You have Died

Everyone always wonders what’s at the end of the line. Heaven? Hell? Oblivion? Honestly, the top ten answers probably weren’t anywhere near what you got. A videogame message seemed too surreal. But it was proof that the last couple of minutes of your life weren’t fake.

It’s kind of funny. You finally built up the courage to tell Sam how you felt. Put the cards on the table and hold your heart open to her. Him? Anyway, the world sent you one heck of a curveball. Their jealous and drunk ex came by, holding a gun. The conversation is a bit of a blur but it's safe to say you ended up shot shortly after.

The last thing you remember was the ex being tackled by some stranger and Sam trying to stop the bleeding. What a way to go. Tell a girl you’ve never talked to or interacted with in any significant way you loved him. Just some stranger you always managed to walk past on the street every day. You were one weird dude. Chick? Man, why is everything so foggy all of a sudden? Can’t remember anyone’s look or sex, much less your own.

“That would be me.” Looking at the voice, you realize you’re not the only one in this black void. The one who spoke to you was by far the most odd-looking creature ever to come across. It looked like someone decided to smash together every creature in the animal kingdom but changed their mind every five seconds. Gils, wings, fins, and fur changed position and appearance randomly. One moment you were looking at a shark with cat limbs and hawk wings. The next was an elephant with an eagle’s head, the eyes of a snake, and the feet of a monkey.

It shrugged, which was impressive with fins for arms. “Comes with being a God of animals. Didn’t pick any specific animal as my avatar so I just cycle through them. Pretty cool too. Ever wanted to taste the rainbow? I can manage sometimes.” For a god with a horse head, she spoke quite fluently.

“That is God with a capital ‘G’ thank you very much. I’ve earned that much at least.” Wait, can she read your mind? And she can tell the capitalization of your thoughts!? Holly crap!

“Perks of being a God.” She says with a hint of pride. “But that’s not what important right now. Going back to your earlier question, I’m the reason you can’t remember things well. Well to be specific, your death and me reincarnating you into the next life is part of the process. You have heard of reincarnation, right?”

You nod your head. Or at least you think you do. Can’t look at yourself right now. “Dead, so right now you’re just a soul. You ever get strong enough or lucky enough to enter the spirit realm without dying, you might get a physical form.” Right, the mind-reading thing.

“So, part of being reborn is losing all your previous attachments. Mostly so you don’t overload your new brain with excessive stimuli, and also the myriad of other problems that can happen of putting an old soul into another body. Could you imagine a goat with the body of a bat? Extinction would be far more common.” You agree that would not look pretty. Like the God being an octopus covered in scales and a giraffe’s head.

“So, while this may be a little scary, just think of it as a clean slate. You might forget who you were, but you’ll always be you. Part of the whole soul thing you know. Anyway, I’ll just spin this wheel here and see what you end up being. It’s a little bit based on your karma, but I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

The world, or in this case afterlife’s, biggest wheel of fortune appeared. With hoofs, she spun the wheel. And dear lord did it spin. It felt like you were there for an eternity before it ended at a pitch-black option. Something out of place since all the other ones had pictures and names written on them. Even the God looked confused.

“Wait. What is this? I don’t remember-” The pizza slice-shaped option was then expanded by two hands popping out and pushing the sides to make it bigger. What came out was Albert Einstein. How did-wait you can remember a famous scientist but not your own name!? What the hell!

“Crazy right? Thanks for landing on my little present by the by. Thought it would be forever before Phetia landed on it. Granted it has been but that’s just semantics.” Mr. Einstein smiled and dusted himself off. Phetia, the animal Goddess if that was her name, managed to make a hyena look incredibly unhappy.

“Chaos. I believe you were banished to the far reaches of the multiverse were you not?” Chaos(?) just smiled and turned to face you. “I will. But that’s not important right now. See kid, it's your lucky afterlife. You get to be blessed in your next life by a God and Demigod. And you get to keep, most, of your memories! Isn’t that great?” Both you and Phetia were rather taken aback by this scientist’s lookalikes’ words. Wait. Did he say, Demigod? Weird someone would banish a demigod. Or will?

Chaos laughed. Which was kind of disturbing as the pitch and tone changed randomly every second. “No, my ethereal friend. I am a true-blue God here.” He tilts his head in Phetia’s direction, who was trying to make a platypus look as unguilty as possible. “Looks like someone’s been lying again.” Chaos claps his hands and now you and Phetia are sitting in an office room. How a fish manages to sit in a chair you’ll never know.

Chaos, in a polka-dotted suit now, walks back and forth in front of you. “Alright kid, time to get down to the brass tacks here. One, Phetia is a Demigod at the edge of being a god. It's why she doesn’t have an avatar yet. Need to build up faith, personal power, other god stuff you don’t need to worry about. Still, she’s been abusing her position as a temporary reincarnation deity to influence souls before their next life. Even as just a soul she can squeeze a little bit of divinity from you, especially since your world lacks gods, and it's quite a shock of faith from people like you to believe in her. She’s going to be punished severely once the other gods find out.”

Phetia tries to speak, only to get her mouth zipped shut. Literally. Chaos wags his finger at her, an odd sight when he looks like Albert Einstein and Phetia has a hippo for a head. “Unless she agrees to my offer. Then I won’t go tattling on her. This brings us to my second point. Two, since you rolled on me for your next reincarnation, you’re going to be saddled with some perks. As I said, maintained memories and some divine blessings. Can’t have all of them as I’m sure Phetia explained what would happen otherwise, but enough to keep your individuality instead of a full reset. You should be seeing the perks right about...”

You have been blessed by Chaos, God of Random.

Due to being blessed before even being born due to luck, you have been rewarded a Title: True Divine Luck

And now you were back to the videogame messages. While you were busy reading your messages, Chaos was staring down Phetia. Interesting to see a dinosaur look intimidated. Chaos just smiled for what could have been an eternity, perfectly willing to just watch the Demigod squirm. She eventually relented, apparently having no choice.

You have been blessed by Phetia, Demigod of Animal Husbandry.

Due to repeating the actions of a previous title, your current Title has been enhanced: True Divine Luck -> True Heavenly Fortune

“...now. See Phetia was that so hard?” The Demigod cow looked right miffed. “You knew this would happen, did you not? Everyone knows reincarnation for Earth is an easy job to get steady divinity. It’s an open secret.” Chaos shrugs. “It’s A-OK if no one talks about it, but since you’re here, you’d strong-arm whoever was in charge at the time. And I was just lucky enough to be the sorry sap that got saddled with you.” Phetia, like a dog, looked rather glum all of a sudden. Wait, when did Chaos take off here zipped mouth?

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“Ah thanks for reminding me.” With a snap of his fingers, Chaos shut Phetia’s mouth once again. “And now for the last nugget of info. Three, I’m doing all of this free of charge. As you can see, I’m the god of ‘lol random’ so this is just the luck of the draw for you. I don’t need you to do anything specific. Just live your life as long as possible. If you want, make something of yourself. If not, just live however you want. But if you ever need some Quests or guidance, just hit me and Phetia up. Our blessing give’s you a direct line to us. You can call us at any time.”

Chaos leans in, pointing a thumb at Phetia. She is currently trying to rip the zipper off with a pair of crab claws. It's not going well. “Between you and me, you might want to leave her alone for a couple of decades. She might misdirect her anger at you and all that. God, even a demi one, can be kinda petty.”

The wheel reappeared with a clap of Chaos’ hands and the office room disappeared. “Now, let's spin it to win it!” With more effort than Phetia had put in, the wheel moved. It spun. And kept spinning. Was it getting faster? Soon enough a hole appeared in the center of the wheel. Which then began to suck you in. Something that sent you into a bit of a panic. What remained of your human instinct told you this wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

“Don’t worry kid! You’ll come out just fine on the other side!” Chaos gave you a thumbs up, a crazed smile on his face. Just before you crossed the holes threshold, you heard him speak. “Unless it drops you in a volcano or something. I’m sure you'll be fine.” Wait. You can be reincarnated into a volcano!? You went into the hole and lost all self-awareness.

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You don’t know how long it had been before you awakened. You were tired. Sleep came easily, as it was a warm place you found yourself in. A cycle that repeated countless times. Only to be interrupted by moments of hunger. You cry out instinctively and are rewarded with a warm liquid. It satiates your hunger and allows you to return to sleep easily.

One day, you find yourself full of energy. You stand, realizing rather quickly you aren’t human anymore. Four legs. Fur. A long nose. You think you’re a dog of some kind. Or maybe a fox? Hard to tell. You notice the tail. The gray blur behind you as you feel rather excited for some reason. And then you were assaulted by a lot of windows. Like, a lot.

Due to receiving a God’s blessing, you have been rewarded a Title: God’s Chosen

You have received a Blessing! Open your Character Sheet to see its effects.

You have received a Title! Open your Character Sheet to see its effects.

Due to holding multiple Titles, you have been granted an additional Title: Owner of Many Names

You have enhanced a Title! Open your Character Sheet to see its effects.

Due to receiving a Demigod’s blessing, you have been rewarded a Title: Demigod’s Chosen.

Due to receiving a blessing from multiple deities of varying levels, your previous titles have been merged and upgraded, God’s Chosen + Demigod’s Chosen -> Divinities Chosen.

You have merged multiple Titles! Open your Character Sheet to see its effects.

Due to evolving and merging multiple Titles, your main Title has been enhanced: Owner of Many Names -> Owner of Advancing Monikers.

Due to reincarnating with some memories intact, you have been rewarded a Title: Partial Reincarnate.

Welcome to Vul new Player.

Due to your Title: Partial Reincarnate, you gave been given a Mini-Tutorial to maneuver through the System. To open your character sheet, please think Character Sheet.

Well, this was a lot to take in at the moment. Being a newborn and in a relatively unfamiliar body had been one thing. Mental spamming of all these windows was another. It took a minute for your mind to settle and process the information in front of you. Luckily, the windows seemed to disappear after you read them automatically. All except for the Tutorial one.

Following its instructions, you soon found yourself looking at your Character Sheet. It went without saying it looked like you’d expected it to.

Name None Level 0 Race Gray Wolf (Infant) Class None Titles Owner of Advancing Monikers

True Heavenly Fortune

Divinities Chosen

Partial Reincarnate. Traits Blessing of Chaos

Blessing of Phetia

Mini-Tutorial Atributes 2 Skills None Luck 0 Faith 0

There was a lot more and a lot less than what you had been hoping for. You don’t know how it works but you get the feeling you are missing a lot even as just an infant. You never really played a game where you had only had two stats. The lack of class or skills made some sort of sense though. You were just born.

And your body was relatively normal. Just a simple wolf. Kind of disappointed to a degree. A new reality and you’re just a common four-legged furball. Well at the least your reality was gamified, or it looked that way to you. Something to look forward to.

You couldn’t help but find it all a bit sad, from an outside perspective. Here you were in a new life, and you didn’t seem to have any real feelings about the situation other than idle curiosity. You were once a man who had lost their body, life, and even most of their memories. You couldn’t remember anyone or anything important, so the pain of never seeing your family didn’t sting.

But that didn’t change the facts. You had been someone. You had loved and been loved. And all of that was gone. With no real recollection of what had been lost. In the end, all you had was Sam. Someone you couldn’t even recall correctly. A one-sided love that had simply amounted to a quick death.

Filled with melancholy, you returned to the dirt ground you had awoken into to rest. Partially from exhaustion as your newborn body lacked energy. Partially to sleep away the dull ace in your heart. Your character screen hanging in the corner of your vision all the while. You could get to it when you next woke up. You had time.

You had your whole new life to get to it.