Soulless, Chapter 4

(Chapter four. I'm unsure about the start of this chapter--I feel as if it introduces Damon as a character exactly the way that I want to portray him, but it also feels so much like a stand-alone piece. What do you think? Thanks in advance, Stone)

4: Damon

I know what you’ve heard. You’ve heard the sound of friends chatting, of children squealing as they play. You’ve heard the sweet sound of laughter, the sound of a satisfied sigh at the end of a long meal. You’ve heard your mother’s voice singing you softly to sleep.

I know what you’ve heard. I know you’ve heard the sound of man crying, and you’ve heard the sound of a woman wailing at the loss of her child. You’ve heard a girl sob. And I know you’ve heard the sound of a hundred people screaming in fear or in pain as someone else, someone much stronger than they are, comes to destroy their lives.

I know what you’ve heard. You’ve heard the sound of gunfire, and you’ve heard the sound a bone makes as it snaps in two. I know you’ve heard the sound of ripping flesh, so much like fabric. You’ve heard the sound of sword meeting shield, the sound of bone meeting bone, when flesh meets flesh, and when skull meets ground.

I know what else you’ve heard. You’ve heard the quiet before a storm. You’ve heard the hush that envelops an audience before the first few notes at a symphony. You’ve heard the calm before an explosion of fire claims a town, a village--a home. I know you’ve heard the sound of silence.

You’ve heard the sound of a thousand people speaking at once. You’ve heard yourself go mute in a great chasm of sound, your voice lost in the very chaos of your own mind.

No?
Oh. I guess I’m alone, then.


I expected her to be late. After all, she seemed to care very little for rules and for the respect that society demanded of her. I didn’t mind.

Nor was I surprised to find her already in my office, rifling through my desk while she waited for me to arrive. I leaned up against the door and studied her as she went through my things, seemingly determined to find something incriminating. So this is what two millennia of evolution has brought me: this scrawny child with the eyes of a gladiator and the tongue of a champion.

“You don’t make a very good house guest, you know.” She noticed me then.

“Well you don’t make a very good host. A host ought to greet his guests at the door…boss.” Emmalyn plucked a paper weight up from my desk and tossed it from one hand to the other.

“You really are a delight, my dear.”

“I try.” The girl grinned up at me as if she was the most darling creature ever to walk the Earth--or in her case, strut.

“I’m sure you discovered what you’re doing today as you were snooping. There’s a list of the items that were auctioned on Wednesday, and I need you to prepare them for their departure. I’m sure I don’t need to impress upon you exactly how valuable those artifacts are.”

They were irreplaceable, really. All were pieces that I had collected over the course of my two millennia of “life”. Alas, auctioning them off was my sole source of income in today’s world, for no military needs a mercenary as outdated as me.

“Of course not. History doesn’t get any more real than that.” The child sauntered past me towards the storage area. “I’ll see you when I’m finished, boss.” She tossed me the paperweight she’d been toying with and disappeared with a smirk.

Really, why did I put up with this? I shut the door to my office, and this time, I locked it. Even back when we were living, she was never quite this rebellious. Of course, it was a different time under different circumstances, and back then, we somehow found ourselves in love.

I found myself in my most private room, which was cluttered with objects from my old life. In the corner, my armor rested on a stand. I could still remember how to wear it, remember the way the greaves clung to my calves, feel the weight of the breastplate on my shoulders.

I took my sword again in my palm, and the metal felt as fresh as the first day I held it. I kept it sharp, and for old time’s sake, I took a fighting stance, swung the sword. My mind, my muscles, my eyes remembered how to use it. The memory was forever at the forefront of my mind, but yet I watched as an outsider.

Who am I, really?

Why do you care? You never cared before. Why remember who you were? This is what you are now. You’re free. You’re free of conscience, of guilt, and you have power beyond any man’s wildest dreams.

Yes, but I know the memories of thousands. I can feel them, hear their thoughts, and yet I can’t comprehend it. They feel something I don’t.

You know what they feel. It is weakness.

They call it compassion.

“Hey, boss. What else d’ya need done?”

I shook my head to clear away the noise. “Go back to the catalogs; I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I delicately returned my sword to its place beside my helmet, again on display for no one to see. It was time to test her.


“So what I need done in here is relatively simple. Most of these were brought here from my warehouse in preparation for the auction, so everything is completely disorganized right now.” That was a lie, of course. All I’d done was go through my archives, remove the labels, and push everything around to make it appear that way. After all, it needed to appear that she had work to do.

“I need you to sort things by time period and get everything documented. Also, I want you to research everything as you go and form a compilation of information about each collection. Start with anything you can find from classical Greece.” I paused to assess her expression.

“You want me to what? You mean to say you didn’t label any of this crap?” Her question was met with a sweet smile. “This is easily a project for ten people, maybe more.”

“And you’re cheap labor. Hop to it.” I grabbed a kylix--a drinking cup, one I’d used many times when they were popular--from one of the shelves and handed it to her. “Maybe you should start here.”

“O..kay..” The girl turned away from me.

This was not a project for some college sophomore I’d picked up at random. No. She was so much more than that. This was a task for a reincarnate. If she was to accomplish this task with only her surface-level understanding of history, she would have to tap into all of those memories that lay hidden in the deepest layer of her subconscious. If she was the woman I thought she was, then maybe, through her memories, I could begin to remember the man that I once was--a man who died over two thousand years ago.

Please, Tisiphone, remember yourself.

Another great read; this is shaping up so well. I'm also unsure about the start of the chapter, though. It's too repetitive; the problem with the structure you're using is that after a while, the reader can just lose interest because it feels as if they're just reading the same paragraph over and over again. I'm not entirely sure how you feel it develops Damon's character, either. I thought that the subtleties of his character were actually very well conveyed throughout the rest of this piece, so if I were you, I would actually cut the opening as it is and go straight into Em's arrival. It's far more appropriate and in keeping with the style you employ in the rest of the chapters.

I hope this is it in terms of characters whose point of view you're going to be switching to. You don't want to overdo it; you're walking a fine line at the moment.

I love the name, by the way, and yes, I looked up the meaning. Thank you for not just calling her "Persephone" and being done with it. A lot of people do that. I like the introduction of classical Greece; I know a little bit of Classical Greek, and a minimal amount of background, but if you ever feel you have to say/write anything in it, I'm happy to help as best I can.

Actually, I'll do a few nitpicks now, just to catch a couple of punctuation problems and so on.

with the eyes of a gladiator and the tongue of a champion

I'm not sure about the "gladiator" reference, when it's so predominantly Roman. I understand that Damon has lived through that era as well, but I would change this to Spartan. It's more appropriate for his background and the problem you deal with in this chapter.

“Wellcomma you don’t make a very good host. A host ought to greet his guests at the door…boss.”

we somehow found ourselves in love.

I found myself in my most private room

Repetition of the phrase "to find oneself". I'd rephrase the latter.

I took my sword again in my palm

I'd like a little more description of this, and of his armour. It's not much, but just something so we can appreciate his feeling of kinship with it.

I grabbed a kylix--a drinking cup, one I’d used many times when they were popular--from one of the shelves and handed it to her.

Again, perhaps a description of the picture on the drinking cup. An illustration of a symposium would be interesting, I think! Anything you bring up to do with love in this chapter, too, is going to create some wonderful opportunities for characterisation, so I'd take your chance.

Well, that's about it. I can't find that much to comment on, again, as I like this so much. I hope my review was a help to you in some ways, at least.

- Jet.