Soul Between Lives

"Hey, wake up!"

Alex only slightly stirred from the deep oblivion of sleep.

"Oye! Wake up!"

While being forced from a peaceful slumber, Alex couldn't help but resent the noisy people outside his window as he stubbornly did his best to keep dreaming.

"I've had it! Such a d*mm stubborn soul. Honestly, how can you even be asleep?"

"G*D! D*mmit! What the hell just happened?" Alex was jolted awake from being shocked by a strong surge of electricity.

When he looked around in a state of shock and while still partly asleep, Alex noticed that he was no longer in his bed. Even his room was nowhere to be seen. In fact, there was nothing familiar around him and only an old man with a malicious grin could be seen within the field of blank white nothingness.

As he looked at this creepy man, Alex couldn't help but wonder if he'd gone insane or if he was having one of those strange realistic dreams again.

"Hmm, finally got a reaction out of you huh?" the old man then grumbled, "It's about d*mm time."

Alex's eyes widened as the old man seemingly conjured an orb of light out of thin air and held it in his hand.

"Now that I have your attention, let's get down to business."

Speechless and with mouth hanging open, Alex had yet to actually begin to pay attention.

"You're here because you died not long ago and out of all the souls of the departed you have won the chance to be reborn into a new world." Said the old man.

Alex spoke as panic rapidly encroached upon his heart.

"What the heck is going on here?" He looked around then focused on the old man holding the now glassy glowing orb "What are you talking about? How can I be dead? I don't remember dying."

The old man frowned and lowered the orb in his hand a little bit as he took a few steps closer to Alex.

"Alright, we'll start from there then." The old man took a deep breath and continued. "You have in fact died. That is no longer your body." The old man pointed at Alex, "At least not your physical body. By the look you're giving me I can tell you think I'm speaking a bunch of nonsense. Shall I hit you with more lightning until you come to believe that this is real?"

The old man held his other hand, that was suddenly emitting a threatening amount of electric discharge, out toward Alex. But Alex hardly reacted other than staring at the nifty effect.

"Don't say I didn't warn you." The old man said right before he electrocuted Alex again.

"Yaaarrg! Alright! Ok! Damn it that hurts! I know I'm not dreaming so lay off! Please!" As the old man let off his attack, Alex was left groaning on what counted as the floor of the strange place.

"Good, I'll continue then. Unless you have any other questions or concerns relating to your fate?" The old man asked with one eyebrow raised and the hand with the lightning poised between the two of them.

Alex recovered his dignity a little and sat up again while warily eyeing the sparking electricity with an expression of resignation.

"If I'm truly dead, How did I die?"

The old man stood up straight and waved away the lightning and a scroll unfurled from his hand.

While Consulting the scroll the old man told Alex, "It seems you died when a blood clot traveled from one of your hemorrhoids and entered your brain while you were sleeping. Not the weirdest way to die but its up there." He said, stroking his beard and chin.

Alex's expression kept changing between disgust and incredulity. He was momentarily speechless again.

As he Rubbed his forehead Alex asked, "If that's how I died... not the strangest huh?" He looked at the old man as if wanting him to tell him what actually counts as the strangest death.

"Yeah, the strangest death I've seen was when a young lady got brained by a cosmonaut toilet seat falling from low orbit." The old man said with a smile. "But that was in a TV show I once saw."

"Now then, we've already wasted too much time." The old man continued. The orb appeared once more in his hand. "Like I was saying, you have been chosen to reincarnate into a new world and it's about time I sent you there."

"Wait! Is that all the explanation you're going to give me?" Alex retorted with less panic in his voice than what was feeling.

"Like I said, time is running short, so off you go!" The old man said as he threw the orb at Alex hitting him in the c.h.e.s.t.

Alex only had a moment to regret not trying to dodge, as the space around him swirled and sped away before he lost consciousness and entered the black oblivion devoid of thought.

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***Elsewhere***

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Leilatha was reading reports in her study, with her platinum hair gently curled around the points of her elven ears. Refugees entering the border and straining their resources was nothing new at this point. But recently, their numbers had been increasing dramatically and to make matters worse, the number of conflicts between her citizens and hungry refugees was also on the rise. It was already far too late to stop the hordes of hungry mouths from entering her territory and her military and police forces were already spread too thinly.

She had recently dispatched the greater part of her army to repel a hostile invasion force that had been closely following a large group of civilians entering her territory. They had already burned large parts of the eastern forest and forced the evacuation of three of her nearby villages. The very fact that such a large hostile force had made it to her borders implied that her neighboring kingdom was in deep trouble. Normally such a force would have been stopped before it ever reached her lands.

She was finding it difficult to focus on the statistics in front of her as she waited for news on the outcome of the battle. There was no doubt that her army would be victorious. They had never once lost a defensive fight and her generals were superb. Only the quality of recent additions to her forces left her in doubt. She had to resort to hiring mercenaries, many of them refugees from other lands, to bolster her forces. There were many cases of corruption and even some sabotage committed by these mercenaries but overall they still helped her police and control the large amounts of refugees passing through.

"I swear if the invading warbands don't destroy us the hungry refugees will eat all our food and starve us to death."

"My lady..."

Leilatha's steward, Perin, could offer little further advice. Previously he had suggested closing off access to the inner portions of the kingdom with the home guard which was the bulk of her forces. In addition, he suggested the use of mercenaries to deal with any hostile invading forces to save both their own manpower and also money. They may not have to pay the wages of any of the mercenaries that fall in battle. If the comrades of the fallen tried to claim their brothers' wages as compensation the home guard would drive them off. They had previously paid such compensation but it quickly turned into cases of fraud and downright threats.

The plan to use outsiders for the worse fighting was feasible as long as the home guard still outnumbered and overpowered the mercenaries but as time went on they had to keep hiring more and more of them just to keep order. As it was, the treasury was being depleted as fast as their food stores. The thought of taxing refugees for passing through their land had been raised before but they lacked the manpower to actually carry it out. There was also the issue where small-scale battles broke out as refugees fought against what they called exploitation. Taxation of all these immigrants just wasn't cost effective with their current means.

All they could do so far was protect the very core of their land. Estimates on the damage to their forest, especially in their outlying lands, were appalling. Considering how long the troubles had been continuing on for and the sheer number of people involved, they had been weathering this burden relatively well. There had been terrible news coming in for years about kingdoms further east being swept away by the tides of bodies.

If she wasn't a god herself, Leilatha would have been praying for divine intervention on her peoples' behalf. Old habits die hard though. She still found herself closing her eyes with a solemn prayer to her mother goddess even though it had been thousands of years since she ascended and broke away to found her own god nation.

Remembering her homeland filled her with more worry. She came from lands even further east than many of the kingdoms that had already been swept away. She could only hope that her old home was too far out of the way for most of the troubles to have found them. Her only solace was in the fact that there had been no refugees from her homeland passing through yet. Surely if there was trouble at least some of her native countrymen would be able to escape and find her.

Lielatha's thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of hurrying footsteps climbing her tower's stairs.

"Let me through! I have news on the battle!" Came a voice from down the hall outside her study.

"Perin, can you go and confirm his identity and show him in?"

"At once my lady." Perin bowed and headed out the study doors.

Lielatha leaned back in her chair fidgeting with her hands hoping the news was good. She didn't have to wait long before Perin returned leading in the messenger from the recent battlefield.

"My lady it is good news." Perin said with a smile.

"Excellent. Let's hear the report. Step forward, please." Lielatha gestured to the messenger to step forward and give his report.

"My lady." The messenger bowed to his queen and began relating the events of the fight.

The enemy forces were more powerful than they had originally anticipated. They had broken through the first three barricades and trap lines until finally becoming bogged down in the prepared quagmire. Only the toughest enemy forces were impervious to the home guard's archers so the lancers moved in while the archers focused on the lighter units.

The hired mercenaries had performed poorly. They had been in the front lines and were routed when the enemies had forced their way through the first barricade lines. Even when many regrouped they couldn't find a meaningful way to contribute to the combat in the swamp and were left to hunt down any wayward enemy scouts and stragglers. Of the mercenaries that fled, only a third had returned to report for duty.

Lielatha scanned the list of casualties as the messenger reported. Some of the dead were familiar names from the home guard. Most of the deaths were from the mercenary units and though it pained her, she was happy that more of her own citizens hadn't fallen instead. She breathed a sigh of relief. The fact was, this battle cost her far less than it could have.