“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”

― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Sharp pain flares through the entirety of my body, but I am already used to the agony of dying. Hard, misshapen metal presses against my form, but I lack the time to process random inputs.

Stop, I order, prepared for the contest of wills. There is none. The world embraces me, accepting my will without resistance, like a loving mother I know it not to be.

Time stops, and I wish the Blue Screen of Death into existence.

I am literate, that is the sole thought I have before my mind freezes.

My name? Then the weight of an entire world’s worth of time grates against my shocked will. Just over eight billion humans, among other lives and consciousnesses, which exist in numbers so large and unfathomable, my original race never bothered with them besides expressing them with zeros and naming them.

I sense the rivers and the seas, the lava and the wind, they all wish to move, they protest, and I alone can bear the burden no longer.

Age, I order the truck’s hood pressing against my face, and the much lower bumper pressing against my calves. Time funnels through me, pouring into the scant few objects I am targeting.

I make a bubble around the truck’s driver. He is innocent in this incident, and I am not about to vaporize the boy who inadvertently granted me my second chance.

Lives explode into existence. Colonies of bacteria and fungi grow and feast on the many organic parts of both vehicles, fed by the rain and sun which they will never see. The metal rusts and flakes, carried by the phantom winds not yet spawned by the colliding heat and cold of the future it will never witness.

The seven landmines laying on the back seat draw a ghost of a smile. I cannot believe I was ever so foolish, so petty. Then, they vanish, time grinding them away without mercy.

Millennia pass before me in an instant of non-time, and then it ends. The ravenous ebb has devoured my offering. The danger to my person has passed, and I am tempted to pour some time into myself, to grant myself a window to think and for my body to heal, but I lack finesse in temporal manipulation.

My level is too low to measure time when it does not exist save as a personal preference. Sound and wind return, an annoying ache flares in my mind, but I dismiss my nerves’ complaints. My wounds are negligible. I’m merely covered in blood, hit by a truck a teeny-tiny bit, just enough to turn a petty fool into a demigod by squishing the life out of him.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The driver is falling, and I catch the lad. The chubby youth has a scruffy beard and some four hundred pounds, stomach overflowing between his undone pants and stained T-shirt, yet in my hands, he is as light as a feather.

“I have seen you, young man,” I say. “Do not worry, I will compensate you for your lost vehicle.”

My presence presses against his frail existence, and the fifty-three-year-old driver’s shock disappears. His muscles relax, and he nods.

“Now, if you will excuse me, I have urgent business, but I will not forget you, be that for the better or worse.”

I have spent too much time in Faerie. Their speech and manners stuck to me, despite the lives I lived in other worlds.

I feel little need to explain myself to a mortal, so I walk, disappearing from the accident site in seven steps, reappearing in my old rented apartment, for as long as you are within your demesne, seven steps will take you home.

Filth, pettiness, insanity, their residue clings to the insane bomber’s lair, reminding me of the madman I once was, and of a woman who helped set me straight.

I draw a deep breath and Feel. The surrounding ether overflows with radiance, polluted with random gibberish and words in such enormous quantities, not even the denizens of the most advanced mage-worlds I visited would have ever dreamt of the possibility.

But that is not the only thing I feel. There is lingering attachment, chains binding me to this world. Chains, which I should either shatter or reforge.

I sigh.

I know what I must do, yet I hesitate, and my whole existence shudders. My epic allows no going back, no surrender, otherwise the Fae magic I have built over the millennia and dozens of lives would crumble into dust. I must and will always blaze my path forward. So, I reach for the air and grab a strand from the giant mesh of empty words.

A telephone conversation disconnects for two unfortunates, but there is no true damage.

Now I hold a thread, but lack the device to nurture it. I could just walk out and buy one, but that is mundane. It diminishes my epic, a major source of my power.

From the first moment of this rebirth, my body was deprived of mana, and despite the surge I am drawing into myself, Earth’s or Chillago’s mana is thin, and human magic will remain beyond me for a month or so. No, that path is still closed to me. For now.

Instead of resorting to petty sorcery, I gaze out the window and see another source of power.

The sun blazes in the sky, leaving the world behind the horizon. The orb is a mere step away, and I stretch my arm, grabbing the glowing red marble between my thumb and forefinger.

I make no pleas or demands. I do not barter. I pluck, and a large pearl is firmly clenched between my fingers while at the same time remaining millions of miles away. I ball my fist, crushing the light and warmth, fueling the thread held in my left.

It comes to life, writhing, seeking to fulfill its purpose.

Her, I order, and the thread obeys.

“Hello, who is this?” the familiar voice asks out of thin air after nearly half a minute of silence.

Who am I?

I do not know what to say. My heart pounds, and the lump in my throat suffocates me. Even those a mere step away from godhood harbor irrational fears.

“Is this a prank?” she asks, a slightly hysterical note seeping into her voice.

I drove her mad. I need to set it right. But how do I explain everything? Anything?

“It is I, Mary,” I say full of regret, burdened by the sins I must atone for. “I owe you an explanation. Would you invite me into your home? Please?”