Chapter 1
Ruin. It’s the only word that can describe this disgrace of rock that was laid out before him. Nothing more than rubble lay for miles around, the earth scorched, blackened trees littered about, branches turned to boney fingers stretched towards the sky. Wastelands are nothing new to him, this land was just one more. One more notch on the belt, one more step, one more name on the list. Just another call from someone who needed a guide. As he “stood” upon the red clay, he took just a moment to remember what it felt like to rest on warm dirt with a blanket of shade from an elder Redwood tree. Of course, if he wished he could materialize a solid form, one of whatever size or shape he desired, but it took so much energy. Energy he had no desire to spend when he was needed elsewhere by a never ending promise.
Staying in place he closed his eyes, or where they would be if he had them, how does one see with no eyes to see from? He stopped asking questions like that a millennia ago, some things just are, it held no benefit to exhaust his mind running circles playing tag with technicalities. He focused on the call that brought him to the miserable landscape that stretched before him in the first place. It had been fairly strong, a clear beacon pulling at him. Now that he was here, it was still strong and seemed to be growing. Yet as he tried to pinpoint it, follow it to the source, it was muddled… fuzzy almost, like the air around him was filled with static. He spotted a faint silver glow off in the distance, the static he had felt initially was steadily mounting in pressure. He called to the soul strand, hand outstretched for it, as he tried to will it forwards.
It was approaching him slowly, like an old stray not quite ready to trust but so desperately craves it. The closer they come to him, the heavier the charge around him grows. An uneasy feeling settles in his gut, something is wrong here, and he can't quite put his finger on it… new was never good, not in his line of work. There were always a few calls that stood out from the rest, this was clearly going to be no exception. The air around him was humming now, vibrating with bounds of trapped energy. He reaches for the strand that called to him, now within reach, only for it to explode in his grasp. Startled, no, not startled, he was too old to be shaken by something unusual. A bust of light so bright it almost hurt flashed before him, overtaking his senses, the electric buzz around him finally exploding, if he had to breathe, the air would surely have been pushed from his lungs. Just as quickly as it came it was gone, a millisecond in time, in front of him now was sight he had yet to see before.
They came rushing by, all shapes and sizes, pouring into the air around him. So many dead, rushing around him as if he were stuck in a hurricane of lost souls. They were pushing, pulling, lashing out, confused and growing in number at a rate he had not seen before. The one strand, now hundreds, was a tangled web of fear, hunger, anger, desperation, and hopelessness… So many souls, so much pain, all colored in glowing shades of gray. He had encountered similar effects in times of great dispute between clans but never has it reached such a scale. Very rarely do things surprise him anymore; so many lifetimes, so many tragedies, but this was something else. Something terrible has happened here.
So many souls, so much pain, if he could sweat from the heat and pressure of them he supposes he might've been in that moment. The cluster still grows around him, spreading out, some bright and some dull, some new, some old, they flash around him. A slight brush against his shoulder, and a sense that someone else was there, goes all but un-noticed as he reaches out for the soul closest to him. With so many strands the choice was as simple as reaching for the one closest to him.