Chapter 1
Nerve endings flare like matches in the wind as pain overwhelms me and fades just as swiftly.
Following close on its heels comes a floating numbness.
This lasts for an eternity. Or perhaps only a split second. I have no way of knowing. My head feels fuzzy, like when your hand falls asleep. It tingles at first, soon becoming a prickly pain that floods through my body. Awareness struggles to surface from the void.
My back hurts. Fuck, my back hurts.
I groan and roll over to ease the pain with a different position on the hard, chilly surface. Grit digs into my flank . A shiver crawls along my spine, feeling like thorns. My eyes snap open to greet darkness. I wave my hand in front of my eyes, but don’t even see a hint of form.
What the fuck is going on?
Did the power go out? Why am I lying on the floor? I place my right hand flat and push myself up to a sitting position. A jagged something digs into my palm.
“Ow, what the fuck?”
My voice echoes strangely, bouncing from unseen walls to return to me. I’m not—huh. Where am I supposed to be? Both palms against the floor now, I can’t tell the difference between the chill of the surface and the strange numbness of my hands. Is this stone? Where am I? Not home in bed, that’s for sure. That’s when it hits me—I don’t even know where home is. Or was. Or why…i’m fucking naked. What?
I stare into the darkness, confused. Where am I? Who am I?
“What the fuck is going on!”
My voice echoes again, every iteration becoming louder and louder, buffeting me. I clap chilled palms against my ears to mute the noise, but it gets louder still until it sounds like I’m shouting at myself from an inch away.
And then the sound is gone, and I gasp into the sudden vacuum, if only to make sure I haven’t gone deaf. A pinprick of white light abruptly appears in the darkness. I’d forgotten my eyes were even open. Light—it’s something, at least. I focus on that point and gather my legs under me to climb unsteadily to my feet.
“Fuuuuuck.” I clutch at my lower back and try to massage away the pain, but it doesn’t help.
My legs shake as I take a step, and then another. My knees feel like they want to buckle, but I force my leaden feet to keep moving. The stale air tastes like despair. The light. Just focus on the light. One foot in front of the other. After counting several hundred steps, I realize the light isn’t growing any larger. It’s still just as far away as when I started, hovering in the blackness. I stop. What is this?
Well, are you coming or not?
The ethereal voice issues from everywhere at once—even inside. In my head, my chest, in my bones and blood. The voice soothes, almost making me forget the strangeness of my circumstances.
“Who—who’s there?” The quaver in my call fills me with shame, but would anyone blame me for being afraid?
Come to the light, child of Earth. Be swift now. They’re coming.
“Who? Who’s coming?”
The Dead Ones. Hurry now. Into the light.
I don’t know who or what The Dead Ones are, but the name sounds terrifying enough that I trudge forward again, the soles of my feet tender against the stone, every step grinding against gritty dust. The pinprick of light stays the same size. Distant, haunting screams and throaty growls drift from the void: behind me, below and above.
“I can’t.” My voice sounds distant, strained. My limbs feel…light. Weak.
Will yourself into the light. The body you feel is only a memory. Your soul is untethered. Come to me.
My—soul? Am I dead?
Yes.
The voice startles me. “The fuck? You can read my mind?”
Hurry now. Or be devoured.
The horror-inducing noise of whoever or whatever The Dead Ones are fills me with stomach-dropping dread. Okay, then. Hurry, the voice said. Will myself into the light, whatever that means. The noise of my pursuers increases as I consider the problem.
The stone floor of wherever I am vibrates. The grunts and groans, howls and screams, much louder now, send an icy shiver down my spine. A distant clatter of stones striking stone fills my ears, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
What is will? Is that like—manifesting? Tell myself that it’ll happen, and it will? No, that’s nonsense. But—maybe? What if it’s sort of similar? I need to enter the light. I want to enter the light. In fact, I have to, or I’m dead. Deader? What happens to a soul when The Dead Ones get ahold of it? I have to do this.
Focus on the pinprick. Eyes still closed, I picture the light hovering in the blackness. I need to be there. I want to enter the light. I have to do it, or something terrible will happen. Can I—all three at once?
I open my eyes.
The light flares, and I pour my needwanthaveto into the idea of entering the light. It rushes toward me, or I toward it. My vision blurs, and long lines of light stretch into eternity. The sounds of my pursuers fade away.
Blinding white light abruptly stabs my eyes, and I cry out in pain, covering them with my hands. The darkness is gone. The stone floor is gone, as is the cold. I feel…nothing.
You have no body. No eyes. Only the memory of such things. You only feel pain because you think you should. Focus on my voice.
What other choice is there? I really don’t feel anything at all. The voice spoke truth. I know my body doesn’t exist because I have no hands to explore with. No eyes to see. There are only my own thoughts and the voice. So, I focus on that. The light flares brightly, then begins to fade and coalesce.
It compresses and shimmers, swiftly taking form. Light flares again, and then mutes, leaving behind a shining figure, human in form, but entirely androgynous. Beyond the figure, surrounding us, is nothing. Not even darkness. For some reason, I expected to see stars, maybe a spectacular astral body or two. There is only the figure. I struggle to reconcile this contradiction between nothingness and eyeless sight. How can I see this being?
That’s better.
“What happened to me? Why am I here? How did I die?” My voice is toneless, flat. I want answers.
What and how are unimportant. Why, however, I can answer. I need your assistance, child of Earth.
“My help?” I chuckle, though I feel no mirth. An old habit. Laugh to buy time, to think. Pointless, now. “Who are you? Some sort of god or higher being?” It sounds like a demand, though my tone doesn’t change. It should feel frustrating, sounding like an automaton, but I still feel nothing. I wonder, though, about that demand, if this is a god.
You don’t believe in such things.
“No. But what else am I supposed to think?” I want to shrug. Her words felt true. Why did she tell me that?
I am—all of those things. More.
“Okay, so who are you?” I have to wonder if this being, who may or may not be a god, is controlling my thoughts, dampening my emotions.
I am Liloothemystaranthianella of The Tenth Ascension.
I grunt. A mouthful of a name and an impressive-sounding title, but it fills me with unease and…skepticism. Why does a god need my help? In that moment,m I realize the numbness has fled. I feel again.
“So—Leeloo. Got it. A goddess of some sort. Okay. So why am I here? You said you wanted my help?” The words inside my head sound cocky. Familiar, even.
The figure is silent for what seems like a long time. It—she, them?—seems to vibrate, the light emanating from smooth, glowing limbs and a featureless torso that shimmers in what I can only think are agitated waves. I focus on the smooth, hairless head. Two glowing orbs of pure white light, which I assume pass for the being’s eyes, bore into me. A shining slit opens where I would think its mouth should be.
Impertinent. But meaningless. Leeloo will do. Your world, Earth, belongs to another. I have my own, but no longer have a direct hand in events. My world suffers.
“Wait, so that means gods really do exist? Holy shit, this is actual confirmation? That’s fucking wild.” The words spill from me unfiltered, arising from somewhere deep within. Was this how I spoke in my world…Earth? The words feel wrong somehow, like they don’t belong to me, yet somehow natural.
Stop. Why do you insist on interrupting? This is serious. I said similar to, but different. It would do you good to listen.
Their words sound irritated, which strikes me as both odd and interesting Is this how they normally sound when not trying to impress a bodiless soul?
It is NOT.
“Oh, you can hear that? Right. You even told me that. Fine–oh Mighty Leeloo of The Tenth Ascension, what would you have of me? Dead and formless as I am.”
I have no memories of conversations, but the words leave me feeling…giddy. Who was I? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe this…personality bleeding through is the essence of me, still tied to my soul.
I swear I hear them—she?—growl in frustration.
You test my patience. I can only hold you here for so long, so we must continue with haste.
“Or what?” It sounds like a challenge.
You die. Forever.
“Okay, but I’m already dead?”
They sigh. I think I’ve hit a nerve.
You will cease to exist. I’ve pulled you out of the River of Souls and out of Purgatory. You are untethered. Your soul will dissipate into the void, never to be reborn, never to seek Ascension. Now stop talking.
She seems significantly more serious than before. I nod in acceptance even as the word ‘ascension’ lodges in my consciousness.
Wonderful. Now listen. There is a war. Between whom and for what reason is unimportant to your task. You only need know that evil abounds on my world because the other side refuses to play fair and insists on breaking the rules. Can you imagine how that feels?
I want to laugh–to double over with it until I pass out. Can I imagine that feeling? I fucking know that feeling. It’s ingrained in me through—huh?
A hint of a memory flickers into existence, then fades when I try to examine it. I know what she’s talking about, but I don’t know why. Yet I can infer from those brief flashes of memory that my current situation is one far more favorable than that which I’d left when I died.
Good. You understand. My world needs a champion. That is why you are here. I will grant you the power needed to oppose and defeat the forces of evil to deliver lasting peace to my world once more. Then I can focus on winning the war.
“And if I fail? What then?” It’s important enough to know that I focus on that instead of asking her about the ‘other side’.
Then my world falls under the sway of the Adversary. Slavery and despair will consume all who live on it, until the world is left a dead husk.
“And what happens to you?” I know there has to be a personal aspect to this, if only to prevent this Adversary from…doing what? Consuming the world?
I die. I rejoin the River of Souls to eventually be born anew. Powerless. Mortal.
“But why me? I’m nobody. I know that much. In my soul.” I laugh at the insanity of the situation. It’s also not lost on me that they only seem to hear my thoughts when I don’t speak. Interesting.
Exactly for that reason. You were nobody. You faced the vagaries of mortal life with little ambition and only impossible dreams. You are the perfect vessel for my power. I will make you a champion—a man to be admired, feared, even loved. Well—the potential for such.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The more I listen to them, the more I wonder if what I’m experiencing is just some end-of-life hallucination. An oxygen-starved brain’s last gasps as every neuron fires in panic. That’s what this has to be. Part of me wonders how I even know these things.
I can give you the power needed to fight on my behalf, but ultimately, what you do with that power is up to you. I can’t make you do what I want, but I trust that you will. It’s graven on your soul.
I’m not sure what they mean by that statement, but I accept it, if only because I don’t know if it’s the truth, or just their hope. If they chose me to be the ‘good guy’, then they see something I don’t.
“So let me get this straight. If I say no, I die forever. Whatever I am now goes goodbye. If I say yes, I get the power of a god-like being, and I get to live again?”
If I had a head, I’d shake it. There’s only one choice.
Power, yes, but not so much that you’re my equal. That would annihilate you as surely as saying no. A fraction is what I’ll bestow on you. The more you use it, the stronger you’ll become to stand against our enemies. Within limits.
I bark a harsh laugh. “A caveat, of course.” None of this is actually real until I see proof.
My imagination suggests a furrowed brow, though there’s nothing to see on the shining figure’s smooth face other than the burning orbs of their eyes.
We are not permitted to create champions with unlimited potential. It is a Rule.
“But I thought you said the other side–the Adversary–was breaking the rules?”
They sigh. There are lesser rules, and then there are greater rules. Breaking the former is frowned upon. Breaking the latter means death.
“You’re confusing me. Who controls you, then? Who controls the sides? Why are there sides? This doesn’t make any sense.” It really doesn’t. Since when did gods have rules?
They shake their head. I am not permitted to answer any of that. Are you ready to choose? Do you want to live?
Permitted. I want more time. I need more time to come to terms with my circumstances and this insane conversation. But it doesn’t sound like I’m going to get it. I could cease to exist at any moment. Yet I still have questions.
“What happens if I die on your world? Will you just find another champion?”
They hesitate before answering. Yes. But you shouldn’t die. My power—
“How many champions have you summoned before me?”
Their hesitation sounded slightly too long to me. I’m starting to think that this goddess or god-like being is less impressive than I first thought. They sound unsure of themselves, and not being able to get a straight answer, coupled with the knowledge they answer to some higher authority, worries me.
Another hesitation.
Three.
An admission, sounding almost bitter, regretful.
“Okay. And what happened to them?” I’m sure I already know the answer.
Two were murdered by the enemy. The third…defected.
They try to hide it, but I can hear the sorrow in their words. Did they actually care? And here I thought I was just going to be a tool.
“Who murdered them?”
The enemy champion.
Another reluctant admission. They didn’t even tell me the Adversary had one too.
“And the third? What happened there?”
She didn’t want to die like the others. She now stands with their side.
“Okay. And how many champions has your enemy gone through?”
They’re silent.
“So just one then. To your three. Four now, maybe.” Wonderful. No wonder they hesitated to tell me the truth.
They’re silent, and I wonder if it’s because they want me to make up my mind. But I want more.
“Tell me about the power. What advantages would I have over a normal person in your world?”
Improved physical health in all regards. From some resistance to harmful effects to increased strength, dexterity, and physical speed. We don’t have time to go into them all.
“What about intelligence? And magic? I have to assume magic exists in your world based on—everything?”
They shake their head again. You can learn anything you want if you apply yourself. You have the potential. But I can’t give you knowledge. I can’t give you magic. But you can learn it. Rules.
“Which rules? The lesser ones the enemy gets to break, or the ones that mean death?”
The former.
“So they get to do whatever they want, and we don’t. Why don’t you break the lesser rules?”
I would become as them.
“So why don’t you? It sounds like their side has the better amenities.” They sound…prideful.
It is a matter of morality, of light versus dark, good versus evil, yin and yang. Break one rule, and you’re tempted to break more. Break those, and what’s to stop you from breaking them all? That would result in utter chaos. Worlds would die. Planes and dimensions would wither. Everything that is would descend into entropy and chaos. Existence into nothingness. An end to life.
“And that’s what they want?” I surmise. “Your Adversary?”
Yes.
“But why?” I don’t see the point. What’s there to gain from ending life on their world? It almost seems like they’re lying.
It is in their nature. Hatred for life graven upon their souls. Unchangeable.
That word again. I wonder what’s graven on Leeloo’s soul? I consider this for what I think are dangerously long moments. If I accept their offer, it sounds like I’ll be on the underdog side, if not the losing, based on what they’ve said so far. I can feel their consideration, feel their burning orbs focused on me, studying me, hearing these very thoughts because I haven’t spoken.
“Fuck it. Okay. Better than being dead I suppose. But a few more questions before we do this.”
Better than being dead? No, I would cease to exist. An end to everything. It’s a distracting and shockingly attractive thought.
Be swift.
“What’s to stop them from coming after me the moment they learn of my existence?”
Greater rules. They are not permitted to challenge you until you become a threat.
“Isn’t my very existence, once I set foot on your world, a threat?”
Only when you gain the experience and strength to oppose them. The cat does not fear the mouse.
“I see.” I’m silent for a long, nervous moment. “But I could die before then?”
It is a possibility.
“You said you can’t give me magic, or knowledge. Can I request a specific advantage? Like–something only I can do that would maybe save you from having to find a new champion, if I get killed.”
Within reason. Your predecessors were offered such. Self-resurrection is not permitted.
“Not that. I was thinking. I’m assuming that, because I’m currently a soul as you say, then the power you intend to bestow on me will be tied to my soul. Correct?” Leeloo didn’t offer me anything. If I had hackles, they’d rise.
That is accurate.
“Good. Then how about you let me have the power to send my soul into another body, if I get killed, or am about to die? Does that break any rules?”
They’re silent for a long time, and I imagine they’re reading through some rule-set only they can see. I wonder if they can only read my surface thoughts, or those deeper ones, where my lost memories hide. The hint of memory I had earlier suggestedthey weren’t all lost–perhaps only suppressed. I no longer have a physical mind. No folded gray matter and countless neural connections. Yet my consciousness persists. The brain operates on electrical signals, and the very fact that I can still think and speak suggests that those signals, that consciousness itself, are not dependent on the physical organ. More unbidden knowledge, rising from…where?
My memories still exist…somewhere. It’s the only explanation I can think of for why I suggested what I did. There’s a hint of a song just out of hearing. A memory of something that made me suggest the power.
It does not. I will grant you this power. With reservation.
“Why with reservation? You admitted the others had advantages as well.”
It is a grey area.
“Is it though? I’m a soul, right? A spirit? Are you going to create me a body? I suspect you don’t have that power.”
They’re silent for another long moment. If I still had a body, I’d be sweating, wondering not only just how little time I have left before ceasing to exist, but also whether my attitude will spell the end of me here and now. Yet this is important. I want to have a chance in what sounds like an impossible situation.
You’ll be given an existing body, one whose soul has recently departed their mortal form. You will awaken in that body, whole and hale. But after that, you are on your own.
“Better, then, to let me claim a new body if mine dies, than go through the trouble of finding a new champion and starting over, right?”
A logical statement. Very well. You will have the power to transfer your soul into a new body. What is your answer?
“Yes. I say yes. I choose life. I’ll be your champion.” I can hear the melody now. The lyrics. If my old life was really as bad as she suggests, I deserve a second chance.
Then come to me. Will yourself into my light and be reborn.
“One last question, If I may?”
Swiftly.
“If we win. If I defeat the enemy champion and help you regain control of the world, what happens to me then? After I’m done living. I assume my lifespan will be that of a normal human.”
Paradise. If you succeed, upon your eventual death, a paradise of your choosing will be yours for the rest of eternity. No more River of Souls.
“Really? Of my choosing?”
Yes.
“Fucking sold. Let’s do this.” I have the duration of a new life to think about what kind of paradise I want.
Then come to—
I’m already ahead of them. Of her. The ‘Goddess’, Leeloo. I’ve already done it once, so I know it can be done. I will myself toward her. Her shining form, featureless before, takes on attributes in the split second between my being where I was to being instantly in front of her, separated only by a film of atoms.
She’s gorgeous. Unimaginably beautiful. Her chest presses against mine, and there’s a startled look of apprehension on her face as she stares at me.
How did you—
“Will. You taught me about it already, remember? I wanted to see you as I imagine you to be. Now you’re a Goddess in truth.” Names arise from somewhere out of reach. “More beautiful than Diana, or Hera, Persephone, Hebe, Nike. More desirable than Hathor, Isis, Sekhmet, Freyja, and Ishtar. I’m ready. Fill me with your power, Goddess.” Names from cultures I don’t remember. Why do I know them?
I…I…you must—
The fluster in her voice amuses me. I’m not who I was. I’m someone new, not a blank slate, but a cleaned one. I feel like the old me would be aghast at my actions, my words.
“Will myself into your light. I understand. I just wanted you to know.”
Since you speak about knowing, there is one last thing you need to know. Beware The Dead Ones. They don’t like being cheated out of their meals. They don’t like our meddling in the natural order of things. They know the scent of your soul, so they will hunt you.
“You’re telling me this now?” No wonder she kept that until last.
Forewarned is forearmed. You will be fine. I believe in you.
“Do you now? That’s sweet. Time to go.” I feel a pressure, urging me on.
I gaze into her eyes with my non-existent ones. I sing quietly as I will myself into her light.
“Tiiii-iii-iiii-iiime, is on my side. Oh yes it is.” Words once sung by a creature wearing a man like a suit.
Her brilliance consumes me. I feel my soul stretching, growing fuzzy.
A moment before consciousness fades, I hear her.
What the fuck?
