Looking down at a vast expanse from above. Weightless, limbless, a ball of milky white consciousness from a dreamer.
Purple clouds with streaks of white swirl beneath him, stretching so far in all directions that it might as well be infinite. Thick, fluffy clouds, red lighting dashing for thousands of miles across the surface, but the activity is so distant that it only looks like inches. Deep caverns, cracks in the cloud layer, craters wide enough to fit planets. Some purple clouds spiral upwards in grand towers, while other caverns splinter through the mass, coiling and splintering within the clouds.
The horizon stretches like a disk in all directions, and above the horizon rests a thin strip of pure blackness. The farther he turns from the swirling chaos of hurricanes, lightning, and cloud caverns, the lighter the blackness turns. Off-yellow to a brilliant, radiant gold, but it grows too bright. Nobody can turn far enough away from the clouds to see what’s at the apex. Too blinding, too painful. He doesn’t have a corporeal body, but the equivalent is like having his torso tied to a chair and trying to twist his head 180 degrees.
This is young F’Aendier’s first time visiting Palela. It won’t be the last.
Every psychic dreams of this realm at least once in their lives, and it’s an experience none can forget.
As a D’Sev, this realm is F’Aendier’s birthright. Still alive in the mortal world, yet only three years old, his kind have the unique capacity to explore this realm and shape it to their own desires.
He turns back to the purple cloud of Palela and floats in the void, admiring the beauty of it all.
But as he watches, three creatures approach. Red-furred abominations, their malice bleeding off them like black smoke. Flying from the cloud at great speed, swooping and diving and changing velocities at such a pace that a mortal’s body would be flattened.
F’Aendier feels the danger in his soul, and flees. Speeds that would reach millions of miles an hour in the mortal realm, F’Aendier dodges swipes from talons and snarled fangs. At speeds so great, precision is a must, and F’Aendier just needs to dodge by inches. None in this realm can look straight up at whatever is casting such a brilliant light, so it’s a game of rising higher, looking down at the others from their blind spot. No matter how high they climb, the purple clouds don’t seem to get any farther.
Twitches, sudden stops and rapid turns, F’Aendier’s soul isn’t reliant on laws of momentum. As this lethal game of tag continues, the three abominations close in. They get a feel for the young soul’s movements, and the distance of each miss shortens. The boy’s only saving grace is that teamwork is anathema to these creatures, and so there’s no coordination.
But before F’Aendier’s soul can be snatched up, a great burning eagle erupts from a tear in the clouds below.
Moving fast enough to appear as just a streak of light, the eagle gobbles F’Aendier’s soul with its razor beak. The great bird turns with the light at its back and spreads his mighty wings, burning the three abominations in his shadow. Their fur catches fire and the flesh beneath melts, sending them fleeing back to the safety of purple nebula.
F’Aendier’s consciousness falls to the eagle’s belly, then moves towards the eagle’s back, sprouting as a new golden feather on the right wing.
With a tremendous flap of his mighty wings, the flaming eagle R’Nzholou speeds down towards the cloud layer.
The enormous gust blows aside the clouds around him, he tears through hurricanes and tornados, lightning strikes his flank but harmlessly sparks across his hide and out the other side. He rips out of the clouds and enters into a spiral cavern the size of a solar system. It’s not long before he crosses the distance and dives through the purple wall on the opposite side.
The light from outside penetrates deep into the clouds, illuminating everything for eons. As F’Aendier looks out, he sees small collections of sprites -glowing balls of souls- scurry towards the eagle’s wake. They remain untouched by the eagle’s fire, but the predators, unholy creatures of all shapes and sizes, are set aflame as the eagle passes.
R’Nzholou dives down, pulling his wings close to his chest as he begins to spin. Around and around, the clouds swirl around him into a terrible, burning red tornado that spreads cleansing order throughout the realm of souls. F’Aendier can’t keep track of the twirl, but suddenly R’Nzholou opens his wings, instantly slowing his descent, then his mighty talons land on solid ground.
A structure deep in the Palela cloud. So far beneath the surface that even the light has started to dim ever so slightly, though it would take hours of flying before the light disappeared completely. A crystal heart with a cylindrical core, then hard, rigid tendrils splaying out from the top and bottom, spreading in all directions. Like two treed connected at the trunks and floating aimlessly in space. The tendrils split, sometimes into twos, sometimes into fives, but the thickness of each branch is divided evenly, then divided again and again, getting infinitesimally thinner and shorter with every split. A fractal, continuing forever. While the base structure is only so large, if F’Aendier’s soul were to trace the lines, getting smaller and smaller, he would never find the end. He would eventually shrink smaller than an atom, then further than that until that atom might as well be the size of a galaxy, then a universe in and of itself.
R’Nzholou’s talons wrap around a branch on the bottom side of the center column, then he spreads his wings in reverence of the milky white, crystal heart.
Each feather on his great body begins to glow, including F’Aendier. All points of light, of which there are thousands, converge to R’Nzholou’s heart, then slowly escape his chest. Thousands of golden balls of light filter through the air and are pulled towards the core of the crystal like snow.
For every soul that leaves his body, R’Nzholou’s body shrinks.
For every soul absorbed into the crystal, it grows just a tiny bit. Even after thousands of souls are added to the collective, it’s too small of a growth to be noticeable by any, except R’Nzholou, who delights in every addition.
F’Aendier looks out as his soul touches the crystal heart and begins to seep inside. He’s the last one, and he sees what’s left of R’Nzholou’s proud body. The flames barely flicker more than a candlelight, his featherless wings tremble, he can barely even stand.
Just a second before F’Aendier enters, he sees a disgusting abomination land on the branch behind R’Nzholou’s diminished form. Too powerful to be brushed aside by the flaming whirlwind from earlier, he approaches the Courier God of the D’Sev. R’Nzholou gathers his strength and turns, spreading his bare wings and letting out a mighty warcry. But before anything can happen, F’Aendier’s vision is clouded by a blinding, yet gentle and warm, white light.
When the white light finally abates, his perception is dull and blurry. He has no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, not even a body to feel, but he can still perceive his surroundings. Yet everything is fuzzy, his awareness weak.
There are people around him, and everything’s dark. No all-encompassing purple nebula he saw before, or even that brilliant light he couldn’t directly look at. There are voices. He’s standing on solid ground. He looks down and he might have hands, but maybe not; he can’t tell. Somebody maybe picks him up? He or she might be warm, but they could also be cold.
But while he can’t make out any details, one thing becomes clear. Information beamed into his very being. Every psychic learns this upon their first journey into the realm of souls.
“This is Palela, the afterlife, the beforelife, the realm of dreams and souls. Chaos forced orderly. The last true monarch foolishly led the greatest army of men and dragons in an invasion of Hell and slaughtered every demon they found. Hell now stands empty, a forgotten wasteland, while the demonic survivors fled into Palela. They corrupted the realm of dreams and souls, stalk the ley lines for lost spirits to consume. Everything you see is the consequence of that man’s grave error.”
The meaning and context is lost on F’Aendier, but he, and every psychic, will be able to recite this speech for the rest of their lives.
F’Aendier is passed around a few times, and there are more muffled words he can’t understand, but his vision fades to black before long.
Then his eyes open.
F’Aendier’s real eyes. His soul is back in his body, in his own crib, in his own home.
He rises from his pillow and looks around. The feathers on his head and spine perk, and his eyes settle on his hands. He looks them over and back, clenches them into fists, feels the weight of his limbs and the touch of his pajamas. It’s the first time he’s ever been fully conscious of himself. It’s such a contrast from the weightlessness inherent with being a soul.
As a three-year-old boy, the fatigue catches up to him and he collapses on his pillow. Ultimately, the memory of his time in Palela fades from his mortal, undeveloped brain, but the soul will never forget. When he learns to harness the power of his soul, his original burst of consciousness will come flooding back as if it only happened the previous night.
Being rescued by R’Nzholou is the first thing every D’Sev can recall.