Spirit World

The Spirit

"Hmm... The Sovereign of the Spirit World, hmm... I ask for your mighty presence. I am a mere human, begging for your holy guidance. I need your spirit's direction in this circumstance I found myself in."

In a small space of the room, seated in the middle was a woman covered with yellowish silk fabric above her head, and only her closed eyes were seen, hummed in silence, imploring and beseeching. She was dressed in a red gown, covering her whole body from head to the tip of her toe, despite the warm temperature inside the room. The room was filled with lit candles, surrounding almost the whole fogged room placed everywhere, but she was seated in the middle of the candles formed in a circle.

In front of her was hanging small plywood on the wall, placed on top was a wooden figure of an unknown person, holding an obvious stick in his hand and a lit candle in front of it. She didn't know if she was talking to a man or a woman because of the long hair and the long gown, there was no face, and the first time she saw it, she was kind of having thoughts of doubts if she should really pray for this like what the book had told her, or not at all. It was weird praying like this, she was actually irritated with what she was wearing right now, but she had to, this was her only hope.

"Sovereign of the Spirit World, please give me your mighty guidance. My mother, the most precious person in my life has been taken away from me, the person important to me, and I believe to you as well, was shanghaied by the people I do not know. This has something to do with those people who were trying to seek immortality. Give me your mighty guidance in stopping them, give me your mighty guidance for taking back my mother, give me your mighty knowledge on what should I do. The Sovereign of Spirit World, I entirely rely on you. I will wait for your response. You are mighty, knowing, and powerful Sovereign, I acknowledge you."

She stood up and clutched her dress to allow her to walk forward. She went to the front of the wooden figure and blew the candle in front of it as if she had just wished for something, and the smoke from the candle would bring her prayers to the spirit she was praying to. She sincerely hoped that was how it worked, she was actually just following the instruction of the weird book she found from her mother's book collection.

After her meditation and sincere prayer to the Sovereign of the Spirit, she stood at the side and took the huge hand fan with a wildflower honey color and a medieval design and swished it in the air, causing the air to extinguish the fire of all the candles in the room. The whole room darkened, and she couldn't see the surroundings anymore, but the knob of the door was just on her side so she managed to get out so swiftly. She was in their basement, filled with books of different languages and symbols that she didn't try looking and reading, she had just come down there to pray to the Sovereign Spirit, like how she had been doing since the day after her mother's a*******n, which was three days ago already but she hadn't heard anything from the Spirit World yet if they were even true.

In the new world where everything had equipped into a more beautiful and urbanized world, these kinds of things such as magic, other worlds, and incantation, were all just absurdity. No one believed it existed, no one even talked about this anymore, the previous way of living had been disregarded and called unhinged, outmoded way of living and something used for insult and had been a funny topic in the world of today. Except, she guessed, for her mother who had persisted the culture of before until now. And that reason as well had brought her to danger.

She didn't want to learn about this before when she was a kid. Her mother tried to teach her a lot of times, but she kept on refusing, how could she when she had to dress like some sort of a witch that made her as the laughingstock of her classmates, and as only a grade-schooler before, of course, it was a traumatizing event for her, so since then, she did not wear that dress anymore despite her mother buying her such dresses like what she was wearing now.

She climbed up to their first floor and sighed, she stripped herself off from the itchy dress that only left her with her denim shorts and oversized shirt. She threw herself on the long couch and groaned there, hating the quiet house and the obvious absence of her mother which by now should be cooking her dinner. She looked at the side and found the picture frame of her and her mother placed on the top of the hutch. She stood up and took it, the longing feeling of her mother's presence was seeping through her heart, squeezing it until it produced tears in her eyes.

"If I only know some hooligans are after your mastery of the boring culture, I should have taken you to one party so you can forget that thing that puts you in danger right now, mom," she said to herself as she wiped the tears on her cheeks and put the frame back on the hutch and sighed. "I'll find you though. I love you no matter how weird you are."

She went straight to their kitchen. Their house was just a simple one-story ranch, the dining room, and the kitchen was connected, the two bedrooms were on the side and easily accessed. It was not shocking anymore that her mother was easily taken. Their house lack locks and security, it was a good thing that those people were stupid enough to leave her. She would make sure that she would find her mother.

She only got a cup of noodles in their cupboard, it was the only type of food that was left by her mother. Well, it wasn't like her mother was the kind of a parent who left her child with only food like that. It was actually the cupboard for survival food if something happened, only to be ready all the time, and good thing they had that because if they were not there, she might be dead right now. A situation without a mother indeed was a survival kind of situation.

While waiting for the noodle to soften, she took the book that had her mother's penmanship, it was in the English language, the only book that was in the language that she actually understood. It seemed like the translations of the other books that were written in some phraseology that only her mother among their kind could decipher. This was also tried to be taught to her, of course, but she just lost complete interest in things like this before because of that one event, and so her mother couldn't push that to her anymore. This, after all, should be learned with investment and perseverance, which she lacked, entirely.

She flipped the page of the part where she was taught how to pray to the Sovereign of the Spirit World if, according to the book, she wanted a spirit to accompany her to anything that she would do in her life. She was taught how to set up the room, what to do, what to say at the beginning and the end, basically every detail to be heard by the Sovereign of this world to give her a spirit to accompany her to what she wanted to do. Of course, she had to say her main motive, by the supreme would know what kind of spirit they would send.

This book had been filled with a lot of information about the worlds, the deities, who they should call, to the history of the culture, where it started, the consequences, the rules of what to do and what not, the evildoers, the incantation to summon things that she was having a hard time believing, and a lot more information, that the first time she took and read it, her head ached in too much information and confusion that she had to sleep it out for almost twelve hours, processing everything even in her dreams.

She continuously flipped the book until it brought her to the page where there were two figures of a cycle illustrated inside. The cycle of life of humans. The first stage was drawn with a baby, meaning a human would be born. Then it pointed to the circular world that had a label of 'Human World' written at the side. Then the human would die, and it pointed next to another world which had a label 'New World', then the other description that humans would either be born again or they would be transmigrated and continue their lives with previous memory of what happened in their lives to the Human World.

It was complicated, yes. And it was making her head hurt again. She decided to close it and stood up to get her lone, very unhealthy dinner. She was lacking in stored food, one reason to find her mother aside from missing her so much. She didn't know what those dummies wanted from her mother, she just went to guessing that those people wanted to do something with the power and knowledge her mother had about worlds and lives, and transmigration, so she came up with something that these people were after longer lives, or for short, as what she had read from her mother's account, immortality.

"What's so good about this life that they want immortality?" she muttered to herself as she slurped the noodles and cursed because of the hotness that she felt burned her mouth. Another furious loud curse word came out of her mouth.

Unaware of her surrounding as she was busy cursing and drinking water to ease the rough feeling on her tongue, a man suddenly popped out at her back, welcoming him with that loud curse that she just suddenly burst out, almost straight toward her to which he couldn't help but frown.

"Miss Callie Cobb," he whispered right on her ears, purposely startling the woman who he didn't fail as she screamed on top of her lungs, threw the cup noodles in the air which sprawled all over the place, and fell on the chair he was seated on.

Callie held her chest and slowly looked behind her with a petrified face. But her screams earlier were nothing compared to the next scream she let out when she saw the person who called her floating on the ground.

Then everything went black.