Rowan’s ex-girlfriend, also known as the goddess of justice and order, stormed out of the courtroom, leaving Rowan and a pair of glowing constructs behind. She didn’t even look back. Rowan had hoped to argue his case, to appeal to her humanity—but maybe she didn’t have any left. And maybe he wasn’t so different.
Maybe I’m the one who is lost. I’m the god of mischief and an agent of chaos, but did keeping things lively make me a bad person? Haven’t I always used my powers for—well, not necessarily good, but for fun? I wasn’t evil, was I?
A sentry opened a sealed metal door with a touch of its hand. “Follow.”
The other sentry stood behind Rowan, waiting. Both sentries were armed with rods that could easily paralyze him with pain. He quickly looked around for an escape. The door Ellie had left through was closed. The door to the cell he had awoken in was open, but he knew that was a dead end. The courtroom had only three doors, and he didn’t see another option except the one leading to the hall of mirrors.
His mind spun wildly as he started weighing his eternity as a prisoner. On Earth, Rowan had to eat. He didn’t know if he could starve to death as an immortal, but eating had felt imperative. Given that a truck had killed him and sent him to this hellish afterlife, he assumed that eating was likely necessary.
Had Ellie considered that I might starve to death while trapped in her hall of mirrors? What if that is part of the punishment? Maybe she means for me to die over and over.
Rowan saw the sentry behind him move as if it were readying to strike. He couldn’t escape if he were blinded by pain, so he slowly stepped forward to follow the lead sentry down the hall.
He was in another immortal’s domain, and he wasn’t even sure if it was possible to escape it—not even to get to Earth, but simply to flee to some place where Ellie couldn’t torture him. He decided he needed to play to his outs, much like being dealt a lousy poker hand. That meant looking for any opportunity to delay being put in the place Ellie felt could hold him.
He moved at the most leisurely pace he could muster while not incurring the wrath of the sentries. He figured this would give him time to think, study his surroundings, and spot a way out.
The floors and walls were smooth, polished stone that reflected the light cast by stained glass windows above. The corridor was wide enough for three people to walk side by side, but his guards chose to walk with one in front of him and one behind him.
He wasn’t bound, which was handy, but he didn’t think he could overpower the constructs. They looked like women designed for war: efficient, lithe, and capable of punching his nose to the other side of his head. He was not going to fight them and win.
A soft tug in his gut, followed by the sensation of being dragged forward and upward, caught him off guard. He momentarily closed his eyes and was overcome by sights, smells, and sounds.
A man and a small girl were facing down two thugs. The night air was cool, and the scent of Palo Verde blooms and dust hung heavily. Rowan recognized the thugs from the Mercedes SUV and realized he recognized the girl. His vantage point was from behind a giant saguaro cactus. A magic user was drawing on chaos magic, sending Rowan’s consciousness toward the first thug’s gun. As the thug was about to squeeze the trigger, the magic that Rowan was riding reached the gun, and Rowan added his own will to the magic. The gun jammed.
Rowan was jerked from the vision.
“Follow.” The sentry ahead of him had turned and was looking at him.
Rowan’s eyes spotted a thread of magic that stretched out from his chest and went high up to the stained glass windows and out—pulling him forward like a kite caught in a gale wind. He let himself stumble forward as if he was about to fall, and when the guards reacted to reach for him, he shifted from human to crow in the blink of an eye. With a beat of his wings, he passed the lead sentry and gained altitude. He swerved and glided toward the fading line of chaos magic.
When he reached the ledge, right before he hit the glass, he shifted back to human and crashed into the glass. The impact hurt, but he kept his wits. He expected a blue sky and bright lights, but there was nothing outside the cathedral of justice. There were a few moments when he heard the tinkle of broken glass behind him, and then he had the sensation of falling. Looking back at where he had come from, he couldn’t see the cathedral. He was in the void between domains, with only cold darkness in every direction.
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Time and direction lost meaning, and he wondered how he was still breathing. He tried to scream, but there was no sound. He might have tumbled or drifted for hours, but there was nothing to mark the time. Then he spotted a pinprick of light in the void. He moved toward it like he was falling into it.
The light grew from that pinprick to the size of a quarter to the size of a car, and it still grew.
I’m falling into the sun after all of that. Ellie always said I’d go out in a blaze of glory, and it looks like I’ve done it this time.
The white glow grew until it was all he could see, and the pressure started to build. He was being crushed from all directions. The throbbing pain began to intensify, and he wondered if this was what it felt like at the bottom of the ocean. Each beat of his heart was a pulse of agony. Unlike the searing pain of the sentry’s rod, this pain was the slow death of being stuffed into a trash compactor.
Mercifully, he passed out from the pain.
When Rowan woke, he was lying on his back, staring at the night sky. He knew it was the night sky, not the void because he could see the stars. He could hear traffic rumbling on a nearby road and the buzz of a fluorescent sign not far away. A light breeze blew over him, and it might have been refreshing if it hadn’t brought the smell of gasoline, coffee, trash, and vomit.
Coffee. That’s what I need after a day like yesterday.
He breathed in and out, still staring at the stars, reveling in the fact that he was alive again. Ellie was going to be pissed. The smell of coffee might have eventually moved him, but in the end, the sound of tires on the gravel made him jump to his feet first. He had just returned to life, and being run over by a car while lying on the road was not on his immediate to-do list.
He dusted himself off and took stock. He was wearing an old hoodie and jeans. When he unzipped the hoodie, he realized he wore a Nirvana t-shirt. He hadn’t seen this shirt in twenty-five years. It was the shirt he wore when he ascended. He felt his face and realized that he didn’t have a beard.
He looked around and realized he had been lying in the dark parking lot behind a gas station. He stumbled forward until he was under the fluorescent lighting and approached a parked Maserati. He looked at his face in the side mirror and realized he was twenty-five again. He had come back to life looking the way he had when he had ascended. This was the first time he had felt grateful for ascending. He was young again and had a chance to do better.
He checked his pockets and found no money or ID. He wished his younger self had brought $20 to the ascension ritual. Then, the backpack sitting on the passenger seat of the Maserati caught his eye. The backpack wasn’t fully zipped, and Rowan could see two twenties paperclipped to a folder.
He looked around to see if anybody was approaching or if cameras were pointing toward him. When he confirmed there were no witnesses, he tried the door handle and found it was locked. Then he realized that the sunroof was open wide enough to reach in.
He had to lean a little but grabbed the folder from the backpack. He stuffed the cash into his pocket, and as he stepped away from the car, he let the folder drop. A gust of wind caught the folder and the handful of papers within, blowing them off toward the pumps.
Rowan kept his head down and walked toward the gas station’s entrance. He glanced back at the Maserati and spotted the license plate, which read, “BIGWNR.”
As Rowan entered the station, he heard a man near the gas pumps ask, “What’s this?”
He spared a glance and spotted the blue and gold of an FBI jacket. The agent was holding the papers from the Maserati and seemed engrossed in what he was reading. Rowan froze. What were the chances of the FBI showing up at the same gas station as he had moments after escaping the goddess of justice? If Ellie had disciples, where else would they work? He shook his head, dismissing the coincidence.
Five minutes and two dollars later, Rowan left the gas station with a warm cup of coffee and a donut. The handcuffed Maserati owner leaned against his vehicle, and two FBI agents were in the process of reading him his rights.
Rowan felt pretty smug as he stepped off the curb to cross the parking lot when the agent behind him spoke in a clear, commanding voice. “Halt. Sir, I’m going to need you to answer a few questions.”
Rowan let out a sigh. Of course, the FBI wanted to talk to him. They probably had Ellie on prayer speed dial, and he had missed his chance to slip away. At that moment, he spotted the folder in the agent’s hand. He saw a picture of a 50-year-old man with a beard: the man he had been before meeting a semi-truck. So much for coincidence.
As he stood, frozen in the parking lot lights with yards between him and any hiding spot, a pickup came to a screeching halt right next to him.
Seizing the distraction, he dropped his coffee and ducked behind the truck. One moment, he was human; the next, he was a raven, beating his wings to fly up into the night sky.
He let out a gurgling croak of delight and glided deeper into the desert. As he banked around and gained altitude, he felt his heart sink. Had any cameras caught him shifting into a bird? He had fled the FBI, and he was definitely on camera while in the store. They would update his file with a new picture.
I ran through the encounter in my head again. What else could I have done? I couldn’t risk being imprisoned by them, and I couldn’t fight them.
They might have been humans, but he had no defense against bullets. That folder reinforced his suspicion that they had ties to Ellie, which meant they also had access to magic.
The FBI's full force would be searching for him now, and they’d have a video showing his new face and ability to shift into a raven. They’d be more prepared next time.