A/N: Back!!!! Yay! People are reading this (even though I only have a few so far, I‘m happy about that). This is now the official first chapter. I’m not so sure about how most of these characters should look, so if I use a commonly used mythical person or entity, and they aren’t described as usual, well then that’s just how they are in this story. K, read as much as your heart desires.

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Chapter 1

I woke up, feeling as if I were in an unfamiliar place. My eyes still groggy from sleep and everything around me looked blurred and foggy. I felt strangely calm and more chilled out than usual. All of the thoughts that usually would attack me when I woke were absent.

When everything finally became clear, I realized that I wasn’t in my bed. I looked around me. Everything was……… blank. That was the only word to describe it. Just a white blankness. I looked down surprised to find that I was wearing blocky white clothes, that I could swear blended in to the rest of the completely boring area around me.

I absently brought my hand up to my neck, and gasped when I felt a thin, long scar that lay almost hidden beneath my chin. I ran my fingers along the scar, relaxing a little bit, before I heard someone clear their throat rather loudly.

I looked over, and was suddenly met with the sight of the most beautiful person, no sight I had ever seen in my life. A woman sat there, her long blonde hair flowing down past her ankles, bright blue eyes happily shining, and bright white teeth almost shining, as she smiled the most sincere smile I had ever seen.

I got up off of the floor feeling very ungraceful as I dizzily made my way over to the very average looking desk that looked as though it belonged in a small business office, strongly contrasting to the woman sitting at it.

I opened my mouth, ready to shoot off millions of questions, when she smiled and waved her hand, producing a chair that lightly smacked my legs, prodding me to sit.

“ I know the questions you want to ask, so I’ll save you the face muscles. Trust me, after spending so long asking questions and doing other things with your face you’re gonna have one heck of a cramp.” She said, eyes alight with amusement.

I remembered to shut my mouth, managing a small smile, before returning back to my confused expression. She chuckled lightly before talking in a well-practiced professor voice, that was slightly monotone, but held the attention of the person listening.

“ You are certainly wondering, what am I doing here? Well, everything is slightly complicated, but that’s just how the universe works. Everything is slightly complicated, but the more you think about it the more it makes since. Anyway the world is way different than you think it is. I’ll start with the basics. The world was created by one force that is like a mix of all of the religions you see all around the world. Now, to say the guidelines set up by these religions are true would be a lie, but everyone was right to say something out there made us all. No one knows where this force resides or even if it exists at all anymore, but we do know that a whole bunch of other smaller forces were made to help run this world he created. We are falsely known as gods, but we liked to be called uppers, because our tasks is to run the worlds and keep things from going into utter chaos, which has almost happened many times.”

“We are all designed to run certain different aspects of peoples lives and in some cases after lives. There are many of us, almost too many to count, though we all know each other very well. We all reside with each other in a huge kingdom, like a big old dysfunctional family. Now, we don’t just run the earth. There are many other world that we have to work on also, but earth is one of our most fragile worlds. If any little thing goes unnoticed, then things will erupt in chaos. That sort of explains what was known as those two world wars. Yeah, that was one of our faults, though who I don’t remember. Back on topic, since there are so many of us running the living world, not many run the spirit world.”

“ The spirit world is not as complicated as it seems to be. Its really simple actually. We uppers are way to busy to be creating so many new personalities and whatnot, so we basically reincarnate, or as I like to call it recycle the old dead spirits. The new baby wont remember the old lives they’ve had, but they will be scarily similar. Most. We don’t give them the exact same spirit either, we change it up a little, keeping things the same and changing some other. A lot of people die every day, you know that, but every once in a while we find one special person, who has not died their third time. Three is the magic number we like to say. Some lives are recycled over and over again, but every three years we look at all of the different lives and see if we’ve found a crusader. It is very hard to find a crusader since they have to have many special qualities. See a lot of mortals are too unstable to be crusaders, that’s why we don’t have many crusaders. Oh yes, I haven’t explained the crusaders, yet.”

“The spirit world requires some extra care. Since most of us uppers are busy running the worlds of the living, that doesn’t leave many to run the world of the dead. Only one upper runs the spirit world and he can’t control all aspects of the spirit world. The spirit world is much like ours, except that the spirits themselves are mischievous and want to get back to their old lives. A lot escape and its hard for Dextirous to handle all of the running of the worlds. So the special crusaders help round up the escaped spirits and help him run the whole world. Very witty he is. That’s one of the requirements to be a crusader.”

Oookay. I was still slightly zoning out.

“Everything seems so confusing now, I know. A lot of newbies are so confused, but I swear once I get you out of here someone more suited will explain it to you.”

She began to type into her computer, which I’m sure wasn’t there a minute ago. “I cant explain, because I’ve got to get you there and if I explain any longer I’ll confuse you more. Hmm, I’m thinking I forgot something. Oh, yes! You will be trained at a special school for the crusaders. Actually there are four, but once you get to them you will be assigned to your school. Oh, and my name is Allixa.” She said smiling a little while she typed away, what I presumed to be information about me. She didn’t ask any questions so I guess the “uppers” had been watching me.

“Well, that finishes that.”, she said while clicking furiously on the computer. I could tell she wasn’t the biggest techno nerd. “Ah, if you would just wait in the chair for a moment I have to go get something for you.”

I sat in the chair wondering where she would go. We were in a completely blank….area! She got up out of the chair and walked away from the desk. The further she walked, the less of her I could see. Finally she completely disappeared. It was so weird. I sank down more into my chair, now afraid of the offending blankness.

I sat waiting for a while. I was bored. Is it strange that one can get bored when they just found out they died and were chosen as a special…whatever to fight off spirits. Apparently not.

She then came back, holding nothing but a small vial of a strange-looking green liquid. She was still smiling.

“It took me so long to find this, but I did. This is a special potion, elixir, whatever you want to call it. It’ll help your transformation. The thing about crusaders is, you get to take shape of the person you’ve always wanted to be. It tastes really gross, though. Actually it tastes better than it used to years ago, because it used to be when you drunk it you would retch and almost vomit. Now we just get the “ugh gross” face so its improving.”

I took the vial she handed to me. She was still smiling. I decided I liked her. She was nice and her smile wasn’t fake. I can tell when a person is really smiling or if they are because they have to.

“ When you take it you will feel numb and fall into a deep sleep. I’ll send you to the place where the schools are, which is in a dimension, between the spirit and living world. Don’t be afraid when you wake up, no one will hurt you. In fact, don’t be surprised if you are surrounded by a big group of people staring at you. You’ve been our first crusader in 24 years. Now, drink your….green stuff and have great dreams.”

I stared at the vial and then at her smiling face. Should I take it or not? Well, I was already dead, what else could I have done.

So I took it. It tasted like that really nasty pain medicine I got from the doctors when I had to get my tonsils out. Really, really nasty.

The taste didn’t last long, because I couldn’t feel my tongue. I couldn’t feel anything.

My eyes were beginning to go fuzzy and I swear I was beginning to drool.

Allixa was still smiling, though this time she was waving. I tried to smile, before I slipped into peaceful darkness. My dreams consisted of ghosts and ghouls chasing Daryn around his room, him brandishing a foam sword around and wearing a pirate costume. I am never taking any strange potions before sleeping again.

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A/N: My fanfiction is my top priority now, so I’m trying to get these updates up. ^^ Next chapter is the intro to the schools and more characters and who is Valerie gonna end up being. I like writing in first person. My friend and I talk in first person for no reason. ^^