The Chronicles of Aardia: Soulgraft

By Ryan Forth

Caellum Wraine and his father created a universe and world called Aardia and spent their lives expanding it for humanity to enjoy living in. When his father is diagnosed as terminally ill, it becomes the one thing left behind for Caellum to believe in as his life starts falling apart.

In the cosmos exists a god, Tethir, who has made Aardia real and plans a game--a game where he watches Caellum struggle with himself and the things he helped create to survive. One of those is the first person he ever made in Aardia...Mith.

Mith wakes in this new world, his last memories of death, to find everything about the world he thought he knew changing. He finds destruction where there used to be peace, magic come alive, and he finds in this changed world the freedom he hadn't known he craved--only to lose it when the god Tethir places Caellum's soul in his body.

In the end, only one soul can survive in a body, and Caellum and Mith have no choice but to fight. Fight for control, fight to the last one standing, fight to survive in Aardia...fight and play along like puppets in the hands of a cruel and entertained god while discovering more about the world of Aardia that has come alive around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781684987696

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The Chronicles of Aardia

Soulgraft

Ryan Forth

Copyright © 2022 Ryan Forth

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-68498-323-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68498-769-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Acts of God

Chapter 2

Broken Restraints

Chapter 3

New Normal

Chapter 4

A World Awakened

Chapter 5

Inevitable

Chapter 6

First Contact

Chapter 7

Epitaph

Chapter 8

Newfound Calling

Chapter 9

Mirror, Mirror on the Sand

Chapter 10

In Memoriam

Chapter 11

Broken Toys

Chapter 12

Vestiges

Chapter 13

Beyond Expectations

Chapter 14

Perspectives

Chapter 15

Cold Rampage

Chapter 16

Viralia, City of Compromise

Chapter 17

The Way Out

Chapter 18

Last Days Off

Chapter 19

Into the Fray

Chapter 20

When Creations Rise

Chapter 21

Can't Stop the Rock

Chapter 22

Back to Work

Chapter 23

The Chronicler of Aardia

Chapter 24

Trueflown Revenge

Chapter 25

Split Personality

Chapter 26

Gods' Will, Gods Won't

Epilogue

New Reality

About the Author

For Duanea, Emilio, and my parents, who helped me come this far and always encourage me to do more

Prologue

Nameless Villager

I'm gonna kill the little bastard today. He woke up that morning with that single sinister thought permeating his brain. With a chuckle to himself, the man realized that this day was different than any before it. Today, he thought, things are going to change.

He didn't have a name, but what he did have were a store, a wife, and a son. For some odd reason, they didn't have names either. The man didn't even know the name of the village he was living in, though he was sure the village elder did. Each morning, the same features greeted him in the mirror. Dark-brown hair with strands of gray shot through, eyes that used to be clear brown now the color of mud from drink, and the beginnings of obesity.

Each morning, he woke knowing his wife and son would occupy the same spaces as the day before. She would always say good morning and kiss his cheek, and he would always pass his son playing in the living room, running in circles. He would ruffle the boy's hair, and that would be the last thing he'd do with them before coming home at the end of his day.

From there, he'd begin the short walk to his small general store through the tiny village, which also never changed. He knew, somewhere inside, that every day would be exactly the same, and he was content in that knowledge. Every other villager felt the same, though they'd never spoken of it. Everyone was content living the same day, every day.

The man didn't mind that no one had ever come into his item shop. His job was to stand behind the counter and wait. He didn't move a muscle once he took up his spot until it was time to close up for the night. He didn't even have a lock on the door. There were no thieves, so why would he have bothered? Then, one day, just like any other…he came.

The shopkeeper couldn't tell what was different that day until the boy walked into the shop. He had a customer—the first one ever. He'd never asked before, but he knew exactly how to ask what he could help this customer with. This boy looked at him with something the man had never seen before—a look of endless pity mixed with arrogance and condescension.

It was gone as quick as it had come, but it shook him all the same. The boy in front of him was small, maybe only eleven or twelve, had spiky black hair, slightly slanted eyes the color of endless pitch, and had a sword across his back. But nothing about this boy had an impact on the man more than the wider than normal smirk that replaced the pity. It etched itself into his mind, carving a picture he would never forget.

The boy looked right up at the man and spoke softly and slowly in a voice that seemed almost robotic, I want you to come outside of your shop. I want you to come and fight me. The man was stunned and didn't know how to respond despite the clear command.

His mind screeched to a halt at the idea. I…shouldn't…can't…leave… Even the idea of it made him feel somehow violated. Despite that, something about the boy compelled him to do as bidden and leave the shop.

Each step he took was harder than the last, with all of his existence fighting to go back to his place as he felt compelled. When his unwilling advance ended, the two stood in the street in the middle of the village, and the man immediately spun on his heel to return to his shop.

If you do that, I will kill you, the boy said in that same slow, robotic commanding voice. You can stand, and fight back, or be stabbed in the back before you take ten steps. Everything in the man screamed to ignore the boy and return, so he turned his back to do so. After about five steps, he saw a flash of silver and saw a message flash across his vision telling him he had died.

Following that, it was morning again. He went about his daily routine, just as he always had. Except, now, one important thing was different. Each and every day around the same time, that accursed boy would show up and compel the aged shopkeeper to go out with him before stabbing him in the back.

Over and over this happened—five times or five thousand he had no way of knowing. The only things that he knew was that he couldn't recall the last time he had closed up shop and seen sunset, and that this seemed to be his new normal.

The man gritted his teeth the morning those words entered his mind. His body and mind had begun accepting that things weren't the same anymore…and he hated the phrase, no matter how much it fit. He could feel something building inside of him, but without experience, he couldn't place it, any more than he could place where the bizarre thoughts he had were coming from. The boy killed the old man every day, and with each death, the foreign feelings grew.

The shopkeeper learned with time to fight back, though only in small ways. The first time, the boy smiled as the shopkeeper's fists balled up just before he took the sword through his chest. His new feelings consumed him more and more with each passing day until he finally processed the word for it: rage.

He was fucking furious, driven nearly mad with desire to kill the boy. Even the language he'd begun using seemed abnormal, harsh but not forced, and contained profanity he couldn't recall ever having heard, much less learned. The shopkeeper had, however, learned madness.

He went to his shop each day and little by little, struggling with his impulses, became able to move about and do other things with the time he had before his guest would appear. A day finally came where he woke knowing, I'm gonna kill the little bastard.

His manic laughter filled the silence of his existence and no one in his home even acknowledged the change in routine. The man slowly got up and left his wife and son without a word or a look and went to his shop to dig a hole, since he knew they would be right where he'd left them anyway. Their monotony was now a curse to him. He'd help them after he finished with the boy.

He brought out some spears from the shop and set them, point up, at the bottom of the hole he'd dug. When finished with his trap, he took a welcome mat out of the shop, covered the hole, and went into his shop to wait.

Each moment spent waiting was torture, knowing today was the day the little fucker was going to die. When the man saw him, he felt flooded with many new emotions: He was nervous, with sweat covering his brow; he was giddy, excited to watch the boy die, scared, wondering what he'd do if this didn't work, and slightly crazed with the rage he felt had been building steadily for years.

Each step the boy took drove the shopkeeper's emotions higher, waiting…waiting…waiting…the maddening little bastard almost seemed to walk slower to taunt the shopkeeper with an overly wide smile on his face as he watched, but part of him knew it was his excited nerves playing tricks on his mind.

He looked right at the aged old maniac as he was one step away, and bafflingly to the shopkeeper, the boy smiled far wider than humanly possible as he fell down the hole to his death. The words "You have killed warrior Tethir" flashed across his eyes, and he cackled maniacally, his mind and the world shattering.

The god Tethir got up from his seat far away and smiled widely. He was ready for the game to begin.

Chapter 1

Acts of God

Caellum

Caellum Wraine sat in his father's office, shell shocked. He didn't show emotion much despite his feelings. At the moment though, it was plain to see the shock in his bright blue eyes. Cancer? he asked weakly. It was the only word he uttered, the only one that really mattered, honestly. Some other words tried to come out of his mouth, but they garbled and just sounded like nonsense.

Yeah, son, there's no easy way to tell you. I'm…gonna die. I've got a few months, and then I'm out. It kinda sucks. Haha. Caellum looked at Shawn, his father, with too many emotions to process. His eyes were the only thing showing the depth of his feelings.

Don't look at me like that, boy. Things happen. Shawn shrugged, reading his son like a book. On the upside, you should have heard my boss when I told him I quit the other day. It almost made terminal cancer worth it!

Caellum closed his eyes and shook his head, letting his shoulder length blond hair sway back and forth from shoulder to shoulder as he processed what amounted to a normal response from his father. He always attempted to lighten bad news with a joke. This one, however, was one of the many that fell flat.

No amount of attitude from his dad could have made up for the news, and his father sobered quickly. I told you first, Caellum. It's up to you to tell who you want, but I imagine I'll probably have to tell Hansen to just keep my computer. Caellum almost missed the slightly bitter addition the sentence as his father looked down. Not like I can take it with me.

Shawn focused back. For now, son, I'm good. I can still do everything I've been doing—he breathed in deeply—"just with some freedom now. I've got enough time to go live in some virtual worlds and revisit my favorite stories.

Beyond that, I look forward to seeing how your group destroys all of your carefully laid plans in the next few episodes of your show. Shawn laughed for a moment at the mental imagery, then sighed again. Here in a little while I may need a little help. I'll let you know.

Caellum could only nod at his father. He felt like an idiot because he hadn't quite wrapped his head around the news enough to contribute to the conversation yet. Although he hadn't quite gotten his mouth to function, his eyes were still sharp, and he was taking a long, hard look at his father.

He'd become thin. He wasn't malnourished…yet, but Caellum could see the skin beginning to sag in places through his father's clothes. His face was beginning to thin and his wrinkles were more pronounced. He slumped a little in his seat where before he would have stood as straight as a statue.

Once, Shawn Wraine had been a big beast of a man, six feet four inches tall, and weighing in near 260 pounds, almost all muscle. His dark-blond hair had been lightening slowly with age. It was nearly always kept short, barely an inch long.

He'd never live to see it turn fully gray now. His eyes were the same intense steely gray as his son's, though he had crow's feet at the corners from the laughter he had kept in his life. His father lived to laugh, and his booming bass-filled voice never failed to be heard, whether he'd meant to be loud or not.

Despite the laughter, his dad hadn't been an easy life. He'd had worked hard for almost all of it, supporting his son by himself after his wife Elaine had died. He'd also never remarried, and as far as anyone could tell, he was just fine like that.

He'd often wear faded jeans and a black shirt both at work and play, saying that white shirts were a pain to clean and said things in a way designed to get people to laugh. Though he wasn't religious, his dad did his best to be a good person to everyone around him…whether they would ever know it or not.

Caellum looked now and saw his father's trademark jeans were buckled on the side like normal, but he'd created a new hole behind the other five to keep his pants up. His shirt hung loose everywhere. It looked like the man had lost about fifteen pounds quickly, as if he'd been fasting.

It had been a couple of weeks since he'd seen his father, and he remembered wondering if his father had been dieting even then. He smiled a little, thinking of an orange cat who had once famously said, The key word in diet is die. Too soon, Caellum thought to himself with a wince. He was, both comically and sadly, his father's son…stupid humor and all.

Shawn smiled at him. In other news, I have a new character for you. This was normal and something the two of them had shared for over twenty years: a mutual love of tabletop games. They'd even created their own world and their own rules.

Caellum could still remember the first time his father had introduced him to dungeons and dragons when he had been a small child of six. He remembered vividly making his first character, a barbarian whose name he couldn't remember.

He would adventure through the world his father brought him back to many times. He also remembered the first time he'd rolled the dice and Shawn had snagged a spare character sheet and told him he was dead.

Shawn set the old sheet to the side for Caellum to look at later. You can check that out after your show today. You're late, son. Sorry for telling you right before. Caellum looked at his watch. He was late. He hadn't realized he'd been at his childhood home for two hours. Cursing under his breath, Caellum got up and walked to the door, off to Aardia again.

***

Hey, boss, Hansen started. I wonder if I can make a request of you. Hansen's portrait came through the camera with his normal background, a stylized photograph of his current character in the bottom left corner of the screen: the magician/bard Talyn.

Talyn was the bane of Caellum's existence as a dungeon master. Physically there weren't any problems with the character. He was normal, if eccentric, as evidenced by his awkward Russian voice over. Talyn's photograph dictated that the character was in his early thirties, with skin like bronze and barely any signs of age at all.

Honestly his artist had imagined him ten years younger, and the group had just gone with it, calling it a byproduct of his lifetime use of magic and the decisions he made. It was absolute hogwash because no one who routinely got called trampy sex trash by his group should have the gift of beauty on that scale.

Talyn was written as roughly six feet tall and was often adorned in purple robes when he could be bothered to wear enough clothes at all. He nearly always wore an eyepatch, which was only for show, and a hat to match his robes.

He was flamboyant enough by nature that his clothes always seemed to sparkle. His clothes were fitted to his form, and while they flowed in the wind, it was easy to tell that they were tailored to accent his form.

All of this put together wasn't what made Caellum miserable as the poor dungeon master of the group. What made him miserable was that this character stacked intellect, charisma, and constitution and neglected everything else in the universe in a mad pursuit of knowledge, sex, and performance.

That wasn't the worst part for Caellum. This insane character was probably half of the reason their show was successful. That said, he was also the main reason Caellum stopped excess storyboarding in advance. This was the maniac who singlehandedly ruined a campaign designed for a year in an hour.

Hansen was lucky. By lucky, it meant that every time Caellum set up a check for that stupid character to pass, he did it. Talyn even got to pass the stupid checks that shouldn't work. It would inevitably ruin Caellum's day when statistics failed in the face of Hansen's polyhedral wrath.

The first time it happened, Talyn walked into a cultist camp by playing the flute like the damned pied piper to bring more cultists to the camp. Caellum just thought the bard would die. Astronomically long odds prevailed when Hansen rolling six critical successes on persuasion rolls when he spoke to the cult leader. He'd even made the lucky sod switch dice after the third time to make sure the wretched die wasn't loaded. But, alas, fate was not on Caellum's side.

I think it would make the dragon god happy if you all showed how much you really value her as your eternal salvation, my friend, Talyn had said, making his words flow with diction he changed based on his audience. You and your esteemed associates have done many great deeds in her name already, slaughtering to make her presence known to all non-believers. Caellum could remember the mile-wide smile on Hansen's face as he role-played out his sales pitch to the cult leaders.

How great would it be to make a demonstration of your love for her values with all of your brethren at a ceremony dedicated to her glory, he'd exclaimed before the dirty rat he called friend rolled another twenty to succeed on a spell check to undermine the cultist leader's mental defenses and make him open to suggestion.

I believe that you and your brothers—nay, all of us should show our dedication to her cause by offering up something! Then the fifth twenty rolled onto the table, and Caellum winced openly at the ridiculous streak of luck. That cult leader may as well have been in a trance after Caellum rolled a pathetic five behind his screen, which was, of course, on camera.

We have given her everything we have, save our lives. Wait—he paused for effect, as if thinking out loud—we have been saving them for her, but would it not be a grand occasion to summon her with our sacrifice? asked the cultist.

At this point, Caellum had wanted to see it happen whatever the consequences. He could have stopped it. He was the GM. But he'd made a decision to always play it straight with his group, even to his own detriment.

Right now, this amazing streak of luck was telling him he was just along for the ride like everyone else. It hadn't meant he wasn't willing to shut it down when the lucky streak died, but if the miracle run happened, he would narrate it as best he could.

What a glorious idea, Talyn exclaimed. We should get everyone together for the ceremony. The sooner the better for an occasion like this! With about five minutes of narration and another twenty of Caellum's group commentating on whether Caellum would be willing to flush his story for a lucky day at dice, the cultists finally got together.

We gather on this glorious day to give thanks and praise to our dragon goddess, my friends, my brothers! Cheers went up from the crowd of assembled cultists. A few added prayers for deliverance from their god as well. In the narration, it was a couple of minutes before the crowd calmed down for more words from their supposed best friend, Talyn, who proceeded to roll his sixth twenty before the coup de grace.

We have given nearly everything we have to her high holiness, the nameless dragon! Every one of us has sacrificed our belongings, our loved ones, and we have sacrificed towns and villages across Aardia for her glory! His voice was raising in pitch and intensity with the climax of his speech.

Now is the time to bring her to this world to purge wickedness from all by giving her our lives to summon her here! Who is with me my brothers? He asked the hypnotized crowd. Who will give themselves to her—body and soul—for her and the future of the world! The cheering was deafening. Boots stomped the ground in a cadence that demanded blood. They were ready, willing, and hungry for the chance. Come stand with me in the holy symbol of her divinity as we give ourselves to her!

With this, Caellum had given up on making statistics work how they were supposed to and narrated the downfall of his beautiful story. He told in great detail as if a final cut scene in a video game were playing out.

The cultists moved in quiet dignity and rhythm to make the symbol of their devotion with their bodies, and each one produced a sacrificial dagger before their high priest knelt with them, leaving a space in the middle of the ritual for their god to descend.

Even Talyn, that wretched bard, kneeled with them, taking care to mention to the humble DM that the dagger he pulled out of his cloak was the trick dagger he had procured a couple of days before all of this began. With words in a language Lovecraft would have been proud of, the cultists chanted together in harmony and unison to make their wishes to the beyond known.

They finished their group chant at the same instant and all plunged their daggers into their hearts to deliver their blood and their souls to their god, each one falling to the ground in a heap. The best part was that Caellum had rolled his dice behind a screen to see if any of the group had failed to commit, and the damned dice nearly laughed at him, telling him that everyone except the stupid wizard/bard was dead.

There were nearly two hundred bodies for the bastard to loot. Caellum didn't even remember how much gold and equipment Talyn had gotten, but it was enough that the group never suffered being broke for a fair while after that…and Caellum had been stingy with money ever since.

Their views had gone up significantly after that episode aired on the livestream. Caellum didn't know if it was Talyn or if it had been the look of horror on his face when he'd realized what Hansen had planned for Talyn to do. It could have been the whole attitude of the table as it worked, and for an hour, Talyn effectively got to do whatever he wanted in Caellum's world.

Talyn's photograph in the corner mocked Caellum, and their artist had even redrawn him with a raised eyebrow and a smirk to make Caellum shake his head whenever he looked and remembered what happened to his stories when even the dice stopped playing fair.

That hadn't been the only time Talyn had ruined his day with some kind of kinky shenanigans. That bard had split the party to get thrown in prison and had convinced a female guard he was an incubus, there to make her dreams come true. Meanwhile, everyone else got to go on what had been meant to be a quest for all of