Chapter 8

As I started looking around the room I felt the lust for power that I hadn't felt originally, but being in this room with so many lifetimes of souls it made me wonder what it would be like to be able to feel all of these spirits at once. I shook my head as if to clear the thought from my head and asked her "have all the spirits been discovered and organized into this one room?" She looked at me and said "most have been but there are still a few that no one has been able to capture because they're usually qualities that don't belong to the ones that could possibly be like us" I looked around wondering which ones were empty. She chuckled at me and said, "I can show you the empty ones if you want to see them silly boy, all you have to do is ask." I blushed embarrassed that she could tell how intently I was staring at all of them. "Yeah I'd like to see which ones are missing, it sounds interesting." She had a small grin at the corners of her mouth as she led me to the great wall of soul essences, she pointed to a few ones that were all bundled together. "These are the only empty ones out of every one of these." I looked and written on the five she pointed at was pure love, selflessness, loyalty, forgiveness, and humility. It made sense that none of these seemed to make it, any that had all these qualities probably died in the battlegrounds. It was surprising that at least one or two didn't make it in though. I took a look around and asked, "where are the spirits like mine?" She replied, "I was just about to take you to yours, it's right over here." As I walked to see mine she said, "As soon as I open this drawer containing your type of essence it will take some of your spirit for me to study, are you ready?" I nodded and she opened it fully and suddenly I felt like a part of me was missing and then she reached her hand out and closed her eyes to concentrate and a small ball of the clear spirit solidified in her hands. It was amazing; the ball was so sharp and defined and turned blood red as she kept focusing. She said, "Now you focus on it and you'll understand your spirit more." I concentrated on it and then memories that weren't mine flooded into my head, the very beginning of what caused bloodlust seeing Cain kill Abel and then so many other people with different feelings causing them to turn into bloodthirsty killers or just violent. At the very end I opened my eyes and took the ball from her hands and she opened her eyes. "What are you doing?" She looked at me sternly and I said, "I just wanted to feel it for myself and admire it before we put it back." She acted like she understood and stood leaning on the cabinet, as I played with the ball of spirit she laughed. "You're just like a little kid playing with a toy." She came over and changed its form several times, at first it was a little dragon, then a gun, a book, and back into a little ball again. "You can make your spirit into anything you want when you tap into it." She said. I looked at the ball and thought about Opet and it changed into her form and I touched it gently and then I changed it back to a ball looking at it forlornly. Pirouette put her hand on my shoulder gently and rubbed it. "I know it's hard to lose the one you love, but you'll always be the one she loved and she wouldn't want you to lose your life to the thought of her. She always said to us she thought you were the type to go out in a blaze of glory." I wanted to be what Opet wanted me to be so I focused on doing whatever it was the soul searchers wanted me to do first and once I learned how to use my ability properly I would focus every effort on getting rid of all the ones like us that stood in the way of the chance at a peaceful and painless world. I stood there silently for a few moments, then a feeling of strong resilience fueled by Opet's belief in my ability to change the world took over my entire mind and I looked at Pirouette and she saw the sudden shift in my attitude and after I nodded she smiled and said "I'll go get Renfro and ask who he wants to train you." I waited in The Final Archive for a few moments and then I heard footsteps coming from farther down getting steadily closer before getting back to the large room finally coming back to me. In front of me was Pirouette and a man that I saw briefly in the room that I gained the soul seeking ability in. "This is who will train you in the ability to seek souls, Arquis meet Bethelod." We looked at each other and I saw a hint of anger pass through his eyes as if he'd rather be off somewhere else than teaching me. We shook hands awkwardly and he said "It's nice to meet you I guess, just stay close and pay attention so we can get this over with quicker." I held back the urge to tell him that whatever he wanted to get back to could wait and just said, "Sure, I'll keep up." He looked at me as if he could tell that I was holding back saying something and looked at Pirouette and asked, "Where to missy?" She glared at him and said "you're going to Lava Rose Rift." He looked at her taken aback by where she told him to go. "What are you trying to do, kill me?! You know Lava Rose Rift is where most of the battlegrounds prisoners come from!" She mocked him after his remark. "Really?! I had no idea that they came from there!" She said sarcastically. She continued in a more serious tone, "I thought you could use a reminder that there are more important things to do than to lay around all day drinking and partying and letting all your talent for soul searching go to waste you selfish ass." He looked as if he were mad enough that his eyes could set her on fire while I was somewhat hiding a smile from him getting knocked down a notch on his pride like I was originally planning on doing but kept quiet about since I didn't know him personally. They stood face to face with each other for a few minutes both staring down the other before finally Pirouette said turning around, "Off you go, you're wasting time looking at me when you could easily take a picture for the road." He muttered back, "I couldn't take a picture because the camera would break" Pirouette whipped around faster than he could blink and asked, "What was that?!" He jumped back just as quick and replied "I said we should head out before daybreak!" He got out quickly and turned to me and said "let's go!" Clearly not wanting to stay around any longer. I smiled at Pirouette and she smiled back and nodded at me and Arquis and I headed off to Lava Rose Rift.