The Trial of the Ghost
Prologue: They Didn't Know
Company policy stated that the Ialna were not allowed to tell the souls they created about their intended destiny. That was all well and good in theory, but in practice, however, only their boss, the Crafter, actually followed that rule.
Destiny is a tricky thing. The Ialna always created souls specifically to push the living world onto a certain path, one the Crafter determined would bring about the best future, but life always got in the way. It changed people, made what would be the best choice in a perfect world into the undesirable one.
The Crafter and the Ialna had had billions of years of practice with the universe mucking up their best laid plans.
But every now and then, life wasn’t the one that screwed them over.
An Ialna’s workshop was beyond comprehension to mortal souls, but they actualized as gardens for the souls. Vibrant flowers, thick hedges, green grass, peaceful breezes, no bugs, the most relaxing place imaginable. This was where the Ialna grew and shaped souls. Most had specialties, and the Crafter’s was souls meant to save the world.
Udhal of the Venla, meant to be born to Orjel and Ralehal of the Venla on the planet Tro, and Allelosin La’dyliap, meant to be born to Umsael La’dyliap and Leroena Ent on the planet Kyp, were two such souls. Two souls who never knew what they were meant for; the destinies envisioned for them.
Udhal was meant to be born right during Tro’s civil war. He was meant to inspire his parents to end the war sooner than it would have otherwise then to save their star from dying, preventing the destruction of their planet. When he grew up, Udhal’s passion, genius, stubbornness, way with words, and compassion were supposed to make him a great leader of Tro and bring them past the horrors of their recent history.
Allelosin was meant to be born human, but with powerful druid magic, the greatest of his generation. With his compassion, endless optimism, empathy, resilience, and kindness, he was meant to grow up to be an activist and inspire a new and better Kyp.
They were supposed to save their worlds. Udhal’s efforts would let Tro rejoin the galaxy. Kyp was only meant to advance towards world peace. Kyp’s science wouldn’t make deep space travel for centuries, far beyond Allelosin’s lifetime. They were never supposed to meet. They never should have met.
Not in life. But special souls, souls destined to separate lives thousands of lightyears away, could meet in the Crafter’s garden where they were formed. So, in their prelife, the impossible happened, Udhal and Allelosin met.
Udhal was in his fourth year of development when the beginnings of Allelosin were formed.
“Who’s that?” Udhal asked the Crafter. “Is he Troan?”
“His name is Allelosin,” the Crafter replied with an amused smile. “And no, he’s not Troan. He’s human bound for Kyp.”
“Hi,” Allelosin said, eyes locking with Udhal, hands fidgeting with a sunflower and a tentative grin on his face.
Udhal grinned. “Hello sunflower!”
Allelosin’s grin widened, turning bright as a sun.
Udhal couldn’t be torn from Allelosin side and Allelosin was just as devoted. They spent every moment speaking of what they thought their worlds would be, what they hoped they would do, their favorite flowers, if the top of the hedge was straight (Udhal insisted since he flew up and saw the top, Allelosin should simply trust him. Allelosin knew Udhal too well at this point and knew his friend enjoyed messing with him), who had the best power. They should have run out of topics, but somehow never did.
Over the next six years, the Crafter had never seen a bond like theirs in their garden before. If they had, perhaps they would have seen the warning signs.
Perhaps they could have prevented this.
But no one in the garden knew. Not until it was too late.
Maybe if Udhal and Allelosin had known, what came next wouldn’t have happened. Maybe their self sacrificial streaks could have prevented it. But the Crafter was the boss and they tried to be a good role model, so the stakes remained unknown to the two new souls.
Udhal and Allelosin didn’t know.
How could they have?
On the day Udhal was meant to be sent to Tro, his ten years of development up, he activated the magic aspect of his soul, tapped into his powers, and ran away.
He’d resolved this years ago. He wasn’t going to leave without his Sunflower.
As a Troan soul, Udhal had access to all the powers of the most magical species in the galaxy. He supersped away with hardly any effort to his prechosen hiding place before anyone could realize he had vanished.
In four years, they searched, but they never found him simply because no one thought anyone would be crazy enough to hide in the Oblivion Pit, and certainly not just above Death Fall.
They really shouldn’t have made him so clever.
The Crafter’s plane didn’t only have the Soul Gardens; it also housed the afterlife. The Oblivion pit was for souls who were Hopeless five times in a row. A soul that was merely Hopeless, unable to realize what they did wrong in their life and feel remorse about it, got scheduled for reincarnation with the hopes that in other circumstances they could do better. Five times in a row? They were stripped of their magic aspect and tossed into the Oblivion Pit, which was spelled so they couldn’t climb out. Inside the Oblivion Pit was Death Fall–the only place in the afterlife where a soul could completely destroy itself.
It was danger incarnate and the last place anyone would look for a runaway soul, so Udhal, while still superspeeding, used his superstrength to make a little hole right above the black, tarlike water of Death Fall and settled in for the next four years.
Udhal cleared his mind and let the time pass. He felt his body aspect, the part of him that stored his DNA information and his future memories, shift as time went on to reflect who he’d be if he took the next opportunity to be born. The gender and names he’d get were all meaningless to him–they were living world problems. So, when it was finally time to leave, Udhal wasn’t Udhal, but Kahal of the Venla.
Kahal had been listening with his superhearing for weeks now, waiting for Allelosin to be told it was time to leave. Finally, finally all his patience was worth it. The time came and he pushed himself out of his hole and combined his powers of flight and superspeed, careful to not touch any walls or else get stuck. He flew and flew, pushing every limit he had until Allelosin was right in front of him. He grabbed the other soul and pulled him into his enhanced time.
“Sunflower, we don’t have much time,” he said quickly. “We both know there’s only one way to even try to find each other in the living world.”
Allelosin nodded. “Soulmates.”
They’d discussed it before in hushed tones. They hadn’t wanted to be told all the reasons it was a dumb idea.
This was just for them.
A proper soulmate connection would let them recognize each other in the living world. Assuming they ever found each other. Soulmates weren’t common, but not rare enough that the Ialna didn’t have a policy to deal with them. Normally, the Ialna used what extremely limited power they had over the living world to help soulmates meet, but Kahal and Allelosin were going to be born on separate planets. It would be a miracle if they could meet.
Still, a small chance was better than absolutely nothing.
“I’m willing to do it, Sunflower,” Kahal affirmed. “Are you?”
“Yes,” Allelosin replied without hesitating.
Allelosin gripped him and met Kahal’s eyes. Together, they began the process.
The magic to make soulmates was relatively simple. Messy, but simple. Kahal took the personality aspect of his soul and ripped it off as Allelosin did the same for his own. Little traces of their magic and body aspects stuck to the personality aspect while traces of the personality aspect stuck to the magic and body. The personality aspect that once belonged to Allelosin attached itself to the body and magic aspects that once belonged to Kahal, and the personality aspect that had once been Kahal attached itself to the body and magic aspects that had once been Allelosin.
The moment the swap was completed, they dropped out of the enhanced time.
“Go,” Kahal urged.
Allelosin smiled and ran towards the Crafter’s gazebo. He no longer had Troan magic, but since he knew their plans relied on him leaving this plane before they could be forced to swap back.
He ran as if death was snapping and snarling at his heels.
It was enough. He stepped in and felt the magic seize him. He felt his temporary aspect, where his prelife memories were stored and thus only attached to his personality aspect, start being erased, so he turned to watch Kahal as they faded. Before he forgot him.
“See you soon, Sunflower,” he whispered.
Kahal smiled brightly and waved. He smiled as Allelosin forgot him and slipped into the living world. He smiled until all of him was gone.
Kahal’s smile slipped when the Crafter turned to him. His smile fell completely under the Crafter’s stare. He could feel the Crafter figure out what they had done and come to the realization that it was too late to do anything about it.
Allelosin was free in the living world.
He couldn’t be recalled.
The Crafter knew that they should have known, seen the signs, but they had never had soulmates in their garden before, the only place soulmates between separate species could form. Would the souls attach to their growing bodies properly? Would their bodies develop properly? They had so many questions and no answers.
The only thing they could do was their job. They kept Kahal past the next deadline as they observed Allelosin, who developed exactly as a normal human baby should.
Luckily, Cael, the soul that had once been Kahal, had another window soon after. The Crafter smiled as if everything was normal when Cael stepped into the gazebo to be born, and for the first time in their existence, the Crafter wondered if they’d done the wrong thing.
There was no way to save Tro. Not anymore. Little, innocent, Cael was going to be born to a world doomed to accidentally blow up its own star a few weeks after her birth. Unless so many things went right, she was being born just to soon die.
The Crafter cried. All those souls, all those innocent Troans would soon be dead and they could see no way to influence a future where it could be prevented now.
They wanted so badly to blame Allelosin and Cael, but they knew where the blame really lay. It was with them because those innocent souls hadn’t known. They couldn’t have.
The Crafter had kept it from them.
They had followed company policy, their own policy, after all.
So, as the visions of the universe now that Tro would no longer be in it flashed before their eyes, the Crafter comforted themself with the only truth they had.
“They didn’t know.”
The story picks up some undeterminable number of hours, minutes, and seconds over twenty one years and seven months after the birth of Cael of the Venla.
It is the 14th of Wediv-month, 1556 on the planet Kyp.