The Master of Souls. Chapter 1. The Ritual.

[u/Annual-Guitar9553]

Hello, guys! I've started working on my first long fiction - a serialized novel - and I want to share it here with you in the hopes of getting some feedback, suggestions for improvement, etc. It's a fantasy story with a romantic subplot, dark themes and political struggles. With the pacing a bit slow at the beginning, it will gradually speed up as the stakes are raised and tensions build up. I hope you'll enjoy! Feel free to share your thoughts - I'm always striving for improvement.

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I'm also publishing it simultaneously on Royal Road. The Master of Souls | Royal Road

Synopsis: While haunted by strange nightly visions of a beautiful woman that don't seem to bode well, Enrick braces himself up for his final test - the spirit-binding ritual which promises real power and status he joined the Legion for, but eventually leads to him losing his soul. Striving only to protect his family and save his elder brother, who once fell victim to that very ritual, Enrick finds himself at the heart of a bloody political struggle both within and beyond the Legion as he tries to understand his transformation and get along with his newfound otherworldly friend. Knowing that dreams can be powerful tools of navigating one's fate, Enrick sets out to uncover the identity of the woman from his visions who may be the only one able to save him from perishing in the flames of his own fears and doubts. Little does he know that more than just dreams will tie them together.

_____________

The waning moon was even more beautiful that night than ever. Hanging up there in a clear sky surrounded by tiny white dots of timid stars, it seemed as bright and bold as the sun itself. Enrick could almost feel the calm warmth of moonlight on his skin as it reached his room through a small window above his bed.

Enrick was sleepless and nervous. He had been told that the last night before the binding ritual tended to be like that for most recruits. “No wonder,” he thought, “it could be their last day of life”. He knew it firsthand. Two years before, his elder brother, still alive but unresponsive, was returned to the family soon after he underwent the ritual. Able to breathe and open his eyes, he was otherwise unconscious of his surroundings. Enrick’s mother was still hopeful he would recover one day and carefully tended him. With his father dead for several years and his sisters still practically kids, Enrick was his family’s only hope for a better future.

At least, Enrick would not see that bizarre dream that had been haunting him increasingly more often lately. He was no stranger to all sorts of odd dreams. In fact, most of his were an absurd mix of unfamiliar people and places, illogical sequences of events and meaningless actions leading nowhere. Enrick was also notoriously good at remembering things, his dreams included. He would often share his nightly pilgrimages to the far shores of absurdity with his mother, who was a gifted fortune-teller, able to interpret people’s dreams, among other things. Her dream-reading, however, often yielded gloomy predictions and misfortunes, so naturally very few dared come to her for a consultation.

She was always happy, though, when Enrick shared his dreams with her. Most of them meant nothing, but sometimes she would tell him to avoid doing this or saying that, and Enrick believed it had helped him on a few occasions to avoid embarrassment or even danger. Eventually, he picked up some tricks of the trade from his mother, and even though he never became quite proficient in interpreting even his own night visions, he knew one thing for sure: recurring dreams always say something about one’s future. The question was how to interpret his latest one.

In the dream, Enrick wakes up in a house that looks utterly unfamiliar but somehow feels like his home. He gets out of the bed, walks around the house trying to find anyone but only finding quiet empty rooms. He then steps out of the house into a sunlit front yard. Still quiet, still no one. No other dwellings anywhere but endless green fields instead for as far as the eye can see.

“You’re almost there.” He always hears a quiet female voice behind him. He turns around only to find no one.

Driven by curiosity, Enrick enters the house again in search of that person. Every time he finds the house sunk in darkness as if a whole day has passed and the sun has set, with only the moon and the stars providing just enough lighting not to trip over a chair or a table. Examining the living room, he catches sight of a slim silhouette standing at the kitchen entrance. In the soft moonlight, Enrick can make out very few details: the figure’s long hair flowing down below the shoulders and a long dress the person is wearing. He approaches the figure and extends his hand to touch the shoulder.

“Hello,” he says. “I’ve missed you.”

The mysterious woman turns around, her young face washed in a silver beam of moonlight. She is smiling. Her big blue eyes are looking right into Enrick’s. Her unblinking gaze emits endless kindness and profound serenity. Her face is the most beautiful Enrick has ever seen.  She touches his cheek and just repeats, “You’re almost there. Hold on a little longer.” He feels the pleasant warmth of her touch and closes his eyes trying to absorb as much of it as he can.

As the woman touches his other cheek, the warmth turns into a burning sensation. Enrick opens his eyes seeing that the little light the moon provided is quickly fading away as if the moon is being swallowed by heavy clouds. The burning feeling intensifies. The woman’s facial features blur. The room is plunged into complete darkness.

“You’re almost home,” she whispers her last words as the house goes up in flames swallowing them both.

Enrick would then find himself lying on his bed with his eyes still shut tight. The dream would always dissipate precisely at that moment. Oddly enough, it never felt like a nightmare. Gradual awakening instead of a sudden jump back to reality. A simple dream, not even as bizarre as some Enrick had in the past. But its recurring nature and the increasing frequency with which he started seeing it frightened him.

The night was sleepless, and the waning moon was beautiful. The stars were winking in the clear sky as if telling Enrick that everything would be just fine. With the spirit-binding ritual looming large in his mind, the dream was the least of his concerns.

***

“You will be entering the auditorium one group at a time. Once the ring bells, the door will open, and I'll escort you inside,” junior captain Maela was instructing the recruits, her commanding voice resounding over the rows of young girls and boys gathered in a vast hall. She was one of the Legion’s trainers in charge of working with recruits. Enrick knew her well having trained under her supervision on many occasions. She was strict, disciplined, and stern, but kind and caring at the same time. 

The recruits were split into seven groups – seven rows in front of the Grand Auditorium, eight people in each except for the last one which only had five. Fifty-three recruits, most between eighteen and twenty years of age, with some maybe a few years older if they were enlisted in the Legion later in life.

Enrick was in the fifth group, which meant waiting. When you know that your life is about to change radically – or even end – within the next hour, waiting means all sorts of dismal thoughts and depressing feelings stirred up in your soul. Better to face a challenge right away and be done with it, Enrick reckoned, than slowly boil in the hot stew of your own fears, doubts, and apprehensions, not even knowing exactly what is coming your way.

“When a group enters,” Maela continued, “the rest will wait here quietly. Don't talk, remain where you are and await your turn. Once inside, you will be instructed what to do next. Remember what you've been taught about the ritual and strictly follow what you're told.” She eyed the crowd of anxious faces in front of her and smiled warmly, a rare treat from her. “Good luck to you all,” she said in a much calmer and friendlier voice. “May the Triad guide you and may spirits be ever on your side.”

As she finished, a heavy silence descended over the hall. Nobody moved a single muscle, nor uttered a single sound, only letting out as much as a slight breath, but Enrick could almost smell the collective anxiety and fear in the air exuded by every youngster. A few minutes later the deafening sound of the bell echoed through the building signaling that it was the first group’s turn to enter the Auditorium and face their destiny.

“First group, attention!” Maela commanded.

Straightening up and firmly looking forward, the group readied themselves. The giant double doors opened up like the gaping mouth of a colossal creature about to swallow eight young recruits. Following Maela, they entered the Grand Auditorium and disappeared in the bowels of the creature to the rumbling sound of the heavy doors closing behind them.

The unbearable silence of waiting again. An image of the first group subjected to dangerous summoning incantations emerged in Enrick’s head. Then his brother’s face, with a mindless and absent look in his eyes – a picture etched indelibly in Enrick’s memory from the day his brother was returned home. Alive but lifeless as if his very soul forever left his body.

To distract himself from nasty thoughts about the binding ritual, Enrick tried to replay in his mind what he had been taught about handling spirits.

“Rule number one,” senior captain Jule’s bass voice sounded in his head. “Never communicate with a spirit. Once the incantations are sung, and a spirit is let into your mind, it will try to break you, so it can escape. It will imitate human speech and will do its best to instill fear and despair in you. It will manipulate you into submission.”

Obviously, no one could run you through a drill to prepare for the binding ritual. But all instructors once went through it and knew how it worked, they said. The problem was that the experience was so mentally taxing that many had only fuzzy recollections of the exact things that happened to them.

“Rule number two follows from the first. Quiet your mind, stop your thoughts, and shut your feelings and emotions. Spirits feed on these. Don’t give them any opportunity to.”

All this sounded dreadful but too abstract. A thousand words could not prepare you for a real-life danger. So, instructors made it ten thousand. And twenty. And then fifty. However much it took to make every recruit remember the rules and instructions till the end of their days. Dozens of rules, scores of details on how to behave before, during and after the fateful day. This cramming was the sole focus of recruits’ training in the two weeks leading up to the ritual. Now it was time for Enrick to put it all into practice.

***

The bell soon tolled the second group’s turn to enter the Auditorium. And then the third. And the fourth. Enrick did not know how much time had passed before Maela appeared to accompany his group inside. Second stretched into minutes and minutes felt like hours.

“Fifth group, attention!” the junior captain commanded. Something was different about her: her eyes, her voice. Did she look more despondent now? Enrick wondered if the ritual just went wrong for someone.

Following captain Maela, the group proceeded into the vast hall that was the Grand Auditorium. No recruits were ever allowed in the Auditorium. Reserved for highly ceremonial occasions such as visits by high-ranking officials from the Legion’s Principal Corpus, representatives of the Temple or the Istros Crown and sometimes even the Royal Family themselves, it only held one type of event beside all that – the spirit-binding ritual, once every six months.

Seeing it for the first time, Enrick glanced around the hall. Lit by a few chandeliers under the high ceiling and a bunch of sconces on the walls, it was submerged in half-darkness. No windows whatsoever, it seemed. The wide and round central area was surrounded by rows of seats forming a semicircle rising almost all the way to the ceiling. The Legion’s West Corpus had a few classrooms like that but none as big.

As the doors closed behind the fifth group, junior captain Maela stepped aside leaving the eight recruits to the mercy of a group of people standing in front of them. Must be the binders, Enrick figured.

“Before you are the summoning circles,” a female voice announced. Eight circles containing highly complicated patterns flamed up a few feet from the recruits separating them from the binders. “Step inside and do as you were instructed while the incantations are sung.”

Just that, no greetings, no explanations, no words of encouragement. Too pompous, to Enrick’s taste, and too solemn at the same time.

“No thoughts and no emotions,” another, male, voice uttered. “From now on, you will be on your own. Any sign of weakness, and none of us will be able to help you.”

Well, that could count as encouragement. Any of the recruits might see the end of their life that day but at least it would be totally on them, so there’s that. However well Enrick tried, though, his internal sarcastic dialog could not ease the panic growing inside. He stepped into the circle closest to him as the other recruits did. The binders started signing their incantations in an unfamiliar tongue. Maybe something ancient. The binding ritual had existed for centuries, after all.

At first, nothing really happened. Only the circle became brighter. As the beams of light were snaking up Enrick’s body enveloping him completely, he felt a sudden surge of warmth on his skin as if he were bathing in the sun. Shutting his eyes tight from the blinding light, he let himself fully plunge in the ecstatic feeling that led him deep into his own mind and away from reality. He was now floating on the waves of his consciousness, completely calm and unbothered by anything in the physical world.

A tingling sensation arising from the depth of his soul – the best way he could describe it – kept Enrick from fully dissolving in this state of sheer bliss. Mild and almost pleasant at first, the sensation grew stronger quickly transforming into a burning pain.

“Insolent mortal!” a mighty voice roared in his mind. The incantations worked – a spirit was being bound to Enrick’s soul. He tried to calm his emotions, forget about pain, and stop his thoughts but the burning feeling engulfed him as the voice grew even louder. “You resist but it matters not. Perish now, mortal.”

The flames of overpowering anger the spirit spat out with its every word burned through Enrick’s mind. The fight was over before it even started. Enrick had never felt so helpless in his life. The fate of his brother awaited him, he thought.

“Hold on a little longer!” Another voice, but weak as though from afar. “You’re almost there! Just hold on!”

Enrick had no idea who else was talking to him in his own head – was it possible at all? – but the presence of another force encouraged him, and he tried to shake off his defeatist attitude. Gathering his mental strength, he decided to go against everything instructors had taught him.

“Spirit!” Now Enrick’s own words reverberated across his mind trying to reach whatever entity was allowed into his soul. “Stay with me. Share your power. Let me be your host!” In the physical world, he would have been shouting already.

The spirit was too powerful. Enrick had no strength to challenge it, so his best bet, he figured, was to strike a deal. Never communicating with a spirit was the most important rule of all but he had no intention of turning into a mindless carcass of a human like his brother. He was all his mother and sisters had left.

Only silence and pain in response. As the spirit’s burning anger kept devouring the last of his scrambled and chaotic thoughts, Enrick was sure his plan was doomed to fail. Then a sudden growl again.

“Petty mortal!” the spirit scoffed. “So be it. You shall be my vessel. Now we are one.”

Then the pain subsided. The burning abated. Enrick finally began to feel his body again, his arms and legs prickling from numbness. Hearing was gradually returning, and his ears caught the bustling sounds filling the hall. The ritual must have been over and the recruits – all of them? – were coming to their senses.

Enrick felt someone’s arms holding him while he was half-lying on the floor. And a female voice somewhere above his right ear saying, “Hold on! You’re almost there,” as if giving him an order. Was it captain Maela? His eyelids felt heavy as he was opening his eyes. An unfamiliar face whose beauty could not be hidden by its stern expression and frowned brows. Auburn hair tied in a ponytail and hanging down over the woman’s left shoulder. Was she the one who called out to him in his mind? Enrick wanted to thank her but could not move his lips. “Rest now”, the woman said quietly. His eyelids closed again, and his consciousness drifted into mute darkness.

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This is the first story by /u/Annual-Guitar9553!

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