25

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you’d manage to survive. My master says good things about you, but I’m skeptical. Any good servant should be,” Amany said with her obnoxious smile. “Since you survived, I suppose we’ll move on to the next part. Now that your soul is strong enough, my master would like to meet with you.”

Ten seconds ago, Vander thought he’d been a faceless farmer. Needless to say, he projectile vomited a thick black substance, the most vile thing he’d ever tasted in his life. When nothing more came, he gagged profusely until he could finally draw a breath and still his reeling mind.

As memories came back to him and his mind, soul, or whatever he existed as in that moment, he laughed to himself at an odd thought. Must be what an AI feels like when it’s loaded into a HomeSense.

“Who knows?” Amany responded, lending credence to his theory that she could read his thoughts. Most of them anyway. She hadn’t picked up on what happened in his assessment before. “Now, you’ll treat my master with far more kindness and respect than you treated me. That is non-negotiable. If you happen to think of running your mouth, I’ll make that little dream you just had significantly worse.”

Vander blinked away the confusion and remembered. The silver and gold portal that displayed the Witch was all he needed to reignite that boiling pit of vitriol and spit in his gut. To calm himself, he thought of saving her, running away from the rest of the world, and holding her in his arms once she was safe. To be together in a way they’d never been before, a beautiful dream he clutched onto with every part of himself and fueled with all the negativity of all the lives he’d lived.

“Fine.”

“Glad we can finally agree on something.” Perking up as if he’d just given her the best news of all time, she waved her hand. Clothes softer than air settled over his body, white as white could be. “Let’s go then. We wouldn’t want to keep him waiting too long.”

The shackles hoisting him up carefully lowered him to the ground. And by carefully, that meant they snapped together to form cuffs over his wrists and ankles, letting him drop onto shaky legs. If he had to walk, a shuffle was the best he’d be able to achieve.

But deities seemed to have the nifty poof ability that shifted the cell away into a grand hall. Gold, silver, red. Too much of each was everywhere, and no natural light shined. They mixed to form an intimidating orange glow that focused in a circle around two parties.

Vander and a white haired man haughtily staring down at him from atop a throne. All else but them, under that light, faded to black. Defiantly, Vander glared back at the man, teeth clenching against the force of the cuffs slowly dragging him to his knees.

“Vander!” Amany hissed sharply.

Of course, he ignored her and continued staring. Unflinching, he dared to not only meet the eyes of Amany’s master but did so while envisioning shoving a spear into the man’s throat. Maybe he’d fall to the floor, choking on his own blood as his life faded. Maybe he’d beg for his life first. Either way, Vander wanted to find out.

“When Amany first told me about you,” the man said, rising from the throne and clasping his hands behind his back, “I thought nothing of you. But I’ve kept my eyes on you. So far, your existence has been nothing but pitiful, whether this life or the last. If that weren’t the case, you’d never have been able to inherit Artemis’ vessel.”

“So what?” Vander growled.

“Impudent brat!” Amany hissed. The familiar sharpness of claws pressed against his back, but something stopped her from piercing flesh. Realizing what she’d done, she turned and knelt beside Vander. “Master!”

“Leave us, Amany.” He stopped in front of Vander, his boots crafted of solid gold.

“But Master—”

He didn’t even look her way. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“By your will.” She lowered her head to the ground, but the man seemed as if he’d already stopped paying attention to her. Without another word, she did the whole poof thing.

“Who are you?” Vander asked, uncertain if he should be concerned for himself and the near future.

“Who I am is unimportant. What is important is the development of your soul’s strength in such a short amount of time. All the pieces of the puzzle are slowly falling into play, to include your development. Eons of planning and setting the stage is finally starting to bear fruit, and the last piece of the puzzle is,” the man crouched low, rested his hands on both sides of Vander’s head, and then pressed their foreheads together, “this.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Knowledge he couldn’t possibly know, like a foggy vision, showed him a place and time he couldn’t determine. In the center of his vision, a boy he’d never seen before. The world around him spiraled as the view in the world shifted outward and away, revealing more and more to him.

Dizzy, he felt the location sink into him. Vander couldn’t make out the details of anything but the boy and a strange sense of unease and longing. If that were all, he would’ve been confused, but the vision reoriented, showing the boy opening a swirling prismatic gate.

Passing through the gate revealed a land he didn’t recognize, no known land of Gaia. On a pedestal, floating as if greeting him, Azazel waited. Again, that sense of longing pulled at him, and he tried to reach for his old friend.

The world around him stretched as his fingers nearly brushed against the enchanted silversteel, dragging him backwards and away from that land of hazy fog. When his eyes focused on the man in front of him, Vander gasped a shuddery breath, staring down at the hand shoved inside his stomach.

“Why?”

All went dark.

***

“He’s dead.”

“Super dead.”

“Dead as a doorknob, my grams would say.”

Waking up on the side of a river, soaked from head to toe, with kids poking and prodding him with sticks, Vander rolled over. Water flowed from his lips in a torrent as he vomited what had to be a trough worth of liquid into the muddy ground. Breathing until he finished was impossible. Labored gasps through moments of reprieve kept him conscious long enough for him to remove his own body’s weight in water from the depths of wherever it’d been stored.

“Not dead.”

“Super not dead.”

“Fit as a fiddle, and buzzing like a bee, my grams would say.”

Vander pushed himself off his hands and knees into a sitting position and focused on filling his lungs with fresh air. Only that was important at the moment. The youngins could wait—or go away. The latter didn’t sound half bad as he glowered back at their unconcerned expressions.

“That’s no fun,” the biggest boy, seemingly the leader, grumbled with a frown. He caught Vander’s scowl and sucked in a deep breath. “I-I mean, shucks mister! I’m glad you’re okay.” When Vander didn’t look convinced, he cupped a hand over his ear. “Uh, guys. I think Mrs. Madeline’s a-callin’. Time to get goin’!”

All together, they scampered off. They shot him worried looks over their shoulders as they peeled off back to town.

“Brats,” Vander grumbled. He looked at the barrels and the river. “Guess Amany’s poison wasn’t just a vision.” Then he thought of the strange man, the boy, and Angel. “Wish somebody would just give me a straight answer for once.”

Though they probably thought the same about him, at least they weren’t getting dragged around and beaten up every other day. Rather than pay them any mind, he figured he’d go back to Tobias and Madeline and figure out just what had happened. Of course, that was right after he killed Tobias. Or at least stabbed him a hundred times. The battle junkie was insane and would probably survive something like that, but it would make Vander feel better.

With a groan, he rose to his feet, filled the barrels in the stream, and made his way back to Stubborn in his pen. Even though Vander wanted to rush into town and beat Tobias senseless, if his memories were correct, the old ox deserved a reward first.

One barrel over each shoulder, he trekked back to the pen. He heard Stubborn before seeing him, a loud groaning hum letting him know the beast was displeased. “Coming, bud. I know I took longer than expected. Just you wait, and I’ll get things taken care of.”

He set one of the barrels down, clicked open the latch, and emptied the first barrel’s contents in the beast’s trough. With the addition of the second shortly after, the water trough was full enough for the old ox to drink more than his fair share. But Vander would have to remember, and not forget this time, to refill the three barrels before the end of the day.

While Stubborn drank, Vander refilled the feed trough. When he stepped outside of the pen, he turned the lock three times, click-clack-click. He’d make his way to the town, but first, he needed to get out of his sopping wet clothes.

In only a minute, he’d entered his home for the past few months, stripped clean, and dried himself down with a spare hand towel. As he finished up, he gave the little place a look around and noticed something that hadn’t been there before—a pretty red bow sealing the bulging bag with a folded note attached.

Uneasy, he pulled on his clothes quickly, greatly annoyed by his waterlogged boots—they’d still been brand new—and made his way to the small table. He ripped the note free of the bag and read over it.

“Dear Vander, sorry things turned out this way. As promised, here are many things that will help you. Maybe next time we meet I’ll teach you my secret recipe. Good luck. You’re our last hope! From your favorite alchemist.” He thought to stomp over to Tobias and Madeline’s house that second and give them a piece of his mind, but something in the letter made him think that the couple he knew wouldn’t be waiting for him when he got there. “I’m still going to kill that asshole.”

He wouldn’t forgive Tobias for how he’d handled things—what’s this? Blinking in the corner of his vision, numerous notifications blared for his attention. “Why didn’t they show before reading the letter?” he mused.

Instead of wasting time, he mentally prodded the notification. There were simply too many. With a bit of creative organization, he got the system to rearrange everything into a streamlined display that didn’t seem as overwhelming. Still overwhelming, but less so.

“Wow…”