Prologue – Where Things Began
The heat was oppressive. The fan was spinning at full blast, a sickly, creeping wind snaking its way through the office doing little to diminish the sweat gathering across either man’s forehead.
The office had that somewhat rustic charm to it, at least in his opinion, the walls a faded shade of beige and wood panelling across the lower half of the far wall. Once it had been the backroom of a hairdresser’s, now it was the office of a local bank. It still carried some of the biting scent of hair products, though now it was tempered by the smell of summer sweat and a town dying of old age.
“This is a nice little place you’ve got here, though I find it hard to believe that this is your favourite memory.”
Aurgur spoke, words slipping easily from the man’s lips, voice rising and falling with a near musical cadence. The man swept back a golden swathe of hair, revealing somewhat pointed ears jutting out from beneath. Edgar sighed leaning a little further back into his chair, looking down at the papers that had just been shoved into his hands, then up at the stranger that had just barged into his office, the young man wiped his forehead and swallowed his questions. “Oh, you’re in shock? That’s no surprise, you don’t want to believe it's’ true, but you can’t deny it; this is unfortunately reality. Well not reality but you know what I mean.” Edgar shook his head turning the document over for the umpteenth time. The papers recorded, and officiated, a death – his own.
“You my friend are dead, this world is a dream, I am a God, and this is what is going to happen next.”
The intruder laughed folding his legs over creasing the neat white and gold suit he had worn strutting into the bank.
“Do you honestly expect me to believe this?” Edgar questioned shaking his head and dropping his papers down onto the table, he ran a bank in a town full of nothing but old people many of whom were a few coconuts short of a shy. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard claims like this. He pushed the papers back towards the would-be-god, Aurgur letting out an almost cheesily-smooth laugh pushing them back.
“I do not expect you to believe me, I know you do. Your body knows it’s dead, your’ mind’s just clinging on to the vestiges of your humanity. This world, it’s like a form of limbo, it’s a mental repository of your life and it is keeping you attached to this planet and your former life. If this continues, I am afraid soon enough you will turn into a ghost.”
Aurgur shrugged, the god brushing off a piece of lint that had settled on his suit giving Edgar another wide grin in true snake-oilsman fashion. “Of course, that’s why I’m here!” The man rose from his seat giving a swift bow. “To save you from your eternal purgatory, to offer you a second chance at life; in another world that is.” The God continued to strut about the imaginary office, waving his arms in wide arcs to accentuate his point. “I offer you a chance to join my world”
“Your’ world?”
“My world.”
Flap...
The god stepped forwards removing something from inside his suit and letting it fall onto the table. It looked like a large scroll, torn and wearied at the edges, with several coffee stains from the bottoms of mugs covering its surface. Aurgur leaned in spreading the scroll out revealing a map of a world Edgar didn’t recognise, divided across several massive land masses.
“This has been my personal project for quite some time. To cut a long story short, when designing my world, I opted to include magic. Yes, non-magic societies are more stable but as soon as they discover science its’ all ‘I don’t believe in unprovable concepts like gods, or pizza, or my own damn existence’.” The god gave a weary shake of the head before continuing with his nonsensical diatribe. “On the other hand, advanced magical societies aren’t quite so obnoxious provided they advance far enough to be truly advanced. In any case after several thousand years my world had practically gone down in flames, the humans had never advanced beyond the bronze age and spent all their days in little mini kingdoms attempting to cast magic missile at each other.”
“So I had the option of either abandoning that world to its’ own devices, a very immature move I’m sure you’ll agree or making a few alterations-” Edgar remained stock still watching as the brightly dressed man continued to rant while waving his hands in the circles. Edgar sighed, he was finding it harder and harder to believe this man really was a god, not out of any sort of religious belief or lack their off – it had more to do with the fact the man was absolute raving loon.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“-In the end that particular plan... well it wasn’t the best success: everyone screaming and dying the world a desolate ruin. So, I opted to take a little tour of a couple of different realities in order to give me some ideas and I ended up finding myself here. Your’ world really is quite unique, no monsters, no magic, nothing remotely interesting whatsoever. Instead you invent interesting things; the most notable of course being games. You probably have no idea how rare it is for a society to place so much focus of playing games rather than you know; surviving. There is actually a bit of a fad around adding gaming elements into magical worlds, but I must admit I really underestimated its benefits. Games really do offer the perfect balance between magic and order.”
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about.” Edgar attempted to butt in, Aurgur leaning forwards to shush him before awarding the twenty-five-year-old man with a light pat to the head.
“So I decided to peruse some of the games this world in order to find a template for my own and I fell in love. Your strategy games were simply magnificent, I don’t know what it was but they were enthralling!” The man let out a raucous laugh. “So I made my choice, I’d use a collection of strategy games to design my world.”
The man gave a smug little nod, Edgar laying a cursory glance over the map splayed out in front of him. He got the feeling that this conversation wasn’t going to end anytime soon.
“Currently my world, Yanir, is a mix of CCG, Kingdom building, chess and roguelike elements. I suppose I just couldn’t make up my mind about what I liked most.” Edgar winced at the line; He was no videogame expect but he knew a car crash when he saw one.
“What does this have to do with me though?” Edgar’s question seemed to break the deity out of his rant, a broad white toothed grin spreading over the man’s face.
“I’m glad you asked. You see this new world of mine has been running for a couple hundred years now and things are starting to slow down so I decided I’d drop some ‘heroes’ into the mix in order to shake things up. The idea is to take several different people from earth, give them absurd levels of power and reincarnate them as children – future rulers to shape the world. Currently I have ten candidates one for each of the main races”
“And that’s what you want me for?” Edgar questioned maintaining a plastic smile. There were no more questions about it, this so-called god complete bananas.
“No.” The response was sudden and sharp
The god let out a long-winded laugh dropping back down into his seat and attempting to regain an appearance of poise.
“Our meeting today was simply happy coincidence. Think about this, I just finished recruiting someone in the apartment complex across the street and then bang! Right outside the window someone’s been hit by a truck. I just couldn’t stop laughing. The Irony of it all. I was recruiting transmigrators when outside the window some guy gets hit by truck-kun.” -Kun? Edgar shook his head remained silent, he had no idea why on earth that would be so funny especially since it sounded an awful lot like that person had been him.
“I was hit by a truck?”
“Yes you were! So, I decided that if you soul held together after your death I’d give you a place in my world. Obviously I can’t just load you up with the same privileges as the others I’m sending their but .” What the hell kind of reason was that? There was no way he was going along with this.
“Well I’m sorry but I feel like I should decline. I was never all that into videogames, and this office really is quite comfortable.” Edgar slowly rose from his seat pushing all the documents Aurgur had handed him back over the table with a sigh and a practiced smile.
“I think you’re confused my friend. I didn’t say I was offering you a place I said I was giving you one.”
Edgar paused, a chill running its’ way down his spine, Aurgur falling back into his chair, a hint of iron catching in the man’s voice, warm green eyes suddenly growing hard and cold as the arm waving buffoon receded back into the god’s façade. A slow sigh escaping his lips. “Well that really is a shame, I was going to going to let you choose your starting cards character and all. I’d even planned on throwing in a bonus legendary card... Oh, well.” The room was beginning to distort the office seeming to melt away as the floor sagged beneath Edgar’s feet, an unknown force slowly dragging him down.
“Edgar Ginnel, it’s been a pleasure meeting you. Goodbye.”