Between one blink and the next I was in a blank, gray void, a checkerboard pattern on the floor and blankness above, the only other occupants the ornate chair I found myself in and...
"Welcome, adventurer. It is with the greatest regret that I must inform you that your time in the world, short thought it was, is over," she said in the purest, most beautiful voice I'd ever heard. Somehow making even the stilted, formal phrasing she used sound as smooth as flowing water. "I am the Goddess of this world, Eris. Your actions in your past life were commendable, and will allow you to…" She halted cold, like an actress hitting a blank spot in her script. "That's odd. It's been hours since you died, why are you just now showing up here.."
With that not at all confidence inducing statement, a beautifully carved wooden clipboard appeared in her hands, and with quick fingers she flipped through one page after another with increasing speed and a growing furrow between her perfect brows. Finally, I spoke up as dangerous sounding creaking noises started to come from the clipboard. "Ah, Your Majesty, or maybe Holiness, or is it…sorry I've never spoken to a goddess before, but what…"
Sighing, Eris dropped the report in her lap, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand, and took a few deep breaths while holding up the other to halt my questions. "Eris is fine, or Lady Eris if you prefer." Bringing both hands back to her lap, she continued levelly. "There is a problem in your case, Subaru. Tell me, what is the last thing you remember?"
Frowning, I replied uncertainly "Well, I was flying the Dragonfly back to Belzerg and…" Realization hit me like speeding dump truck and I bolted to my feet. "Wait, HOURS! What about the others, Yunyun, and…"
Frantically waving she spoke slowly and soothingly "Time doesn't pass here as it does in the mortal plane, my job of guiding the many souls to their reward would be impossible if it did. There is no need for rash action." Straightening her skirts, she looked down for a moment, then met my eyes again. "And enough time for a vital discussion. I apologize for being unclear. What I meant was, what was your last memory, before you came to this world?"
Still shaky, I sat back down and thought. That was months ago, but there wasn't a day that went by that I hadn't thought of it at least once. I could still clearly see the neon sign glowing above the sliding doors of the corner store as I walked in that night just like I had dozens of times before. "I was taking a break in between episodes of Asterisk War and went out to the kitchen for some more snacks. We were out, so I went to the convenience store and then…" I shrugged in confusion. "Here I was. Like I stepped one foot on Earth and the next here, nothing in between."
"But since I'm here now, I have to ask. How do I get back there?" Not letting her reply, I hastened on, my voice straining tighter as I went. "That's why I became an adventurer. To find a way back one day. Ok, that and also because it sounded fun, but still! I was a lousy son, but bless them, my parents loved me anyway. Tried to get me out of the house and do things, talked to me, put up with me being awake and bumping around my room at ungodly hours. They might not have known how to fix what was wrong with me, but they never stopped caring, or trying. And I rewarded them for it by being a terrible son who didn't deserve any of it." I paused for breath, chest heaving. Swallowing, I continued shakily. "So that's my bottom line. I go back, grovel at their feet for their forgiveness, and do it right this time. And I'll do whatever I have to, to make that happen." I finished in a rush, knowing I was leaking tears and not giving a damn.
If a goddess couldn't help me, then who could?
As I spoke, her face looked more and more sick and resigned, as though a terrible suspicion was being confirmed with every word. When I finished, Lady Eris nodded sadly "As I feared. This will be difficult, Subaru, painful. But I'll ask you to trust me. When we finish you will understand why."
Heart sinking, dread rising, I swallowed a lump in my throat. Dying was bad enough, but this? How awful did the truth have to be to make a goddess flinch? But what choice did I have? Here was the answer to a question that had burned in me since my very first hour in my new life.
Could I run away from that? Could I live with myself if I did?
Finally, I nodded numbly.
Between one blink and the next I was in a blank, gray void, a checkerboard pattern on the floor and blankness above, the only other occupants the ornate chair I found myself in and...
"Subaru Natsuki, welcome." In the room was an ornate desk and a chair holding the one who announced my arrival. If there was ever a goddess, she had to be it.
Her beauty was beyond the idols shown on television; she had a glamor that surpassed humans, with long, silky smooth blue hair and seemed to be about my age.
She wasn't too busty nor too lacking, a classic example of medium is premium, and had a light-purple hagoromo draped over her shoulders.
"I am the goddess Aqua. Your time…" Her voice faltered, like the scratch I'd allegedly put on my Dad's favorite CD track that always seemed to skip right before the chorus. "That can't be right. What's wrong with you, you're 17!" With that, a manila folder appeared in her hands, quickly flipping it open her glacier blue eyes scanning each page as she muttered to herself in increasingly irate tones. Finally, my curiosity drove me to stand up and walk over to her desk, moving around it to read over her shoulder. Above a column of medical gibberish I found a line that stopped me cold.
Autopsy report: Naksuki, Subaru DOB: 04/01/1995 Age: 17 years MRN# 2358406
"A….autopsy?! But, but, but…" I stuttered, drawing the attention of the goddess I was standing behind as she sat bolt upright with a yelp. Between one heartbeat and the next I found myself back in the chair in front of her desk…
I didn't have a heartbeat. A quick pulse check at the neck confirmed it, I was still breathing, but couldn't feel any air moving in my lungs. Hesitantly I stopped, and it didn't bother me at all. Force of habit, nothing important.
Nothing that was keeping me alive.
"What is WRONG with you?!" the goddess shrieked, leaning forward and half rising in her chair with a scorching glare. "You don't sneak up on somebody when they're reading! Do you want to get smited, because that's how you get smited!" she ranted.
Not particularly concerned with the irate goddess in front of me, I would've been hyperventilating if I hadn't just proven that was a waste of time. "But how, I…I was walking home from the store, nobody was around, no cars, no trucks, no people. I just took a step and here I was…"
Aqua snorted, sitting down in her chair again. "I'll bet you did. When the doc looked at the stuff in your blood he said it was, 'incompatible with life'. Potassium and magnesium were so low they were practically in your socks. You had a lot of regular salt, mostly because based on all the corn chips in your shopping bag all you ate was salt!. But that's not what got you, amazingly. Between your gods awful diet, way too much caffeine, and not drinking enough water your heart should have been a time bomb. Those electrolytes are what allow your muscles to contract, didn't you have cramps? When was the last time you even drank a glass of water? Or anything that wasn't an energy shot?"
"I thought I was just stiff from sitting too much," I muttered. "And water tastes boring."
"As the goddess of WATER and HEALING, I can tell you it wasn't and it isn't!" she snarled back. "All that junk and caffeine made your blood pressure go crazy! Eventually it made part of your brain basically explode because your diet was so bad! You were dead before you hit the ground. If you'd ever eaten like, one vegetable and drank some water sometimes you could have made it to 50, probably." Snapping the folder closed with a perfectly elegant flick of her wrist, it vanished as if it never was. "Congratulations, you died early because you're an idiot. I've seen young people croak from everything under the sun: violence, suicide, disease, and all kinds of weird and gross crashes, but this just might be a first."
Taking a breath to settle from her tirade, Aqua continued "But let's get back to business so you can stay out of here forever. You have three options at this point. Reincarnation, which is just what it sounds like, starting over as a baby with all your memories gone. Heaven, which is basically a retirement home where you sit around and chat with all the other spirits for ever and ever. Or," she paused for effect "you pick door number three."
The recovered memory ended, my vision returned to find Lady Eris kneeling in front of me.
"And there you have it, sweetie." she spoke softly, sadly. "Your parents mourned, and still do even now. But your time in that world is long over." Reaching up one hand, she brushed my face, startling me into noticing the tears streaming freely down it.
Meeting her gaze from the thousand meter place it had been, I croaked once, and this time didn't even try to hold anything back.
After a minute or an hour, in this place who could tell, I came back to myself. Miserable, but at least with a dull, spent ache instead of a hot, stabbing pain. I found my head not on the divine furniture, but on a warm, soft, not to put it too finely heavenly cushion.
And all of me floating about ten centimeters above the ground for some reason.
Craning my neck back, I saw Lady Eris looking down with a tiny smile. "If I had circulation in my legs, having weight on my lap in that position would definitely have cut it off. How mortal girls do it I'll never know." she said, lowering both of us to the floor. "I doubt you're feeling much better, but like it or not you've got some decisions to make."
Rubbing my face in my hands, I sat up regretfully. "What do you mean, exactly?"
Getting to her feet, Lady Eris brushed the front of her skirts, erasing the traces of my presence on them. "You have three choices, the same as before. Reincarnate in Japan as a blank slate, ascend to Heaven, or go to Belzerg."
"But…but I'm dead. How?" More to the point, why? I'd left an absolute disaster behind me, who would go back to that?
"Simple. Well, not really," she amended. "It's very difficult, but not complicated at least. It would be bending the rules into a pretzel, but given the ability you selected it is possible to send you back to a time before you died. With the way your reincarnation was rushed Aqua left her, call them fingerprints, all over you too. Your soul has been bouncing between here and your body in Belzerg like a ping pong ball since you died, before I finally checked in on what was making the awful racket. In a kind of limbo due to Aqua telling you basically 'don't come back'. Words have power, especially from a Senior Goddess. She unintentionally barred you from the afterlife with that, but you had nowhere else to go."
Nodding understanding, I asked "I get that, I think. But, I can't go back to my body anymore, right?"
"Certainly not as it is now," Lady Eris agreed, and I decided to NEVER ask for details. "But the connection is there all the same, and as I said, time doesn't flow here as it does down there. It's a more involved and expensive process, but it can be done."
To say that was worrying is the understatement of the year, at least. Lady Eris must have read my face like a book, because she gave me a little half smile before returning to her desk.
"Don't worry." Pointing at herself with one finger she went on "I am the goddess of good fortune and commerce, it's true. And there's no such thing as a free lunch. However, someone else will be covering your bill today. If you choose it."
And there's the punchline. Choose. Aqua said I'd get any wish I wanted if I defeated the Demon King, but let's be honest here. I'd be lucky to be in the supporting cast of whoever got that done.
Reincarnation or Heaven. One would at least get me back to Japan, not that I'd really know it. But I could do it all over, maybe not be such a disappointment this time.
Or I could just give the whole mess up entirely and retire from Life Itself.
So really they're both the same, aren't they? Accept that I've botched the job so badly that I can never fix it, and leave it for someone else to deal with. Just like that day my freshman year when the last members of my posse told me to get lost. That I wasn't fun, I was dangerous. Gods if only they'd known.
That's hell I'd be walking into. Forever. Always wondering if I could've made things right after all, if maybe I hadn't lost it all. If, maybe, I could still be forgiven.
Sighing, I looked up from my clenched fists to find Lady Eris waiting patiently for my answer. "So, that wish. Does it include going back to Japan? Pick up where I left off?"
Eris nodded. "Or before even. Any point you choose." Her perfect lips curved further, her pleasant smile giving way to a pleased grin. "Step onto the seal over there, and give me a moment."
I did, wondering for a moment when it had gotten there, and she leaned over her desk, scratching noises coming from the pen as she drew and calculated on what looked like honest to goddess buckskin parchment. Finally, she turned, the now thoroughly marked up sheet in her hands as she blew softly on the ink to dry it. "A few adjustments to your Gift to make this work. This is old, old magic even by my standards. Not quite a sacrifice, but it does work better with a connection to a living creature," she explained. "Now then. Last chance. I'd say you want to take another swing at this more than anything, but I have to ask. This will be a much rougher trip than your first transfer, and given what that one did to you…"
Squeezing my eyes closed, I took a breath. Not that it did anything here either. "Ride or die," I agreed as firmly as I could. As much to reassure myself as anything. "And for what it's worth you've got a worshiper for life for this. And after, I guess. Ah, any chance I'll go back to before we take off?" I added hopefully.
Lady Eris gave me a grim little smile. "Oh Subaru. Once you've bought the ticket, you have to take the ride." Correction. Calling THAT worrying is the understatement of the year. Before I might, maybe, have considered changing my mind she composed herself and then intoned, "So mote it be." Her voice echoed as though in a cavern too vast to see, and the buckskin burned away with purple fire.
Raising her hands, a sheath of flickering lights surrounding them like a backlit shadow, my new goddess sang a chant in words I couldn't recognize. Wasn't even sure was language in the first place, so much as rising and falling tones. Like an old fashioned modem connection performed by a professional opera singer. Finally, as my nails felt like they were about to cut right through my palms, spirit body or not, she raised her arms high and cried with a final flourish:
"CHAINS OF MEMORY!"
In the last aching instant, an explosion of emptiness, Lady Eris gave me a heartfelt smile and rasped, her throat as raw as my ears, "My blessing be upon you, adventurer. You'll need it." With that, I felt a hand worm its way through my spine, as though the flesh and bone parted and flowed around it before it settled on my heart. gently cupping it before giving
One
Hard
YANK
