few inches above the ground, pointing to something far away in
the distance. His floating was an
attempt to compensate for the incredible height difference between him and his
companion, who was beside him, raising a skeptical eyebrow. The Sentinel within the flame turned to look
at his companion and said something with a teasing gleam in his bright
eyes. With a disdainful ‘humph,’ the
other glided forward, his long black cloak soundless upon the pebbly ground. The Sentinel shook his head, used to this
behavior, and hurried to catch up.
Behind him, two other immortals trailed along at their
own paces. One of them, her hair
glistening gold in the daylight, yelled out something excitedly and gestured
toward the distance with a slim hand.
Keeping pace beside her, a male immortal looked dubiously at his friend, shrugged,
and reached to straighten the deep purple robes he wore.
The Sentinel turned around toward them from up where he
was, and waved, calling out, “Come on!
We’re leaving you behind!”
Hearing that, they instantly—
The single flame on his candelabra
was abruptly snuffed out, plunging the room into darkness, as the Sentinel
straightened in his seat, frowning. He
could sense something—or more specifically, someone—moving toward the room, but
it was too fast, too certain, to be a mortal soul. His expression turned thoughtful, and in a second the room was
once more completely lit, every candle on the walls ablaze. The three on his low table burned steadily,
their dance muted.
By the time the visitor appeared in the
Room of Lost Souls, the Sentinel was standing beside his armchair, a careful,
but polite, smile on his face. “What a
pleasant surprise, Hermes.”
Hermes, an immortal who had a head
of glossy chestnut curls, bowed crisply and replied, “Indeed, Lord Sentinel.”
The Sentinel refrained from
commenting on how stupid he thought the honorific sounded in conjunction with
his name, but felt he had to try and get rid of the ‘Lord’ somehow. “Please don’t be so formal with me.” Hermes smiled, but showed no indication that
he was going to change his way of address.
Biting back a resigned sigh, the Sentinel switched the topic to a more
important one, “What brings the fastest messenger in Upperworld here?”
Hermes bowed again, closed his eyes,
and within a few moments produced a small, shimmering orb of light that floated
a few inches above his open palms. “An
epistle from the Lady Nemesis—Goddess of Vengeance, Chief Scourer, and Warden of Upperworld.”
The Sentinel raised his eyebrows,
“And she sent you?”
“Well,” Hermes suddenly looked
sheepish. “Technically I shouldn’t be
doing this, but… well, the lady is quite. . .persuasive.”
It was with a conscious effort on
his part that the Sentinel managed to keep his face straight. “I see,” he murmured politely, and reached a
hand out for the epistle. Hermes
released it, and the orb drifted over to the Sentinel, glowing and pulsing a
soft gold. It was Nemesis’ color,
Nemesis’ aura, so familiar that the Sentinel felt a small smile tugging at the
corners of his mouth just holding the epistle.
It had been a while, hadn’t it?
“Thank you, Hermes,” he replied with
a nod. “Did Nemesis ask for a reply?”
“No, Lord.” Hermes promptly answered. “The lady stated that all would be clear
when you unseal the epistle.” Well, at least he didn’t add the ‘Lord’ in
front of my name this time, the thought flashed by the Sentinel’s
mind. It’s a start.
“Very well,” he began absently,
intent on reading the message as soon as possible. But as he looked up to see Hermes staring rather wistfully at the
golden epistle, the Sentinel couldn’t resist just a little tease—“Exactly what did
Nemesis do to convince someone as busy as you to bring such a trivial
little note?”
Hermes started, averted his gaze,
then blushed as red as a boy, despite being an age-old immortal himself. “Well, I was unoccupied at the time. . .that
is, the Sages had nothing for me, so I thought, why not? I mean it was not as if. . .well, she did
say. . . .” He caught himself in the
midst of his rambling and stopped, his blush deepening.
The Sentinel strove to keep a
devious little smirk off his face.
“Seduced you again?”
“NO!” Hermes shouted, before he remembered whom he was talking to. “I mean, uh, No, my lord. Nothing of the sort. . . .”
“No need to be so uptight,” the
Sentinel interrupted. It’d slipped his
mind, how the messenger took everything so seriously. “I was only teasing.”
Hermes stared down at something apparently very interesting on the
floor, what was visible of his face completely red.
“May I. . .may I be dismissed?” He mumbled.
The messenger looked so utterly
miserable that all the fun of teasing him quickly evaporated; the Sentinel felt
rather sorry for him. “Of course. You may take your leave.” Gratefully, Hermes leaned forward in yet
another crisp bow, turned, and dematerialized out of the room. The Sentinel could feel the messenger’s aura
flit away, vanishing as Hermes left the realm between life and death. For a moment he stood, staring at the wood
grain of his door, before shrugging and turning his attention to the epistle.
The sphere glowed expectantly in his
hands as the Sentinel closed his eyes in concentration. He did a routine check for tight seals and
wards indicating the importance of the message, and found only one, a simple little
thing anyone could break. The flaxen
haired immortal opened his eyes and shook his head. Trust Nemesis to convince the most important messenger in all of
Upperworld to deliver what really was a trivial note. But then again, anything Nemesis asked,
Hermes would undoubtedly do: the Sentinel had rarely seen anyone so hopelessly
infatuated with her (most deeming the Goddess off-limits). A shame, really, that Hermes didn’t have the
sense of his fellows, that out of so many immortals he had to fall for Nemesis,
an asatyric.(1) What sort of feelings
must arise when the one you love is incapable of reciprocating? And now he was doing Hermes an injustice: it
wasn’t as if the messenger could help his own feelings…
The Sentinel cut off his own
thoughts before they went on long pointless tangents, and unsealed the epistle
with a quick exertion of will. The
golden orb’s light increased in intensity for a few brief seconds, then dimmed
and floated out of the Sentinel’s hands.
He turned, walked to his armchair, and sat down. The epistle floated after him, suspended in
mid-air above his little table, waiting until the Sentinel had found a
comfortable position. The instant he
looked up, the epistle changed.
The sphere expanded, stretching out,
up, and down, the dull golden color fading gradually as its shape grew more
complex. From this amorphous energy
mass grew the form of a slender woman, tall, with well-shaped limbs and finely
chiseled face. Her hair of gold spread
out, surrounding her head almost like a lion’s mane, before settling down upon
her shoulders, a soft halo of powdered light.
The woman floated there, eyes closed as if sleeping, while more color
poured into her, letting her seem more alive and less like an apparition. Finally, she opened her eyes, and smiled.
Seated in his armchair, the Sentinel
smiled back, even though he knew the imagus before him couldn’t see.
“Hello, Sentinel,” the imagus of
Nemesis began immediately. “I know
you’re all for word games and riddles, but I’m going directly to the point. Blossom season is beginning, and even though
this time the Sages don’t have any sort of Immortal Council planned, I thought
maybe you’d like to visit anyway.(2) We
all know you have a weakness for flowers, and there’s certainly a shortage of
them where you work.”
The Sentinel’s smile vanished as his
brows furrowed in thought. An
invitation to Upperworld? For fun?
“It’s only for a little while,
Sentinel,” the imagus sounded teasing.
“Surely you can curb your workaholic tendencies for such a short amount
of time. Anyway, come up after you get
this message; I have your rooms ready for you.
When everyone gets here, we can have a marvelous time enjoying
ourselves. See you soon!” And with that, the Nemesis’ imagus melted
away into strands of power that the Sentinel gathered back into the shape of a
sphere. He looked at the epistle
silently, Nemesis’ message reverberating through his mind.
Technically, he was not allowed to
leave this room unless the Sages informed him, through messengers like Hermes,
that his presence was needed in Upperworld, where most immortals reside. He had agreed to this arrangement when he
became the Sentinel of Lost Souls eons and eons ago, though the rule was, in
his case, more of a formality than a necessity. Time did not pass in the boundary. He could stay away for months and come back to find everything
just the way he left it. But he was,
and had been for a long time, treading on thin ice with a particularly
influential and powerful Sage. Such
breaching of rules would certainly give His Eminence an excuse for arrest,
whether time existed in his workplace or not.
The Sentinel sighed, brushing a hand
through his hair as he debated with himself.
He had actually broken the rule before, once. And that one time, he had been forgiven because his reasons for
disobedience overshadowed the crime.
His life, after all, had been in danger.(3) But now? Nemesis knew the
rule regarding immortals who worked outside Upperworld as well as he did. She would never invite him just because he
had a “weakness for flowers,” as she had claimed. There must be another reason, a deeper reason. He could feel, despite her flippant words,
that the Goddess of Vengeance was troubled about something—and he’d learned
very early on that Nemesis’ intuition was frighteningly accurate. He should go to Upperworld.
Except he could imagine how the
Decider—the Sage he had angered long ago—would say scathingly when he heard the
reason this time, “Instinct? You
came to Upperworld because her instincts told her that all was
not well? Really, Sentinel, I expected
better from you. Instinct is for
animals and mortals, not for us.” And
then he would be arrested, because Nemesis’ intuition, while more trustworthy
than most trustworthy things, would not serve as an adequate excuse for the old
greybeard…(4)
The Sentinel stopped himself again,
feeling his own frustration turn into very irreverent thoughts. He was starting to sound like Charon, one of
his colleagues—a realization that wasn’t all-together encouraging. The truth was he knew his own choice—he knew
the right choice. But the dangers:
discovery, then humiliation, then very likely the loss of his beloved duty,
and…
But all of that hinged on whether or not he would be discovered in the first place.
The Sentinel stood in one graceful movement, and the epistle in his hand shimmered as it vanished. Something was wrong with Upperworld, something Nemesis knew she could not handle alone. He would just have to risk discovery, using the tricks he knew and his friend’s assistance to keep hidden. The Sentinel cast a glance around the room, and as his eyes swept across the candles, the flames upon them extinguished. As soon as the last candlelight flickered out, he disappeared from the room as well.
* * *
(1) The immortals in Upperworld are categorized
by, among other things, whether they are satyric or asatyric. This is the broadest sort of category
because any immortal, regardless of power level, rank, or gender, has to
be either one or the other. Satyric
immortals are just like mortals in their passion and emotion. Asatyric immortals do not feel lust or
passionate love, which is why the Sentinel reflects that it is a shame Hermes
(who is obviously satyric) should fall for Nemesis, an asatyric.
(2) Nemesis refers to the Blossom Council, which
is mentioned in footnotes of the short story “Notes.” It always takes place during Blossom season, but the Sages,
rulers of Upperworld, do not hold it every immortal “year,” or cyclus.
(3) Because all non-canon Upperworld stories are
related, directly or indirectly, to each other, there will be oblique
references to events that happened earlier in the timeline of the immortals’
lives, just as we would remember things that happened to us long ago. Knowledge of what the Sentinel is referring
to is not necessary to the understanding of the current story.
(4)
“Greybeard” is a derogatory term for a Sage—especially one who is
old-fashioned, too conservative, and pigheaded. The insult is said to come from the immortal who founded Sagacity
Hall—in other words, the first Sage—not because he exemplified those characteristics, but because his most striking feature was a long,
silvery beard. (All the more striking
because immortals don’t usually sport facial hair.^_^) Can be used, by the way, with any Sage, regardless of whether or not they have beards.