My old human body twitched and writhed in agony as a Spirit and Mind, derived from his own but so alien in nature that it was almost incomparable, invaded and melded with him, corrupting flesh in subtle ways, altering the Mind, Body, and Spirit of my past self beyond recovery.

I felt some pity for my former self, but it wouldn’t do to allow events to turn out as they had previously. Though I no longer had an emotional attachment to my purpose, a promise was a promise… and my very being seemed to reject the idea of ignoring this one.

When I came to in his body, I looked down at it and frowned in disapproval. I’d forgotten how damned fat I used to be… not to mention bald. I already missed the hair that had grown back in after being dragged to the Seven Tiers.

I forced my body to its feet, unwilling to use Eldritch power in a body not meant to wield it… just yet. I looked inside myself, examining my essence.

Interesting, I thought to myself. My old essence, which was made of the natural elements, was still vibrant and alive, if inaccessible in a world where mana acted on a frequency undetectable by sane minds.

My Spirit was a mass of pure Eldritch power, mighty and beyond all mortal limits, and my Mind, though not as buffered and strong as it had been before the transfer, was still strong enough to withstand the Eldritch chaos, albeit less effectively than it had before. I could, if I was willing to do so, expend some of that power to alter reality around me, especially with the Forbidden Knowledge I still held inside me.

However, any of that power I used would not be recovered, unless I was willing to use blood rituals to convert Earth’s strange mana into Eldritch mana. Which I wasn’t. On Earth, such actions were far too risky, even though such concerns would be irrelevant in a few weeks, when a fifth of the human race would be transferred to the Seven Tiers, most of the rest killed off by the Outer Gods to fuel the transfer.

I felt a pang of sorrow as I considered my parents across the landing. Neither would survive to reach the Tiers, though my brother did well enough to survive until humanity’s destruction. My sister I was unsure of… I never encountered her, nor was she on the list of the Sacrificed.

The loss of my Body’s resistances to magic and physical harm was something of a blow… but those losses were easily remedied with time and effort. The fat though… I sighed. There was not enough time to have any real impact on it before I was summoned.

I sat back down in the chair and pulled up the world’s biggest mail-order website, ordering various supplies on my parents’ credit cards. While I couldn’t take a whole lot with me to the Tiers, there were certain objects that would be good to have when I arrived, even if they quickly became obsolete afterwards.

I then got off my fat ass and headed downstairs, my emotions oddly… turbulent. When I found Mom sitting on her beat-up leather chair in the living room, I almost started crying, which startled me until I realized that the remnants of my younger self were still present inside me, and the knowledge that she was going to die soon was breaking our quickly-fusing hearts.

I wanted to suppress the emotions… but I didn’t want to hurry up on erasing my humanity. That would come with time, in any case. Better to allow myself to feel for as long as I could, at least until it became a true liability.

It was novel, for me, to feel actual emotion. I felt a wistful desire to hold on for as long as possible, but I knew that, for my plans, it was an unrealistic goal.

“Clephas? You are up?” Mom asked me, surprised. Normally I didn’t emerge from my room except for my part-time job or to grab something to take back up to my room to eat.

Mom was in late middle age, but she still qualified as ‘cute’, at least in my eyes. While she had the bags under her eyes from years of getting up far too early after long nights, the love and worry that lay there, for her rather lazy and errant firstborn, threatened again to break my heart.

“Yes… I thought I’d come down and talk to you for a while,” I said softly, deciding to let my plans for the next few hours to wait until tomorrow. I had time, for I’d come a few days earlier than I’d originally planned.

She smiled softly, a bit of disbelief not detracting from the slightly pleased glint in her eyes. I was always a mama’s boy, and it was the rather loving relationship between us that had pained us both for so long. My lack of ambition or care for the future had left her feeling helpless to do anything for me, and my own guilt over that same lack of ambition had made me feel constantly wracked with guilt, showing as sullen irritation when confronted.

It was easy to let go of my younger self’s guilt. There was no meaning in it, considering what was about to happen. No, I would reassure her, so that she would at least be able to spend her last days without worrying… too much.

We talked softly there in the den, me sitting on the couch, Mom perched on the edge of her chair. I told her of the feelings of my younger self, and I promised to do better. She promised to help me find my way, while I concealed the sharp pain that threatened to make me cry at any given moment.

I realized something I had lost along the way, one of the most precious emotions to a human being… at some point I’d lost the ability to love. Having it back was… agonizing. It was painful in a way that far surpassed the pain I’d grown accustomed to in the Prison. It didn’t restore the humanity I’d lost. Nothing could do that, even merging with my younger self. No, all it could do was remind me of one of the reasons I’d made my vows, so long ago.

I felt the terrible resolve I’d held to for so long grow even firmer, my younger self adding his feeble determination to the mix, even as he was slowly consumed. It wasn’t a painful process for him, but he could feel the gaping holes in his Spirit and Mind from where my own had already melded with and assimilated them. It would be weeks or months before he was completely consumed, but it would happen, eventually.

Dad was another matter entirely. His reactions to me tended to be prodding or confrontational, and while I felt some guilt toward him for his disappointment, it wasn’t nearly as deep as with Mom. That night, I helped Mom cook a dinner of spinach and mushroom tacos, complete with mozzarella cheese.

I almost cried again at the flavor I’d thought I’d never taste again, and I knew that I needed to relish this while I could. Every moment I relished being with my loved ones would fortify me for what was to come.

For the next three days, I did exactly what my parents wanted to do, continuing my preparations in between. My supplies arrived on the fourth day, while my parents were still at work. I’d called in to the grocery store to say I couldn’t make it so I would be there when they arrived.

I opened each cardboard box in my room, confirming that they’d sent me the right stuff.

One spring steel shortsword with an edge in a solid leather sheath with weapons belt. One heavy waterproof hiking backpack. One steel combat knife. One box of fifteen salisbury steak MREs. Three army canteens. Six pairs of socks, two of underwear. Fatigues that will fit this ridiculously fat body of mine. A pair of hiking boots. One striker. A folding shovel. One heavy poncho. That should do it… I listed out the objects as I stuffed them into the backpack, adding a few dozen granola bars and an economy-sized bottle of cheap whiskey.

I waited until nightfall before heading down to my car, a white Ford Taurus, and I shoved the backpack into the trunk, quietly forcing it closed until it clicked. I then got in and started the car, heading out of my neighborhood toward the interstate.

There were few people who really understood what happened and what determined how powerful someone was when they arrived in the Tiers, but there were two things that everyone had figured out in retrospect. The inherent talent or strength of your Spirit was one determining factor, as it was used as a base for the reconstruction of your body. The second was where you were when you arrived.

People in wilder areas, those that were camping or living in rural areas, entered the Tiers with more Soul Points than those in urban areas. It was theorized that part of it was the placement of Earth’s leylines and the other part the lack of people to absorb the mana built up in the area. People in deserts, for example, were weaker than people in forests. People that were on the ocean or in a rain forest seemed to benefit the most from this, but I didn’t have enough money available to me to buy a plane ticket to Brazil to get me to the Amazon, so I was heading for the next best choice… Yellowstone Park.

The reason Soul Points were so important was simple… Soul Points were the currency you used in the Between and in the Tiers to obtain powerful artifacts, bloodlines, and powers. Any Soul Points you had on you when you left Earth had to be spent in the Between, in the Soul Shop.

As such, I needed to maximize the amount of Soul Points I would have upon arrival. In my previous life, I had had only slightly above average Soul Points, at 3. Most people only had one or two Soul Points, allowing them to buy a basic body upgrade and maybe a weak bloodline or power. The most powerful of individuals had hundreds or even thousands, allowing them to buy powerful bloodlines or magic talents.

I’d used one point on the Basic Body Upgrade, two on a Mana Cultivation Manual, and picked up the ‘free’ Eldritch Gift in my previous life. The first was something chosen for you automatically if you had less than ten points, and the second was one of the two types of manuals that could guide one to power if they made the effort. However, the third… was rarely chosen. I foolishly – in hindsight – didn’t read the description of the Eldritch Gift power, and it was my misfortune that I didn’t discover it before I chose Spirit.

This time around, I would make different choices… and try to minimize my use of Eldritch powers. It was free for a reason, despite its sheer potential.

Driving from Texas up to Idaho was going to take at least a week… and I had about two weeks before I would be summoned. As I drove, I chewed on some jerky I’d purchased after I got out of Austin. Subjectively, it was the first time since my imprisonment that I’d eaten jerky, and I was enjoying the flavor of what had once been travel rations to me happily. In the Seven Tiers, salt was difficult to obtain, so I was enjoying it while I could.

My younger self hated the driving. For better or worse, I’d been very sedentary as a youth, hating to drive on unfamiliar roads or outside of town. The main reason I’d left with two weeks remaining was so that I could deal with the exhaustion our internal friction caused us. I could generally get eight hours a day of driving out of our body before our conflicting desires started to impair our reaction times.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I slept in the car at night, ignoring my younger self’s complaining. He was rather annoying, and I found it rather embarrassing that he was so weak as to complain about a crick in the neck. I usually ate protein bars during the day and ate at the cheapest place I could find for dinner. The savings my younger self had managed to accumulate only amounted to around four thousand dollars… sufficient for the trip and maybe some extra supplies purchased before entering the park but little else.

I found the entire trip to be quite pleasant, despite his complaints. Eating fast food and sweets again made me feel a bit wistful that it would all be gone forever in a few weeks. The few survivors on Earth would only survive for a year or two before the air became too thin to support life, the planet’s inherent mana no longer creating sufficient gravitational or electromagnetic energy to maintain the atmosphere.

I knew objectively that the turbulence of emotions I was perceiving was nothing compared to what I used to feel, but compared to what I’d been feeling only a short time (in subjective terms) ago, it was… overpowering. It also troubled me, somewhat, as it meant that my mental buffers were not operating at peak efficiency. Those buffers were necessary to protect my Mind from the monstrous influence of my Spirit.

I sighed, shoving my counterpart’s consciousness down as I pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. I then began concentrating on the state of my Mind.

When I was in the Prison, my Mind was like a crystal ball made of layer after layer laid upon one another an onion. It was perfectly round, easily shedding the madness-inducing tentacles of my Eldritch power.

The sight I saw before me inside my Mind now filled me with dismay. It was as if the layers of the onion had punctured in a dozen places or eaten away by moths. There were gaping holes in every layer, though these holes were not contiguous. I shuddered to think of what might have happened if I had used any of my Eldritch magic at the moments when I was tempted over the past few days. A single use would have sent me spiraling into the depths of madness, unleashing unspeakable horrors on the world around me. My Spirit was far too corrupted to contain the influence of the Eldritch before it could ‘splash’ against my Mind and Body.

I turned off the car and sat there, staring into space as I reassessed my chances. Realizing that using my Eldritch power wouldn’t be an option in the near-future was a blow. The immense power I was capable of using would make me unbeatable in the 1st or 2nd Tiers. With a sigh, I ‘looked’ at my Spirit… and was surprised at what I saw.

While the greater part of it was little more than an ocean of bilious green, the more multicolored and vibrant orb of my younger self’s Spirit was intact. It sat in the middle of the ocean of inhuman power without being touched by it. This led me to a rather reluctant conclusion… for the sake of both of my selves, I would have to forswear the use of my power.

With a thought, I activated my Status, the information board implanted in my soul when I first arrived in the Tiers.

#!$#%$%$Y&%^&$%!!!

I winced at the pain that came with it. Apparently, the act of traveling through time and entering my younger body had destroyed my ability to access that objective measure of my capabilities.

Oh boy… I guess I’ll have to change some of my initial purchases, I thought with some resignation.

______________________________________________________________________________

I arrived at Yellowstone National Park less than a week later. Upon my arrival, I abandoned my car as deep into the wild areas as possible before moving further in to find a place to wait out the last of my time on Earth.

My obese frame constantly complained as I hiked the back trails, eventually getting away from the hiker’s routes and onto animal paths as far out as possible. Even in my current state, I could feel the mana growing thicker and denser as I got farther away from other humans, so I made sure to go in the direction it was strongest at all times.

It took me almost two days of traveling on foot to make sure I found the spot with the densest mana field. I wasn’t at the exact meeting point of the leylines, but then, I would have to be far beneath the earth for that. Yellowstone’s ninety-six leylines met at the point where the supervolcano’s magma was hottest, and it wasn’t a place where humans could survive.

I made camp, setting up my tent. I still had another four days before the earliest estimated time of summoning. My body was completely exhausted from making its way along the uneven paths and animal trails I’d used to get to the small clearing I’d found, and, underneath my fatigues, I was covered in blisters from where the coarse cloth had rubbed against my oversensitive skin.

My younger self rarely spoke now… though I was taking the lion’s share of the burden, I couldn’t shield him from all the pain and fatigue our body was feeling without destroying his psyche. I was unwilling to do so, for reasons I was finding increasingly difficult to understand.

He never spoke to me, exactly. Neither of us was fond of talking. Speech was a tool to obtain an objective, and he knew that no amount of talk would change my mind. Not to mention that both of us found the sound of another’s voice to be vaguely irritating.

It was on our second day at the camp that my plans were thrown off… just a bit.

A man in the uniform of a park ranger came walking into my camp, a disapproving expression on his face, his hand on the pistol holstered on his right hip, “Sonny, what are you doing out here? This isn’t a designated camping area.”

I sighed internally. Logically, I’d known this was a possibility, but I found it more than a little depressing this particular scenario had popped up… especially since I still had time before the transfer.

My lizard brain was assessing him, noting that he showed no signs of significant training, and he didn’t seem to be entirely comfortable with the gun holstered at his side. I was sitting and he was standing, but that wasn’t as much of an obstacle to me as one might think. Even my corpulent frame was capable of incredible speed, if I was willing to endure the pain from torn muscles and ligaments that would go along with it.

My younger self was horrified at what I was considering, and while he didn’t actually say anything, I got a definite sense that he was pleading, trying to get me to reconsider.

That actually decided me. As the man approached, I spoke, “There something wrong with me making camp out here? I’m not using fire.”

It was true. I’d religiously avoided building a fire, despite my younger self’s complaints at the cold. The expensive sleeping bag and thermal blanket were more than enough to keep us alive, if not comfortable. Comfort was a luxury, not a necessity, in this situation.

“Camping out here isn’t allowed… this is a designated conservation area because it is the habitat of several endangered species. I have to ask you to go back to your car and leave the park,” He replied, approaching me aggressively.

I made my decision in a flash, and the stiffened sausage-like fingers of my right hand punched into his trachea, crushing it in a single perfect blow… at a cost in pain that had my younger self screaming inside. I ignored the pain and bent over the park ranger, pulling his gun from its holster. I calmly walked over to the tent and got out our pillow, placing it over his head, pushing the gun’s muzzle into it before pulling the trigger.

The ranger’s body went still, and the familiar scent of blood and voided bowels filled my nostrils. Nausea, belonging to my younger self, threatened the position of my breakfast, but I easily ignored the sensation as I took the ranger by the ankles and dragged him out of the campsite before dumping him down the hill. Once I was satisfied that he’d rolled a sufficient distance away, I returned to the murder site and grabbed the pillow, tossing it toward the corpse. I then used the shovel to dig up the blood-stained earth, tossing each shovelful down the hill so the blood scent wouldn’t be so strong.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing.

I looked at the gun on the ground, considering. Guns were useless beyond the 1st Tier. Anyone who made it to the 2nd was essentially bulletproof. Only weapons held by someone who could coat them in magical energy or chi could damage someone with a body that had reached that level of power.

However, it would still be moderately useful in the 1st Tier.

I quickly dismissed that thought, though. The usefulness of such weapons was far outweighed by the disadvantages that they suffered from. Loud weapons weren’t a good idea in large stretches of the lower Tiers. While there were relatively ‘safe’ areas dotted across the landscape of the lower Tiers, outside those areas were massive numbers of hostile Beasts. Using a weapon that reverberated aurally as much as a gun was usually a fatal decision out there.

So I quite deliberately dropped the gun outside my campsite, which had a small inch-deep trench dug around it, indicating the precise five meters of space that would be transported with me. I would miss my pillow more than I would the gun, if I were honest.

My younger self was still sobbing in pain and horror, but I was feeling a little disgusted with his weakness, so I didn’t bother to try comforting him. Murder would become all too familiar in the world we would find ourselves in, all too soon.

It was also likely I would have to kill the ranger’s partner at some point in the next day or so, which I found a bit more depressing. A part of me had hoped I would be able to leave Earth without drawing blood.

I almost seriously considered just lazing around for a few hours… but instead I looked for the path I’d come in on, the one the ranger had used to find me.

Once out there, I used twine and stakes to set up several small man traps… nothing immediately fatal, just enough to make anyone approaching squeal and tell me their position. Given the emphasis on the buddy system in forest situations, I seriously doubted that his partner was all that far away.

My sword, which had up until now been inside my pack, was now strapped around my waist, the weight comforting (to me, if not to my younger self). I then lay down on my belly about two meters away from the trail and covered myself with dead leaves, closing my eyes to slits as I waited for my enemy’s inevitable approach.

Sure enough, a few hours later, another park ranger, this one a grizzled man in his late forties, came walking up the trail, a pump shotgun with a pistol grip in his hands. Unlike the other, he was very intent and focused, and I was fairly sure he’d realized something had gone wrong. I doubted I was the first illegal camper in the area, and I imagined not all of them were friendly.

He carried himself like an experienced soldier, and I was little sad I would have to waste a potential survivor’s life in a place like this.

His eyes widened when he hit my first tripline, the simple trap causing a stake to plunge itself into his left leg above the ankle. He grunted but didn’t cry out in pain, and I was glad I’d chosen to wait in ambush instead of listening for cries from camp.

I once again forced my body to move far quicker than it was meant to, drawing my sword and chopping halfway through his left arm in a spray of gore. Predictably, he dropped the shotgun, instinctively reaching for his wounded arm with the other.

Surprisingly, he managed to stop the motion before actually completing it, but the mistake was still enough to let me send the sword into the back of his spine with an unpleasant crunch.

Naturally, my fat and sedentary body couldn’t produce the strength for a decapitating strike from that angle, but it was more than enough to partly sever the spine, causing him to collapse bonelessly on the ground, taking the sword with him.

Unfortunately, he was still alive, and I almost wanted to apologize for not managing a full decapitation. The fear and pain he must have been experiencing would never have been if my younger self hadn’t been such a lazy shit.

I drew my knife and reversed it so the point was downward, then I knelt beside him, plunging the weapon into his heart from behind. He ceased to breathe only a few seconds later, and I sighed with regret. What a waste. Old soldiers tended to function better than many on the 1st Tier, allowing people to survive and thrive that otherwise wouldn’t. It was a pity he would never have a chance to know his own potential now.

Unlike his fellow, I actually made the effort to bury him. Warriors should always be honored when possible, and the effort reminded me of what was coming.

It was almost full dark when I was done covering him with soil and loose rocks. Still, I easily made it back to my camp, as the passive senses that came with my power were far better than sight in situations like this.

My younger self was now actively directing hatred at me, as well as visions of Mom crying her eyes out that her son could do such a thing, and the vision actually managed to cause a stab of pain before I callously suppressed him with vision after vision of the horrors of my first month in the Tiers. Power was everything. Without power, compassion too easily became a luxury most couldn’t afford.

I spent part of the next day digging a pit trap at the base of the path leading to my camp and filling it with stakes, ignoring the pain and exhaustion of my body as I did so. Every time I moved, I felt jolts of agony from the torn muscles and damaged ligaments, and bruising covered much of my right side from the extremity of the movements I had made. However, all such things would be easily healed when I was transferred.

Once that was done, I settled myself in my tent to wait, eating the nastiest of the rations in my pack (protein bars I bought at a convenience store on my last stop) to keep the better tasting ones for later.

The next few days were spent in constant discomfort, as my body punished me for my abuse, and my younger self occasionally rose to chide me, despite the horrors I had shown him.

It was on my sixth day in the camp that I felt the wrenching sensation every person taken to the Tiers could recall with perfect clarity, and a wide smile curved my lips, as I showed my teeth in rare anger, “This time...”

The vow would be kept.