The last thing George remembered before he woke up was the loudest sound he ever heard. It wasn’t a totally foreign sound to him. He’d heard it plenty of times before, in one form or another, but never in person or right close to his face. He thought, with his last thought, a gunshot is so much louder than the movies made it seem.

Then there was nothing. A white flash, burning light, the expectation of pain - dying by gunshot was less awful than he thought. It must have been awful for everyone around him, of course. And especially awful because there was so little he could do about it. 

And he was dead. That had to be it. The chances of surviving such a thing were essentially zero. The statistics behind it all didn’t assuage any fears of getting hit, either. He just knew that he stared down the wrong side of a pistol wielded by an angry person - one whose face blended into the blurred scenery that surrounded the weapon - and he died. 

But he could still think. That was one thing a brain with a bullet in it shouldn’t do. It confused him. 

Am I still alive?

His thought echoed out into a great void across an unseen distance. He felt like his eyes were open in the dark, but it was a perceivable dark. Like nightfall over a cloudy ocean; something was there. 

Or is this death?

He tried to look around. He could feel his eyes moving, and even his neck. He still felt his body, no worse for wear, just like he remembered it. There was no hot sun on his neck or hard ground under his feet. No feeling of rustling, wrinkling clothing against his skin. No hard shoes keeping his feet together. 

What happened to me?

Then he heard another voice, right in the back of his head. 

Soul stripped of life;

Your yearning to be saved hath reached me.

Speak your will to live;

That I may make it so.

A woman’s voice, calm and lilting, in tones of olden English like out of a ren faire play, echoed in his mind. As she spoke, the light increased. There was no direct source and nothing around him to see at all. He was in a void, no floor beneath him or sky above. No walls, no limits, just muted space without color. 

The offering didn’t make sense. It confirmed he was dead but didn’t explain anything. He was given a command and couldn’t reply. He felt his mouth, and the will to speak forming words in his lips, but there was no sound. 

What does it want me to say? I want to live, but -.

What shall accompany you;

Into this new life I give?

What need you to find peace?

A gift, it is. Name a gift, and it shall be yours.

With the voice clearly in his head, giving him the answers, he thought about what it wanted, visually. He tried hard not to use words directly but imagined his answer in totality to know just what he wanted that would help him the most. 

If the goddess was bringing him back to life, and was doing so to help him find peace in life or in death, there was only one thing he could think of. The moment he died he went through an entire lifetime of regrets. All the things he had left to do, dying so young and in such a tragic way. If that could be reversed and he could be placed back in that situation for a last chance, only one thing could make it better. 

“If I had a gun….”

He shook his head.

No, even then I would just -.

Then, you shall be sent.

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What!?

George tried to look for the source of his new deity. He ended up spinning in place, in the void without even gravity, end over end while the growing light filled the space from a murky dark to a blinding white. 

He suddenly felt solid ground under his feet, but the whirling motions he made caused him to lose his balance. He fell forward and braced his hand against the ground. His other hand couldn’t be opened, and it hit the ground harder with something clutched hard within his grasp. 

George laid on his side for a moment and looked down at his arm. It was the same one he always had, everything normal, down to the uneven freckles and moles across his skin. And in his hand was a gun. A handgun, just like what killed him.

“Hey!” he wheezed. He turned around and looked up. With the ground manifested, his Goddess became real too. She stood over him like a holy maiden with flowing cloth around her body which billowed out in many strands and segments. Her skin was white, her lips were deep red and her hair flowed behind her like an orange twilight skyline. 

George pushed himself up. His right hand remained braced around the weapon. He’d never held a gun before in his life. Even if I had one, could I have used it? That regret was interrupted by the sudden manifestation of the greater power in charge of the void. He looked up at her in defiance while she kept her face matronly, eyes closed with a peaceful look of acceptance. 

It just made him more upset that he didn’t know what was going on.

“Who are you?” he demanded. He tried to point at her with indignance, but he pointed with his right hand. He pointed his gun at her. When he saw that, he quickly shoved the gun to his side and looked back to see if he startled her. She was just as placid as before, unshaken as she towered over him. 

He started more calmly. “Who are you? Where am I? What are you -.”

I am the warden of lost souls;

Guider of spirits intersticed in death, unwarranted;

And thou shalt be lifted past this pausing place to a new world;

Thence thou shalt live, and with thy gift, claim peace.

He looked at the handgun with fright. His hand was locked to it. He couldn’t move his fingers off of the grip or away from the trigger. All he could do was pull his finger closer to the trigger.

“I don’t want this,” he said. “This is a mistake, I -.”

Thy world beckons;

Many voices call for heroes.

Thus I answer, their calls aplenty;

Go forth and become their Hero;

And I shall meet you then.

The light grew more intense until it blinded George. A rush of sound accompanied it, a shrill whine of the light’s intensity overpowered his senses. He felt a great pushing force that propelled him forward, like the g-force of moving in a car that took a corner way too fast. 

Then he stopped. He shot forward and hit the ground. He felt and smelled soft grass underneath him as he slid to a stop. His senses returned to full power with an overload of information. From the second he opened his eyes his confusion escalated into awe-stricken wonderment. 

He was alive, but not where he used to be. There were no city streets paved with asphalt and concrete, or high rises in the distance glutting the skyline with their monochromic post-modern assembly. There were tall buildings, just not the kind he thought were real. 

Before him was a wide plain that led up a countryside criss-crossed with rivers that divided the land into many small properties, each one with a house and a fence and a mill wheel that worked the rushing currents which all joined into a number of thicker tributaries that flowed out into a great forest. 

The buildings were all rustic, but well kept. Some had thatched, grass-covered roofs, others were more traditionally tiled with ceramic slats and old, basic shingles. Beyond all of them, up the hill that led toward the mountains, was a wall that surrounded a massive castle town. It was a skyscraping structure, more mountain than castle. Like a giant pillar of granite just happened to be molded into the shape of a proper castle.

From the distance it looked like a model. Like he could reach out and inspect it. He tried, but his reaching hand only confirmed its incredible size and the distance between him and the strange, new land. His other hand reached out with the gun, aimed forward. 

When Geroge saw the gun still in his hand his heart jumped in his chest. He slouched back against the ground and looked the gun over. His inspection was pointless. His briefing of gun knowledge only informed him of two things: it was a pistol, and guns killed people. That was all he knew. Every important piece of trivia about guns and how they worked was lost on him in the panic of the moment. 

It was modern, though. Compared to the medieval architecture and unnatural landscape that was stretched out before him, the gun was the most familiar thing aside from his clothes. He still had on his shirt and pants, basic stuff he wore on his walk before everything went so very wrong. 

Minutes passed and he remained uncertain. He checked himself over for anything else, any evidence that tied him to the world he died in. His wallet was gone. Keys, gone. The contents of his pockets were all gone. Inside and out, he was empty. The only thing he had was the gun. 

Now what?

He looked up to the sky, hoping for an answer, but none came. The voice was gone. He couldn't feel the same invasive presence from before when he was lost in the void. That goddess, the warden of lost souls as she called herself, was absent. She left him there, dazed and confused and just a little irritated as well. 

There was only one direction George could take. He picked himself up, brushed off his pants and headed inland. The one saving grace of having jeans in a fantasy world was that they were rugged enough to hit the ground and stay intact. And, he had deep pockets. Barely deep enough for the gun. He shoved it down and saw it bulge out as a big squared protrusion in his pants. 

“Great,” he sighed. “No one will believe me.” 

He treaded lightly over the hilly terrain until he came up to the furthest river from the land of many streams. He got a better look at the scenery than when he first turned his head up. In just about half a mile he was close enough to see the grand mound in the middle of the castle walls better, and the villages that stretched out far and wide beneath it. 

He stopped just before the wide, stone bridge that passed over a thin portion of the riverbank and crouched down to see if he could inspect his reflection. The water was running well. He saw a few small fish flit out of sight down the stream. Once he found a flat enough portion of water he tried to shield his eyes so he could see past the glare.

George was still himself. Short brown hair, skin that could use a bit more sun, brownish eyes with a tint of hazel around the middle, clean shaved like he was that morning. The only thing that was off was the scar in his forehead. A perfect circle bordered by ragged, wounded edges like an exploding ball of fire. 

Right where he got shot. 

He re-styled his hair to cover his forehead and stood back up. He heard the gun clatter in his pocket, the simple yet powerful moving parts clashed together slightly. He did his best to extend his index finger as far from the trigger as it could go until he felt it pinch against the trigger guard under the barrel. 

He was trapped in another world with a gun. And that made him feel weak.