Two hours I had been pushing myself to the max. I had traversed countless mountains, forests and lakes. Still no signs of pursuers. Slowly the underlying fear that I had been keeping at bay dissolved, replaced by the invigorating feeling of freedom. I wanted to explore this new world.

I stopped as it truly sank in. I had “survived” this ordeal. Now I could do whatever I wanted. No Darkons, no false friends. It was a fresh start. Well, maybe not everything. I could do the things you were able to do as a soul. But that was still much better than being dead because an evil magician had ripped apart and devoured my soul!

Taking in the surrounding view, I floated around five hundred feet above a lush green forest. To my left a tall mountain stood as a silent observer of its surroundings and functioned as an impressive landmark.

It was beautiful. But as the initial rush of freedom faded away my brain focused on the more important tasks. It quickly became clear that I had some critical issues to solve. I didn’t want to float around as a lonely soul for the rest of eternity. Additionally, I had to somehow deal with my hitchhiker. I couldn’t find a single reason why having a devilish identity in my soul could be a good thing.

This was a magical world, I refused to believe that there were no solutions to my plight. I had to find civilization. The cure to my problems would most likely be there. The lush forest suddenly lost most of its appeal.

Floating higher, I searched for signs of humans or other intelligent life-forms. Sadly, the only thing I found were plants that stretched themselves toward the horizon.

In which direction should I fly? It didn’t really matter. I was unable to make out any differences. Following that thought, I choose at random and made my way toward the mountain I had seen earlier.

Forest, forest, forest… Come on! There had to be a city or some other sign of civilization!

Not wanting to believe that I was so far in the wilderness, I kept searching. Three days later my once cheerful countenance was thoroughly abandoned and replaced by frustration. I had enough of forests and nature. I would have given a fortune to see a good old coal-fired power-station, or even a clarification plant. They stood for modern civilization.

Before I knew it, another week had passed. That didn’t help my mental health…

At one point during the journey I had learned that I could let myself be blown through the sky by the wind currents. It needed much less power to move that way. Yes, even though I was dead, I still had something resembling stamina. I needed that to propel my ghostly self towards a direction.

The first time I had felt it was when I was pushing my speed as far as I could. The plan was to accelerate as much as possible. I wanted to get out of this no-man's-land as soon as I could. At some point I felt dizzy and saw “stars”. I had to stop. At the beginning, I got scared. I thought my soul was about to disperse. But nothing happened. After some time, the symptoms vanished and I could see normally again.

Nevertheless, the time spent was not all for nothing. Most of it was boring like hell, but there were moments when something special happened. One time a phoenix crossed my path! It flew towards the horizon, its burning feathers lightening up the evening skies. The bird was enormous! At least the size of a house! Even my souly self felt the urge to bow in front of such a majestic creature.

Another such an occasion appeared when I saw two strange bears fighting each other. Their furs were black apart from mysterious red runes that were glowing on their foreheads and shoulders.

Despite their lumbering gait, they were extremely fast and strong. The Darkon soldiers seemed like snails compared to these beasts. They ripped the entire forest to shreds while they fought. Nothing was left standing intact.

I had to laugh in my head. It looked like all the fantasy novelists on my former world were not that far off with their stories of magicians and magical beasts.

But even though I got to witness those awe-inspiring moments, I still felt sick and tired of only seeing green all the time.

Having so much free time and being alone let me contemplate my past more in-dept. I examined the decisions I had made during my childhood and growing period. I knew already that I had been too radical in the past. Reexamining my memories only reinforced that notion.

I Remembered all the occasions I had gotten hurt and compared it with my last two-year period during war. There I had gotten my first genuine friends and understood that being distant and cold was not always the best solution.

Right than I swore to myself that I would change some of my behavior if I ever got out of this ghostly state.

I would still be distant, calculating and cold, but I would give new people a chance to prove themselves. Now I understood that not everything was clearly written in white or black. No, there were countless shades of gray in between. This opened the equation to an extreme amount of possibilities.

What was the sentence again that my teacher once told us during a lesson?

Everything depended on your perspective. In my past I had hated having to live in a cruel and cold world. Everybody only looked after themselves. But things had changed. I had seen much more sorrow and true cruelness during the war. Looking at it from a more remote point of view, my earlier simplicity was laughable.

I didn’t know how I should feel about myself. I had needed a war, my death and even a kidnapping after that to realize these facts…

Well, someone once said, better late than never, right?

Like that, I made my way over an increasing larger distance. Slowly my self-reflection changed to plotting of how and what I would do if I got out of my soul state. I could only self-reflect for so long.

It happened some days or weeks later. There! I could see structures on the ground! Yes! At last, I had found civilization!

I floated over and inspected it from a closer distance. It resembled the old boundary walls that the romans of my old world used to protect their territories. I think the most famous one was called Hadrian’s Wall. The fortification was made from stone. It stretched itself like a line that separated the wilderness from the human world as far as my eyes could see. I got closer and realized how big it was. At least sixty feet high and thirty feet thick.

Even more peculiar was that I couldn’t even see a gab or a crevice in the structure. It was like they cast the wall as one whole piece. There were no weaknesses. Unknown objects were built onto the wall, they looked like old cannons but had eye-catching glowing runes on them. Every three hundred feet watchtowers were built into the wall. Hopefully, they were manned! I burned to find out what sort of races lived here!

All towers had the same height except for one, that one was more than double as large as the rest.

The command unit for this part of the wall had to be stationed there. I knew that it was only a guess, but it made sense. I floated over and reached a window. There! Movement! They were Humans! This was splendid news as I knew how to work with humans.

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I entered the tower through the window. Some sort of leisure room came into view. Six people were playing cards at a table, others laid around relaxedly on the chairs and couches that spread throughout the room.

They wore armor and carried swords. I had already expected that, since I had seen my former captor fight against the black knight. It really seemed like I had landed in a world similar to our old age, apart from magic, monsters and maybe other races.

The one at the left side of the table opened his mouth and spoke with the others. My initial elation got immediately dosed with cold water. I could only understand gibberish! Crap… Why couldn’t you speak simple plain old English…

Breathing out slowly, I calmed myself. Thinking about it, it was only logical. I was on a different planet. Why should they speak English? That let to other questions. Why the heck was I able to talk with Sorvoros and understand the knight, but was now unable to understand anything?!

After some seconds of contemplating, I didn’t come to a viable solution. It made no sense!

Looks like I had to attribute it to magic. It was the only usable explanation.

Well, I couldn’t speak with them, but maybe they were able to see me?

I moved closer to them. I was practically sitting on top of the left guard, but nobody seemed to realize that there was a ghost in their middest. I tried everything. I jumped around and gripped part of their equipment, but nothing helped. I had still no substance and my hand simply went through the beaker I wanted to grab.

At the end I even flew through a guard. Even that didn’t bring anything. Damn! That didn’t go according to my plan. How was I going to get help if I couldn’t even draw attention to myself?

Wait! Sorvoros and the warden were able to see me. That meant it was not impossible. Maybe I had simply not met the right person with the ability to see ghosts? Yes. That had to be it.

Putting together some theories, I thought it was highly possible. There had to be some sort of two class system. Magicians and non-magicians. Most of the none magicians had to had enhanced their strength but had no, or limited magic. The magicians would have had more awareness and magical abilities, but lesser physical strength.

Maybe that meant that I had to find magicians. Maybe they would be able to see me. I didn’t fancy that thought at all as I still remembered my run in with Sorvoros much too vividly.

I only hoped that my next magician would be less evil. Maybe I would meet a friendly one for a change?

I was still debating with myself when suddenly the six guards stopped playing cards and stood up. They formed a group and walked deeper into the tower. Something had changed. Interested, I followed them. After we had passed many guarded checkpoints, we had reached the belly of the tower.

We entered a sizable round room. I scanned the new surroundings. At that moment a rift suddenly appeared in it. It started as a small silver pebble in the middle of the room. At a certain spot, somewhere around my waist’s height, the light suddenly bent. A silver seed grew out of nothing. Some time later it had reached the size of a football, glowing with a pure silvery light.It churned in on itself.

I checked the guards for suspicious behaviour, but they were simply standing at the side and waited. I saw no sign that something was wrong. It looked like it was supposed to happen like this. Relaxing myself mentally, I waited with them.

The portal had reached the size of a six feet wide silver vortex. With a shout from the leader the men formed ranks and walked as pairs into the silver thing. I had to decide quickly. If I waited too long, I would be left behind. On the other hand, who knew if it was safe for a soul to cross?

Following my gut, I flew over and touched it. Immediately it sucked me in and transported me to somewhere else. A second later I arrived at the other side.

Relieved, I turned and took in the new view. My location appeared to be similar to the one I had been in before. It looked like the people here build uniform structures for ease of access and orientation. On my world we had used this concept in the military as well.

“My” group stood to the side of the portal and was about to walk out of the room. The safety measurements were lax, I had to say. Well, maybe that had to do with me being a stranded soul. They were not prepared to deal with such an existence. The picture would be drastically different if they had been aware of me.

Following them, I floated through long stone corridors lit up with glowing stones. I could see them everywhere. Where my world took the route of science, they developed magic.

Sometime later we had passed all the checkpoints and had arrived outdoors. We were in the middle of an enormous fortress. As my new friends usefulness had ended, I left them. They were only foot soldiers. It was simpler to search for a magician on my own.

But first, I wanted the have a better view of my surroundings. Floating up and up, I reached a height that enabled me to take in the enormous structure and appreciate it's all-encompassing glory. It was huge, built into the endless wall I had been following earlier.

There were mighty towers and thick walls, as well as strange formations and objects that glowed in unique colors. Armored guards manned the walls. They moved and stood with an abnormal grace which showed their power.

I could make out an entire training camp. There countless soldiers were drilling and improving their fighting-power.

The whole fortress slash city was built strategically to defend against a potential foe attacking from the wide road leading into the wilderness. At the same time it controlled the trade that came through. Looks like the wilderness was not as unoccupied as I had thought.

I floated towards the drawbridge that served as the entrance to the fortress. A queue of merchants and other people were waiting to enter. Scanning them, they looked somehow strange. I closed in on them and realized why that was the case. They were elves, Beast-humans, Dwarfs and even minotaurs! But the most conspicuous of them was the spider women. Double the size of a normal human, she had a gorgeous upper body fused together with the lower part of a spider.

I was right. Many races lived together in this world! I felt happy; I wanted to live again even more!

Having satiated my thirst for new civilizations, I flew back up. I needed to find a magician. They had to be important individuals, so they should be in the tallest and most beautiful building. Or in case of a fortress, in the best protected building.

Gotcha! In the middle of the whole fortress one tower surmounted them all. It was built from black stone. The appearance was beautiful and intimidating at the same time.

I Closed in on the structure, planning to land on the highest balcony of the tower.

When I came closer, I felt like I was passing through different layers of a force-field. It made it harder to fly the closer the tower was. I could literally feel spiderwebs that tried to bind me. I pushed with more power. First it held, but after I reached a certain threshold, I felt it give. I had arrived in the tower.