Soul Census - War of Shadows - Book 1

by AJVega

Rated: 13+ · Book · Fantasy · #1877118

Paranormal fantasy set in 1930s. Elements of Reincarnation, Soulmates, Mythology & Nazis

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#834998 added March 11, 2026 at 2:34pm
Restrictions: None

Chapter 2.1: Baptism

Earth Date: 14th of August 1939 CE
Location: Locker Room, Soul Sphere, Earth

Maddock slammed the door to his locker as he had done for what seemed like months to him. However, they told him that six years had actually passed topside. Apparently, time in the Soul Sphere worked differently. Months down here turned into years for everyone in the real world. It was a good thing he did not have any family or friends up there. Come to think of it, maybe that was one of the reasons they had drafted him: no ties to leave behind.

He looked over to one of the many propaganda posters on a nearby wall. It showed a dead hand coming out of a grave with the words “The dead do not rest… neither can you. Fight on!”

Maddock shook his head. He had not seen any demons, ghosts or whatever since he joined Census. He began to wonder if any of this stuff was real at all. After all these months since joining these assholes, he had hoped that by now he would have cracked some undead heads or something. Instead, the days were filled with endless schooling about lost souls, poltergeists, demons, imps, ghouls, pookas, possessions, and other strange shit he would prefer not to hear about.

Looking up, he wondered what things were like beyond the seashell ceiling. What’s it like now in 1939? He had been trapped down in the Soul Sphere too long. He needed to stretch his legs out in the real world—see the city, smell the air, bust some heads, and get some lady action. Enough was enough.

As he mulled those thoughts over, he turned around to see Wolfe standing at the doorway wearing a smug expression. Maddock felt like pasting him right there.

“You know what day it is?” Wolfe said.

Maddock squinted, caught off guard by the question. “Pal, I don’t even know if it’s day or night. How the hell am I supposed to know what day it is?”

Wolfe pulled something out of his pocket and dangled it in front of him—a wristwatch. “It’s your lucky day,” Wolfe said. “You ready to wear this?”

Maddock’s fuming stopped.

The wristwatch was a symbol, signifying the rank and position of a Census Enforcer.

Finally …

Maddock walked over and snatched it from him. “No more schooling?” he said as he strapped it on.

Wolfe shook his head with a smile. “On-the-job schooling from here on in,” he said. “The way you like it.”

“It’s about damn time.”

“Yes,” Wolfe said. “It is about damn time. Normally this takes a few weeks, but with you …”

Maddock stopped strapping his watch on and felt himself tense up. Another word from this wanker and he was going to be wearing this watch around his throat.

“Don’t bother putting the watch on just yet,” Wolfe said. “We have one more thing to do before it is truly official. Let’s go.”

Wolfe led him out into the main chamber and then down a narrow passageway. Maddock noted that he seldom saw any of the suits walk through this way.

They reached the end of the passage and came upon a wall where two guards stood. One of the men was of average height and build, wearing military-style brown fatigues but without any kind of rank insignia. He carried a bulky-looking rifle and a tight-fitting helmet that covered his face with a dark visor.

The other guard looked like something from a medieval story—a tall, fair-skinned, and imposing figure with dark-blue eyes and a full white beard. He wore a black outfit and gold bracelets. His long white hair draped down onto a black cape that hung down to his feet. From his belt bulged the handle of an ornate-looking sword encrusted with multicolored jewels.

Of the other strange gadgets that hung from his belt, the one that caught Maddock’s attention was a curved horn made of what looked like tree bark. The horn seemed to expand and contract on its own, like it was breathing or something.

Both guards stood impassively, the first holding his rifle, the other standing with arms crossing his chest. Upon their approach, the one with the rifle gave Wolfe a silent nod, and the two moved out of their way. Wolfe walked ahead to the wall, Maddock following.

As Maddock got near, he peered at the white-haired guard, trying to elicit a reaction.

The guard turned to him with a gold-toothed scowl, his hand now on the hilt of his sword. “Tilbake bort for jeg skja-jre du apner liten gris,” he said.

Maddock felt himself tense up. “What the hell did you just say to me, bub?”

“Step away from him now, Agent Maddock,” Wolfe said. “Come this way.”

Maddock gave the guard a wink as he went past him, then looked back at him. The guard’s glare followed Maddock till he was out of sight.

“What did that bruno just say to me?” Maddock said.

“Nothing important,” Wolfe said as he pressed a hand on the wall.

His hand sunk into it, followed by his arm, shoulder, and the rest of him. Wolfe disappeared completely—one of those bubble doorways again.

Maddock walked up to it and, leading with his hand, pushed himself through. It was warm and thick, like what he imagined quicksand might feel like. When he emerged on the other side, he joined Wolfe inside a small chamber. The room was completely alien to him, like nothing he had ever seen.

The walls were black and had a glossy wetness to them. As he walked in closer, he could see the walls were actually fleshy, like skin almost. They expanded outward and then inward—throbbing like the inside walls of a heart. In concert with this movement, a rumbling sound filled the room, shaking the walls like a muscle spasm. In the center, a canal ran through the room from one wall to another, carrying a thick black goo across. Weird stuff.

Wolfe walked up to the canal and pointed down to it. “It’s time for your baptism,” Wolfe said. “Strip out of your clothes and get in there.”

Maddock remembered being told that agents would go through a baptism before going on their first mission, but he thought that was just a metaphor.

“Are you pulling my leg?” he said.

Wolfe shook his head. “If you want to go on a mission, you have to get past this first.”

Maddock looked around, half expecting that the minute he got in, a bunch of suits would jump out and start laughing at him.

“If this is some kind of joke, Wolfey, I’m going to play some lovely chin music with your jaw—you got that?”

“Save the punches for the demons,” Wolfe said, still pointing. “Get in there.”

Maddock reluctantly stripped off his clothes, glaring at Wolfe the entire time. When he was done, he went over to the canal and sat at its edge, looking down at it. Whatever the liquid was, it was too thick and dark to give any hint of what might lurk beneath it.

Wolfe walked to the entrance wall and dipped his hand into it as if to leave.

“Wait! What’s in there?” Maddock said.

Wolfe turned, still pushing his arm through the wall. “It’s …” Wolfe started, staring out in thought as if trying to find the right words. “It’s the real you.”

He then disappeared into the wall, leaving Maddock alone in the room.

Maddock sighed. Now that he was alone, the thumping and rumbling made him feel uneasy. He sat at the edge of the canal, ready to roll into it. The black liquid seemed to invitingly stare back at him. Compared to the rumbling and beating walls, the liquid seemed tamer.

“All right, screw it,” he said, rolling into the canal.

The moment his skin touched it, he froze completely. His body involuntarily went stiff, arms at his side and legs stretched straight out—and then he dropped down into the canal with the buoyancy of a brick.

Underneath the black liquid, all sensation stopped. There was no feeling, just a complete numbness. He felt as if he had no body at all, with only his thoughts to remind him that he was still alive.

As he helplessly stared into the blackness, something stirred above him. A disturbance in the liquid that emitted light, which then turned into images, figures, and voices. A picture formed, and it looked like a place filled with sand and sun… a desert.

A figure walked the sands—a frail-looking man, wearing tattered rags that wrapped around his entire body. Only some of his face was visible, and the skin was like old leather. As he walked, pieces of the rags dragged behind him, leaving trails that stretched out into the distant sand dunes.

The man limped along, cursing in a language Maddock should not have been able to understand, but he did understand it. It was Turkish, and the man… it was Maddock himself from another life. They were the same images he had seen when he first came to Census, in that room where he’d first awoken.

With that recollection, a rush of memories flooded his mind—memories of who he was, that Turkish man in the desert… Taylan Chagatai. Taylan, the man whose family had been slaughtered by the Mongol invaders, who had nevertheless later joined them and pledged his life to the Kipchak Khanate—also known as the Golden Horde.

Batu Khan had turned Taylan into an assassin, sending him to Acre so he could kill the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights. He succeeded and escaped… only to become lost wandering this desert without water or food. No reason for him to live at that point, and he preferred death to being captured anyway. And die he did.

As that life memory concluded, he sensed another memory, something older—another life before Taylan. But it all slipped from him before he could understand it as he felt his body move again… floating up and out of the depths of the darkness.

Willem Maddock opened his eyes. He was in the strange room again, his naked body floating on top of the black goo in the canal. Although he had regained feeling in his body, he stayed still for a moment. He had to think about the man he was. He knew he was Willem Maddock, but he also knew he was once Taylan Chagatai—a Mongol warrior who was a skilled assassin, swordsman, archer, and rider.

“Take your time,” he heard Wolfe say.

Maddock had not even realized that Wolfe was back in the room.

“It’s difficult to sort it out at first,” Wolfe continued. “You have to align your mind with who you are in this life.”

Wolfe extended a hand to Maddock to help him up. Maddock took it and swung over and then out of the canal. He stared down at his feet, noting that his body was completely dry.

“I was a Mongol warrior,” Maddock said, almost to himself. “I had a family… Ilayda, my wife… and Tuana, Melis, and Emin, my children. Where are they now?”

“My advice to you, Agent,” Wolfe said, “is to forget about them. Only keep with you the skills and wisdom—forget the emotion. You are not a Mongol warrior; you are a Census Enforcer now.”

Maddock grabbed his clothes and got dressed. “All right,” he said as he finished buttoning his pants. “But there is something that you have to get me.”

“What might that be?” Wolfe said.

“Tea… black tea,” Maddock said. “And something else …”

Wolfe cocked an eyebrow. “You want tea instead of coffee?”

Maddock made fists with both hands, then set his left atop his right before raising them up together, finally striking down with a yell that sent Wolfe leaping backward.

“A scimitar sword,” Maddock said. “It’s been almost seven hundred years, and I miss holding one.”

Maddock brought his imaginary sword up and then down diagonally in a swinging motion, then continued doing drills—ducking, lunging, feinting, and yelling.

Wolfe looked at him and shook his head. “And for a brief moment, I thought you were becoming more civilized.”

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