Leon was strolling around in the park with his dog.
The wind was gently blowing on my shirt as my footsteps made crackling sounds in the sand path I was walking on. When I had finished strolling around the huge park with my dog I decided it was time to go back home. As I walked back home through the central part of my town I noticed a parade coming my way.
"Oh, yea its veterans day" I mumbled bitterly.
As the parade got closer I could see a man in a military uniform he had short brown hair and glasses. He looked just like one of my comrades. I immediately froze on the spot. My dog Robert started acting to try to comfort me, but now all I could see in was the face of my friend covered in blood with half of his brain blown off. I collapsed on my knees and started getting distressed while an overwhelming amount of sweat was pouring from my forehead.
As Robert went to lick my face and began pushing himself on to me while his different colored eyes were staring at me. I started softly patting him and began to calm down. People around me gave me weird glances as I rose up from the ground thinking that they should just mind their own goddamm business.
My life isn’t really that interesting. I am a 25 Yo veteran working as a Personal trainer with a salary of 40k a year. I had some really stubborn clients sometimes but usually, I got along with my clients quite alright.
After I had gone to the store to buy some vegetables and some vodka from the liquor store I started heading back home. I didn’t usually drink as when I came home from my 2nd tour I started heavily drinking and it became quite a problem, which I did overcome over time tho. After that, I decided to rarely drink and try not to go overboard.
When I finally came home I first meditated in my backyard for about an hour and did full body training for about half an hour. Then I came back inside and poured a shot of vodka for myself, which I put on the living rooms glass table.
Then I let Robert out on my backyard from where he had a viewing distance to me in case I had another PTSD attack. I continued to put on the tv and switch to the news channel. Nothing interesting was really happening on the news so I decided to down my shot without paying attention to the male reporter on the screen and went grab a beer.
The reporter was now suddenly speaking in a serious voice.
"In other news today in many states all over America and even in some other countries there have been reported cases of people gone missing in the past 2 days. What makes this interesting is at in all cases the person disappearing has left a deep hole behind them. Some have gone missing while inside their own house and some even while being surrounded by people. No one knows what could have caused this phenomenon and some people are believing that these were cases of alien abductions but for now, no one really knows for sure what has happened to the people that have gone missing."
"Huh what a load of crap," I said as I closed the tv.
"I guess it’s time for the daily maintenance now."
I had lost my left forearm and hand in Iraq so I now had to do some maintenance on the prosthetic. I had gotten used to it pretty well, though the first month or so I had constant ghost pains on my “forearm” and still have some occasional pains this day.
The arm was made out of stainless steel and titanium I was even able to control it with my mind, as science had made some huge leaps with prosthetics in the years I was deployed. And I managed to become one of their test candidates for a forearm prosthetic. The prosthetic forearm was quite good looking it really looked like it was a part of my arm as it perfectly connected the upper arm.
Even the fingers were less robotic looking nowadays and were quite smooth the whole prosthetic arm had an outer core made out of a mix of stainless steel and aluminum. Making it look even more like a real forearm.
Joining the marines was a turning point in my life. I wasn’t really good with dealing with a large group of people but slowly I warmed up to the merry bunch that became my family. Finally, I had found People like Luciano, John, and Dan who accepted me as a comrade, no not as a comrade...as a friend. I got over my depression thanks to them and the many other people in my platoon.
I had finally accepted myself the way I was. To me, the Marines were my family who I had to take care of the way they took care of me, though I wasn’t able to do that in the end…
After I was done with my weekly maintenance I went back to my room to play MMORPGs with my friends online.
(10 minutes later)
" Goddammit these fking Minotaurs got aggroed to me!" Dan yelled
"On it sarg!" John responded
"John haven’t I told you that you don’t have address me as sarge in civil." Dan said while laughing.
"Stop flirting you two! I`m going to take care of these fuckers with my Meteorite so cover me!"
" Ooorah!!"
I had known John since basic training, he was one crazy motherfucker who was always ready to fight. When he came back from deployment he got his hands on an m249 saw which was the gun he so loved using while deployed. John was the type of guy you would bring with you when the odds were totally against you and no one else was crazy enough to do the job at hand, It was truly a miracle that he hadn't got wounded even once. Dan, on the other hand, was a calm guy. He had been on 3 deployments and had gotten shot in the buttocks twice.
And so after 1h, we had completed the dungeon run.
" argh, I guess I got fucked in the ass by the rng gods I didn’t get any good drops."
"Yeah me neither.."
"Ha, I just got a new epic sword for my collection!" John bragged
" Of for fuck's sake John why do you always have to get the good stuff!"
We all laughed. Then we started cracking shit jokes and talking about meaningless stuff. After a while, John left and probably went to jack off his m249.
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"Yeah, I guess I’l be hitting the bar now see ya," Dan said.
"Yeah see ya tomorrow man".
I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen Robert come in since I let him out. I sensed something was wrong so I hurried to my backyard, but I couldn’t find Robert, instead, there was a deep hole in the ground.
all grass around the hole had also disappeared.
"Fuck!" I tried to calm down.
"There’s no way Robert got taken by something unnatural yeah just a huge coincidence maybe he just dug a hole and ran somewhere." I didn’t see Robert anywhere inside the house I even called for him a few times. I saw the slightly open fence gate and thought that Robert had gone into the forest where I sometimes walked him.
Though why the hell would Robert a well-trained dog go into the forest without its owner.
That is something Leon didn’t have time to think about as he put on his coat and boots and started running to the forest hoping that by some miracle Robert had just decided to go walking on its own and that he could find him.
………..
………..
I kept running hoping I could find any traces of Robert. I don’t know for how long I had ran, all that was in my mind was the thought of not wanting to lose Robert. I just ran and ran amongst the birch trees, now having derailed from the original path in the woods following a small forest path that led to a small lake which we had visited many times with Robert.
When I finally reached the lake I sensed something was not right, In my time in Afghanistan I had felt a similar and I knew this feeling all too well. It was as if someone or something was tracking me constantly keeping its eyes on me as I ran through the forest. Now that I think about it with my mind calmer I had had this feeling as soon as I entered the forest, I had originally not noticed this feeling as I was so fixated in finding Robert.
But now I was sure I wasn’t alone here, suddenly a Dark circle with weird engravings appeared below me and it started glowing. I also noticed a hefty amount of bubbles forming in the lake in front of me.
I kept looking at the bubbles while trying to move away from the circle when suddenly the water started rising forming a vortex sucking me in the water as I helplessly tried to grab on to something to not get sucked in, but it was in vain as I had already been swallowed by the weird water vortex.
It felt like my soul was being torn apart from my body. I started losing my consciousness soon after.
I heard a voice calling to me from the dark depths of the void it was a faint voice…I could not quite make out what the voice was saying, but soon after I started feeling something warm as if something or someone was hugging me.
Not once in my life had I felt this kind of warmth. Those were my last thoughts as I finally lost consciousness.
I could see a silver coated wolf moving towards me. It had two different colored eyes one crimson red and the other blue as the sea. On its neck, the wolf had a locket of some sorts. I tried standing up to run away but I could not move even an inch of my body I couldn’t even see my body only a very blurry version of what was supposed to be my body.
The wolf that was now only meters away from me was slightly bigger than an adult grey wolf and its footsteps could not be heard, not even the leaves under its feet dared to make a sound as it walked closer to me. I closed my eyes hoping this was all a dream. Now it was only centimeters away from my face as I could feel its warm breath in my face. I could feel myself falling through a void again as I no longer couldn’t see anything around me.
I suddenly stopped falling and I found myself in a dark empty space where my body was still a blur. I could barely recognize my hands and could see a figure covered in light appear before me. While thinking if this was some sort of weird afterlife suddenly a being covered in light appeared before me and started speaking.
"Welcome to Elswynd. I am in charge of your introduction to our world in which you are going to be reincarnated in." The being said in a feminine voice.
(silence)
Leon: What the fuck?
"Hey, are you the one that took my dog! and what the hell are you talking about!" I yelled furiously.
"This may be a bit of a shock to you but you amongst several other people were “transported”. Though your case is a bit different from the others."
"Okay then, so do you have something to do with disappearing of my dog?" I asked slightly agitated while being in a weird state of mind not knowing if I was really dead or not. I had a very surreal feeling that was hard to describe.
"From what I have been told the reason your pet was summoned was due to a mistake in the summoning progress used by the demons. It is now in this world still alive except there are now some differences in this dog of yours, to put it simply it no longer is a mere dog. This dog of your has also somehow been able to avoid being corrupted by the demons and most likely has been able to escape them."
"Fucking hell what do you mean by “mistake by demons” and “no longer a mere dog”?!" I said as my anger began to overflow and my blurry body began to heat up.
The being realized this and with a wave of its hand, it made me calm without me being able to do anything about it.
"Now now let me explain as you were being summoned your soul had such deep bond with the dog's soul it was mistaken as a part of you and thus summoned.
And about it no longer being a mere dog you will understand eventually as you two are bound by fate you will meet when the time is right even though it may take some time it is certain that you two will see each other again."
"…..okay then, so what’s this whole thing about being reincarnated to this world."
"That’s quite a long story but I will give you the simplified version,"
"The demons created summoning magic to acquire good candidates from your world to corrupt them into their armies ranks, some forcibly and some were welcome to this idea of getting to kill humans and other races of people. When the gods realized the demons were summoning people it was already too late and almost all people that the demons planned on summoning were already summoned or in the progress of being summoned."
"You were one of the souls meant to be forcibly corrupted to be one of their pawns. As such at the final moment when the demons were about to summon you the Goddess of nature used her might to take your soul away from the hands of the demons and reincarnate you to this world. You were killed in the progress as the demons were summoning you and the goddess of nature was trying to stop them from acquiring you, by taking your soul away from them to save you. Because of that, your soul was separated from your body."
The being took a short pause as if it was thinking about something.
"The goddess of nature does not wish you to fight against the demons but what you do here in this world with your new life is all up to you."
"I still don’t get why would she go through the trouble to save my soul if I’m not even asked for anything in return?
And why was I out of all people being `summoned by demons`?"
"I'm sorry but both of those questions are ones that I do not have the answers for.
Also, I find it hard to think that the goddess would reincarnate you to fight against the demons as I cannot see any major potential in you."
"Well, thanks that’s very encouraging of you to say."
The angel didn't have any reaction to my sassiness and just continued on.
" All I can say is that think of this as a new life for you, an unlucky soul who deserves better than being summoned by the demons to be a pawn."
"Well if you talk to this Nature goddess please send her my thanks, as I sure as hell don’t want to become a pawn to be used by some demons with no goddamn manners.
Fking hell at least buy me dinner first." I said with slight gratitude in my voice.
"I sure will mortal.
I took a slight pause before asking. "So what are you exactly?"
"I guess you could call me a messenger of gods, an angel"
"Alright."
"You seem to be acting rather calm now."
"Well, to be honest, I guess being mad isn’t really going to help out in this situation As a god personally saved my soul and I probably am hallucinating all of this or this is just some crazy ass dream."
(Not that I could feel angry at the moments as I still feel weird from the angel forcing me to calm down, also for some reason I feel like this angel is telling me the whole truth about this.
Not that it matters as this is probably just a dream)
"Now you will be receiving a new body as soon as I have taught a bit to you about this world and how things work around here.