Thousand Year Sword: Part 9.01: Soul Quest Begins

    Beyond the Hills of Hecate, beyond the desert of Sardia, beyond the plains of Golmon, there is the forbidden valley; a vast area spanning hundreds of miles on the Eastern Continent of Midgarda. A massive opaque energy dome covers the valley, at each of four ends there is a temple that pokes out from the dome. A white temple on the east side, a black temple on the north side, a blue temple on the east side, and a red temple on the south side. It is rumored that these are ways into the valley, however each is filled with monsters of such strength and ferocity that none dare venture too far inside the massive temples of unknown stone. It is said at the center of each temple there is a monster of godlike power.

 

    ******

 

   No one knows for how many generations the Soul King has ruled, nor for how many generations the land of Manatosh has been encased in the great dome. The faith of the land, headed over by the Soul King, says that in ancient times there was a great war fought between angry gods, demons, and humans who wielded the forbidden power of magic, forbidden to mortals that is. The Soul King at that time created the five temples, the black temple of the tortoise, the red temple of the phoenix, the blue temple of the dragon, the white temple of the tiger, and the purple temple of chaos that rests in the center of their circular nation.

 

   This is a world where death rules, death does not belong to the living, but to the Soul King. When one dies, for any reason, the bodies are retrieved by the black robed and metal winged Reapers to be taken to the nearest temple. There the bodies become servants of the Soul King for all eternity, skeletal knights, zombies, ghasts, ghouls, or transformed into a completely inhuman form of some thematic guardian beast. There is no time to mourn the dead, the populace are desensitized to the whole affair from an early age. The dead are used not simply as enforcers of the Soul King’s laws, but as the farmers, the laborers, and all physical jobs. Simply to be a merchant or a doctor requires intensive training and regulations under the tutelage of a Lich; for upon death those that take up these practices are granted the memories of life and become a Lich themselves. For most who die their souls go to the Far Sphere, the eternal paradise that the Soul King promises, kept in his own palace. Those of faith who pilgrimage to the palace upon the Day of Souls may bear witness a window that shows the souls of their loved ones in the Far Sphere, and reminded that the dead that walk are not their loved ones, but merely their earthly vessels being put to use.

 

     All is not as it seems, the undead are not silent in the night, other things wander free in the forests and among the houses in the dark. All are ordered to be inside at night or else the fiends may get them. The undead guards wander the streets at night, it is said to safeguard the towns from fiend attacks. But Lukatara knows what he saw, one night when he was a small boy his mother had come home late, and despite the law against it, he peeked outside as his mother ran for the door. A shadow fiend, the things one saw hiding in dark corners of the forest leaped forth and attacked her. No one would answer her screams and pleas for help. The undead guards came and surrounded the scene, they did not help however. No, they tore into her themselves, the shadow fiend was only holding her down. As the zombies ripped into her something else came, something his young mind couldn’t describe, it seemed to be made of the shadows themselves, but different from the Shadow Fiend. Like it was covered in eyes and mouths filled with fangs, it struck in an instant like a whip, gobbling up his mother, along with the zombies and the shadow fiend. The entire scenario was beyond his comprehension and defied what he had been told to believe on a number of levels.

 

  Lukatara couldn’t tell anyone what he saw, for to break the dark laws was punishable by banishment from the dome into the wilderness of soulless evil beyond. He trained in secret, using a wooden sword he made, he was young and foolish, he didn’t know what he could do, but he had to do something.

 

    ******

 

   Lukatara is now sixteen years old, a strapping young man if a bit thin. He is a bit of an outcast, he hates the undead guards, refuses to pay respects beyond the minimum required by law under penalty of having the state given home and provisions taken away, and he likes to walk, he likes to travel by foot everywhere. He has learned something, noticed what no one else seems to notice; that the dead greatly outnumber the living. The dead roam the countryside while the living are kept in houses in uniform looking square towns with the same fences around them that he is ostracized for jumping over.

 

    It was on one his walks up an orchard hill on a day too hot for the zombies to be out, and too soon in the season for them to be picking that he saw the thing that changed his life. He was up there enjoying the flowers and the sight that no one else seemed to even want to enjoy when he looked over the town and a nearby meat farm, a place where animals were raised to be butchered for human consumption. The farm and the town looked exactly the same from up there, the same layout of pens too houses, the fence, the streets too dirt paths, even the people and the animals from this high up were nearly impossible to tell apart. That is when it hit him, the dead bodies that are taken away can’t all become undead, after the countless centuries they would be buried in dead layered on each other, the things from the temples don’t really resemble the dead either…they are food. Some turned into undead, others just eaten. He never saw his mother’s body as a zombie, nor his father’s, and in fact in all his life only once saw one that was identified as his great grandfather’s second cousin. Sure they were spread out and some just skeletons, but still, so few new ones, and he’d seen all the same old ones, minus the small group that vanished when he was younger, his whole life around town.

 

    “fight” comes a small woman’s voice.

 

   Startled Lukatara looks around and sees a small purple ball of light.

 

   “A fiend…” starts Lukatara.

 

  “Silly,” giggles the light, “I’m no fiend, I’m a fairy.”

 

  “Wha…what’s a fairy?” asks Lukatara.

 

  “You people in this meat locker really are sheltered aren’t you?” asks the fairy.

 

  “A fairy,” she continues, “is a magical being with great powers, but has many complicated rules controlling our actions.”

 

   “what…do want from me?” asks Lukatara.

 

  “what you want,” says the fairy, “I could sense you, your heart’s desire, your mind freeing its self from the Soul King’s shackles. I watched you, you are the one to free this land.”

 

 

   “How…how could I do that?” asks Lukatara, “I only have a wooden sword, sure I beat some fiends but…”

 

   “The sword of power,” says the fairy, “the forbidden blade of Maletech, made from a sliver of the Ancient Dragon’s talon, it is lighter than wood and can slice through any metal and stone without ever dulling the blade, held only by a sheath made from Maletech’s own scales.”

 

   “wow,” says Lukatara, “um…two questions…”

 

   “sure,” says the fairy.

 

  “where is it?” asks Lukatara, “and…what’s a dragon?”

 

  “A dragon is a winged reptilian monster,” says the fairy, “well not always winged, but always magical, the ancient ones were equals to the gods. Maletech chief among them. With that power you could free so many, return the dead to their proper rest, for you see it’s even worse than you imagined. Your people are not merely food for the undead, with some turned into them, your souls are what power all the undead, kept trapped by the Soul King in his Far Sphere, it is not a paradise, it is a maddening hell for all trapped within”

 

   The fairy pauses, “the sword is an ancient forgotten relic from a time before your ancient tales, a legend to those whom you may regard as mere myth. Deep in the dark waters forest, there is a stone shaped like a skull, inside is a labyrinth, at the center is the sword. I will lead you there, but you must fight the fiends.”

 

   “If I need the sword to fight fiends…” starts Lukatara.

 

  “I will assist you all I can for now,” says the fairy, the light pulsates as though straining and a small violet crystal is produced.

 

  “take this,” says the fairy, “it is a mana crystal,”

 

  He picks it up and it vanishes into his skin like a strange otherworldly mist.

 

  “Concentrate,” says the fairy, “when holding your sword, and it shall be infused with spirit power. This will allow you the most basic power to defeat the weaker monsters that dwell in the forgotten ruins.”