"Who are you?" I asked the man with the southern accent and cowboy attire.
"The name's Primor," he said, lowering his hand, realizing I wasn't going to shake it.
"What is this place? Why am I here?"
"I told you," said Primor. "This is the Outerlands. And you're here 'cause you died."
"But why am I not in the Underworld?"
He chuckled. "The Underworld? Heh. Is that where the dead go on your plane?"
"My plane?"
"Your world. Earth, I do believe. Am I wrong?"
"No, you're not wrong. I'm from Earth. Are you not?"
"No, silly. I'm from here. I'm a native of the Outerlands."
"You're a native of this place, where there's literally nothing anywhere?" I said, gesturing to the empty plains that surrounded us. I turned and there was no sign of the box I was trapped in. It disappeared. And in its place was more plains.
"Of course there is," said Primor. "You're just not looking close enough."
I tried to examine the emptiness more closely, and there was still nothing.
"Whatever," I said. "What was that box and why was I trapped in it for so long?"
"That was your penance," he answered. "You kept yourself trapped in there because you felt so damned guilty for whatever happened before you died. It took for you to forgive yourself for you to be able to get out."
"How do I get back home?"
"Well there's the question you should have asked first. You got to face your trials."
"My trials? What trials?"
"You see, this entire place exists outside your universe, or any universe. Time is different here. It still passes, but not in the way you're used to."
"Like in the Lotus Hotel and Casino?"
He gave me a blank look. "Now if you're done talking gibberish, listen to what I have to say. The sole purpose of the Outerlands is to guide fallen champions to their redemption. The Entity wanted his champions to earn their way back to the living."
"Wait," I said. "The Entity?"
"Yeah. You met him."
The Entity's words came back to me. 'Absolutely no one is to know of our encounter, or even my existence.'
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.
"Ha!" Primor laughed. "This wasn't a test, but if it were you passed. Don't worry about it. The Entity created the Outerlands, and me for that matter. Here everyone knows about him. You don't have to carry that secret here."
"Fine. Now how do I get back home? I died leaving an entire camp full of innocent people susceptible to death."
"Don't worry about it. If you were protecting those people, the Entity will have made sure it's protected. Let your mind at ease. Your world will get along without you until you return. But to do that you're going to need to be patient. You need all your focus on your trials."
"I don't know what trials you're talking about."
"Of course you don't. I haven't explained that yet. Let me put it simply: you died. To get back to life, you need to build yourself to be ready to go back to the real world. Because if you die a second time, you ain't coming back here. That's it. You're done. Now to build yourself, you need to go through your trials. Each trial will be vigorous and unforgiving, and will not end until the trial master knows for sure you succeeded. Then you'll get your gift and move on to the next."
"Trial master?" I said. "Gift?"
"Each trial is led by a trial master," he said. "After you complete it, they'll reward you. It's pretty simple."
"Okay. So how do I do my first trial?"
"Is that eagerness or impatience?"
"Uh, both kind of."
"Wrong answer."
"What?"
Suddenly he clapped both his hands on my shoulders, stared me in my eyes, and then said, "I'm your first trial master." Then he threw me backward and I began to fall.
I fell for several minutes. I don't know how I got so high above the ground. I twirled midair to face the ground but couldn't see it. Whatever the atmosphere was made of was too thick for me to see through, so it looked like I was falling through a void. Eventually I finally did see the green terrain speeding toward me much faster than I'd thought it would. I barely had a few seconds to panic before I was suddenly laying on the ground without an impact.
When I got to my feet, I found myself in a very similar landscape to the one I was just in, but this time there were countless identical houses surrounding me, placed in a seemingly random pattern. There were no roads and no logical reasoning to the angle of the houses. It was all completely random.
"Find me," I heard Primor's voice say from behind me. I turned and saw nothing but more houses. Doing the only thing there was to do, I walked into the nearest house.
It was pretty rustic and neatly furnished. It's your stereotypical 'grandma's house'. After walking in the front door you're facing a staircase with hand railing leading to a solid wall, strangely. The walls were covered with photographs and paintings; all of them depicting Primor (several of them were topless).
There were several shelves stocked with random baubles (snow globes, figurines, etc.) and more portraits of Primor. To the left of the front door is the living room, with a large carpet covering the hardwood floor, a very soft looking couch, a wooden rocking chair, and a T.V. stand with a large crystal ball on top of it.
Behind the staircase there's a door leading to a normal bathroom, which has another door leading to the kitchen, which loops back around to the main entrance.
So this house wass empty of life and the only thing I learned was that Primor thought a lot of himself, and that the Outerlands are a very, very strange place.
Having seen the entire house and no sign of Primor, I exited, leaving the door open so I'd have a way of remembering I'd already searched it. After that I randomly picked another house and looked inside of it.
It was perfectly identical to the previous in every single way, including the fact that Primor wasn't in it.
"This is going to take a while," I muttered.
So I searched the next one, then the next one, and all the others. After what felt like at least a couple of hours, I found Primor in what felt like the thousandth house I'd searched. I walked in and everything was exactly the same as per usual, but this time Primor was sitting in the rocking chair with a clipboard and pencil.
When he didn't give any sign that he noticed I'd entered the house, I said, "I found you."
"Indeed you did," said Primor without looking up.
"So is that it?" I asked. "Trial over?"
"Ha!" he said and wrote something down. "Percy, if that was the entire trial, what do you think the theme of it was?"
"I don't know," I said. "The ability to complete a tedious assignment?"
"No," he said and wrote something else down.
"What are you writing?" I asked.
He looked up at me. "I'm logging down how you're doing in my trial."
"And how am I doing?"
"Well I can promise you this will be the longest trial you'll have. And exactly how long it is depends on how long it takes you to succeed in it. There ain't no failure. But with you I can say this trial will be a bit shorter for you than it was for everyone else."
"Everyone else?"
"The other champions. Like I said, yours will be a bit shorter. I'm impressed with your past. Two weeks without much to entertain yourself with when tailing those hunters, without even sleeping. And your entire life's mission. You're a single soldier in a war you intend on winning. Those past four years you handled very well. Those are both major points in your favor. But if you're going to finish this trial, you'll need to do show me you're completely and utterly capable of something you did and are doing during those things I mentioned."
"And what's that?"
"If I tell you you won't grow. That's what this is all about. The point of these trials isn't to just test you for the sake of testing you. It's for you to improve upon yourself. But with my trial, it's going to be almost impossible for you to achieve your growth if you know what it is you're trying to achieve."
"That makes no sense," I said.
"It does. But it don't matter if it does to you. Let's get on to the next part of the trial."
He got to his feet and walked to the house's entrance and I followed him outside.
When we got outside, all I saw was a large pile of hay.
"Where did all of the houses go?" I asked.
"It's right behind you," Primor answered.
I turned around and there was only the house we came out of; just the one.
"That's just one house," I said. "I searched at least two hundred."
"Did you?" he said.
Confused, I dropped the subject and focused my attention on the haystack, which is where Primor led us.
"There's a needle in there," he said. "Get it for me."
"Are you serious?" I asked.
His pencil touched the paper.
"Alright, alright," I said. "I'll do it. "
He stopped himself from writing whatever he was going to write, but then wrote something anyway.
"It's important you take your time," he said. "Rushing ain't gonna accomplish nothing."
I got down on my knees and grabbed a handful of hay. I sifted through it and tossed it away from the haystack. I heard the scratching of a pencil on paper as I grabbed the next handful, searched it, then tossed it aside.
A handful at a time I moved nearly the entire haystack away from its original position. I grabbed another handful and this time I felt a prick on my palm. I grabbed the needle and shook the hay out of my hand.
"I found it!" I said and stood, holding it out to Primor.
He took it and carelessly tossed it behind him. "Good job," he said.
"Is that it?" I asked, a little miffed at how little he cared about the object I spent so much effort obtaining.
"No," he answered and wrote on his clipboard. "Walk to the house."
Obediently, I turned and took several steps in the house's direction.
"Stop," he called out. "Come back."
I turned around and the hay was gone. Now there was a contraption and a chair next to Primor. I walked to it.
"Sit down," he said.
I did as he asked. In front of me was a large button, and behind it was a flat, metal pole with a centered on top of it.
"You're going to press that button," he said. "When you do, the ball is going to move either left or right. Right before it gets to the end, you're going to hit it again and it'll go in the other direction. Then you'll hear a ding Again, you're going to hit it before it gets to the end. You'll hear another ding. If you hit the button too late, it'll fall off the edge and you'll have to start over. Do not just spam the button. Hit it right before it hits the edge. If you hit it too soon, no ding. It won't count."
"Alright," I said. I hit the button and the ball began to move to the right. Before it hit the edge, I hit the button again and it immediately began going to the left and I heard a ding. Before it hit the left edge, I pushed the button and there was another ding.
I'd heard a couple thousand dings before the ball abruptly stopped in the middle of the platform.
"Do I push it again?" I asked.
"You don't have to," he said.
I stood. "Alright. What's next?"
He gave me an interesting look and wrote something down.
It could have been days. It could have been weeks. All I know is that it felt like a massive amount of time. In the Outerlands, exhaustion isn't a thing. Hunger and thirst aren't things. Defecation and urination aren't things. Just the trial. I had absolutely no way of perceiving the passage of time. No matter what, the sky remained the same shade of gray.
There were just dozens and dozens of long, tedious, and most prominently, pointless tasks for me to do.
At one point a part of my mind decided that there wasn't a point in being annoyed or bored. So I simply wasn't. Patiently, I readily accepted any task Primor assigned me. The length or meaninglessness of the task was irrelevant.
It was shortly after my subconscious had that epiphany that my trial ended.
I'd literally just finished watching paint dry and asked, "What's next?"
"Your results," he said.
"I'm done?" I said.
"You're done. Let's get to the house."
When we got inside, Primor sat in the rocking chair and I sat on the couch.
"You passed the trial," said Primor.
"And what exactly was the trial?" I asked.
"I'm sure you've figured it out by now. It's patience. In order for you to have completed the trial, I had to know that you had a high enough tolerance for long tasks without becoming annoyed or upset. It's an important skill, especially for someone such as yourself. Before you came to the Outerlands your mind was focused on the end. Now your mind focuses on the here and now, and also sees the past, present, and future as a whole."
"So this whole thing was just to get me to be able to be patient?" I said.
"Yessir. But mastering patience is just the stepping off point to a whole new set of skills. Your mind is a powerful thing. And now you're a large step closer to utilizing it to your tremendous advantage."
"So what's my reward for finishing the trial?" I asked.
"Glad you asked." He tossed his clipboard and pencil aside and drew a dagger, then struck his palm with it. From the cut a tiny thin plume of purple smoke came out. He put the dagger away and took out a glass vial. The smoky blood snaked through the air and inside the vial. Once inside, it condensed into liquid, like water vapor on a cold glass. He corked the vial and tossed it to me. "That is your gift. Blood — "
"Holds a lot of power," I finished for him. The entity had said that to me once. I removed the cork and drank the purple blood. Just like when I drank the Entity's blood, I felt a rush of power spread through my body. It lasted several seconds and then I felt normal again. "What did you give me?"
"I gave you an enhanced ability to improve. To learn. To evolve. All of that was inhibited by the constraints of your mind. I removed those constraints. Now you can learn new skills a lot faster, improve previous skills more easily, and most importantly of all, you can tinker with your powers."
"Tinker with my powers? What does that mean?"
"You're a smart kid. You might only have killing Prometheus to thank for that but you're smart. You'll figure it out."
"How do you know so much about me?" I asked.
"Well I saw," he said. He pointed at the crystal ball on the T.V. stand.
I saw nothing in it but the smoky stationary patterns the crystalline material had.
"Alright, then," I said. "Thanks, Primor."
"Not a problem."
"So how do I get to my next trial?"
"Just step out that door and you'll meet your next trial master. It was good to know you, Percy Jackson, or should I say Assassin?"
"Percy's fine," I said and stood. "I guess this is goodbye?"
"Yep it is."
I extended my hand out to him, giving him the handshake I denied him when we first met. After a single shake I turned and walked to the door. As I traversed out of the house, I caught a glance of Primor's clipboard. It was filled with incoherent symbols.
The Outerlands are indeed a very weird place.