*hugs for everyone!* 12 stars! *happy dance* =P Now I just have to hope Chapter One isn't a let down for everyone. XD
Trial of a Villain
Esten, High Judge of the seven hundredth Soul Transition Station, opened her door and looked out. A line of glowing blue forms looked back at her, some mewling as only a loose soul could. The line went all the way along the short “Next,” she sighed, wishing for the third time that day—and she’d only done three souls since opening her office an hour ago— that she still had a secretary.
Two souls glided, essences twined together at the fingers. Oh uh, she thought. “I can only do one at a time,” she informed them, motioning for one of them to come forward. The two leaned closer together, their essences beginning to merge at points. Esten sucked in a deep breath, keeping herself from cursing. She wouldn’t be punished for it, but she had to set an example.
“Come in, then,” she said finally. The two souls, still tightly twined around each other, glided into the office. Esten sighed; this was going to be a long day. She shut the door and walked to her desk, noticing how the souls looked about them in curiosity. Esten had been born during the 21st century on the third ‘sentient’ world of the six hundred and twenty-third universe. Her office reflected the era she had grown in, with modernized chairs, lamps and a glow lamp on in the corner. Since the seven hundredth universe was still in its early years, the environment was entirely alien to the souls who came to her daily. Luckily, this universe had magic, so they did not cower away from the electric lights as she’d learned souls tended to do in other universes.
“Which one of you will go first?” Esten asked, sitting down. The souls looked at each other, and the female took a place in the seat before the desk. The other, male, floated behind her, ethereal hand’s still locked together. Esten rarely had the pleasure of knowing whether or not to call her spirits sir or madam, since they rarely had the presence of mind to define themselves as male or female.
“Place your hand in the bowl,” Esten instructed her. The bowl—which sat in the center of Esten’s desk—was made of venysl, a substance that allowed Esten to see clear images of the spirit’s thoughts. Very few knew how to communicate in ethereal form, and Esten had no patient to teach them.
The spirit leaned to the desk and slid her hand into the bowl, eyes watching the silvery surface.
“As you can see, there are many others who wait judgment. So I will only explain this once.” Inwardly, Esten cursed. At the station in her universe, there had been greeters who worked under the reaper who explained these simple things to the spirits when they arrived, but this universe was too new; the station only counted the Reaper, two under reapers, three hundred case workers who came and went, and Esten herself. The reapers, to Esten’s annoyance, had the responsibility of ferrying the souls to their respective places. And caseworkers were responsible to watching the souls in the mortal realm and recording their case information. Understaffed as they were, the cases were rarely complete and gave a horrible image of what these people had really done in their lives. Just as well, Esten thought, the growing population demanded a faster recycle rate for the souls anyways.
“You are at a Station. Here, I will judge you on your life. You will receive years in heaven for good acts, and years in hell for bad acts. In hell, you will be submitted to punishments befitting of your crimes, in heaven you will live freely and happily until you have used up all your years and are returned to the moral realm for a new life,”
“Do our intentions have any effect on our judgment?” a clear voice asked. Esten gaped. This was the first time since being posted here a soul had managed to speak to her directly without median of the pool.
Esten frowned. The issue of ‘intentions’ had raised quite a debate, when the stations were first established. Now, your acts were judged on the positive and negative effect they had. If you stole to survive, you would ear years in hell for theft, but if you had stolen to feed yourself and a sibling, then you would also earn time in heaven for caring for the sibling.
“Not really,” Esten informed the soul. “I will look at your record, and judge you upon it. You will, before that, be given a chance to present your case. All you have to do is focus on a memory, and I will take it’s content into consideration.”
The soul hesitated; it’s glow flickering in places as it debated. Then, an image formed in the silver of the pool.
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Apparently, the man who said ‘you are what you choose to be’ was a liar. A really horrible liar who took joy in making innocent little children believe that they could choose their own destiny and be whoever they wanted to be. If he’s still alive, someone should help him realize the error of his ways. It will start like this: “Sir, since you can choose your destiny, why don’t you decide you’re going to live while my knife and I decide you’re going to die, and see whose will is stronger.”
These were my thoughts as I watched the blood trickle down my arm and drip unto the packed earth floor of the barn. Realizing how immoral my thoughts had become, I cried in frustration. “Why is it so hard to be good?” I wailed. It was my first day and already I was back to thinking dark and corrupt things.
As if he’d said something, I turned to the farmer and sighed, my frustration shifting towards despair. “Don’t look at me like that,” I grumbled. “You didn’t believe any of that ‘you can be whoever you want to be’ nonsense either. If you had,” I reminded him, “we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.”
His silence was answer enough: what was done was done. No point moping about it now. I’d have plenty of time to do that when I got out of there—if I got out of there. My eyes darted furtively to the barn door, still ajar from when the farmer had entered. Outside, the noon sun glared down upon the fields, letting the last warmth of summer caress the land. I’d never make it out there, I realized. Not without a horse.
A breeze pushed the door farther ajar, sending little bits of hay floating through the air. I turned to the farmer, then back to the door. If I healed myself, I would need to rest—if I went outside, they would catch me. I looked around the barn, finally setting my sights on a dark corner up in the loft. If anyone did come in here, they’d be much too busy to notice a little extra shadow.
There was a man with a pitch fork through his stomach lying on the floor, after all.
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Esten stared as the image faded and the pool returned to its silvery color. She looked up at the soul and frowned.
“This is your defense?” Esten asked, incredulous. This spirit obviously had a sense of morals, so why had they chosen to use such a memory to represent themselves? Most people presented their fondest memories, or scrambled to find a moment where they were truly giving and kind.
“A single memory cannot trace the map of our lives. This one is as good as any,” the soul echoed in the odd ethereal voice all souls had. Esten, accustomed to the more filtered voice of the pool, found herself straining to catch the words the spirit spoke.
“You can take out your hands,” Esten said with a sigh. The spirit withdrew, but a small speck remained. This was her case—a small speck of knowledge that clung to a soul from the moment it began the cycle to the moment it ended it. Esten watched as, disconnected from its soul, it unfolded.
Images began to form in the pool, flashing by in an instant. Esten realized, wit annoyance, that this was a full case. There was no way she could pass judgment on a lifetime—not with the little time she had. She was lucky the station worked outside of time, allowing the reaper to enter the universe at any moment and retrieve souls then—if it were otherwise she would never be able to handle the constant flux of souls.
Not that their reaper could have handled real time reaping. Most souls found their way without help, but those for whom the reaper was responsible were delayed—usually by an inability to let go of life. Johnson, their reaper, was fresh off the wrack and his green hand in the field showed.
Esten closed her eyes, the onslaught of images giving her a headache. She opened her top drawer and drew out her glasses. There allowed her to see a soul's ‘acts’ in colors. Each color represented a type of act, and they appeared proportionate to the person’s life. She didn’t usually use them, as it took a lot of energy and—more importantly—the technology was in the testing stages. However, it was much easier for her to pas fair judgment this way.
She waved for the second soul to move behind the desk, and after a moment he did. Esten slid on the glasses and looked at the soul before her. At once, she knew it wasn’t good. All manner of conscious sins—which shouldn’t necessarily be judged, though the system they had in place didn’t allow judges like Esten the time to discern what sins were conscious and which were not—danced across the souls surface, appearing as dark shadows that twisted the blue light. Some good acts showed as well, but they many were unconscious, meaning this soul had not intended them. There was far darker than there was light. Esten watched the colors for a long time, mentally calculating the sentence.
Finally, she took off the glasses and reached into the bowl, the case folding up under her touch. In the language of administrators, she dictated the sentence. It would be a long one, and none too kind. Many lives stained this soul.
“Fifteen hundred years in hell. Your punishments will be proportionate to your crimes,” Esten announced.
She expected the soul to cringe, to flinch. But it did not; it looked at her evenly, without the glasses simply glowing with a steady blue ethereal light. “I understand.”
“When you have finished your sentence, you will be granted a hundred years in heaven.”
“And then?”
“Your soul will be returned to the mortal plain.”
“Will I have my memories?”
“No. Your essence will be completely recycled, made anew. You will continue to exist but you won’t be aware of it, though you might end up with a similar personality.”
The soul began to flicker, and almost instantly the second was at her side. They clung to each other, fearing that when this time came they would be parted. This was what Esten hated about coupled—they didn’t have the time to adjust to the afterlife separately, and so began to dread the recycling process as a pair, rather than accepting it as an individual and then appreciating their time together.
Love rarely transcended to the after life, people tended to never meet their loved ones from life. They managed anyways.
“You’re next.” She said. The male soul hesitated, but took the chair while his partner floated off to the side. Esten waved to the pool, impatient to be free of them. The soul reached forward, and touched the pool. It began to ripple. “I will go with her,” an indistinct voice echoed from the water.
“I cannot give you a sentence that is not yours to bear.” She informed him. It went against the rules.
The soul withdrew its hand from the pool and sat stubbornly in the chair. Esten sighed. “If you don’t wish to represent yourself then fine. I will pass judgment regardless.”
To Esten’s annoyance, the case file was also full. Someone had sent too much time with this soul. What were those caseworkers doing? Did they not realize that even in a new universe, there were millions of souls that needed casing? With an annoyed sound, she waved the female soul behind the desk so her colors wouldn’t affect the reading and put the glasses on.
A blinding light suddenly flared, making Esten cry out and she covered her eyes. The soul behind her touched her shoulder. “Are you alright?”
Esten pulled off the glasses, rubbing her eyes. Little spots of light danced across her vision.
Damnation, she thought.
She’d seen this light before, though never so intense. It was the light of selflessness, or self-sacrifice. This soul had given his life to others, and from the intensity, saved many, many lives in doing so. He was untouchable: an honored soul.
His place in heaven was assured, for as long as he wanted it.
“It seems you did something very good with your life,” Esten said.
The soul reached into the pool.
“I want to go with her. I will share her punishment.”
Esten stared. Very few souls chose hell over heaven. In fact, none had in her many centuries at the desk. However, Heaven had very specific rules: honored souls of the heavenly variety could go where they pleased, and like members of the administration, were allowed to keep memories of their past lives when they were recycled.
The administration of hell would surely not mind another soul; only the warped and twisted worked that branch of administration, under the watchful eye of those who dared deal with them. They took pleasure in tormenting other souls, though for the most part minor sins were punished with free labor set-aside just for them.
Esten considered. Heaven wanted their honored souls—needed them, actually. These souls carried a power for goodness that was needed to purify souls in the recycling process. And with the number of lives in the universes all having reached their ‘growth’ stage, the number of new souls being produced was higher, as so the number that needed recycling was, as well. The administration had even hinted they preferred shorter stays in both hell and heaven, because making new souls was far more grueling than recycling old ones. Esten’s refusal to take a hint had resulted in her being ‘recommended’ to this lesser position.
“You are an honored soul, sir. If you would like to go to hell, then I don’t have the authority to stop you. The boat leaves at the end of the day,” Esten said, a small smile creeping unto her face. She took the case file and added an instruction that he was to be kept with the girl soul at all times, sharing her punishment. She handed it over, and he bowed. The two souls were together at once, obviously rejoicing. They glided out of the room, humming with contentment. Some people could be happy anywhere, so long as they had each other.
It was unfortunate that such happiness was not one you were usually granted as you made your way to hell.
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If you are an old reader of DoaV, you are probably going 'o.O' right about now. Have no fear. The story style you are used to (third person and all, I decided first person is too limited for me to work with =P) will be returning in chapter one. Promise.
Feedback Questions
1) What do you think of Judge Esten? Does she seem like a realistic character?
2) Do you feel the story could benefit from more description? If so, where?
3) Do you feel you have an acceptable understanding of what's going on? Do you think there was a lack of explanation? Were there elements you'd like to understand better? Or was there too much telling and not enough showing?
4) Did you find parts of the story so far confusing? (ex: the fact I didn't name the souls)
5) Did you find this at all interesting? =P Should I try and get more of a hook in there at the beginning? *feels like the story starts off very slowly*
Sorry there are so many questions. This is a new take on DoaV so I have a lot of questions about what people think. I'm open to all other input, of course. ^_^
Feedback Questions for old readers
1) What do you think of the changes I've made? Do you think it has promise?
Bonus: Keek tries her hand at description! <It's very short. Take a look! 
