“It’s hard to explain... but in the modern world. It felt like everything was an endless war with yourself. I see that now. I look up at the clouds and feel the same thing. In this age, like old times, everything is against the world. The struggle is to convince yourself to live, the struggle is implicit in that other life. You trade one devil for another, but at least your hunger is your compass, and the cold guides your bleating bleeding heart. I am the Soap Man. A peddler, money bags, a trader with no name or holdings. A stranger to this world. I see their eyes, and they look down with suspicion or up with fear. My name is lost to them and now even to myself. I am the Soap Man, and this is mine, my life and my love. But also the depth of my fear. I meant to send these once. But as the days pass. I end up laughing at the possibility. What are these anyways? Who for? It’s not cheap: both ink and parchment. Maybe this is the only thing holding me together, past-present and future.”
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Soap Isekai
The robed figure placed the burnt piece of yellow tinted parchment back on to the table. Beneath the paragraph lay a small drawing of the sun, rolling wave like clouds, like those in a child’s drawings… Lower further you could see a small box house with a triangular roof, and a misshapen car. A small figure was standing on some grass, (portrayed by small upward dashes) with a refrigerator body and stick hands and head. Beside the figure, there were others — the figure leaned in, and glared through the dim twilight straining their eyes. Their silhouettes were smudged with an apparent fingertip. Below the written ink, and charcoal drawing, the page was burnt. The reason was unknown. It began with my “My name…” and soon faded into a crisp burnt edge. The figure gathered the notes, and left the ruin. The wretched stench of soap was becoming unbearable.
***
Lest we forget all the broken computer chairs, lost as a result of leaning back too far; Perhaps that’s why my current predicament feels like a punishment from god, lord of the tallest tower, ruler of the holiest kingdom and the highest heaven, wielder of the most perfect radiance and hopefully the only deity (I hope)... Capable of isekaing a perfectly good citizen of a country you probably have never heard of. That’s right… I used isekaing as a verb. I suppose in the common tongue, away from internet slang, you’d call it banishment. So, yes, I was spirited away as I leaned back in my computer chair, one temperate summer afternoon. It might have been fall — it felt golden, maybe it was the sun, or the leaves growing crisp, changing over.
Those hazy memories are shards of a past I can’t remember, but it has been a very long time… Some days, when the light scatters at the right angle, and the rays strike the broken stained glass just right — some of those times, I can remember it; a past that resembles a fading dream, a spell that wanes in its ebb and flow. To see, or not to see, a memory or a delusion. Whatever it may be, what right does it have to hurt me so? If memory, pray tell, I wish that it be gone, and if it is a simple dream I wish for it to linger. The ache that fills my heart, can be so unbearable and yet is it’s absence is a cold and lifeless void. Am I insane? Perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps I died and this is my heaven. But it is in the past, and whether I broke my neck, or cracked my skull, dying, while lying on my back across my floor, or if heaven cast me out of the kingdom of luxury… Well, it does little to change my oh so peaceful life. Let me tell you of it.
I live now, in a rural place. Well most places are rural these days. City centers are few and far between… so most places are like this. Rural, but not modern rural. Really knees to the dirt rural if you can believe it. Knees deep in the mud any time after a good rain. I didn’t really understand why... Not at first then it just clicked one day. Growing food is hard… Big towns were kind of an industrialization thing or something. I never really paid all that much attention to the boring classes. Man. I am kind of a lame time traveller.
Around here, you try to drink well water, and try not to drink anything else, save for small springs away from animals or shallow rivers. Anything else, creeks, rivers, lakes… With water from a well, you are usually safe. But I’ve heard of animals drowning themselves inside, which can foul the water for months… I keep a large wooden O across my well, and on top of a stone, and on top of that my iron bucket tied with some rope. I prefer to boil the water with a meal. Otherwise, I drink it raw... I am used to it now. It takes too much wood otherwise. But with food it’s been a good habit to be careful. You learn quickly, the right way to wash your vegetables in a metal tub or prepare meat or giblets in a buttered cast iron pan over a fire. There are many simple folk who teach freely for a helping hand. Though they may just as quickly slap or batter you if your helping hand makes too many mistakes.
Peasants are the bread and butter of the human world. I learned it quickly. The rules vary between the many vast lordships. Some peasants are less like slaves and more like indentured servants… But those that work the mines conversely are treated much differently. Kept in cages and usually in guarded caravans. Anyways each, peasant household pays a tithe to their lordship each harvest and a little into their village for tools and foods they can’t get a hold of, craftsmen and the others usually pay in other ways like market rights and property fees. Salt is a pretty big deal.
That’s the great human kingdom to the west in a nutshell. There really isn’t a name for it. There are just many high and mighty lords who want to screw you (figuratively and sometimes literally). Well, Lords meaning: kings, knights, wizards, dukes and barons, as well as the hundreds of lesser lords and officials, usually stewards of mines or vast forests which they rule in the name of their lords all while men of law keep the ‘peace’. Man I have been lucky keeping clear of most of those self-important pricks. Phew-*
P, note : west, or thataway. Is not a real direction. It could have been north. It’s just opposite of where I am. Or they are where I am not. But I guess technically it’d be west from where I am sitting right now. If where I am facing is north. North meaning the great forests. South being mountains, and to the far east swamps.
If you can believe it I live east. Across the River Teshna, across the sparse crossable shallows lies my new world. Its water flows down along the sheer cliffs, from the great kingdom of rocks and mountains to the south. The great river curves along the peaks and it is a safeguard, few cross it. Most folks hide behind their superstitions and bide their distance. They refuse to linger in this land. Old places and archaic things tend to carry unimaginable weight to most. It took me a long time to understand what they meant and why.... Suffice to say, everything expires quickly here. Few welcome death, but few can muster the will to deny it if it begs to enter.
Anyways, this median land is bordered by the old woods in the north. This great wood is a strange old place, most forests everywhere else are cared for by man and cleared and tended to, for trapping, hunting, and pollarding . But this place is unlike any other. “There are eyes to that forest,” I heard the peasants say… They avoid that place. Stories shared over a warm drink, are that old human men would venture into that place to seek their end, or younglings with no prospect or family would deem it time to never return and take a noose into the forest’s heart. Those that wander carelessly along it’s border sometimes see the silhouettes of the lost, memories from the dark that shimmer beneath the canopy of trees, and sometimes the sound of rope gnawing against the branches, echoes.
That forest is often called the virgin woods. Because it looks as if no man had ever entered them and indeed it looks that way, I can attest to it. And they are technically right, no man dwells in those woods. Only I did not discover the true reason for this until a storm a year or so ago. I had just bought my home, from an old coot named Jasper who was both bald and grey and deaf as an earless ox. He died shortly after of pneumonia. I think he might of had dementia… Musta, but who knows, maybe that’s why I got a good price for it. Well it also might have been for his lonely daughter... Dowry or emotional blackmail, I never did meet her. But by the end, with the way he spoke of her, I figured she was a fiction. I didn’t pry any further about the cursed girl. A mystery in her own right. My only desire after all, is to leave the trouble behind me, and stay ahead of it all. The story of how I found the wealth to buy it, is worthy of its own consideration, for another time.
My humble home is out of the way; about an hour and a half west of the pub. It lies near a shallow dirt road: small and easily tormented when the rain comes, and during the winter’s snows. So oftentimes a stroll becomes a march worth several taxing hours. The ground all around is mostly rocky. There are few trees, sparse berry bushes, and the odd patch of mushrooms that crop up. But as a whole, it’s empty and green. Unfortunately, the land around my home is referred to as infertile (was told this after Jasper passed), only good for grazing and there really isn’t all that much of it that’s mine. Though in a rural place land rights often stretch as far as you can manage... The plus side is it's also closer to the center of town, and most fear living too close to a place where many strangers meet. It’s dangerous… and well I am quick to agree.
Anyways. The house was a dusty, musky, husky kind of old place. The windows were broken and the rims of the windows had signs of rot. The mortar lining the stone walls was also suspect. I could see cracks and signs of wear in between the stones. Real sketchy... The floor also creaked, and loudly whined whenever I placed my foot on any particular bit of it, and the smell of mildew was thick in the air. Well, I did what I could and tidied up. I mixed the lime-mortar (expensive as it was) and filled in the old tear and wear. The friendly barkeep helped replace the window frames. He knew the man who built the home and he referred me to the carpenter who could build me some cheap frames cut to the right size. I won’t speak of how I procured the glass but that was a story filled with miracles and short degenerate scoundrels. I think I almost died. Last time I play games for window panes.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Anyways I have come to love the barkeep. He knows masonry and he is a good man. He helped a vagrant-nobody, like me and I am sure that’s how he also knew the carpenter and really, all the other zany characters and normal folk within our ‘town’ or perhaps ‘village.’ It is unnamed, and simply called as necessary; at times folk see it as the gallows, in bad harvests, a sanctuary, or a banished colony. Folk have tried to develop all sorts of calling cards. The reality that lingered, was quite disappointing, the name those few traders who stopped by for some peace and quiet gave this place, was, Earf-Braken. Earf, for earth, and Braken for disturbed soil. That’s all that remained. Most of course were quickly disappointed. Some because they hated the idea of a name, and others because they felt their ordinary identities be trampled by an ordinary town name, that all but squandered all possibility of mystery, adventure, rhyme and poetry...
There are few who travel the roads to our lands across the shallows where the river widens. Because of that, there are few houses to build and because of that, I am now fond of this lonesome place. In fact, I am writing all this, beside the warmth of the fireplace stretched out on the heated floor. The floors still creak... But now, it’s less harrowing and more homely. No more fear at night or at least now it’s just the wolves, I think, I hope. Once I lit the fire place, the scent of mildew slowly faded ,and the home gained a hearth. It might surprise you, but I hadn’t learnt how to properly work a fireplace until those few crucial days; the first time there was so much wood that when I lit a bonfire quickly erupted. Hah, how it crackled, how it singed the floor with bright sparks. A fond memory of better days…Easier days. Days when I was stupid enough to burn my house down. (It’s nearly always better to be stupid, and know that you are stupid. An oaf who thinks himself a god will surely do something most stupid and banal. And an intelligent man will surely do something unflattering, unsavoury, and to all parties bizarre, just to seem intelligent before himself, and finally retain originality. Not like those others, those simple folk who act out, an old tried best.)
The roof took some work, that following summer, but that was before the storm, which happened in spring. Y’see, those shingles had a life span. Something I was not aware of, until my roof started to leak nearly everywhere. I hadn’t even installed the windows yet… and what started as a small drizzle from an overcast sky became a storm. I could hear the thunderous claps growing nearer and the lighting trail across the lands to the west. In a ruined place, alone, I learned fear and quickly the slow creep of dread, that feeling of potential horror around every corner. Just then, the small light of my dimming fire had left me, alone and in the distance, the hurricane looked more like a fearsome monster as it spread darkness and fire everywhere that it went. I was afraid it’d swallow me, rip me from my home and hurl me to my death. I left my poor little sweet home before that monster. I rushed through the heavy pounding rain with most of my belongings in my pockets to the large tavern/pub.
There in the warm confines I found the place filled. Everyone shared a grim face and sat, listening solemnly to the roar of the rain and the explosions following the thunder. They all sat quietly beneath the old thatch roof. The bartender softly spoke with the customers and comforted old wives where he could. He saw me, frightened and yet bigger than most folk (an advantage modernity handed me oh so fairly) scurrying across the floor like a lost mouse before an angry tomcat. I sat in the corner, away from prying eyes. He gave me a pint in an oak tankard which saved me at the time. It cured me of my fouled nerves and ticks. The warmth of the drink replaced the cold. That’s when I noticed it, the light strumming of a guitar. Only it wasn’t a guitar but instead a man playing a lute, well at the least, it had a bowl-like chasm at its center and the set up was similar. I do not remember how many strings it had. I only remember his words, and even those have faded, the melody was an afterthought. You’d think by now I could speak to all the lands, and their stories but even that comes at too high a price.
It seemed like everyone hadn’t noticed him come in and honestly neither did I. He sat a ways away from the fire and his face was shrouded in mellow darkness. Only the greys of his eyes where bared towards the audience. He had an absent-minded look, as if entirely adrift in a long-dead sea. And then he began his song. His voice was soft and oddly clear like crystal, it’s light nature was soothing and at times he’d hold a note in between the words, and yet a contrast emerged from his harrowing tale.
The master spoke of times both far and near. The war of races, men and all held dear. He spoke of times both lost to words and records past, and follies unremembered by new men, whose rights demand a fair grasp. In eons past, when forests were the plains. In those days creatures of rock and wooden spirits held a fair key. To peace, and laughter, an alliance dearly bled away. The humans carved this forest floor and tamed the land and forced it back at bay. They cut the thin strand of peace and severed hope.
I don’t remember many of the words. But I knew what he spoke of, and the image held true. The creatures of stone and the woodland spirits… I had yet to meet them, but I saw them being described and I knew… I already knew. It was somber, a retelling of a past I felt, but never saw...
He spoke of a fortress razed with old carcasses of wood. The great trees which had lasted a hundred human lives. They too became an instrument, the handle of the knife which broke the old alliance, set to end the war. One sunny day, a woodland spirit sprung and old as white and grey as ash and bone appeared before the fortress. The man stopped singing and began to only speak.
He walked firm, and sure. His bare feet walked the muddy road to the fortress and by his lack of boot the soldiers knew he was not man or pilgrim. But by his ear they knew he could never be a man. The old alf, walked up to the great gate and began the hymn. He gathered the air before him and bent nature to his will. The wisps of wind gathered into a cyclone. It flowed towards the fortress. They could see he was a caster, and at the heart of the hurricane, a cyclone was rushing to meet them. They fired cold bolts of lead at his heart, to steel the storm, but it only grew. Nature had grown furious at the old unified kingdom of man. It’s fangs where bared and a cold wind blew across the dead stumps and ruined groves. The man shed tears for the land he loved and burst into hot ash. The cyclone had drained him. As the ash became part of the whirlwind it ignited, and a fire storm raged for twenty one days slaying all creatures across the plain.
It only ends with everything turned ash. Men walk this land with caution and old fear. They stumble, graze and farm with those held dear. But no arrogance is held and no king may take, what could never be yielded.
It ended just like that. The old story of this land. The ghosts of yesterday were brought to light. The storm around us had entered it’s highest crescendo. Men cowered and women held onto their children. A harsh silence filled the air, in between booms of thunder. But the bard cared not, he rose and took his instrument and walked with heavy thuds across the floor. All eyes lay on him, mesmerized as if seeing first snow. He walked to the door, long cape winding through and stepped outside into the cold rain. The barkeep’s mouth fell open and then he gave a frightful chase. But as he rushed past, through the door, into the cold rain there was nothing to find. No footsteps or trace were left behind. I was there too, and stared into the same distance, but no more did I see then the barkeep could.
I did not know who he was or why he had come, only that the storm that once raged quickly ended and turned to a tepid rain. Then slowly conversation returned to normal, and laughter once more filled the room. I filed out too, in the appropriate fashion, after explaining everything to the barkeep. As I walked outside the sun finally reared its head and a sole raindrop landed on my cheek. I ran my finger over it and felt it’s surface, strange... I looked at the smothered drop and inside the fluid a small grey speck was visible. I let it fall to earth, and hurried back home.
I soon repaired my roof, but only afterwards did I realize how little I knew of everything and how much I knew at the same time... Because that fall, with a repaired roof and a house filled with firewood I began the long process of bringing lye and fat together and soon enough I would be called The Soap Man, Soap for short, for I never gave my name. I mean nobody could pronounce it here, or there, or anywhere, they still can’t some years later and my family name is utterly purposeless. All this happened before my first encounter with spirits and men of stone. But I am afraid I can’t continue. This yellowy parchment is running thin and I have many stories left to tell.
Did you know? I managed to grow a beard. I mean nobody told me I could, I never did try, in part because I didn’t know it was possible. But it did nicely, to cover up the grooves; the pensive scars buried across my cheek. I wish writing wasn’t this expensive, the rest I leave for the sales records. I’ll buy some more soon, when I sell some more soap.
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Notes
Ps. Do not ogle the customers. If you find this and you can read it and I am not here… Well. I hope you have fun. This is something like the story I want to leave behind. I don’t want it to be dreary. I burnt the other drafts.. I can’t afford to burn anymore of it.
I have seen so little of this world and yet I am certain no one but me will ever read this. Not one person I know writes in this style.
I wonder who will bury me?
I wish I knew what day it was on earth… Was it two years ago? Two short… Has it been five? Too long… Am I 18? 16? 17? Older? Younger? Do the seasons even match in length to those on earth?
The last letters were larger and the question mark was brazen and imposing, as if done with a shaking hand.
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He put down his papers and stood up. Bang! Bang! Bang! Thrice his door shook in its hinges. He stared frozen, cold in his own sweat, the fire licking at his broad back and yet... He was terrified.
Like an animal caught dead to life, he did not move. His hands lightly jittered as he heard a creature scurry outside. His eyes swung wildly around the room tracing the outside noise. Suddenly a crash. He stumbled backwards as he saw a medium-sized rock, land on to his wooden boarded floor. The glass had burst. Around the windowpane large pieces lay in the window still, and smaller fragments had spilled further into the room. The wind rushed through the opening. He turned away shielding his eyes from grains of glass. He thought his heart would burst. It took everything he had not to scream or howl like a barbed dog.
***
Alright, boys, and ghouls. If there is interest, there will be more. There is one other chapter on ice rn. But honestly interest dependant. I enjoy it. But I am not sure how much interest or engagement there is in anti-isekais.