“Congratulations, mortal, you died.”
Those words resonated inside my head… or rather throughout my whole being, like some divine proclamation coming from all around me.
“Indeed so,” came the booming male voice. I couldn’t understand what was happening or who it was replying to and trying to open my eyes wasn’t working. I tried to remember where I was, what I’d been doing, but the last thing I recalled was playing videogames at home.
“Yes, you died many times then too,” the voice spoke with amusement. It was as if he was mocking me for being bad at videogames. But I hadn’t even said anything.
“Hearing thoughts is trivial for one such as I, the great Myr, God of Fortune. You may stop attempting to open your eyes, they are already open. My divine aura is simply too potent for lesser beings to penetrate. Be grateful, mortal, were you to look upon my magnificence your mind would shatter from the shock and even your soul would be in danger.”
This had to be a dream, right? Or some sort of horrible hallucin-
The idea died before I even completed it, as a dreadful weight pressed in from all sides and I felt like I was suffocating!
“Do not be tiresome, mortal, if I say you are dead then that you are,” came the now-raised voice, the vibrations powerful enough that whatever body I had felt like it was being torn apart! It blew away any room for doubt in an instant.
But… then how could I have died?! I was a young guy, very fit and healthy – I went to the gym three times a week after classes and didn’t eat too much junk food… although admittedly I’d been eating more since starting university….
“Yes, they always want to know that, very well. You died playing your videogame yet again and so in disgust you left the apartment to buy something to eat. Crossing the road you were distracted by your phone and walked in front of a bus. You were killed instantly.”
What?! But I was always so careful not to be one of those idiots walking around with their eyes on their phones.
“Yes, you were rather unlucky… you were checking your email I believe – you had just received your grades for the semester. You failed math.”
Ugh, come on, that’s a really stupid way to die! I want a do-over!
“Hah, you may yet get one, mortal, if you can endure my training that is.”
Really? I can go back to Earth?! Thank you God!
“Earth? Oh no, nothing so dull, mortal, I brought you here from that dreary and harsh world for a purpose, returning you wouldn’t be interesting at all.”
I didn’t like where this was going – Myr sounded like he just wanted to use me for his own amusement, more like a devil than a god – but it seemed that my thought were an open book to the God of Fortune.
“Do not be insolent!” his voice, if that was what it was, slammed into me like an explosion, my very bones resonating, my body throbbing from head to toe, driving out any thought but fear. If I enraged a God like this there’d be nothing left of me at all!
“Indeed,” the voice came, sounding almost surprised. “It seems I’ve picked up an interesting one this time – most mortals would have been destroyed by my wrath. Of course Earthlings are tougher than those of other worlds, but even so none have endured so well. I am impressed.”
I needed to throw up, but it seemed that I couldn’t even move. Other worlds? Earthlings are tough? And did that mean Myr actually meant to kill me right there?! But then I was already dead…. My thoughts were totally disordered at that point, my head spinning, but it seemed that the God of Fortune was ignoring that.
“Rejoice, mortals! My past apostles were too weak, so this time around I’ve gathered up plenty of candidates from the harshest world, Earth, a place without even a mote of mana. You are all recently-deceased, but I have saved your souls so that you may have the joy of serving me in another world – a kinder world.”
He kept going as if talking to a large audience, but I got the impression that it was part of his divine power – he was talking to each person simultaneously.
“Of course while Earth has no mana that doesn’t mean you cannot acquire it. Exposure to my eminence has already awakened each of you. The supernatural essence that is mana is already circulating in your bod- your souls.”
Did Myr mis-speak there, I wondered. Did Gods even make mistakes? I felt stupid for fixating on that of all things, but with how shaken up I was, perhaps it was no wonder that I didn’t want to think too hard about the other things he was saying.
“Awakened as you now are, you will be able to ascend to new heights. I will have you incarnate in new vessels and hone your bodies to become suitable servants – unless any of you should wish to pass on into the cycle of rebirth and lose your sense of self of course.”
Even if I had my doubts about the former, there was no way I was ready for the latter – I’d only been 20 when I died. And that taste of existential dread just now was already more than enough. From the sound of it no-one else was rejecting the idea either.
“Good, but before I send you on to the next world you shall require power fitting apostles of the great God Myr. While I devote myself to weaving grand destinies for each of you, you will do your utmost to improve yourselves and become worthy to serve me. It shall be painful, but endure this sacred trial and you shall earn my divine blessing.”
A trial? Come on, I just did my exams last month… I just want to go home!
“Quiet,” Myr seemed to be speaking to me personally once more. “You are a troublesome mortal, but your defiance is… amusing. I should by rights simply scatter your soul to the divine wind like so much dust, but it seems you have great potential. Once fully awakened by exposure to mana you shall enjoy remarkable powers. Be thankful, I shall give you the greatest test of all! Just try not to die again, that would be quite a waste of my time….”
With that the presence seemed to recede and the all-encompassing darkness thinned until I could make out what looked like stars. It was quite a sight in fact, a beautiful array of glowing celestial objects, some stars, some planets or even distant galaxies, glowing strands of purple and golden energy curling about everything like borders around the images of each body. If I had to guess, perhaps this was some sort of interstice between worlds? Like a warp zone or something? The planets all looked very different, and I certainly didn’t seem to be in space – I could breathe normally as I floated there.
Or at least, I could at first. I didn’t think I was moving, but all of a sudden I passed through some sort of… barrier? And then something punched me in the lungs. All the air rushed out through my mouth and nose, strange vapor clouding my sight, stinging my eyes. I couldn’t breathe, and as the strange gases dispersed I realized I couldn’t even feel the air around me, a sensation of throbbing pressure building inside my head.
My consciousness was starting to grow hazy as I felt myself falling, but somehow, perhaps out of fear, I managed to hold on and look up (or down?) through my burning eyes at the huge sphere I was plummeting towards. It hung overhead like a black pearl, the planet’s surface shimmering in the light of a painfully white star that lit one side. I couldn’t breathe, but it seemed like I wouldn’t be suffocating at the rate I was speeding towards the strange alien world, growing to totally fill my vision.
I had just enough time to realize that I didn’t seem to be dying of depressurization before I started to feel air around me again. It was almost too thin to notice at first, but it grew denser fearfully quickly, and as it did I started to feel the terrifying wind of my fall!
It built to the point that I thought it would tear my skin, my body starting to heat up everywhere it hit me. The friction of entering an atmosphere was going to burn me alive. Even the space shuttle had to use special super-tough tiles, right?! And I didn’t even have a coat on!
The pain was intense, my clothing quickly tearing apart and disappearing, my sight obscured by the flashes of red that were enveloping me. I tried not to think about what exactly it was that was burning, because it seemed like it must be me. That damn Myr! What kind of test was this? This was just murder! He wasn’t a god, he was the devil himself!
A shape streaked through the skies of the desolate and lifeless planet like a meteor, jagged obsidian spires the size of mountains rising up like knives and claws to meet it… but at the last moment a strange gloom seemed to well up around it, tinged with purple light and golden sparks, enveloping it like a barrier as it smashed into the hard black rock of the surface with a boom.
~~~
Myr, the Trickster, a god of Darkness, Space and Fate, sighed to himself as he waited for a single mortal to ‘die’. From his divine realm he could observe multiple worlds, but he could do little to influence them directly. That was normal for the gods of course. If they could easily intervene in the mortal realms they ruled over then miracles would be commonplace, but such actions expended a great deal of divine power and so they were rare even in worlds brimming with mana and faith.
The mortal he was observing today was an unremarkable college student, at least for a resident of Earth. That world was perverse – a place where even the divine blessings of the gods struggled to reach and mortals survived with the aid of machines and technology, eking out difficult, short existences that rarely surpassed a century despite their medical knowledge.
Of course, to look at it another way, it was that same harshness that made Earthlings so abnormal – an Earthling awakened to mana would have an abnormally large pool of that precious magical essence combined with an exceptionally tough and powerful body. It was no wonder they were the favourite target of the gods when they wished to recruit new apostles.
But transporting a living earthling to another world was no simple task given the difficulty of intervening in that world and so to limit the need to interfere the gods tended to choose only those who were about to die anyway, spiriting them away at the moment before their death, when that world’s hold on them was weakest. Most mortals saved in that manner would be happy to become followers of their new patron deity rather than passing on to dissolve back into the cycle of reincarnation.
That was why Myr was growing impatient – he had chosen a suitable human and sowed the seeds of ill fate that would lead to that mortal’s imminent death so now needed his target to hurry up and die already. Normally he would have just waited for appropriate humans to die on their own, however this time he had a plan that required a great many victims. Or rather ‘apostle candidates’ as he would put it. This would be the last one, so he was impatient to get started, having gathered up nine hundred and ninety-nine already. He couldn’t hold them in limbo indefinitely after all.
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Inspired by the harsh world of Earth, Myr had created a training area, a space within his divine realm place that held a series of harsh and deadly planets on which he would deposit his apostle candidates to strengthen them even more. He wouldn’t admit that more specifically he got the idea from a TV show on Earth of course.
A thousand might seem like overkill for such a plan, but naturally some, probably most, would die from the brutal conditions they would be thrown into. Some might even kill each other to survive, but it didn’t matter. Myr had no need of weak apostles.
Thankfully, it seemed that his wait was over at last – the final mortal had stepped carelessly into the road, with an oncoming vehicle bearing down. The human might not die, but it was close enough that Myr could just expend a little extra energy to extract them – and make it look more fatal to onlookers to avoid attracting any undue attention to the abduction.
With that his plan would finally go into motion. The other 999 candidates had each been told they were dead as they arrived, but they hadn’t been told about his plans or sent on to their training world yet as Myr wanted to start them all at the same time - it was tiresome to explain things over and over. Really the humans should have been grateful he answered their questions about how they ‘died’ at all.
~~~
As the final human arrived at Myr’s divine realm he frowned – the mortal had been surprisingly difficult to pluck from Earth in the end, and despite his mastery of space Myr had been forced to exert more power than he wanted to. It would come back soon enough, but it pricked his pride to have stumbled even slightly on such a small and insignificant pebble – so he decided to have a little fun with this one.
“Congratulations, mortal, you died,” he boomed, his divine aura enveloping the puny mortal like holding an ant on the palm of his hand. The first few humans he’d taken as apostles long ago had quivered like leaves in the wind at that suffocating darkness… but this one was annoyingly relaxed about meeting a divine being. It even had the nerve to let its mind wander in his presence. Such a weak and pathetic creature was actually thinking back at him now – doubting his word! He had never known such a thing from a mere human!
“Do not be tiresome, mortal,” he snapped, intensifying his divine aura. To another god that might be likened to showing his bloodlust but a powerless mortal could only be crushed into submission. He was amused and gratified by the fearful, panicked reaction… even if the human went back to trivial thoughts rather quickly.
Still, every human wanted to know how it died, might as well answer that one. There was no need to let on that the human wasn’t actually dead of course – he’d tried that at first, but too many of his targets ended up insisting on going back to Earth. Certainly he could refuse, but breaking the lingering connections with that world against a mortal’s will required far more divine power. Better to simply trick it into letting go on its own.
This particular human was still complaining however, when most had been able to do little more than prostrate themselves before Myr. That was no good – a disobedient apostle would only be a waste of his divine blessing. As the mortal’s thoughts turned openly insulting the god decided to punish the insubordinate human and find a replacement.
“Do not be insolent!” he roared, unleashing the aeons of divinity that his vast form contained in a shout that carried his will to unmake the foolish human who had shown him such disrespect!
In the wake of his outburst the God of Darkness felt better. As if he would have wanted such a rude and disrespectful apostle. Myr had been about to turn back to look at Earth and start searching for another target, when he realized that the tiny presence in his divine realm… was still there? He squinted down at the tiny shape, and realized to his shock that the human had survived, and already mana was welling up within its minuscule form – despite having encountered his divine aura mere minutes earlier.
He thought about reaching out to crush the offending being, but something stopped his hand. It was curiosity. This human had potential. Perhaps, flawed though it was, it would be the one to provide him with amusement. Maybe it could even do more than that…. For now it would cost him nothing to see how it fared in his ‘training’.
He resolved himself to overlook the truculent attitude of the human, at least as long as it didn’t dare insult him again. Activating one of the many divine tools his realm contained, Myr addressed his many apostle candidates simultaneously. This would be the first time they learned of his plans for them, but hopefully most would consent to his suggestion – he didn’t have the power to forcibly abduct all one thousand of them without other gods noticing, and that was the last thing he wanted.
As he told the mortals of his will Myr almost gave a hint of his deceit however – it seemed that the last human had surprised him more than he thought, leading to his slip of the tongue – but thankfully the mortals were too stupid and ignorant to understand that he was manipulating them. They could barely even think within the pressure of his divine aura.
Even so there were an annoying number who asked to pass on to the divine Samsāra and give up their current existences – almost a hundred. Of course they weren’t actually dead so that was impossible, instead he would simply return them to Earth where they would awake with no memory of these events. The remaining candidates would do. And if not he would collect another thousand. Humans were always dying on Earth after all, and his plan was worth the expended divine power.
As for the final mortal… it really didn’t have a shred of reverence. Fine. If it was so full of potential, let it taste the hardest training course he had created, that should crush its will nicely. If it survived he would have an excellent apostle. If not then he would enjoy watching it break.
~~~
When I came to my whole body was aching all over and my head was pounding with a horrible ringing in my ears. I seemed to be in some sort of crater. All around me was shattered rock and dust lit by a painfully bright sun overhead. I wanted to cover my eyes against the light, but I was half-buried in rocks and even the parts of my body that weren’t felt terribly heavy. The best I could manage for the moment was to squint. I should have been dead of course, but it seemed that Myr wasn’t quite ready to kill me off yet – stuck into the rock a meter or so from my head was a small metal signpost with a message on it.
“Welcome to level 1. I made sure you didn’t die getting here, so don’t waste my efforts – struggle and survive so that you can grow stronger. Be grateful, mortal, your God has shown you mercy.”
The hell kind of mercy is this? Dropping me into a blinding wasteland?! In the distance I could see mountains that gleamed in the sun like glass, the tops of some sticking up in jagged, improbable looking spires, but just getting to that shelter seemed impossible with how heavy I felt. As I was thinking that another sign seemed to just drop down from nowhere, next to the first.
“As you can see the gravity on this artificial planet is ten times that of Earth. The air is also thinner, the sun is brighter and food is scarcer. Best of all, this planet will constantly drain your mana. Even awakened most Earthlings would die on this planet in under an hour, however I have high hopes for you, even if you are only a human. At the very least don’t show me a boring death.”
“Unbelievable,” I groaned, forced to let my head slump back against the rock again under the weight after holding it up to read. “This is insane, how can I survive when I can’t even move? This damn god’s trying to kill me! Maybe I should just die after all then, a nice boring death that suits a human like me!”
For perhaps half an hour I lay there like that, listening to the ringing sounds in my ears that were stubbornly refusing to fade, still being slowly crushed by the rubble of my terrifying fall into this awful, barren place. I thought about what awful luck this was and the cruelty of my tormentor. Maybe I was just trying to work up the courage to die. But even so… the sun just kept getting hotter, and I wasn’t getting any lighter. The ringing was more like random noise now, with the occasional flash of colors or shapes that made me worried I had a concussion. Even if it was just what that shitty god wanted, I started to think about trying to survive. I wasn’t ready to die there on that hellish world.
Just getting one arm loose was a nightmare, the rubble so heavy that I was out of breath in seconds, each of the larger pieces weighing more than a normal adult human, at least by my guess… I did fail math after all, and that was before I had this annoying static in my head…. But somehow I managed bit by bit to free myself, my body adjusting to the dreadful weight, at least enough that I could raise my head and arm. To hell with Myr and his plans, I was going to survive this hellhole no matter what he threw at me.
I worked the largest chunk free, finally unpinning my chest, and felt my flesh squish as I heaved the stone away! For a moment I thought I’d broken something, but as I looked down I saw two bumps. Sticking out… of my chest….
“MMMYYYYYRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!”
~~~
Watching the human struggle with the aid of the tools in his divine realm, Myr laughed at the mortal’s impotent rage. His scrying system allowed him to view everything happening within his divine realm and even peer down upon other words not unlike a satellite. He was watching the struggles of his apostle candidates with interest.
“Hmm, was that insolent one female when I picked it up?” he wondered aloud. But it was no matter – mortal bodies that had developed without mana often changed drastically when awakened. The human should be glad it had a form that was pleasing to his eye. Mortals existed for the sake of the gods.
More importantly, the human was giving an impressive performance for such a harsh planet. Most of the others, who he had placed together on a more forgiving training area, were already starting to struggle after only a few days. Yet the impudent human had managed not only to find a place to shelter but water too. With a little luck it might also realize that the canyon it was hiding in was one carved out by the deadly lava flows of a nearby volcano. With even more luck it might learn that before the volcano erupted again.
Of course the impudent human wasn’t the only one Myr had sent to a more challenging planet, and there were a few other good prospects scattered about the five training planets who had yet to run into too much trouble, but none that he would have deemed ready for the nightmarish trial that the impudent human was already facing.
It was truly interesting watching the mortal struggle, and Myr made sure to keep a close eye on his experiment.
~~~
Falling in a ravine shortly after arriving made me think I was dead all over again – the knife-like obsidian blades lining the bottom of the pit rushing up to meet me with terrifying force – but somehow I’d escaped with wounds that were shallow, while several of the spears of glass shattered under the impact.
At least the cave I managed to stagger into down there sheltered me against the scalding sun. The walls were wet and even slimy in places, but I didn’t have the energy to care. Perhaps if I got really desperate I could get some moisture from them….
I shouldn’t even have fallen in the first place but what I‘d thought was a concussion had turned into something more like a constant stream of information being beamed directly into my brain – languages, written and spoken, with all sorts of sounds and characters, none of which I’d ever seen before. It was immensely confusing, and it kept getting worse. Without that I would have seen the ravine a mile away and avoided the fall but even setting that aside it was an overwhelming, painful experience. Yet another form of torment from that evil god!
At least I was distracted from worrying about the changes to my body….
~~~
Myr had lost track of how long the impudent human had been ‘training’ now. Every time it became accustomed to the horrible conditions on the planet he would raise the level and add a fresh set of ‘challenges’ for it to deal with. Lightning storms that welled up from the frozen obsidian mountains, rains of poison, toxic fog so cold that even the lava flows froze up…. And all the while Myr kept the stream of knowledge pouting into the humans’ head.
Of course the human didn’t survive those trials unharmed – even Myr himself would have found level 10 unpleasant were he to take physical form on the planet. With the freakish human’s increasingly sturdy body and ballooning mana pool it had endured nonetheless, healing from each injury and clinging stubbornly to life.
As for the languages, rather than teach his apostle candidates the necessary languages for the world he planned on sending them to, it was easier and far quicker to use a divine tool to forcibly transmit his full library of linguistic knowledge into each apostle candidate. There would undoubtedly be some side effects from forcing in every strange and archaic language in the ancient texts in his library, but that would be their problem, not his.
~~~
By the time I reached ‘level 10’ life had turned into a haze. With the flood of words and symbols that were always attacking my mind it was impossible to think, let alone sleep. But I would surely have despaired otherwise – the hell that was my world was hopelessly cruel and barren. I spent most of my time scraping disgusting, barely edible sludge off rocks and trying to avoid the barrage of natural disasters that chased me down wherever I went. I’d been stabbed, crushed, electrocuted, poisoned, starved, drowned, gassed, and plenty more besides… I was losing track of it all. I couldn’t tell if I’d been there a month or a year any more.
So when the barrage of words finally stopped, and the crushing pressure released my body, at first I just thought “Ah, yeah, I guess it was about time I died, huh? That wretched god is probably laughing somewhere.” Only the oblivion that I feared didn’t come. Instead I was just floating in darkness.
“Such disrespect, have you learned nothing?!” boomed a disgustingly familiar voice. “Be grateful you wretch, you alone, of all the mortals I have chosen, have overcome my trials and emerged triumphant. Prostrate yourself before me, pledge your eternal faith, and I shall bestow my greatest blessing upon you. You shall be my chosen apostle!”
It was loud and powerful enough that it hurt my head far more than the assault-of-languages-that-was-really-just-assault ever had, yet as overwhelming as Myr still was, my rage was more overwhelming.
“Go to hell you twisted bastard! Or better yet go to whatever that hellhole you sent me to was! I’d rather die than become your apostle!”
“Silence!” With a word I couldn’t speak, or even breathe, as menacing power engulfed me from head to toe, threatening to crush me alive, darkness seeming to eat at my mind as I desperately tried not to black out.
When the pressure finally receded, Myr spoke again. “How disappointing you are, mortal. You will be punished for your ingratitude. Consider yourself lucky that I am gracious enough to allow you to keep your life.”
Dimly at the back of my mind I wondered if Myr would be saying that if any of his other victims had made it though the trials… they were probably all dead. But… wait… we were already dead weren’t we? So more like their souls were destroyed? But… wasn’t he saying he was letting me keep my life?
Myr grinned as the mortal gradually put things together. Such a limited mind. “Finally you noticed,” he snorted, “if you were dead you would have had no corporeal form. But it matters not; your bond with Earth is thoroughly severed now. However, you are quite alive, and if you wish to stay that way you will obediently accept your punishment and depart for the next world.”
My anger almost boiled over at those words, but once again fear made me hold my tongue. My thoughts were totally blasphemous of course, but it seemed Myr was giving up on any real loyalty, as long as I at least acted the part.
“Hah, arrogant human, a God does not give up – I have simply thought of a fitting punishment for your insolence.”
The darkness seemed to glimmer with a malicious purple energy that curled around my body, tight enough that I couldn’t breathe, my mind going blank. “Even the lowliest of mortals enjoys the protection of Fate, but not you, human. Your only future shall be Execration. I curse you with the ultimate malediction – excommunication from the fabric of Fate! The grand future I had prepared for you is no more - I banish from your being all trace of the providence of divinely woven Destiny! Henceforth you shall know only the suffering of one abandoned by Fortune!”
Myr’s grin was audible at that point. “Now, show me a pleasing struggle, my plaything. Perhaps if it’s you, you’ll even manage to overcome the trials my curse will bring. And if you can cause some trouble for that despicable Sun-God the more the better. Of course if it’s her you might….”
The small figure of a human girl blacked out while Myr was still talking, and missed his final words. He cared not however, it would show him something entertaining when it arrived in the world ruled by the Goddess of the Light, Sun and Luck, Soleil.
Myr muttered to himself as the sent the mortal on its way. “Really… to survive my divine wrath, which crushes even dragons, and to endure my greatest curse… just what is that human…. Perhaps this will be even more amusing than expected….”