2)

Still dead, at a job interview.

“I didn’t know they came in balls. Seems a bit limited. I mean if you headed off for long enough in one direction you’d just end up back where you started.”

The green skinned angel nodded. “Well, it didn’t start off as a mythical world. It wasn’t until the locals damaged it so badly that we had to add magic to keep it from dying that other options became available. But by then it was pretty much locked down as a globe. We took it slow but it was still kind of traumatic for the locals.”

A big ball. I wondered how it worked, but finding out wasn’t my priority. “So what is Alelen doing down there?”

Clemons smiled. “A very good job I’ve been told. Only a few people had enough talent at the start to gain spell casting classes. They needed guidance and advice so your wife volunteered to become a guardian angel to a girl who would get some sort of arcane class when she comes of age."

"We sent her there as soon as the background level of magic rose enough to begin granting people levels.”

“Since it’s been more then ten years, your wife has had the option to be promoted or to retire, but she has said that she intends to watch over the girl until the girl has a solid start on her class. With how difficult it is to advance classes there right now, It might be a while.”

“You can choose to wait for her in paradise, and she will be told you’re waiting for her. Or you could join the hierarchy for a while and earn some rewards of your own while you’re waiting.”

I stared at the angel for a moment, wondering if he was trying to sell me something. “What’s in this for you?”

He sighed. “We still need people down there, now more than ever. The background level of magic has reached the point that “Earth” is finally developing dungeons. Even if I can only get you to run one for a single year we’ll end up with one that has your beliefs and morality ingrained into its matrix. All on their own they just get greedy for kills and the locals have to destroy them.”

I winced or at least tried to. “Yeah, I did two of those. Good bounties, but I lost a friend.”

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Clemons perked up. “Shegon Mirkmire. He just got promoted to divine emissary from temple guardian. He has a very promising future in store for him. Lucky dog.”

Heh. Clem sounded a little jealous there. “How far up do these promotions go?”

He sighed. “Theoretically you can become a primal god and help build a new universe or at least a new world in one of the bigger planes of reality. But most people tend to take breaks in paradise between jobs until they just get tired of an ongoing existence and want to start over with a simple mortal life again.”

So my choices were to spend a few more years either having more work to do or waiting around in idle enjoyment. But since Alelen is down on this Earth, maybe I can see her there. After all, what’s paradise without her? “You know what Clem, sign me up.”

He smiled as the room began to glow brightly, so bright it became blinding.

So it is agreed, and so it is done.”

Then I was somewhere else. In the middle of an enormous blurry workroom of some sort, with metallic cabinets, as well as wooden ones sitting all around me in a huge squarish hall.

A ball of white light within an open shell made up of brightly colored sections of glass was suspended above me. While a series of various sized squares of muted brownish colors extended all around me in a repeating pattern.

More cabinets were attached up high on the walls on one side, as well as shelves. I could also see a starless night's sky past a wall sized window of clear, perfect glass.

And… I could also see cobwebs on the ceiling. Crumbs on the floor, as well as dust. There was a faint smell of rotting garbage and the floor seemed greasy in some spots, and just plain old dirty in others.

Then the gigantic old woman came shuffling in. She was somehow both flabby and scrawny at the same time in a green shapeless dress covering her aged stooped body. Her steel gray hair was chopped short and stuck up in an untidy mess. Tight white stockings going up to her knees and a worn out set of slippers on her feet that were shaped like comical looking lizards.

Oh, this room isn't that big. It's me that's small. For a moment I was able to pull myself back to see out through the transparent orange gem like body of a core. With me in a vast empty room somewhere in the middle.

I also realized I was seeing in all directions at once, and somehow not getting dizzy while doing so.

“What was that light? I thought for sure a bulb has gone out, but I don’t even know if these new fangeled Eleydees go all bright just before they pop.”

As the old woman came into the room with her eyes looking up at the light above, her comical lizard shaped slipper clad foot came forward to send me flying along the floor and under an aged looking tall cabinet of grimy white.

It was horribly filthy underneath. Dust, bits of dried up food, and hair. As well as what I could only call a sort of collective scum.

It was very gross, but thick enough to bring me to a slow stop well before I hit the wall behind the metal cabinet. A not quite clean line marked my path, and a small pile of fuzzy sludge had ended up bunched up on one side of me.

Even without a mouth, I could still taste the memory of a bit of something coming up my nonexistent throat.

“What did I just kick? Oh well, I’ll figure it out when the next time I clean under the fridge.”

Next time?

I looked all around. From the looks of things under the fridge, the next time would also be the first time.