33: A Dead Business (Part 1)
As everyone else left, three students headed to Gallen. They were Drenak, an old and wise seeming man with the Domain of Guidance, one of Sandra’s friends, a woman with Refugees as her Domain.
Gallen looked at them and frowned. “I had been hoping for more than just three, but I will do what I can. Maybe others will join latter on, after I have trained the three of you.
“Follow me.”
He led them through a portal and they appeared before a massive structure that seemed endless.
The building itself was made of massive pieces of stone with writing on them, but there was a mist that made it impossible for most people to read.
Gallen led them in and to a wall. Around him the mist faded away they were shocked. Those massive blocks of stone actually each contained a soul laying in wait until it would be called on.
The sheer size stunned them all!
Gallen nodded. “There are trillions of souls here. Entire secular worlds worth of people here, plus those others that I managed to gather on the way.”
The one who sought to give refuge was shocked!
“What can be gone to let them live again? Surely the plan can’t be to just keep them waiting in those blocks!”
Gallen was deadly serious when he faced and told him “If you have a better idea, I would like to know what it is! Remember, I am often pressed for time, and need to be neutral.”
“How about letting them mingle while awake?”
“So, you want murderers, torturers and rapists, able to freely mix with lots of potential victims?”
“WHAT! Of course not! I meant those who hadn’t done anything like that.”
Gallen calmly replied “I have to be neutral! Picking such as that would not be neutral. If we had things set up, I could and would let people talk with shrinks to help deal with the trauma of dying. Can you imagine letting loose a little kid who wants to find her parents after being eaten alive by monsters? In the same place as other people who had suffered horrible deaths? Or are monsters themselves? And considering the parents had faith in a religion in order to keep going, the parents are in their heaven, but without their girl?”
The stunned horror on her face was soon covered by disbelief as she could not believe it. Her mind could not accept it without going insane herself.
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Gallen calmly told her “I want to sort them out. I really do. Right now I am in a bad spot. We need things sorted out! Right now I have a choice: let the souls pile up unsorted, or let them possibly be destroyed!
“This is where you lot come in. If you can save the souls, I can work more on getting things organized.”
The old man with Guidance asked Gallen “Isn’t this a bit messy and thrown together? Why did you even open when this wasn’t yet dealt with?”
Gallen told him “Because we had no time! Felinia floated the idea and before we knew it we were getting beings from all over the place interested. Things keep snowballing! I do have some ideas to use, but need a bit of time to work with them.”
“Really? What kind of ideas?”
“Irrelevant for now. I brought you here to show you how the system works, as it does for now.”
He led them from the building and the field outside. “New souls will arrive here. I expect there will eventually be problems when there are large groups. Keeping the souls you bring is part of your duties.”
He walked inside and through a hall with murals on the walls depicting souls being saved from shattered worlds, or from being Lost Souls.
“You are to lead the souls though here to the main chamber.”
He came to a large chamber at the end and in the middle, taking up the entire floor there was a symbol on the ground. “The symbol is a distraction. The souls, when they enter, will feel compelled to go to the center. Then they will be bathed in white light as they are lifted up and vanish. That is when they are shoved into those boxes to sleep until we can deal with them.”
Drenak was thoughtful. “And you will pick souls to be reborn. This is how you introduce souls into the system you use. Not what happens to souls that had already been put into the system.”
Gallen nodded. “That is different. Different faiths will have different things happening. Those with no faith or anyone claiming them is something we have to work on. In the system we based this on, they were devoured by an ancient evil being. We want to avoid that.”
Thinking a bit he added “It would be best to stop thinking of the souls you will be sent after as Faithless, but rather Unclaimed. This included those who followed false faiths, or were refused by their people’s Deities. In my world, the main faith has a clause that reads ‘A bastard shall not be counted among the Lord’s congregation unto the tenth generation’ Considering I do not know who my great grandparents were, let along 6 more generations back, I don’t have much hope there!
“You can make your offer to any who does not have another power able to claim them. I will have to teach you how to be able to sense such souls.”
Drenak asked “What about reincarnation?”
Gallen swore and said “That can be bloody annoying! Sure we are planning to do it here a bit, but the fact there are entire Faiths based on it? Trust me when I say it can get complicated for many parts. However, if they believe that the Gods or Powers that Be direct their rebirth, and possibly Karma, then they are off limits to us. If they believe it just happens? Then we can get involved.”
The Guidance guy frowned. “They believe they get reborn . . . but think it occurs at random?”
“No, they just don’t think about the details. They want something to believe in, and the idea of being judge by an all powerful being who knows your evils is a bit disturbing for them.”
All the guys there considered that just stupid, but the woman didn’t “So, what is wrong about that?”
Drenak just told her “Do you really want to put your faith in a system that you believe could reincarnate you into a dung-grubbler at random? You might even come back as something even more disgusting, like some socialites and politicians I’ve met.”
He shuddered at the memory of them, even after thousands of years.
Gallen was eager to turn the conversation away from that!
“How about I show you how this works in practice?”