Frank was on his way home from school when he thought he heard someone call him from behind, so he stopped, barely saving his life from the arrow that just flew straight past his face and off into the distance. A loud “SORRYY!!!” could be heard from the archery range he had just walked past from where a teen ran out. With a terrified expression, the guy almost bowed to a straight 90° and began talking. “I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean to aim outside the range; I just got a heavy cramp just as I was about to shoot, so I ended up aiming an entirely different direction.”
Sensing how uprightly sorry the guy was, still feeling half in shock at what just happened, and remembering the past couple weeks, Frank simply placed his hand on the guy’s shoulder. “No one ended up hurt, so you can just apologize by having your club raise a fence or something to stop it from happening again. Sounds good?” He could clearly see relief wash over the guy’s face, who immediately nodded. “Yeah. Again, really sorry about it.” And with that, the guy was gone, and Frank was on his way back home.
“Hah… This really has been some crazy couple weeks lately. Five pots from multiple story buildings, three almost truck crashes, six barely escaped car crashes, two kitchen flying knives at cooking class, and now an arrow past the face. Is the whole world out to get me?” The first couple times he had been absolutely terrified by the experiences, but at this point he honestly found it hard to care, especially since not a single encounter has managed to even hurt him yet.
By the time he was a couple buildings from his house, a ‘ping!’ came from his phone and he stopped to check it, an action that saved him from the next accident. After looking at the phone for a couple minutes, he put it away and just as he was about to resume his walk a loud screech could be heard, followed shortly by the sound of an oversized cannonball smashing a brick wall. That was when he saw what was going on. Two houses in front of him, a train smashed its way through the entire building from the back and straight out the front side, barely slowing down before crashing into the building on the opposite side of the road. The screams of terror from the people in the train could barely be heard below the deafening crashes from the train itself.
Just like all the other times where a crash had happened close to him, his body screamed for him to get out of there, now. So that’s exactly what he did, this time just with the same expression as when he witnessed the first crash, terror far worse than that archer guy from early.
Only stopping well over 20 minutes later after putting multiple kilometers between himself and that nightmare, he pulled out his phone in the hopes of discovering that most if not all had survived, but of course that’s not what he found. Instead, multiple media sites had already posted about an absolutely insane train accident where everyone involved ended up dead. A feeling of needing to puke welled up inside him, but he managed to keep it in. At least until he continued reading the article.
“This train crash is just another (although larger) case of mass deaths recently. 16 people have perished in car crashes, three small kids have been run over big trucks, five people have fallen and hit potsherds lying on the street, two students have had fatal accidents with kitchen knives today, and shortly before this crash, a man was found with an arrow straight through the airpipe.” It didn’t take long for Frank to connect those instances with each of his own barely escaped accidents, which was more than enough to make him puke right on the spot.
As he tremblingly finished puking, he looked around and saw that he now stood in an indent in the pavement and that cracks had spread for multiple tens of meters, with him as the epicenter. While his terrified mind was trying to comprehend what had just happened, part of him noticed the distinct lack of puke smell. When he looked back down, what he saw just confused him even more. His lunch was disappearing, but it wasn’t seeping down the cracks, it was instead turning into a mist that dispersed itself in the air.
Once all the puke had disappeared, an old, almost ancient, voice could be heard all around Frank. “Frank Carter, you can’t be allowed to live anymore.” Before he could even really comprehend what had been said, Frank saw the pavement begin to move around as if it was liquid, but it still kept its general shape. That was at least until a spike of pavement suddenly shot out and pierced straight through his heart. “Gah!” was all that came from Frank, as he felt his eyes grow heavy and mind weak, and with that, Frank was no longer part of this world.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
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“Bwah!” Frank sat up with a sound not too far from what you’d hear if you punch the air out of another person. He blinked a couple times, hoping to get rid of the shivers from that nightmare. That was when he looked around himself and saw that he was anywhere but in his bed. “Shit. This place means that other stuff had to be real as well.” A nervous laughter escaped him, and he pinched his arm. “Nope, nope, nope. This can’t be real. I can’t randomly have been there at every accident, so maybe if I had just died at the first falling pot, no one else would’ve died from those accidents.”
“That is indeed correct, young mortal.” The ancient voice from earlier spoke once more. “But almost as if by pure instinct, you managed to avoid everything but my one direct interference.” A chocolate skinned man appeared before Frank, his black hair went down on both the back and the chest, though it didn’t reach far down. At his chin a fairly long and straight beard had been grown out and neatly kept. Based on his physical appearance, particularly his face, Frank guessed he was around the end forties. He was dressed in a suit, which made him remind Frank of the big end businessmen who where always investing in something.
Just as Frank was about to scream from being confirmed to be the reason so many people died, the man began to talk again. “Though it would be incorrect to give you the responsibility of their deaths, you were after all not aware of what was going on. And just know, if I hadn’t killed you, you might’ve ended up accidentally destroying the Earth.” As the man spoke, Frank slowly got his thoughts together, that is until he heard the last part. At that point, his jaw dropped, and eyes became wide a saucers. “Wha… What? You don’t mean that, do you?”
With a slow nod, as if he had all the time in the world, the man continued. “You have one way or another managed to awaken mana in a place that has been devoid of it for millennia upon millennia. So just the tiny amount you released when you read that article was enough to rip into the Earth many meters around you. The Earth was able to sense that you had awakened it, so it tried repeatedly to kill you to save itself and the people on it, but you managed to avoid it each time. And as for how I killed you, I used all the mana your puke had released into the atmosphere to form the spike and impale you.”
“Was there no way besides killing me? I was kinda looking forward to living a full and good life.” The man looked straight into Frank’s own, and he felt like the who room was rumbling as the man spoke. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING? IF YOUR MANA HAD CONTINUED TO GROW, YOU WOULD’VE KILLED THE ENTIRE PLANET.” One of the blank walls disappeared and gave way from an outer space view of planet Earth. “It’s your life against all seven billion there” -the man pointed to the planet- “just be happy that they sent me and not someone like Zeus or Ammit, then you’d just be dead without being given the option to be sent to another world.”
In accordance with the man calming down halfway through, the absolute terror in Frank’s eyes turned into fear, then confusion, and finally curiosity. “Wait, send Zeus? Does that mean you’re a god as well? And did you say send to another world? Why didn’t you lead with that?”
At the second question the man mumbled something to himself, before coughing twice as the gesture of clearing the throat. “You’re right, I am a god. I am Geb, and in your world I’m considered the god of the Earth. And yes, I did indeed say that you will have the option of going to another world. As to why I didn’t start with that, I considered it more important to give a base rundown on your situation.”
Before Frank could say anything about how cool that was, or something else for that matter, Geb continued. “I’ll send you to a world that has mana in a bit, you’ll probably have some special ability as you were able to awaken mana on Earth. As a small extra, you’ll be allowed to customize your appearance, and even make a whole new separate appearance that you can swap to. Though, do note that while things like the name, race, and gender change between forms, most other stuff stays the same, so do take care. With that said, off you go; I have stuff I need to get back to.” With a quick clap, Frank’s world went dark.