Chapter 1
The clicking and clacking of her keyboard made Kora’s teeth grind in frustration as her auto-dictation spell worked them over at a blinding and deafening speed. Of course, the mortal souls arrayed before her heard no such noises. The speed of Kora’s perception was such that she could register the individual key presses, even if it was unthinkably fast, even to her altered hearing.
Looking over the crowd of huddled, shuddering masses, Kora cleared her throat and lifted a hand to put a bubble of silence around her PDA. The poor mortals didn’t need its distraction, and she had thousands of them to process.
“Welcome, you damned and dreary souls to central processing. Here, we do not judge the quality of your soul, it is only our purpose to determine who owns you once you’re done crossing over. No questions, and that’s not a request. There are four thousand, six hundred and seventy-seven of you fools to get through today, and I am only one demon. When I call your name, approach the circle of runes in the center of the room. Do not touch the circle, it will kill you. Do not try to run, I will kill you. As long as everyone’s clear on the rules, let’s start alphabetically with... Arthur Abeshi-... No, fuck you, I’m not bothering with that. Arthur, get your ass over here, you know who you are.”
The soul in question shivered, as much as can be said of such things, and very quietly wisped itself over to her circle of runes. She was pretty sure this one was male in life, though it was hardly her job to keep track of mortal naming conventions. Her head was already pounding at the anticipation of these nearly five thousand souls and their sordid little lives and secrets.
“Very good. Arthur, it seems you made many, MANY appeals to many different gods, and many different pantheons in life, as well as selling your soul to a witch doctor. In situations like this, the bargain of your soul for services rendered takes precedence, unless mitigating factors are inherent in the deal, which isn’t my department. Go through door number five, the next department will help figure out where the witch doctor’s loyalties are. NEXT!”
"Soul number... Oh, does it really matter?" Kora was well into the H group now, having just sent Harold Drustovnukai-something-something off to meet his own chosen fate. The huge glowing door marked with a question mark over the center arch was growing more and more popular as her shift went along. She didn’t like having to scare the mortals into line, but experience and her training had taught her that recently departed souls aren’t exactly ready for the big questions, and don’t respond well to actual conversation. It helped somewhat that she’d only had to blow two or three of them to oblivion for trying to escape. The rest shimmered and swelled in ways that... might have been fear if she squinted. It was almost impossible to get a read on the formless, smoky mass of a disembodied mortal soul, even so, fresh off the vine as these.
Looking up from her ethereal clipboard, keyboard clacking away at a blinding pace four feet away from her head inside its little isolation bubble, Kora called out for Haroldson, son of Harold Drustovnukai-something-something, and tapped firmly on her clipboard for emphasis. It was almost impossible not to notice the late arrivals, ascended demons floating in with their billowing black cloaks to drop off souls at the back of her queue and go floating off into the distance. She tried not to take it personally, they were just doing their jobs, but she could swear that bitch Fiirtax was intentionally flooding her line.
Realizing she’d gotten distracted, Kora shook her head and cleared her throat, looking at her clipboard as it populated with this new guy’s sheet. Her eyebrow quirked up as she watched it continue to fill, absolutely flooding with more and more information. The process looked strange from the outside, her head seeming to blur as she lost focus with the relative time of the mortals to process Haroldson’s sheet. When she slipped back into focus and her form stabilized, she clicked a button on her keyboard with a psychic input, and the number sign over door number one lit up.
“Congratulations. You’re the first mortal today to go to a single god by virtue of actually meeting your spiritual obligations. Go through the door, please, so that the Morrigan can take you.” Annoyingly, the soul grew agitated and tried to protest, swirling and pulsing in a way she definitely recognized.
“No, I don’t care that you’re not from Ireland. Your mother was, and I don’t make the rules. Your father made his own promises, but you didn’t, and because the claim to your soul was left unattended, she gets to claim you for your Irish blood. Take it up with her.” The soul continued to pulse as it floated to door number one, where only one god’s claim remained over those who passed. Kora’s job was hard enough without trying to explain the minutia of promises made versus promises kept to these flagrantly temporary little candles. ”NEXT!"
