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Chapter 7: Wake Up Call

Jason woke up, though it wasn’t really waking up. It was simply coming into being. One second he wasn’t there and then the next second he was in the place he now called the lobby. A white void that seemed without end and yet Jason felt oddly confined within it.

He wandered around a little, no longer afraid of it like he had been the first time. It was simply a space within himself when he wasn’t himself. It was hard to explain, but he just knew. He was vaguely aware that his body was on the move. Antes would be at the wheel and Jason was simply in the lobby waiting for his turn.

“Good, you’re awake,” Antes said even though he was nowhere in sight. His voice permeated everything. “Dying puts quite the strain on the soul.”

“I imagine so,” Jason said and looked down at his bare feet. He was naked and human. Easy enough to fix.

With a single thought, Jason was in a comfortable and loose pair of pants with a flannel button shirt. He was also a dog again and since he didn’t know how to make shoes to fit his new foot paws, he kept them bare. Jason looked at himself for a moment and then frowned when he didn’t see a tail. A hole then appeared in the back of his pants, allowing his long fluffy tail to slip out.

“Better,” Jason said and then turned his attention to Antes again by simply staring out at the void.

“Accepting what you are now?” Antes asked.

Jason shrugged. He had time to think, though he didn’t remember thinking about it at all. Where had he been when Antes had been in charge of the body? Sleep wasn’t the right word. Something else, on standby? Maybe. Maybe not. However, he was now comfortable with his new self. There was no changing what was fact now.

“Where are we now?” Jason asked.

Antes chuckled. “Just open your eyes.”

As if the words were a switch, Jason opened his eyes. It was warm. Actually it was pretty hot. That was what Jason noticed first and then he noticed that he was looking at the white fabric of a canvas tent. He sat up.

If he had woken up with amnesia of the past events, Jason would have thought that he had been out camping. Weird medieval fantasy world or back home, a tent was a tent.

There was a lot of noise outside. Numerous voices, lots of moving stuff, horses neighing. Jason wondered if it was actual horses or people horses neighing. He didn’t know and the thought riled him to sit up.

Sweat dribbled down his chest. Dogs weren’t supposed to sweat, but Jason did. So, there were a few differences beyond the obvious. A quick thought of licking himself came to mind and he quickly pushed it away, aware of who would always be sharing his every moment. Antes didn’t make any comment. Did he know every thought that he thought? He couldn’t hear what Antes was thinking, though he could feel his presence. Like having someone standing behind him closely, but not uncomfortably so. Than angel’s presence was actually comforting. A security blanket or sort.

His pants, white like the tent, but made of cotton or a similar substance with leather pads at the knees, were itchy on his fur, but Jason kept them on. He stood up on his paws and walked to the flap of his tent. There was no zipper, but a few leather laces tied to keep the wind from blowing in dust. He undid them and had to shield his eyes from the light that flooded in.

The outside world was beyond what Jason could have ever imagined. The smell was awful to start with, but everything else was marvelous. Thousands. It had to be thousands of people, some human, some horses, canines, pigs, every animal was out there, all walking on two legs and going about their duties. A dog with white patchy fur was hammering away on a sword that looked as if it had seen better days. A swan, long neck and all, was ironically fletching arrows, using feathers that Jason thought could have come from his own back. A ferret, small and nimble in leather armor, was filing with an even smaller rat in chain mail. It was quite the sight.

“What are you doing pup,” a voice, gruff and gravely said and Jason jumped, turning to face the source. It was a gnarled looking badger. Black and white fur with bits of off colored pink showing through where numerous scars covered his body.

Jason couldn’t think of words to say, so he said them all. It came out as a coherent mess of one syllable words and noises. The badger snorted.

“Can’t even answer a question,” he said to himself, but loud enough for Jason to hear. “What unit you from?” He took a few steps closer, his hand on the pommel of his sword.

He wouldn’t draw it, would he? Jason thought.

“I’m not part of a unit,” Jason managed to say, his voice meager and without any confidence behind it.

The badger raised an eyebrow and bared his teeth. “No unit? Then what are you doing here? There’s a war going on, can’t you see? We don’t have time for the likes of you. Milling about and eating food that you don’t deserve.”

Jason took a step back towards the tent and looked around. No one was watching at all. He could be attacked right now and no one would intervene. Whoever this badger was, the entire rest of the camp was going to let him do whatever he felt like doing.

“Look,” Jason said, throwing up his hands in a non threatening posture. “I don’t know who you think I am, but...”

“But what?” The badger said and took a few more steps towards Jason.

What was his deal? Did he walk around camp just looking for trouble? Jason thought of what he could do. He could just run. He was certain he could outrun the smaller badger. Then what? Just keep running through the camp, he supposed. Not like he could get lost in a place that he already didn’t know.

“I think you’ve scared him enough, Vilany.”

Out of nowhere, the ferret that had been dueling the rat appeared on Jason’s shoulder. Jason nearly freaked and swatted at him, but barely managed to hold still. He could feel the ferret’s tail brush the back of his neck.

The badger, Vilany, relaxed. His frown turned into a slightly bemused look. His hand left the sword and rested on his hips.

“Had to have my fun, Kline” Vilany said. His voice was no longer gruff. It was quite airy actually, like Brit who had been living in Australia for a few years.

Kline rested an elbow on the side of Jason’s head. “Plenty of fun will be coming your way.” He then leapt from Jason’s shoulder and landed on the ground in front of him. He did a short bow. “Kline Fauster at your service. Antes said that you’d be waking soon. I’m Lord Practitioner of Arcane Arts. That old thing behind me is Vilan-“

“Vilany Bell,” the badger interrupted Kline. “Master at arms. We’re here to instruct you on not being dead.”

It took a while to get Jason caught up with everything, but it all boiled down to that Antes wanted to make sure Jason could defend himself through both martial might and magic. Turned out that Antes was not fully with Jason at the time. The angel had traveled through an etherial realm to heaven where he was meeting with the other angels and discussing angelic stuff, whatever that meant. That meant that the angel wouldn’t always be there to help out in potentially tight situations and if Jason died again, they’d both die.

“You copy all that,” Vilany asked and drank from his mug. The smell of beer was strong in the mess tent they had moved to. At least a hundred more others were there now.

“Uhh, yeah,” Jason said and scratched his head. “I think. I just need to learn how not to die.”

“Told ya he’d understand,” Kline nudged the badger with his elbow. He sat on top of the table on his own smaller chair with his own smaller mug of beer. The dishes must be quite a doozy to take care of.

The mug of beer was downed before Vilany spoke. “Let’s put it into practice then. Tomorrow morning at dawn. We’ll teach ya good and right.” The two chuckled and got up and then left without so much as a goodbye and no other instruction on what to do with himself for the rest of the day. The sun, which was a slightly more orange color than the one back home, was still high in the sky. The days also seemed to last longer as well. It had barely moved the entire time Jason had been with Vilany and Kline.

So, Jason wandered the camp. It was like a small city. It wasn’t just all tents. Some buildings had been constructed with wood, though there were no trees here. As far as Jason could tell, the camp was in the middle of a dry and arid flat. The ground was cracked and parched. Dirt was being kicked up at every step and it was quite choking.

There were few humans in the camp. They were definitely a minority, but they weren’t treated as such. No one cared what anyone else was here. They all just carried on. However, Jason was looking for one human in particular. Even though he hadn’t been there, he knew that Antes had met with Kieth and had brought him here. He simply knew as if the memory, or rather the experience, had been his own. A part of Antes that had been left open to him he supposed because he could recall every experience that Antes had and Jason had the feeling that the opposite was true.

The camp was very big. There were streets and blocks with carts and massive amounts of traffic and yet it wasn’t hard to find Keith. Jason had caught the scent. It was strange to explain. He had simply smelled the air and caught the whiff of something. It was like experience a surreal sense of deja vu. Kinda like smelling mom’s food after a very long time away. He simply followed the smell until it slapped him that he was smelling Kieth, after that it was even easier to follow the smell until Jason found him.

He was surrounded by about a dozen others. They were all having a great time by the looks of it, laughing and talking. They were all drinking at what looked like a tent made just for alcohol because the smell of it only got stronger as he got closer. He could begin to make out the words.

“So,” Kieth said in a hushed tone that forced everyone else to quiet down to hear. “There I was, crawling through the bushes. I was covered in scratches and bruises from staying hidden when I heard the sound of combat. Naturally, I had to investigate being the brave soul I am.”

A horse snickered and an elk slapped him on the shoulder.

Kieth went on without pause. “I came upon the scene and boy was it marvelous.”

The crowd came a bit closer together.

“There he was, Antes, the angel thought to have perished at the battle of Malus’ citadel. He was shining in his silvery armor, his legendary ice blade in his hand and his impeccable metal wings extended out wide. Before him was and I want to express just how much that ‘was’ is in past tense, was five demons. They were gnarly with more razor sharp teeth than an angry shark and some even had more limbs than what should be reasonable.”

Jason stopped walking. His head became a swirl as he recalled the events.

He had, or rather, Antes had, woken up from being dead and after just a short amount of time, he had been confronted by demons, scouts looking for him... Antes.

“Go back to your masters, there is nothing for you here now,” Antes said. A sword of ice formed in his hand from the moisture in the air. It was impossibly sharp and incredibly strong as well.

The demons were too stupid to think of disobeying their masters. Antes knew this perfectly well. They had been made from tortured souls and sin along with anything laying around with not much else to it. The souls craved to be alive and they were threatened with things far worse than death to serve.

The demons snarled and charged. Antes sighed.

“They came at him,” Kieth hissed and raised his hand up as if wielding a sword. “Antes cut down the first in the blink of an eye. He moved too fast for the eye to follow. Blood-“ Kieth stopped a moment, turning a slight shade of green for just a moment before swallowing. “Guts spilled everywhere.”

The other demons were concerned. Antes knew it. At this moment they were finally thinking about running and hoping their masters never found out. Too late. Angels were nearly as merciful as they had been in the past.

He leapt, flapping his wings so hard that craters were left by the air pressure alone. He burst forward with his sword dragging behind him. This body, Jason’s body, was young and full of energy, untapped and beyond what Antes had before. He was beyond mere demons now.

The second demon barely raised his own rusted blade to block the incoming attack. It didn’t work.

“His head vanished into a fine mist.” Kieth created an explosion around his head with his hands. “The demon was dead just like that and now there were only three left and boy did they look scared. I would have helped, let’s face it, Antes needed no help.”

There was a sound of agreement from the crowd at that statement.

“What happened next?” A bear with bandages around his head, asked.

“He killed them, obviously,” another that Jason didn’t see replied.

“Yes. Yes,” Kieth calmed them down. “I was getting to their brutal deaths.”

A demon lunged for Antes with a deadly looking spear. It would have gotten Antes straight in the back of the head, but a metal wing soon blocked it while Antes whirled around with the other wing. The demon’s top half hit the ground before the bottom half fell.

The fourth demon to fall cake shortly after that. The birds would have a field day picking bits of that one out of the trees.

The fifth tried to flee.

“He dropped his four swords and ran as fast as his three legs could carry him. He screamed and begged for mercy,” Kieth laughed. “Didn’t save him from the icy javelin that Antes threw right through him.”

The crowd cheered and clapped at the end of the story and after a few thanks, began to part.

Jason stood at the edge of the crowd with his arms crossed and a smile. He waited until Kieth spotted him. “Made yourself quite at home didn’t you?”

Kieth instantly perked up and ran over to Jason, hugging him. He was actually crying as well. “You have no idea how good it is to have a familiar face around again.”

“Good to see you too, bud,” Jason lightly hugged back and waited for Kieth to stop his own squeezing.

“Sorry?” Kieth wiped the tears away. “It’s been a hectic few weeks.”

“Weeks?!”