Having life stripped from you in your sleep was... kind of a letdown. I always expected to go out doing something noteworthy. While very possibly dumb and self-inflicted, noteworthy none the less. Maybe snorkeling the great barrier reef with a shark taking shelter in an underwater cave I simply must lead a one-man expedition into? Trying to trapeze between high rises while being unable to withhold a sneeze? Or perhaps even a high speed shootout with police hot on my tail on live television. No such luck for a guy like me. Rather than any of those ludicrous but memorable options. A simple unfortunate roll of the dice from powers beyond my comprehension landed me with a heart defect that was only noticed after it had run its course and ended me. Now after seeing the instant replay of my life's events, I'm left wondering. Why? Knowing the joy of life leading to the completeness of death are not steps along the same path. If this all ends with a fade to black and a rest like no other, could this be acceptable to me?
Fuck no.
As the highlight reel that was a life... My life half lived continued I found myself ethereally hovering over my limp thirty-four-year-old body. A sigh escapes my none existent lips with each detail of my untimely demise that gets devoured by my ghoulish flickering figure. Lifting my hands up to observe this new existence death has condemned me to, my vison informs me that the concept of a body is truly lost to me. There is no pull towards a celestial clearing with winged figures having brunch near a pond reflecting natures indescribable beauty. Yet neither is there chains leaping towards me to bring to a void of all consuming darkness. Unsure if that's a good or a bad thing I experienced something. Something that I hadn't noticed was missing until it ambushed me. Feeling, since being awakened to whatever this state of being is. Feeling anything had been absent, until the impression of being watched cascaded over me. While grappling with the oddity. A spark was lit in the depth of shadows in my studio apartment, a pair of flaming flickering purple irises seemed to be following me. Not dead me but the version I am currently existing as. With what seemed like velvet toned whispers shared between trusted conspirators,
"This one seeks something new?"
Immediately upon finishing the statement the shadows of its darkened corner themselves began expanding in an uneven pattern around the moonlit 10 foot by 10 foot room. Creeping around the walls gorging themselves on any sliver of light they could find. Until the entire room was engulfed in black, with only the window providing moon light making sight possible. Looking back towards the corner the eyes moved impossibly far away given the confines of the room. Trying to get sloser o the window I noticed the window along with any light other then the eyes had disappeared consumed by the voracious hunger of shadows. cut off from the light and nullifying whatever sense ghosts use to see, the dark encased me. For a moment the burning eyes were blown out in the same way one would blow out a candle with a gust of pressured breath. true blindness became my new reality. Without warning a purple light matching in color of the eyes grew from a horizon in the distance. Revealing a vast blankness that wasn't there less than a minute ago. In its advance the light revealed a silhouette of a woman obscured by being in front of the encroaching light.
"Uhh… This one seeks something new?"
The woman? Entity? repeated itself, as the source of the light revealed itself. Coming into view, like the sunrise cresting the morning horizon brightness began lifting from the shadowed plane that served as the floor in this place, a inferno of purple flames began to whip around in a frenzy behind the figure.
Using only my thoughts to portray my intentions was a new feeling, hesitantly I answered.
are you death? Can I play a game to get another chance? How does this work?
The flames that were coming towards us at a snail's pace began to move faster and continued to gain momentum.
"to whom or what do you bestow your belief?"
Clearly not in the mood to put up with any kind of bullshit then.
Having never been religious and under threat of whatever the flames were closing in faster and faster, I gave the simplest answer given the circumstance.
no one and nothing.
The light from the flames began to overcome the shadow scape and somehow I knew, if they reached me. It would be the end of me, and of whatever chance I had left to bargin.
"Then I offer a simple deal, I will escort you to a new reality with powers to ensure you begin your own path, your life and choices leading to a notable end in excha-"
deal.
"And to think they thought this would prove to be a difficult task, mortals continue to surprise in the most... perplexing of ways"
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a red flag would be going off in my mind were it not for the cascading tsunami of infernal flames being less than twenty meters away. With impact eminent I prepared to fight back with every ounce of whatever was left in this corporeal prison. The lights illuminated the female figure enough for me to see raven black hair.
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without warning I was opening my eyes to see a beautiful face I didn't recognize. Staring down at me I tried to ask where I was only to find myself unable to form words, reaching out to them with my hand the reason became painfully clear. I was an infant. One of the only other thing I remember from this time was the emblem on her blood red leather armor. A black mako shark adorned with a dark purple spiked crown with one flaming purple jewel in the center of it.
Looking around this new environment with my literally fresh set of eyes some things that stuck out as different was the place we were located was an igloo of immense proportions. Like a combination of a cabin and a room in a cobblestone castle. Ice blocks stacked on top of one another like bricks forming a barrier from whatever resides outside. On the opposite side of where I stood was a leather canvas that kept the outside world at bay. The leather would sway to the wind being stirred by the elements just outside this "door" but the wind would never cross the threshold to enter the igloo. Inside this room was a wooden bedframe stacked with numerous furs of multiple animals. Most furs were white with some being more exotic colors of purple and dark blue. The language was foreign to me but what was assumed to be my parents were clearly in the middle of some form of argument with the beautiful woman's face turning red while she was flailing her arms at a man in a full suit of plated armor. Eventually she pushed him aside grabbed a bow that was hung next to the entrance of the room. Dramatically throwing the tanned leather that hung in the opening to the room as a make shift door she left the room to the howling gales of a blizzard which seemed to magically remain separate from the room I was left alone with this strange man in.
This point of time consciousness would come and go with the years until around eleven years old. When I began to notice the place where I lived had changed dramatically instead of the ice bricked igloo I now resided at a work camp to mine precious gems minerals or items within the great glaciers of the Arctic Desert or hunting magical animals for the commodities these beasts bodies would naturally produce. If a war or conflict were to break out the classed workers would be used as frontline soldiers, the classless slaves would be suicide bombers or spies. Luckily, this far north the benefits of war reinforcements for the dark elves geographically would take too long and the closer to civilization one got the more difficult it would be to find truly powerful beasts or unexplored dungeons or tombs. We would never be close enough to outweigh the value of the workcamp itself. Once sentience was more firmly cemented, around sixteen, my life became that as a useless warrior scholar. Due to a friend I made when concrete memories were not yet cemented into my mind, not able to remember how or why but she was always around. While she was teaching me about this world's philosophies, fighting styles and stances, magic, or just life's complications, she would also protect me from the slavers or other hungry indentured servants of more carnivorous races who were forced to be here with us. I was short compared to the other workers who were in the same circumstances around six foot or 182 cm. Dark brown hair, piercing light blue outer iris, and a subtlety golden bronze ring around the pupils of my eyes. As with all the other sun starved people of my new home I was fair skinned with a "classically handsome roguish face" at least that's what the slavers around the work camp used to describe me as when trying to sell me off. But no one wanted to buy a classless, especially one who is defended by a bloody fucking Valkyrie.
This woman I'd come to know as Agatha. She would be more of a teacher and nanny to me. She was around five foot seven or 173 cm with almost white blonde hair. A Nordic braid falling down half of her hair with the other half being beautifully interwoven with a silver silk sash connecting to the braids into a pony tail behind her head. Somehow maintaining tanned skin while living in what could only be comparable to the artic circle back on earth. Athletically built with multiple scars of varying sizes, none bigger than an index finger covering her body. Her face left miraculously untouched. Piercing deep dark brown eyes that could easily be confused for pitch black which when used with intention would disembowel any semblance of defiance in a moment.
She was known around our work camp as a hardened veteran who could single handedly fell legends of old with a ease that could make the gods of war envious. However she was captured she didn't seem to mind the indignities or the lashings so long as she was able to stay by my side. Eventually the dark elf slavers gave up on trying to punish her and just let her stay by my side so long as she produced three times the amount of work that an average slave could to make up for the expense of keeping a classless like me alive and fed. Because of this we were the only workers allowed more freedoms to be out of camp and without chains, knowing that if they decided to I would have no hope to stop them before they would be able to kill me. Agatha would never leave my side or leave me behind and the Drukon as the Dark Elves were offically known were aware of that too. To me she was known as a goofball meat head who couldn't cook a proper meal to save her or my own life who was my verbal arch nemesis when we would argue to pass the time. Today, a day like most others since coming of the working age of 18 in this strange ruthless land. Agatha would take me into the bitter cold of the "white desert" which was where the glaciers met the land to create a frozen snow-covered wasteland connecting us to the sea. In order for her to hunt for the entire work camp, sometimes she would catch just enough to prevent starvation. Other times we would come back with creatures the size of a two story home. But first we would always have to cross the challenge of the "artic desert".