Authors Note: Last part of what amounts to a really long Prologue. With this, you will have seen the character's current personality, gotten some background to know why he is that way and a bit about what makes him tick, and now will get to know about the setting the rest of the story will continue in. I know it's long, but hopefully you'll stick it out, early childhood will go pretty quick in the next few chapters. Need to get to the good stuff right? Enjoy chapter 2 and 3 while you wait.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 3 : The Womb in the New World
"You mortal, are very entertaining." - Floating Ball of Light
"WHAT THE FUCK, IT TALKS!?" - Mike
Ok, I think I've officially lost it now, we are on a whole new level of deranged bipolar here.
"Hahaha, I never get tired of the reactions of the mortals, of course I talk, I am a God after all." - Nameless God
"Oh good, I thought I was loosing my mind there for a minute" - Mike
"..."
"..."
"Wait, you're a WHAT?" - Mike
"Haha, I was waiting for that, I am a God, or at least what you mortals have always referred to as one. Cernunnos to be exact." - Cernunnos
Huh, what mortals have always referred to?, so he isn't really a god then?...wait, doesn't matter right now, ask later.
"Really, you're telling me you are THE Cernunnos, as in the Horned God, The Green Man, ruler of life and death?" - Mike
"Yup" - Cernunnos
"..."
Ok mind work fast, take it in, extrapolate the data you're getting, don't shut down or geek out on me now.
"..."
Alright, information uptake completed, I'm now in the presence of an utterly awesome divine being, proceed to turn back into a D&D geek.
"HOLY SHIT, I won the religious choice lottery! Double d20 roll confirmed!" - Mike
"Ahahaha, such an odd and entertaining mortal, but we really need to move on, there is much to say and not much time." - Cernunnos
"Ah, right, right...please excuse the outburst and proceed, I am after all in quite a bit of confusion as to where I am and why." - Mike
"That was quick, well since you asked nicely..." - Cernunnos
Cernunnos proceeded to give me the gist of what was going on and why I am here.
To break it down, when I died they felt that a soul who believed in them passed on and decided to bring it/me here...wherever here is.
This was most likely due to me following Druidism for most of my life, really lucky break there.
Apparently this world is known as the Beast Lands, or Plane of Beasts, it's kind of like another dimension from where I was.
From what Cernunnos told me, human greed and lust was pushing the old races way too close to extinction and beginning to upset the balance of the world and it's dragon lines, or ley lines as they are known now.
Seriously we never learn, only gotten worse with time it seems, I knew humans were beyond redemption.
This threw magic completely out of wack and the Gods decided to lead a mass exodus of sorts.
So all the priest and priestess of nature type people the old races and the gods gathered at Stonehenge to invoke a Gate like spell.
The Gods chose the Beast Lands because it was still untouched by human hands so to speak, still being completely covered in its' natural pristine terrain.
The gathered elves, dwarves, dragons, various fey creatures and mythical beasts, along with the humans that lived alongside nature all went through the Gate with the Gods and disappeared from our world.
Matching up the time-frames from what I remember of the history, it seems this is what triggered the Dark Ages period of history.
It's my guess that without any religious guidance from the gods, humans went kind of nuts for a few hundred years until they invented new gods for themselves.
At least in what is now Europe, according to Curnunnos, other Gods exist in other parts of the world as well, but they didn't come along with them on their migration...at least at that time.
Apparently after the massive expansion of the Roman Catholic Church, some of the others followed suit with their followers and such as well, although only a couple of others chose to also come to the Beast Lands.
The reasons I hate Catholicism just keep increasing it seems, I swear they ruin everything.
Anyway, I was told that due to the nature of the Beast Lands itself, the existence of magic, as well as the head start of the nature loving folk, the technological development is far behind what it is on my old world.
The basic crafts found in the middle ages combined with the existence of fantasy like materials has gone much further than what they are on Earth though.
The civilizations of the Beast Lands lack many of the creature comforts we have on Earth, however, those they do have are mostly achieved through the use of magic and advanced material use.
For instance, instead of waterproofing through chemicals, they do it either with magic or naturally water proof materials.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
The society of the place is very much still on a pre-dark age bent though apparently.
The addition of the other Gods' people has caused the break up of land into continental sized countries, that occasionally wage war.
With the multitude of people still roughly stuck in the middle ages' mindset, the social views haven't advanced, meaning slavery, monarchies, and survival of the fittest is still pretty much the norm.
Furthermore, through the interference of the old races, mythical creatures, the added power of the Gods seeping into the environment and the natural evolutionary track of the original inhabitants...many of the more powerful native beasts quickly evolved into a sort of humanoid form.
Some of those humanoid beasts, through either naturally evolving further over the centuries, or through breeding with drunken pagans, have produced the perverted joy of every otaku's wet dream...the beastkin.
Cernunnos also told me that he and the other Gods decided to grant me an inborn gift due to being the only soul, for over a thousand years, that had strong enough bonds to nature and belief in the old ways, to get their attention.
It didn't take me too long to come up with an idea for the kind of ability I wanted to be born with.
After pretty much a lifetime of being nearly obsessed with death and the Grim Reaper, I knew I wanted some kind of control of my soul and the ability to absorb the souls of living things, just like Grim.
Of course, I was told that would be way to powerful an ability, and my soul would literally explode since human souls are inherently weak.
So we bantered back and forth for a while about potential soul devourer like abilities...well more like I came up with various completely OP soul sucking abilities and Cernunnos just shook his head no.
From the wiggling of the Cern ball, I think I even managed to surprise him with some of the ideas I came up with.
In the end, I managed to finally find something that wouldn't make my soul imitate a firework.
We decided to call it Soul Siphon, as it siphons a part of the soul and stores its information so I can access it later to alter or improve myself.
Whenever I use the ability, I gain Soul Essence and Soul Knowledge, both of which improve over time and have multiple uses.
Soul Essence collects in different amounts dependent on the power of the soul siphoned from, and is stored until I use it.
It's used for fusing Soul Knowledge with my own soul, allowing me to enhance myself with knowledge contained in the siphoned soul, though I was told I'd have to figure out what kind of things will be available through experience.
I can also use it to mark a soul, though I don't get the essence used back, this lets me know where that soul is in relation to me at all times, like 400 miles north of my current location; also, if the soul is nearby when it leaves a body I will automatically siphon from it.
That sounded quite useful for battle situations...if a little unethical, but hey, I'm no saint here.
Soul Knowledge on the other hand is kind of like a feat and skill list from D&D, I can conjure up a mental list of all the knowledge I have stored and spend Soul Essence to make it my own, with more powerful knowledge being more expensive.
That's all I know about the ability so far, I'll have to wait until I use it to figure out more.
If it's anything like what I'm thinking though, while it will be a slow start, I might just be able to turn into a true OP MC if I put in enough effort.
Potentially slow growth aside, this is almost too awesome for me to believe it's happening.
Hopefully, I don't royally screw up and die before I get a hang of my new life and ability, but that's all beside the point.
To my utter joy, I get to enter into a world with all kinds of fantasy like concepts, that doesn't have the concept of the guns that ended my life, I got to choose a god given gift to be born with, and it's populated with human looking, animal eared, tail wagging, heat having beastkin, various sexy mythical creatures, dryads, nymphs, and lusty fey critters of all kinds.
*mental heavy breathing*
Ok, gotta calm down, way too high a level of nerding out here...breath in, breath out...once again from the diaphragm, in, out...ok, calm and collected.
Now for the all important question of why I can't see shit if I'm already in this other world.
"Hey, Cernunnos, could you please tell my why I can't really see anything in here?" - Mike
"Ah, that was so you wouldn't freak out before we were done talking." - Cernunnos
"Freak out? Why would I freak out if I could see?" - Mike
*Cernunnos glows, shedding soft green light all around*
"It looks like I'm enclosed by a wall of some sort, kind of disgusting looking actually" - Mike
Then I looked down, and noticed the odd shape of what I assume is my body, before looking back to the walls, through some sort of membrane.
"I'm a FUCKING FETUS!" - Mike
*Not a pig, don't be a pig, not a pig*