Chapter 3 - Reincarnated as a Chicken?!

Ashkith’s home was modest and rather plain. It showed none of the eccentricity Chuck had quickly come to know of the man. In fact, it was all he knew of the man. Their walk lasted until well after the sun dipped below the horizon, and its entirety was filled with Ashkith’s unwavering chatter of his menial day to day life embroidered with the panache of heroic tales.

The house harbored no decorations. The few pieces of furniture, devoid of any personality, sat seemingly unused. It was much like a model home, only drab and uninspiring, a place not meant to bring comfort but simply for function.

The man pulled out a wooden chair, spun it about, and sat Chuck in it, facing the center of the room and away from its table. Chuck’s muscles spasmed as he sat, his energy completely consumed by the day’s events. His legs shook and had not Ashkith been there to help him down, he would have instead crashed against it.

Every movement sent flares of throbbing pain through broken ribs and sprained limbs. He was sure he had hyperextended his knee in his daring attempt to land in the cabbage cart as, on several occasions, a misplaced step led to his leg locking at the joint. Each time, Chuck had to backtrack a step, lift the leg, and bend the knee back the right way. Luckily, Ashkith was rather perceptive to his pain, and not once did he drag him along.

“Relax now…”

“I am,” Chuck grunted, very much not relaxed.

“Ah, yes. I see! That is why your muscles tremble so, I do think.” Ashkith steeled his voice slightly. “Relax now, or what I will do next shall hurt hurt more than is necessary—”

“What the fuck are you—” Chuck started, but Ashkith placed a hand on Chuck’s chest before he could finish. “Aarhg!”

A pressure ran through his body, sending reverberating waves of pain that echoed within him. His body fell limp in the chair. Chuck opened his mouth to speak but Ashkith held a hand to stop him. “You mustn’t speak, lest you have a desire for more pain. Now,” he continued, “we shall heal your injuries, I do think!”

The pain slowly subsided, and Chuck could feel cuts stitch themselves together, bones shift into place, the edges grinding until locking together with a sharp click, and the tenderness of bruises vanish. When all was still, he breathed in deep—the first full breath since the escape.

“Ah, very good! Yes. Good. Good. Your body heals quickly. You have an affinity, I do think!” he said, wagging a finger in front of Chuck’s sweating face. “Now we shall rest and talk and… drink… tea! Yes, yes. Tea, I do think.” And the man shuffled to the other side of the room behind Chuck. Cabinets creaked open, and the man rummaged through the cluttered spaces, clashing together pots and pans.

His body was only a dull ache now, yet it felt weighed down by some unseen force. Every movement was sluggish as Chuck sat straight in the chair. He tried to look over his shoulder to watch Ashkith, but by the time his head was halfway turned, Ashkith had already returned mug in hand.

“Take this.” Ashkith said, and realizing Chuck’s sluggishness was not due to a dislike of tea continued. “Ah, I see. You heal quickly, yet now your body resists. You are a strange man. And so very interesting.” The man came closer, opened Chuck’s mouth, and poured in a bit of the tea. Chuck sprang up, coughing violently. “Much better, I do think! Ashkith, always a step ahead!”

“What the fuck was that?” Chuck screeched.

“Merely tea, my friend—”

“Not the fucking tea!”

“Ah, yes! You have experienced the Divine Arts—magicks, Master Chuck.”

“The Divine Arts? Magicks? ‘Master?’”

“Yes… Has your hearing not yet healed; ask you always so many a question?”

Chuck simply stared at the man, sat back down with a thud, and sighed. He rubbed at his temples. “You said you are a servant of ‘a god,’” he asked, “there are more?”

Ashkith cocked his head and stared at Chuck, arms crossed. He tapped a finger against an arm for a while, then beginning to pace back and forth, muttered to himself.

A moment later, he stopped, and looked at Chuck with a seriousness unbefitting of the eccentric man Chuck had come to know in such a short time. “You are his Champion, yet you do not know there are many gods? You have an affinity for the Divine Arts, yet you also resist its effects. And you have bested two Archons in battle, though they were but still children—”

“Children?” Chuck exclaimed, “those men were nearly a head taller than me!”

“Yes, children. And no, not men, Celestials…” Ashkith continued tapping a finger against his arm, the rhythm quickening as he thought. “Has Jenwahre not told you of these things?”

“Jenwahre?”

“My god, this is no good.” Exasperated, Ashkith continued his pacing, the fingers of one hand twisting and pinching at the hairs of his beard just below his lip. “No. No. This is not a good thing, I do think. You are in Purgatory, Master Chuck. You know this, yes?”

“I do—”

“Good. And why are you here?”

“I died?”

“Died? You are not dead!”

“I’m… not?”

“No! You are a Champion. You have been given chance at another life in service of my god. Have you not accepted his conditions?”

Chuck raised his hands. “Look, I don’t know anything you’re talking about: gods, champions, Divine Arts, all that. I was living a normal life, about to butcher some chickens for a customer of mine, those chickens attacked me, and then I died. Now, I’m here…”

Ashkith stopped. “Chickens killed you?”

“I know. Embarrassing. But I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like they knew how to fight. Like they were targeting me.”

“No… No, no, no. This is not right. There is something else at play here, I do think. I thought it odd to find you here in Purgatory. But I think this is not so much coincidence as I once thought. So…”

A silence lingered until Chuck, becoming uncomfortable, drawled out “So?”

“So, we haven’t much time. I must needs think. Stay here.”

Without another word, Ashkith disappeared into another room, waving his hands about, speaking to himself in hushed tones. Chuck thought about fleeing, but something about the man’s sudden worry calmed him. The genuine nature of his words left him feeling secure—for this moment at least. The thought of running into another archon made the decision to stay easy.

Children. Gods, they were children? I nearly snapped my shin in half kicking the first, and the second nearly killed me.

The weight of his situation finally began to sink in. He was dead—but not actually dead according to Ashkith—and hunted by the Archons. He was a champion, of Ashkith’s god at that, and was he supposed to know a Jenwahre?

His head throbbed, and an exhaustion overtook him. Chuck rose from the chair, and made his way to the short couch. His weight sunk into the cushions. It was too short for him to lay fully stretched out, so he let his legs hang off the edge at the calves.

As he lay there, his mind began to drift, and he fell into a deep sleep.

Chuck awoke in his bed, not the one of his farmhouse; he was in his childhood home. Overhead hung from fishing lines, model planes and rocket ships. Countless hours were spent piecing each of them together. Above those was that star-speckled backdrop of space. He had begged his mother for a year to paint his ceiling, and begrudgingly, his father had finally painted the mural of the night sky. Not well, of course. His father was no van Gogh. But it was one of the only good memories of his father.

He sat on the floor the whole day, looking up as his father painted, the old man asking him series of questions. ‘Do you want the moon here? Should there be planets? How many stars are there?’ Chuck was happy to answer, and even though the Moon, lopsided and too dark a gray, looked more like an asteroid than the Earth’s eternal partner, the boy marveled at it.

A knock came at the door, and Chuck spun around to see who it was. It was Jenna. When he turned back to his father, the man was gone, and Chuck no longer sat cross-legged on the floor. He stood. And before him stood Jenna.

She asked him ‘what is a man like you doing here?’ A counter sat between them. The deli, his first job during university, where the two first met. Chuck stood behind it, an awkward smile as he blushed from the cheesy pick-up line, and Jenna, dressed in black slacks and a tight, white button-up that bordered on professional, stared back at him, her own playful smile writ across her face.

She asked who he was—an odd way of asking his name, but she always had peculiar ways of doing things—and when he replied with only his name, she shook her head, telling him ‘you have much to learn about yourself, if that is your answer.’

He closed his eyes, savoring the memory. When he opened them, he was alone, in his butcher shop, trophies, medals, and certificates lining the walls. He hated them. A wall of reminders of what he once had, completely meaningless, and in no-way a representation of who he was.

Who was he?

He opened one of the display cases, and removed the framed arrest warrant. The world spun around him, and his father lay on the ground. Chuck lifted his hands. His knuckles were bloodied. His father beneath him, swollen and bruised. He lay there motionless, eyes cast up at Chuck, and an emotion that Chuck couldn’t quite place. A mix of sorrow and a determined look that said, ‘I do not regret what I have done.’

It made him angrier. And so Chuck hit him again. And again. Tears falling from his face. Until police—called by a neighbor—arrived, and pulled him off the man.

A door opened, and Chuck sat up, drenched in a cold sweat. Ashkith entered the home with a haggard look, none of the usual flamboyance in his mien. “Good. You have awoken. For a moment, I had thought you crawled yourself there to die.”

He pulled a chair to the couch and sat down. “I have made arrangements. We have little time, I do think, and I shall answer any question I can until our time is up.”

“What is about—”

“And keep your voice low. You are a loud man, I do think, and we must needs attract as little attention as possible.”

“—to happen.”

“A good question, that shall be answered soon. Ask me of more pertinent matters, Master Chuck.”

Chuck paused. You act as though we’re about to be attacked, and that is somehow not pertinent? “Why do you call me Master? And what is a Champion?”

“Do not mistake it. You are not my master. I serve only my god. It is simply a matter of politeness in title,” Ashkith replied. “As for Champions, I am not the one who should give such explanations…”

“Are you actually going answer my questions?” Chuck growled.

The man sighed. “Very well. If you cannot ask me the proper questions, then I shall just give you the proper answers. You are in Purgatory, but you are not dead. Only the dead are sent to Purgatory to be processed, and then sent on their way to the their assigned heavenly realm.”—Ashkith rubbed at his beard—“So why is it you have come to Purgatory? You did not choose so, not intentionally in any case.”

“It is clear to me that Grauvater—the god holding dominion over Purgatory—has brought you here himself… But why, is the question. And it is one I cannot possibly know.” Ashkith rose, placing the chair gently in its proper home at the table, then began to pace.

“You are pursued by the Archons, who, under the control of High Archon Auriel and somewhat Grauvater himself, work to secure this realm and others. You are a Champion, not a threat to the heavens. Be you captured, we shall uncover his plans, I do think.”

At these words, a knock sounded at the door. Though knock, severely understates the aggressiveness of it. Someone desperate to get in. Chuck thought.

“Ah. The time has come, Master Chuck. Earlier than I expected.”

Chuck shot up. “You were stalling!”

Another knock. The door rattled in its frame.

“My sincerest apologies for deceiving you so. But know that you shall not be in any real danger. In your final moments our common patron will swoop in to save you, I do think.” Ashkith said. ‘I do think.’ He’s not even sure of it himself. “Though you may come out of this a bit battered.” Chuck breathed in deep, attempting to, and nearly failing to, keep his anger in check. “Go on, now. Through the back door. Over there. Yes. That will do.”

Chuck shook his head, and snarled. “I won’t forget this…”

“You would be remiss to do so. And give Lysander my regards, violently preferably, you will know him. I shall stall them as long as is reasonable.”

Fists clenched, Chuck turned and left through the back door. He could hear the hinges of the door beginning to give, a loud crack, and then a cacophony of yelling.

Rested and healed from his earlier ordeals, he ran through a large, communal courtyard, once again weaving a path through the city’s denizens. Where the fuck am I supposed to go now? Chuck realized the implication of Ashkith’s words, if you are captured… There is no escape. The fucking prick. Two on my shit list now: Mr. Sullivan and the jovial Ashkith. Though admittedly, the later ranked far lower than the former, assuming the man’s words remain true.

He slowed his pace, and, standing now in the center of the courtyard, turned to face his pursuers. The crowd split as a tall man—Celestial—glided down to a stop, thirty paces before Chuck. It was the same archon who spotted him in the canal.

The ethereal wings of swirling blues and whites, folded in on themselves until they faded from existence. The glow of his armor brightened, and Chuck could feel a pressure enfold him. The archon swept his arm in a wide arc, and a rush of air filled the courtyard. Hands shielding his face, Chuck watched the crowds scatter and disperse into and around the surrounding buildings. Finally, the archon locked eyes with Chuck.

“Did you really think you could escape the Archons?” His voice was gravely, not in the kind of way women would grovel at, but as if the man’s voice was made from actual gravel.

“I’m still here aren’t I?”

“Not for long—”

Chuck didn’t let him finish. He charged in, ready for a fight his youth would have thirsted for. The archon stood still. This is going to hurt.

Full speed, Chuck brought up a foot and kicked with the entirety of his weight behind it, not a insignificant amount at nearly three hundred pounds. The archon’s ethereal wings shot out, and a gust of wind pushed from behind. Chuck’s leg crumpled as he slammed into the man and fell backwards. Shit. Not at all like the fight his youth yearned for.

Rolling to avoid attacks that did not come, Chuck then pushed himself to his feet. The archon stood with his arms folded, and barked out an ego-piercing laugh. “Ha! Like a child! Restrain him.”

Arms gabbed Chuck from behind like iron vices. He struggled, but made not even an modicum of progress breaking free. The archon behind, lifted him of the ground, legs kicking, animalistic grunts at every attempt to free himself.

The first archon strode forward, and his face came less than a hand’s length from Chuck’s own. “How pathetic you humans are. To think we Celestials birthed such a weak race of curs.”

Chuck slammed his forehead into the man’s nose. The archon reared back and roared, hand covering his face, a fury in his eyes, and blood leaking between fingers. “How’s that for weak, you fucking asshole! Courtesy of Ashkith!”

The archon pulled back a fist, one of the others called out “Lysander, wait!” And then the world went black.