PROLOGUE - THE VOID

Moments after he died, Jiru woke up in the Void.

The excruciating pain he had been in suddenly vanished, and that disoriented him, to such an extent that it took him a while to even notice his surroundings. Or lack thereof. The Void wasn't exactly something you could comprehend quickly, since it pretty much amounted to nothingness.

What clued him in fast was the fact that he was not breathing.

And that, for some reason, being unable to breathe was not bothering him in the slightest.

It felt as though he were suspended in outer space - there was no gravity, no wind, and no light. He thought he could feel his body, but he was not exactly sure. That did not seem like something a person should be unsure about. His thoughts were clear enough that he could not think he was unconscious.

I'm dead, he realized.

"Fascinating," A booming voice said. Jiru did not hear it in the conventional sense; it was more like he understood the thought in his head. Even though he was aware that the thought came from and belonged to someone else. Almost like telepathy.

"Hello?" he responded. Once again, he was not speaking in the conventional sense. His lips - did he even have lips? - may or may not have been moving.

"Yes, little mortal. Greetings to you, as well."

The speaker was not a person, being more akin to… a presence. And there were two of them, though he did not know how he knew that.

"Hello?" Jiru repeated stupidly.

"Yes, you said that already." That was the second presence. It seemed female. "You have questions, I assume. Go ahead, ask them."

A ton of queries ran through his mind. Where am I? What is this place? Who are you? Am I hearing you in my head? What the hell is going on? But he settled on the one that was his most immediate concern.

"Am I dead?"

"Yes." The first one replied.

"However," added the second, "depending on how this conversation goes, it may not be your final death."

What the hell does that mean?

Several moments passed before Jiru realized that A) the silence was getting awkward, and B) they were waiting for him to speak again. So he went for his second question.

"Is this the afterlife?"

Chuckles from both of the entities.

"No." Even voiceless, the female presence managed to project her amusement. "Even we do not have that power."

"Am I dreaming?"

"No." More amusement.

"Who are you?"

"That explanation is beyond this conversation, at least for the moment. Ask another."

"Can I go back?"

This time there was a pause.

"I am sorry," And she truly seemed to mean it. "You cannot. We have closed the threshold."

"What?"

A sigh. Even though there was no air and no breathing.

"What is the last thing you remember?" The first - the male - entity asked.

"I - I - was - "

He had been bleeding through a huge gash on the left side of his neck.

"Yes?"

"Dying. I was dying."

"And now you are dead. Seems logical, no?"

With or without a body (or a face) his anger must have projected somehow, because the female entity said, "See, now you've upset him. I have asked you repeatedly not to make light of death."

"My apologies."

"At least in front of mortals. Ideally altogether, but at least in front of mortals."

"Yes yes, understood. Let me approach this a different way: Can you confirm what happened to the other one? What was his name - "

"Irfan." The lady offered.

Hearing his murderer's name made Jiru seethe, and he felt anger rising up in him. "Irfan's dead," He growled. "I killed him."

"Ah, good, good. This endears you to us. Well done."

"Seems like he took me with him though, from what you are saying."

"This is correct," the female entity corroborated his suspicion. "We would like to know - why did you stop this Irfan?"

"It was my job."

"Which was?"

"NSG."

"What?" both his hosts inquired in chorus.

"What do you mean, what?"

"Pretend that we do not know and explain. Actually, start by introducing yourself to us."

What the hell, why not? This can't possibly get any weirder.

"Assistant Commander Jiru Vanchi Rama, NSG."

"What is - "

"National Security Guard. Black Cat Commandos."

There was another pause in which he felt sure the two were communicating with each other somehow.

"A Guardsman," The male said. "That explains it. You were sent to stop him - and you killed him?"

"We got all of his buddies too. Took out the whole cell. Irfan tried to improvise a suicide bomb with a claymore."

"A what?"

"A claymore. It's a mine." Saying it (projecting it?) left a bad taste in him; had he been in a physical body he could feel, Jiru would have spat out his disgust. Ever since the fiasco of the Americans' defeat in Afghanistan, US-made weapons had been flowing into the hands of insurgent groups in the region. A cell made up of Irfan and four others had been using a semi-abandoned warehouse as HQ to plan an attack when, following a lead from the intelligence community, Jiru and his team had come knocking on the door.

The terrorists had greeted them with assault rifles, forcing the Black Cats to respond in kind and drop all four while Irfan himself made a run for it through the maze of shelves and boxes filling the massive warehouse. Jiru gave chase trying to take the cell leader alive until he rounded a corner to see weird symbols drawn on the ground, like some arcane Necronomicon-style ritual. The distraction caused a fraction of a second's delay in his reactions; by the time his eyes had found and locked on to Irfan it was just in time to read FRONT TOWARD ENEMY in big bold letters. Forced to make a split-second decision between taking cover and taking action, Jiru had shot the man three times in the chest, only for the world to explode around his ears. Even as the metal shelves absorbed most of the steel ball bearings the mine was loaded with, some of the shrapnel had ripped through his neck and torn him up good.

The rest of it was a haze. He remembered the silence right after, the low hum in his ears indicating hearing loss from the detonation. He remembered trying to put pressure on the wound, but neck wounds were difficult to self-administer first-aid on. Finally, he remembered his vision blurring.

And then he had woken up in the Void.

A third and longest pause lingered as he finished recounting what had happened. The entities seemed to be considering something.

"I detect no falsehood in what you have said," The feminine entity spoke. "And I would have known, had you spoken a lie."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Uh, o-kay…"

"You have rendered a great service to us." The male. "You may ask for a boon in return."

Jiru's first instinct was to ask for answers to all the questions buzzing in his head, but that was immediately replaced by the most obvious thing that he wanted.

"You cannot go back," The female repeated as if reading his mind. "I have already told you this."

"I - " Jiru started and then stopped. What the hell do you ask for after you die?

"You've confused him," She admonished the male voice, "He doesn't even know what happened or where he is, how is he supposed to ask for a boon?"

"True enough. Ask your questions, mortal. We will answer any we can."

He hesitated for a second before once again settling on what the hell, why not?

"Is there a heaven?"

"Yes. There is more than one, in fact."

"Can you send me there?"

"No."

"No?"

"I told you, even we do not have power over the afterlife. However, we can let you move on, if that is what you wish."

"Move on?"

"True death," The male entity said. "You will die as normal, and whatever happens, happens."

"What does happen after death?"

More amusement was projected at him. "That we cannot answer. Knowledge of death is only for the dead, and you are not dead, not truly - not yet."

"Okay… wait, does that mean there is a hell, too?"

"Yes," they both responded in unison.

"Damn."

"Precisely. Are you concerned about which way you will be going?"

"Not really, no."

"Oh? A man of faith?"

"First time I've been accused of that, and no. My people did not believe in faith. We followed karma."

"And that is?"

"Action. Duty. Responsibility. Judgement based on our accomplishments, not our prayers. And I've led… I won't say a great life, but a decent one. Been a part of some missions that I am proud of. Took out some really bad people, too."

"Interesting, and I am happy for you. So many people get that wrong."

"Oh?"

"Indeed. But back to the subject."

"Right. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, what exactly was Irfan up to?"

"He was opening a portal to transport himself to this world."

"This world?"

"Yes."

"What is this world?"

"Shall we show him?"

"Oh, why not."

The Void around him seemed to light up with stars, exacerbating the impression that he was suspended in outer space. A tiny golfball-sized planet appeared in the distance and zoomed towards him as though he were falling on to it. It got close enough that he was in the upper atmosphere, looking down on it.

It looked like Earth except… off. Different continents, different oceans and water bodies. It was bigger, as well. There were two moons, only one of which was tidally locked with the world, which was part of a solar system of six planets.

"Shit," he said softly.

The view zoomed in further, and he saw a lush green countryside filled with farms and people going about their day.

People who were not human. Most of the beings had reddish-orange skin, with black tattoo-like markings all over their bodies. They wore some kind of flowing garments tucked in around them to move freely.

There were also creatures that looked like goblins, as well as some kind of short reptilian folk.

"Those are firasi," the female voice said, and he somehow knew she was referring the Orange-Red guys. "The small ones are goblins, and the reptiles are kobolds."

"Shit," he repeated.

He seemed to fly away from there at astounding speed, and the landscape changed to a busy city. This time there were a lot of humans. He spotted a couple of minotaur, a group of ninja-turtle-looking things with crocodilian heads and small spikes on their shells, and… wait, were those centaurs?

"Shit," He repeated again.

The view lifted up and zoomed off, and the land became far enough away to be seen as a planet again. And then the whole thing disappeared once more. No more stars, no more light.

"Huh." Jiru summed up his confusion.

"In recent years there has been a series of portals opened into the multiverse," The male voice said. "Weapons, magics and artifacts have been brought forth, sent out, exchanged, and have wreaked havoc. It seems that this Irfan was planning the same thing - to cross over into this dimension. He made an accord with someone here, the details of which are unknown to us. However, on this particular instance we had foreknowledge of the incursion, and we amassed our power to put a stop to it. It turned out not to be necessary though, because you killed him and took his place in the portal."

Jiru listened to the entire thing and latched on to the one piece of trivia that concerned him the most.

"The multiverse is real?"

"Yes."

He moved on to the second most important bit of info.

"Magic is real?"

"Yes."

"So… what exactly are you?"

"You have asked that already. And we told you - "

"Short version?"

She somehow sighed once again without air.

"We are Guardians of the In-between. It is our job to protect the magics of several dimensions, make sure they do not collide, and others do not breach into this one, as well as protect our universes from outside threats."

"And that no portals happen?"

"Yes."

"Seems like you messed up a bit."

More amusement. "Yes, indeed we did."

"How did I end up here instead of Irfan?"

"The ritual powering the portal - "

"I think I saw that."

"Do not interrupt. The ritual powering such a portal requires life force - usually from a living sacrifice - and from what you have told us it seems that when you slew him, you activated it."

"This portal thought Irfan was the sacrifice since he died, so it used his escaping life force as fuel, latched on to whoever was nearby, namely me, and flung me across the multiverse to where he was supposed to go?"

"Succinctly put, and accurate."

"Shit."

"Yes."

"How do I go back?"

"You cannot. I have told you this. You have already crossed over the threshold; to send you back we would need to open another gateway, which cannot happen. We took an oath against this, and are forbidden from helping anyone traverse the multiverse. You are here, and for better or worse here you must remain."

"Okay, so what are my options?"

"Say again?"

"You offered me a boon, right? But you can't send me back and you can't send me to heaven. So what can you give me?"

"Finally," The male voice jumped in, "Someone who knows how to bargain."

"Uh, thanks?"

"We can grow a healthy body to put your spirit into, and place you in the world you just saw. Maybe a royal or a noble? Or a rich merchant perhaps? You can live a hedonistic life if you want, and choose to move on after you die again."

"Right. Restart in Magic Land."

"Something like that."

"Before you decide," The female voice said, "I would like to make another offer."

"Wait," the male said, "What?"

This time he could definitely sense the two of them communicating, and they were a lot more riled up. Eventually though, the lady spoke again.

"Yes, so would you like to hear my offer?"

"Yyyyes?"

"We have stopped incursions before," She said, "But we have never intercepted a multiversal traveler. This unique situation presents us with an opportunity. We have no idea who is behind these recent incursions, and we would very much like to find out, so - "

"Why do I get the feeling you're about to ask me to act as bait?"

There was a pause in which he got the impression of someone opening their mouth to speak and then stopping.

"I'll take that as a yes."

"It would not be without compensation," She added hastily. "I would bestow upon you a boon of mine, apart from the one you have already earned."

"And in return?"

"The portal leaves a marker upon your soul. That is what enables them to bring you through the doorway on their side. Now, we could lift that marker and make sure that does not happen so that you can live the carefree life that you have just been offered, or we could leave it as is."

"And let me go through and end up in front of whoever is there that Irfan was supposed to meet."

"Yes."

"Bait."

"You would not be helpless - we will give you weapons and magic to defend yourself."

"My colleague is leaving out a few important details," The male voice spoke up. "We have no way of knowing where you will end up, who will be there waiting for you, what their powers and capabilities will be, or if you would even be able to survive an encounter with them. On the off chance that you live through the event, the portal marker would remain branded in you, and it will be much more difficult to remove it once your soul has been grafted on to a body. If you escape, whoever is involved in this will no doubt try to track you through it and enact vengeance."

"You know, I have to admit," Jiru confessed, "Hedonism sounds a lot more appealing."

"It is up to you," The woman projected coldly. "All I am doing is offering the choice."

"Will it give me a chance to take out whoever helped set up this whole portal deal?"

"I cannot say for sure, but if that is what you want then this is indeed your best chance of accomplishing that goal."

He took a minute to think it over. He was tempted - genuinely tempted - to go the hedonistic route. He could have fun for a few years, drink himself to death. Why not? Hadn't he earned that? Hadn't he just literally died fighting the bad guys?

But someone on the other side of this portal thing had helped a terror cell. And if this was becoming a regular occurrence, odds were it would happen again.

The decision, when it came down to it, was this: who was he?

And the answer was easy.

He was a Black Cat.

Jiru took a deep breath (or tried to at least, but there was no air), and sent a silent prayer to Ganesha for a new beginning.

"All right," He said, "I'll go."