As Alicia’s eyes slowly began to flutter open and the sunlight outside gently trickled down onto her face from an open window, she let out a sigh of relief. She was alive, and that’s all that mattered, to a point. She was tucked in neatly to a pearl-white bed, with soft cotton sheets pulled up to her neck, covering her resting body. As she slowly began to sit up, she took a look around the room, realizing that she was resting in some form of clinic. Whoever built the place very clearly was a huge fan of the color white, as the entire room was painted with it. The room itself was rather large, and there were numerous beds in two neat rows on either side of the room. To the left of each was a little nightside table, each of which contained a small clock, a glass of water, and a notepad. Directly beside her rested Miranda– Alicia was happy she was safe– and in the bed across from her was Sean. Directly next to his bedside was Jacques, his husband, who was brushing Sean’s messy hair out of his eyes.
“Oh, hello Alicia.” Jacques quietly said, turning his attention to face her. “Glad you’re awake. You’ve all been asleep for a good few days now.”
“Hello.” She sat up fully now, rubbing her head and groaning. It hurt. Quite a lot, actually. “What happened?”
“We found the three on the fish plant floor, with Puffs at your side. He’s alive, surprisingly. Whatever you used on him didn’t seem to kill him, just completely immobilize him for a few days.” Jacques told, standing up and walking over to Alicia’s bedside. “He’s going to be sent to prison for fraud, thankfully. Whatever deal he made with Sean didn’t seem to be entirely legal. So the fish plant is getting shut down soon.”
“Well, that’s good,” Alicia said, propping herself up with a pillow. Despite the fact that she’d been completely incapacitated the past few days, she was still completely and utterly exhausted, strangely. It was nigh impossible just to keep herself upright.
“Yes, it is.” Jacques finished, smiling softly as he knelt down next to Alicia. “You guys are heroes, you know that? All three of you.”
“I- well…” Alicia stammered, trying to be as humble as possible.
“No, I mean it,” Jacques interjected. “You two had zero reasons to jump in and fight for us as you did. It would’ve been easy to cut through here and let Sean handle things by himself, but you didn’t. Thank you.”
“Well, don’t mention it.” Alicia quietly shuffled in her bed as she spoke, looking at Jacques's face as he tried to hold back tears.
“All this for me, huh? I’ll tell you, Sean’s pretty resilient, but he’ll fight to the death for the ones he loves. I really wish he’d stop getting himself into trouble sometimes. Look at him, I get a tiny scratch on my head and he turns the whole town upside down to try and fix it. Still, though… I can’t say I don’t appreciate it. He’s reckless, but he’s sweet. He does it all for me, so I can’t get too upset…” Jacques quietly stated, before shaking his head a bit and clearing his throat. “Forgive me, I’m rambling again, aren’t I? I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to bore you.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” muttered Alicia as she tried to adjust to her surroundings. The adrenaline had long since left her body, and she was left with nothing but crushing exhaustion.
“Don’t push yourself,” Jacques calmly stated, standing up out of his chair. “You’re still recovering, you know. I wouldn’t want to lose a Soul Bearer.”
“Is that what they’re calling us now?” Alicia asked.
“It’s what they’ve been calling you for a few hundred years now,” Jacques replied.
shuffling in his seat a bit. “It’s traditional, after all. This whole thing is rooted very deeply in tradition, you know. That’s all it boils down to, as far as I understand. It’s a big honor.”
“Yeah, a big honor.” Alicia broke eye contact with Jacques, instead choosing to look at Miranda. She was bandaged a bit, but she didn’t look too badly hurt.
“Oh… did I say something wrong?” Jacques asked as concern began to wash onto his face.
“No, no. It’s nothing. I promise.” Alicia quietly murmured, forcing herself to look into his eyes again. “Thanks for coming over to check on me, Jacques. I appreciate it.”
“Well, it’d be rude if I just checked in on Sean, yeah? I felt like I should at least thank you.” He shuffled in his chair again and remained silent, occasionally clearing his throat. Alicia did the same, staying bundled up in her cloth sheets. After several minutes, a nurse walked into the room to call Jacques away. Visiting hours were over, it seemed. As Jacques was leaving the room, he slowly turned towards Alicia. “Hey… good luck, Alicia. On the pilgrimage and all.” As he finished, he slowly let himself out of the room, leaving Alicia to sit in silence for the remainder of her stay.
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The remainder of her time in the clinic was slow, meandering, and dull. The majority of it was spent sleeping, as there simply wasn’t much else to do, and she was completely exhausted. As time went on, she was able to watch Miranda and Sean slowly but surely get better. Sean went from being unconscious to being able to sit up, to fully able to move around just as he always had on the last day they were there. As soon as they were discharged from the clinic, Jacques clung to Sean tightly.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” he said. Sean just laughed and ruffled his hair a bit in response, making sure that Jacques wasn’t too scared. Once they finished, he stretched a bit and looked out over the Oscis skyline.
“Y’know, this is the clearest I’ve seen the sky in quite a while.” Sean sighed and outstretched his arms, letting the sun slowly shine upon his large figure as he closed his eyes. Jacques quietly did the same, followed by both Alicia and Miranda. “Thanks, kiddos.” Sean finally said, after a few minutes of basking in the newfound sunshine.
“Well, thank yourself, too,” Miranda responded, putting her arms down. “I couldn’t have done anything if you didn’t give me that knife.” Sean smiled a bit and rolled his eyes, in an attempt to be modest.
“You’re better with it than I thought you’d be, in all honesty. Didn’t even stab anyone. I’m impressed!” Sean leaned up against the rickety building that held the clinic, which was risky, considering it could probably collapse at any second. Oscis still had a lot of rebuilding to do.
“I can stab people if you want me to.” Miranda raised her eyebrows and smirked, seeming very intent on the idea of homicide.
“Miranda, no. We talked about this.” Alicia sighed a bit and just let Miranda chat about whatever she wanted. She’d learned better than to attempt to corral her, at this point. “Well… I suppose we’ll need to be leaving soon, right? The Elder said we need to head to Mistwood, didn’t he?” As she finished, the other three went mostly silent, shuffling around awkwardly.
“Oh, yeah. I suppose you do need to leave, huh?” Sean responded, lowering his arms and resting them at his sides. “Well… you mind doing me a favor before you go?”
“Yeah. What’s up?” Alicia asked, curious as to what Sean was about to have her do. He hadn’t exactly asked much of her in their time together.
“Well, I want to train you a little bit. You’re gonna run into a lot of nasty people, you know. Much nastier than Puffs. You’d do good to have a little bit of soul training under your belt.” Alicia sighed with relief as he offered, before quickly agreeing. She was in DIRE need of proper training. Sure, she used her powers once, but both she and Sean knew that she’d need a decent bit of practice before she could use them consistently. “Good!!!” Sean clapped his hands and danced around a bit, causing Jacques to quietly laugh behind him. “Meet me at the far edge of the lake in an hour. That’s my training spot. I’ll do all I can to help you before you set off, alright?”
“You got it, Sean,” Alicia responded, watching him excitedly run to his house to get his training supplies. After he came out, he gave an extremely enthusiastic wave to Jacques, before running off. Upon looking over at Jacques, his cheeks were very clearly burning red.
“Does he embarrass you or something?” Miranda asked, crossing her arms.
“Oh heavens no,” Jacques responded, snapping himself out of the trance he was in. “Just, well, he can be a little too enthusiastic sometimes. He likes helping people out, so humor him a bit, alright?” He looked at Alicia with a smile as they watched Sean run around the lake to his destination.
“You should follow him, Allie,” Miranda said. “Seems like he wants you to, at least. You’ve seen him fight, he’s not gonna want to wait an hour.” Alicia rolled her eyes a bit at her comment, but she was right, after all. Sean was– to put it loosely– very enthusiastic about fighting. Alicia still couldn’t get the mental image of him swinging on the sprinklers like a monkey out of her mind.
“Alright, alright. I’ll be on my way, then.” Alicia gave Miranda and Jacques a gentle little wave as she began to trek across the hills that surrounded the lake, following Sean’s massive footprints in the grass. The thick smog that covered most of Oscis was mostly beginning to fade away now, being replaced with a gentle breeze that cast itself over the hills like a wispy blanket. As she approached Eternity’s sheer edge, she found Sean, sitting atop a relatively low hill with a sword on his lap. Surrounding him were training dummies in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some were humans, some large animals, and some were bizarre-looking beasts that Alicia had never even seen before, much less heard of.
“Hello there!” Sean called out, standing up. “You’re here early! Suppose you’re ready to train, then!” Alicia gave a quiet nod in response as she walked up the hill towards Sean, the two eventually meeting at the halfway point.
“Well… I mean, you could say that, I suppose.” Alicia muttered. She was nervous, to say the least. She’d gotten lucky once, sure, but the odds hadn’t exactly been in her favor as of late, and she was terrified to see what the gods of chance had in store once she left Oscis. They must’ve been cackling to themselves already.
“Well then! Let’s get started!” Sean laughed a bit, before thinking. “Suppose I should ask this first. What exactly do you know about God Souls?” Alicia thought about that for a second. She knew the basics, everyone did. God Souls gave you increased power, whichever one you obtained during the ceremony was chosen for you by an ancient process, and if you used too much of their power, you’d die; but she didn’t know much more than that.
“Well… not much. Calarina was destroyed the day the Ceremony took place, so we never learned explicitly what a God Soul is.” Alicia quietly shuffled around as she admitted this to Sean. While the many nations of Eternity were very different in their social and political customs, almost all of them had the same general education system. From the ages of four to sixteen, each child is taught the absolute basics. Typically, this is known as General School or Gen-S. Each child is taught, very basically, how to read, write, do math, and the history of the various people and places around the floating island. Upon turning 16 and graduating from Gen-S, the Elder of your town, Kane in Alicia’s case, holds a ceremony in which each student is gifted the Soul they will have until the day they die. The process of selecting who gets which soul is typically an extremely secretive process carried out by the gods themselves. Allegedly, not even Kane, the oldest person in nearly all of Eternity, knew the exact specifications for Soul Selection. Regardless, upon being gifted a Soul, everyone would typically be enrolled in a two-year training program where they learn the basics of using it, before either joining the Military or picking up a skill and working in town. This, to Alicia’s knowledge, was the very basics of Eternity’s education system.
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“Hey, that’s alright! I wouldn’t expect you to be super skilled in all of this, anyways. You’re still a kid, after all.” Sean smiled and rested a hand on Alicia’s shoulder. “Well, think of it like this. Every living being on earth has a soul. It’s the purest essence of your being. Everything you believe in, everything you stand for, that’s all in your soul. Because of that, it’s an obscenely powerful thing. Thousands of years ago, some old guys in the Land of the Gods learned how to manifest their soul power, and over the next thousand or so years, they shaped it into specialized forms of magical power, unique to each of them.”
“So… it’s like selective breeding?” Alicia asked.
“Exactly!” Sean beamed, happy she was sort of getting it. “We, if you didn’t know, are humans. Human souls are significantly less powerful than God's Souls. But– and here’s the kicker– we’ve got a little extra room in the space where our Souls usually rest, to put it in understandable terms. Because of this, the Gods can take a little piece of their soul, and attach it to our soul. However… Well, our soul isn’t exactly super friendly to the foreign soul, and both of them tend to go into overdrive. That’s what our necklaces are for. To prevent us from dying due to excess power use, our necklaces act as power inhibitors. That’s why they always re-appear around our necks when we will them too. When we take them off, we can use the GodSoul at full power, to the best of our abilities. A clever piece of tech, no?”
“What exactly happens if you use too much power, Sean?” Alicia interrupted, somewhat worried about the people who used their souls frequently for daily work. His expression darkened a bit as he looked away from Alicia.
“Well, the necklace itself will always return around your neck after twenty-four hours, to prevent death by insolence. But there have been cases of people using far too much soul power in one attack… in that case, well, your soul rips through your chest and rejoins whichever God it came from.” Sean finished, looking at Alicia’s terrified expression. “B-but, that’s rare! So don’t worry about it! If you use God Souls safely, there’s virtually no risk at all, I promise.”
“Well, if you insist.” Alicia looked away from Sean, suddenly a lot more nervous about using God Souls as frequently as she was planning to.
“Hey, don’t worry about it, Alicia. I promise, if you’re reaching your limit, your body will tell you. It’s not something that you can trigger on accident. Now come on, let’s get to training.” Sean stood up and drew his blade again, causing Alicia to stumble back in surprise slightly. After a moment, she regained her composure and tore off her necklace, summoning her blade and pointing it at Sean. “Hey! You’re getting it!” Sean exclaimed, laughing like a maniac.
“Well… I guess I had a goal in mind this time.” Alicia responded, her sword hand shaking a bit. For the next several hours, the two trained as hard as they possibly could, sword against sword. Sean was an adept fighter, and he was pretty quickly learning that Alicia, in contrast, was not. That didn’t stop her from trying, though. A lifetime of monitoring Franklin’s experiments made her reflexes extraordinarily sharp, so she was able to block fairly well. Her problem often boiled down to her ability, or lack thereof, to fight back. Her sword was powerful, no doubt, but she could barely bring herself to attack Sean. She got in a few good hits, sure, but her ability to fight the guy was middling at best. After a moment, she just sighed and sat in the grass, feeling her necklace return to around her neck.
“Hey, it’s alright! You’ll get better, I promise.” Sean gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, before sitting down next to her. “You’re still new at this, Allie. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“But Sean, I don’t have time to prepare. I need to bring this soul to the shrines, and who knows what we’ll run into on the way. I don’t know why this stupid soul chose me, anyways.” Alicia just sighed and rested her head in her hands, messing with the jewel on her necklace. She wanted to fling it away from her body and watch it explode into a million tiny pieces. She knew she couldn’t, though. She was stuck with it, whether she liked it or not.
“The Gods are rarely ever wrong in their guesses, Alicia,” Sean responded.
“Well, I guess I’m the first.” Alicia miserably muttered.
“Listen, Alicia. You and Miranda charged into this town and flipped everything upside down in a single day. You liberated us from Puffs. That’s not nothing, you know. If what the legends say is true, Laius was the same way. Just because you can’t swing a sword, doesn’t mean you’re completely useless. I think you’ve got more guts than anyone in this town put together.” Sean looked out over the edge of the Island, the ocean below glittering in the sun’s warmth.
“Sean, why are you so kind to me?” Alicia asked. He paused a bit, before responding, thinking over his words as carefully as possible.
“Alicia, Inside each of us there’s a flame. This flame ignites the day we’re born and is extinguished the moment we die. Within all of us, our flame burns, giving us light, giving us warmth, and giving us the drive to move on. You see Alicia, this flame wanders. From person to person, creature to creature, each helping to keep the other lit. It’s in the flame’s very nature to keep others like it alive. After all… what’s the good of one weak flame in a cold, dying world?” He finished and looked over at Alicia’s confused expression. “I’m just trying to keep us all warm, that’s all. Guess it’s fitting that I got given the Soul of Temperature, no?” He laughed a bit, before giving Alicia a pat on the back.
“That was really profound, Sean,” Alicia responded, thinking about the flame he was talking about. It made a lot of sense to her, at least.
“Hey, don’t get used to it. Now come on, let’s head on back. I think you’ve done all the training you can handle.” Sean stood up and started walking back to Oscis before Alicia stopped him in his tracks.
“Sean, I know this is a lot to ask, and I don’t even really know how doable it is. But… well… would you mind coming with me on my Pilgrimage? You’re strong and good in a fight, and I feel like Miranda and I could use you.” Alicia shuffled around nervously for a bit after she finished, looking up at Sean with a tight smile, trying to come across as polite and not completely insane. Sean stared at her for a second, before a smile came across his own face.
“I thought you’d never ask, kid.” With just that little phrase, he turned around and began to walk back towards Oscis, no doubt running to tell Jacques the good news. Alicia stood there in disbelief. She took one last look at the glittering ocean below, rubbing the jewel on her necklace. For the first time since she’d gotten it, she felt more at ease about Laius’ soul being in her body. Before she knew it, she was making headway towards Oscis again, a bit more of a spring in her step.
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“Excuse me?” Jacques expressed, shocked at Sean’s recent proposal.
“C’mon, Jacques! It’ll be fun! Alicia needs some company, and we could both use a break from this tiny little town. It’s been ages since you last wandered the world!” Sean was excitedly bouncing around, causing Miranda to snicker a bit behind him.
“I wouldn’t mind having you two bozos on the team. You’re both entertaining as hell.” Miranda leaned up against the wall of their house as they argued, twirling her knife in her hand.
“B-but, Sean, let’s think about this. The people here need someone to deliver the fish and repair the streetlights. Besides, who’s going to take care of your garden if you’re gone?” Jacques was protesting now.
“Well, I can get the lady next door to take care of the garden. And it’s not like this Pilgrimage is going to take all that long anyways. We’ll only be gone for a few weeks, at the most.” Sean continued to list his reasons before Jacques stopped him.
“Yeah. You’re right.” Jacques muttered. “Alright then, I guess I’ll go pack our things.” Jacques wandered inside their house, beginning to stuff clothes, food, and spare flasks of water in a leather backpack. Sean smiled and leaned against the wall next to Miranda.
“See Miranda? Once you-” Sean started, before being cut off.
“You need to help, love!” Jacques shouted from the inside of the house, causing Sean to scramble inside as fast as he could. As Alicia walked up to the three of them, they were just getting finished, and the sun was beginning to arc downwards in the sky.
“If this is what marriage is like, Allie. I can’t say I’m interested.” Miranda said, sheathing her knife in her belt. Looks like Jacques had made her a holster for the thing while they were waiting. “Gotta say though, Jacques is pretty good with materials. He whipped up this knife holster in like, an hour.”
“Marriage takes many forms, Miranda,” Alicia responded, watching as Sean and Jacques proudly marched out of the house with a bag in each hand.
“We made one for you guys, too,” Jaques said, placing a leather backpack into Alicia’s hands. Inside was nothing particularly special, but enough to get by; food, water, bandages and various other medical supplies, a knife, and a little bit of pocket money that the two managed to scrounge up. Jacques would be holding onto the majority of the funds, which Alicia was fine with. She did tend to overspend on raisin bread.
“Alright! Let’s get going!” Sean exclaimed, slinging his pack along his back with a cheerful little whistle. “The Mistwood forest is only a day’s walk from here. We’ll only need to camp for one night.”
“Wait! Don’t you wanna say goodbye to everyone, first? It’d be strange if you just left without saying anything.” Alicia asked, perplexed.
“Sean’s not one for tearful goodbyes.” Jacques explained, “I left a note on our front door explaining the situation, so if anyone wonders, they’ll figure it out fast enough.”
“Now let’s get going!!! It’s been ages since I last visited Mistwood!” Sean exclaimed, before speed-walking along Oscis’ main street, towards the entrance of the little town.
“Well, Allie. Let’s get on out of this fishy hell.” Miranda said, causing Alicia to nod in response. As they walked out of the great gate of Oscis and began to trek across the rolling hills towards the dense forest of Mistwood, the four of them felt a little tinge of sadness to leave the tiny hamlet behind. The further they walked, though, the less they felt it, and in time, they were laughing and joking with one another along the winding road to the forest.
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As the four of them ascended a rather large hill, they were eager at what they would find on the other side. Sean had said they were getting rather close to the Mistwood forest, and Alicia was excited to finally see what it had in store. She’d read about the wonders of it in Professor Franklin’s science books; fog that was so thick it could be woven into cloth, trees with leaves in every color of green she could imagine, apples the size of a newborn baby, and pumpkins so large you could make a house of them, but she’d never been to see it herself. Upon reaching the top of the hill, she was awestruck by the view. The hill gave way to a large valley, and at the far end was a huge, dense forest, larger than Alicia could’ve ever imagined. The trees were as tall as her old house, and the usual green leaves were replaced with a menagerie of warm colors; reds, oranges, yellows, and bright browns– all of which were layering the soft grass beneath them as well. Alongside that, a misty fog rested upon the ground like a great transparent blanket. Between them and the great forest, the entire ground was covered in a colossal field of ruby-red roses, stretching for miles in every direction.
“Oh, gods above…” Alicia expressed, admiring the naturalistic beauty of the world before her. The sun was beginning to set, too, which made the colors of the landscape pop even more.
“Now THAT’S a rose garden!” Sean exclaimed. “Puts all my work to shame.”
“Oh hush, your work is lovely,” Jacques responded, looking over at the landscape himself. Both Alicia and Miranda were in complete and utter awe at the path that awaited them, while Sean and Jacques looked less impressed. They had seen it before, after all.
“Hey, who’s that?” Miranda asked, pointing to the middle of the rose field. Right in the middle was a rather ominous-looking man, facing toward the great forest. His skin was entirely covered, either by cloth or by shadow. He wore a beige trenchcoat, a hat with a rather wide brim, black gloves, long black pants under the coat, dark dress shoes, and sunglasses, though the group on the hill couldn’t see that. He also sported a COLOSSAL sword, easily the size of his entire body, if not flat-out larger than it.
“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Jacques responded, looking down at the man. “Hey! Are you a Mistwood citizen?” His shouts went unheard, however. The man simply continued to stare at the forest entrance, the light breeze blowing his trenchcoat around.
“I’ll go and speak to him,” Miranda said, starting to walk down the hill.
“Wait, Miranda,” Alicia said, attempting to stop her. “We’ll come behind you. That sword can cleave you in half in a wink if he knows how to use it.” Miranda simply nodded, before continuing to walk down the hill, the others following close behind her. She bounded carelessly through the rose field, trying to reach the man as fast as possible, meanwhile, Sean and Alicia were far too busy tip-toeing in a desperate fight to not trample any of the beautiful flowers. Upon reaching them, she tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey! What’re you doing here, man? Are you just gonna stare at the forest forever, or what?” Miranda’s shouts of protests seemed to barely be heard by the man at all. He simply stood still, facing the forest. With a grumble, Miranda began to slowly turn around, before the man finally turned to face her, drawing his sword.