I stood alone, surrounded by the dead white of the Antarctic, arthritic joints burning and swollen in the cold. Having spent what currency I had left - social and otherwise - to be there, I took a moment to take in the stark beauty of the place I had chosen for my death.

My name was – and I suppose still is, even now - Alex Hunter, an 82-year-old with a life laid out behind me defined mostly by missed chances and, like my presence upon the vast frost beneath my feet, it was all my own doing. Mostly. While many of my failings could be laid solely at my feet, I was also part of the .0001% - not in terms of wealth or power, but rather part of the .0001% of humanity immune to immortality.

After 56 years wracked by anxiety, depression and a marked failure to seize the moment, I had thought it a second chance when immortality had come to market - it apparently being cheaper to make somebody young forever than to look after them in their old age. And for many, it had been – just not me.

By the time I started to plan my trip to Antarctica, the surge in education, research and creativity brought about by the newly supplied glut of time, lack of existential dread and reintroduction of old talents, had resulted in almost total job automation and had removed most of the drudgery of everyday life; asteroid mining, atomic printing and high efficiency solar panels, coupled with super-high density batteries had all but eliminated scarcity. Without the looming shadows of our mortality, humanity’s population growth had even slowed somewhat, and by my 80th Birthday, everyone in the world officially had Enough™.

They were even close to cracking the Alcubierre Warp Drive, from what I’d heard from people I knew in the physics community. Visiting the stars had always been a dream of mine, and I was going to live just long enough to miss it by a hair. My ageing body was failing me at an ever-increasing rate, breaking down around me like an antique iPhone made of meat and bone. Weeks, they had told me - I chose something quicker to cut-short the dread and to do at least this one last thing purely on my own terms.

I had booked a sub-orbital flight to South America, and from there found a man who did tours, and persuaded him – in the form of everything I had – to fly me here. People always wanted more, even in a post-scarcity society.

And so there I was, with what was left of the short day rapidly fading into evening, the temperature dropping as the last of the daylight retreated before the marching shadows of nightfall. I took in a lungful of freezing air as the transport lifted off and accelerated towards a horizon blurred by my own degeneration, and slowly sat to watch the Sun set, dark sunglasses the only protection I had bothered with. I sat there, shivering in the fresh dark as the wind began to whip about me, foreshadowing a blizzard, and I waited to die. I did not have to wait weeks.

*

***

*

“You died! That’s great news, thank you!”

I opened my eyes to a darkness filled with stars, uncountable and beautiful.

“I mean, it’s great for me, but I’m guessing you’re probably wondering what’s going on?”

The voice was feminine, rich and resonating, but the words sounded like nonsense. I was sure I had to be misunderstanding something – who was happy about I was dead, when I obviously was not?

“Hello? Dead human? Ugh, Alex, right? This says your name is Alex Hunter? Did I get a dud? How could this happen? My first agent in years and it’s a dud!”

The almost wailing of the mystery voice caused the ground beneath me to vibrate slightly.

I braced myself to sit up, but it was surprisingly easy, easier than it had been in years. It was in fact, effortless, a mere application of whim.

Now sitting upright, I tore my eyes from the vast starscape and looked down at myself, eager to see why I was able to sit up in less than 5 minutes for the first time in years – and I was made of light - the flicking silver of starlight.

“Holy shit!” I jumped to my feet, swatting at myself frantically, my body feeling strangely smooth and frictionless, like a liquid, but solid. And made of light.

“Hi! Yay, you’re not a dud! Or you know, at least standing is good... I’m glad though! Getting a dud after so long would have sucked.”

I finally turned to look at the source of the voice, and I guessed I still had lungs or something close, because I full-on gasped and caught my breath.

She was a dragon – a pink, white and powder blue serpentine dragon, coiled on top of a golden hemisphere of light. In her right... hand? She held a tablet of black glass.

“You’re a dragon.” It was not the most eloquent thing I could have said, however I was not at my best, having just died, only to discover myself not dead and flickering like an old fluorescent bulb, but I did feel it got my point across.

“I am! Well, sort of. I used to be a dragon, but I moved on. You can’t live in the past, you know? I still appear to agents like this because they tended to drool a lot when I was in my other form, and it’s really weird watching a disembodied soul drool. Like, how is that even a thing? What are they drooling? I do not want loose soul on my floor. It’s just gross.”

I rubbed where I remembered my temples being and looked around – there was no ceiling I could see, or walls, just endless stars and a golden white sun in the – relative - distance. It was strange looking at the – Sun? Staring into a giant ball of fusion and plasma apparently did not pose any significant threat to... disembodied souls.

There was a moment of vertigo as I stared across that vast distance, and pulled my gaze away to look down, hoping to find a degree of normality – it was a decision I regretted almost immediately when I noticed the planet we were apparently orbiting. While I could most definitely feel something beneath my feet, I couldn’t see anything between myself and what was most assuredly not Earth.

“I’m in space. I’m in space.” I knew my eloquence left something to be desired, but I’d suffered a number of shocks in the last few moments and felt it justified. I locked my gaze back on the apparently former dragon, who was staring at me with a strangely recognizable expression that clearly said she thought I was defective.

“You’re not really in space, that’s just where the view is. You’re currently inside of an intraplanar nexus – my intraplanar nexus. It’s sort of like my office, but I also live here? It’s really the easiest solution, because I can reach both the River of Souls and my client planet! Work smart, right?”

“Uh, sure - “

“OK, I’m a workaholic, alright? It’s been really stressful these last few years, with so few dead coming through – there used to be so many, there were plenty to go around but I haven’t completed a task in a decade! I’ve had nothing to do! They keep asking for more agents, but there just weren’t any!”

There was a definite quaver in the ex-dragon's voice, and as I watched, a single incandescent tear rolled down her cheek. I always hated to see anybody cry, so I rushed to reassure her... about whatever weirdness was upsetting her.

“I mean, no, free agency and all that – totally our fault. We sort of found our way – most of us – to eternal youth, so that’s why there’s less deaths. It’s not your fault. What about, other planets? If we’re in a multiverse or whatever, there has to be more than just the planet down there and mine? Also, why do you need all dead people? We’re not food or anything?”

“What? No! Ew. Besides, you wouldn’t even be a crumb – look at yourself, your soul has all the strength of... somebody from the lower planes. Anyway.”

The dragonoid, having established she was too good to eat me, moved on.

“There are a lot of worlds, like so many worlds! But there are only so many suitable candidates in any given population, and we service so many pantheons! We’re each allocated 2 or three candidate worlds, which usually keeps the numbers steady, but all of mine drastically reduced their mortality rates at once! How is that fair?”

I rubbed my temples some more as she stared at me, clearly waiting on a response.

“Yeah, people not dying must suck for you, for some reason. Why, do you need dead people again?”

“Oh! So, my colleagues and I are from a higher plane. We have about as much power as most minor gods here, but are subject to less red tape. Gods aren’t allowed to meddle with their worlds after the initial creation, beyond providing power to their worshipers, and only when asked. We saw this as an opportunity! We can’t directly meddle, but we can introduce new mortals to meddle for us!”

The tone the dragon-ish woman was using had shifted to the same sort of tone I’d heard in sales pitches when I was younger. It was almost comforting that corporate bullshit seemed to be universal. Well, comforting or despair inducing. I had always hated that crap.

“We pull mortal souls from the River after they die, and offer them a new life on our client worlds – which are of course one plane up from where they started, a guaranteed promotion! We also provide exciting new powers and abilities, in bodies of your own design and much improved lifespans to maximise your chances to advance again before resetting, and we do all this for nothing more than the completion of strategic goals received from the resident pantheon by us and provided to you! It’s a win, win, win!”

That was a lot to take in, but there were a couple of things that stood out to me.

“So, you’re outsourcing Divine intervention because the gods aren’t allowed to? Isn’t that cheating? Also, what do you get out of it? And how long are we in for? You mentioned significant life spans, would I be... servicing... the pantheon, or you I guess, until I die again?”

“That’s it exactly. We’re providing assistance to the Devine, by circumventing the red tape of reality! Why should mortals get all the agency, right? Gods are people too. As for what we get out of it, there’s some energy conversion involved, but what it comes down to is that Divine energy is self-perpetuating in a way the energy we normally have access to isn’t. Taken to the higher planes, it grows in density to match the power it would have if it was from there originally, which is a lot! We save up and then absorb it to shortcut perhaps millions of years of the cultivation it takes to ascend to the next plane up!”

That made sense, I thought. It still did not seem sensible to bypass fundamental laws like that. Somebody or something, somewhere had to have put those rules in place – something powerful enough to be bossing gods around - and I could not imagine they would be overly happy to be balked en masse.

“That’s all sort of fine, but again, how long am I in for? Oh, and where’s the Divine intervention for my world? Aren’t we a client, or whatever?”

“Your world doesn’t have a pantheon - It’s a planar level lower than this one, so you don’t have gods. it wasn’t created, it just sort of happened. Nature over nurture, you know? As for how long our arrangement would last... normally there’s a minimum task quota, after which you’re free to do as you please, even take on additional tasks for bonuses! In your case... it’s been long enough that I have a really major backlog, so I’d need you for substantially longer.”

“How much longer?”

“It really depends on how fast you can work through the backlog; it would technically be an indefinite contract. But! Again, as I haven’t had an agent come through in so long, I can blow my whole decadal budget on making you the best you you can envision. Or I’d have to send you back to the River of Souls and hope for a new agent. Which would suck for us both.”

I thought about what had been said for a minute, stretching into 2. It was a lot. Indefinite was by definition boundless, and I did not like the idea of signing away my time for potentially ever.

“What happens to me if I go back to the - River of Souls, you called it?”

“It depends on your last life. You could move up to this plane and be reborn, you could be reborn back on the same plane... or you could go down a level if you really didn’t do a good job.”

That sounded less than ideal – my last life had been anything but a roaring success, unless you considered death a finish line, in which case I had beat billions to it.

“... What’s down a level?”

“I couldn’t tell you, sorry. I have too much energy to go down that far, and I’ve never met a soul that’s come up from there.”

She sounded sad, like she suspected what might sit beneath my home plane but did not want to give it voice, but if living with anxiety for a lifetime had taught me anything it was that the worst possible thing that could happen, would absolutely always happen.

“Can you at least give me an idea of what I’ll be doing?” I did not want to end up in whatever Hell-plane was below my own, but I also did not want to end up being assigned a genocide. Genocide never looked good on anybody.

“You’ll start relatively small: save a person, escort a group, find an artefact. It’s important that the task always be within your capabilities – if you fail, I fail.”

“That sounds reasonable – what happens if I do fail, though?”

“Early on, you’ll just have to live with it, but once we get in to the wider ranging things, failure will mean death, more often than not. Don’t misunderstand me, Alex, I’m not saying that I’ll kill you, but the higher-level things we’ll ask of you, will almost always be really dangerous.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but she wasn’t finished.

“Having said that, I will actually kill you if you start failing on purpose. I have a reputation, I would hate to fall further down the rankings.”

That was a tough pill to swallow, but as long as what she said was true, that the tasks would always be within my reach, then I should only fail as a result of my own incompetence. Which would have been fine, if I did not have a lifetime of experience of getting in my own way. Would I be failing on purpose if I self-sabotaged?

“One last question before I make up my mind on whether we’re going to do this – what happens if I die here?”

“You’ll either be reset and reborn here on this plane, or if you suck, go back to your old plane – one of the perks of working for us is that we provide the energy to Advance your soul far enough to be here! And, since you can’t drop multiple planes, you’re safe from... that other plane.”

I could certainly see the appeal of just skipping the possibility of hell, and if I was being honest with myself, just knowing there was an after took a lot of the existential weight off my shoulders.

“I guess I’m, no, you know what? I'm all in... I’m sorry, what was your name?”

Amidst all the weirdness, I had completely neglected my manners.

“Yes! You made the right choice! I didn’t want to say anything but you had a pretty good chance of dropping down a level if you didn’t Advance first, and from what I’ve been able to find out, that plane really sucks. As for my name, you can call me Xiournal. My actual name would take a week for you to butcher, so let’s not even go there. You are... Alex Hunter, it says here?”

“Yeah, Alex... Nice to meet you, I guess. How do we get this party started?”

“No, sorry, there will only be one of you. But we’ll start with designing the new you! You can’t go down there as a soul unless you want to end up being a battery.”

Having missed the idiom, Xiournal gestured next to me and a huge smoky glass cube rose out of somewhere beneath the apparently transparent floor, and within it, I appeared.

I stumbled back a step – it has emerged within an inch of me – and took in contents of the glassy structure. It was me as I had been in my early twenties, but in really great shape, and naked.

“This is your default shape taken from imprint left on your soul and adjusted for the minimum performance you’ll need as an agent of Divinity. You have a lot of freedom to change it, especially right now since we’ll be spending my entire budget on you. Once you’re done designing your body, you’ll be able to select abilities – be careful though. You won’t be able to change any of this once you’re on-planet. I mean, you’ll be able to change your body, but only by, like, doing things with it?”

I looked back to my body, a little embarrassed, but in the end, I decided somebody that looked like a dragon probably did not look at people like me, like that.

As I looked in to the cube, I found an instinctive link to it and that with a little mental effort, I could make changes. As somebody who had been a heavy gamer before I had become too old for the equipment, I did what I felt any other gamer would do – I spent the next several hours alternatively making myself either an Adonis or a freak. At one point, I had lime green skin and bright orange hair with a head the size of my torso and legs like tree trunks. I went back to default when I noticed Xiournal looking worriedly over my shoulder.

I ended up with just a better-looking version of me, with fuller, thicker hair and facial hair, and a couple of other minor tweaks, like sound of my voice. Looking incredible was nice, but I had to dial it back when I started being attracted to my own floating shell.

When done I had shoulder length chestnut brown hair and a full red/brown beard. I would stand 6’3” when not floating, with broad shoulders and muscles. Lots of muscles. I also had amber eyes, like an eagle or a wolf and it was badass.

Once done, I mentally tried to pull up my menus, which is when I saw the racial options.

“Fuck!” I had spent hours working on myself and now I looked through the tabs I had apparently missed. The list was extensive, and I did not recognise any of them. There were no Elves, Dwarves or Halflings. No Orcs or – thankfully - Tieflings.

“Is something wrong? You didn’t decide to go back to the green... thing... again, did you? Please?” Xiournal sounded worried and assumed she had never been a gamer.

“No, not that. I just spent an age setting up my body without realising there were options for other races. Are all these races down there? It seems like a lot.” And it was – there were hundreds of entries on the list.

“Oh, no. Those are all the races available to you, native to this plane anyway. You probably shouldn’t pick anything that stands out too much.”

“Which are native to this planet? How am I supposed to know what stands out?” I may have sounded a little sharper than I intended, but I felt justified. A little.

“I’m not really allowed to tell you too much about the planet itself, we’re supposed to let you form your own opinions and stuff. We’re less limited than the local pantheons, but we’re not totally free, you know? Your default form would fit in ok, which is why your world feeds this one - maybe don’t stray too far from there?”

“Can I at least save this as default, so I don’t have to do it all over again?” I really did not want to have to go through all that a second time.

“If you change your race, it will maintain these settings as much as possible, and if you switch back to-” She checked her glass tablet. “Human again, it will be exactly as you see here.”

“Oh, ok. Cool. Thank you.” I turned back to the cube and started skipping through the races – there were some really strange looking races, although none as strange as some of the things I had come up with. There were also Elves, or a couple of races which looked like Elves, but they were not called anything similar in this interface. And at least one of the names did not inspire confidence – what did it take to earn the name Devourers?

After running through the list, a couple of times, I ended up settling on a race called the Ren, according to the cube. There were almost no changes to my body – the muscles changed slightly and something changed in my eyes, making them look fiercer, but it was hard to tell I was no longer human.

According to the information provided, the Ren were a rare race characterised by a tendency towards, martial combat and physical superiority. It took some fiddling but I got it to show me the changes in comparison to humans and as hard as it is was to admit, the Ren was better than humans, physically. Twice as strong and fast per pound, with significantly increased nerve conductivity and lifespans 4 or 5 times as long. It was a marked upgrade, which was shown by the cost.

During the creation of my body, a glowing ball had appeared near my body’s head, and while it was hard to tell at first, creating my monstrosities had definitely dimmed the light. Selecting this race reduced the orbs luminosity by a good 20%.

“I’ll take it!” I said with a huge grin on my face! If the people on my new world were human, or even humanish, I would have a pretty big advantage over them, even discounting whatever abilities I was about to get!

“You’re done? But you haven't selected any abilities yet! You’re going to die before you get anything done! I’m really starting to think you’re a dud again, Alex.”

“No! I mean I’m done setting up the body. I just meant that I like this race.”

“Oh, right. Never mind! Carry on!” Xiournal sounded relieved, although I did notice she had a touch of what looked like doubt on her reptilian face. I had to wonder how long she had been doing this – she had mentioned at least a decade without a candidate, but beyond that, she might never have dealt with anyone, for all I knew. She did not act like somebody who spent a lot of time around people like me.

Eager to be on my way, I shook my head and turned my attention back to the glass cube’s interface, mentally requesting to see available abilities. The list was, for all intents and purposes, endless.

“How the hell am I supposed to choose from these? Xiournal, there has to be millions of abilities here. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Well, normally we only grant agents a single ability, and after modifying their bodies, what they have available is limited by budget. You have access to more due to your expanded budget. You could probably take 3 of anything highlighted in red, 2 of what’s highlighted in green or 1 ability highlighted in violet. I’ve never actually seen the violet abilities before, so I can’t really advise, sorry! Oh, but you do get a language ability for free. We don’t want you getting yourself killed on the first day because you don’t know literally everything you say has an offensive meaning, locally. Not more than once. There’s a search function, if that helps?”

I was grateful for the free language but knew I would be standing there for a while – the gamer in me would not let me select crappy abilities, so I firmed my will and began to pour through the abilities, using the indicated search function but even so, somewhat paralysed by the choices arrayed before me.

After many, many hours, days or even weeks – it was difficult to tell with nothing to mark the passage of time. I did not feel fatigue, or hunger or thirst in all the time examined the long list. After an indeterminant ammount of time, I managed to pick out a number of choices to shortlist.

Danger Sense

React slightly ahead of events – this ability can improve, increasing the distance covered in both time and space.

Lesser Regeneration

Regenerate from almost any wound – eventually. This ability cannot bring you back from death and will not expel foreign objects.

Lucky

Fate favours you – while you may make your own luck, some will be provided.

Soul Constructs

Construct armour, weapons and mundane items out of the stuff of your soul. Destruction of these items may injure your soul in a non-permanent manner. This ability can improve, increasing the strength and optionally the scale of the items created. These items can be controlled remotely.

Greater Regeneration

Rapidly regenerate from almost any wound, in a brief timeframe. This ability cannot bring you back from death.

Flawless Coordination

Your body is able to perform any action your mind can imagine perfectly, provided your body is capable of it.

The struggle was real – the details of each choice, provided directly to my mind by the interface, made them all incredible options. It was really tough crossing Flawless Coordination off the list, but while it was without a doubt the strongest ability on my short list, without knowing more about the world I was visiting, it was too much of a risk. What if everyone was a Wizard or some other kind of caster? I was sure they would all be impressed by my parkour or guitar playing, but it is a near universal truism that you cannot punch a fireball.

My green choices provided almost limitless utility and a spectacular safety net, but an injury to my soul, even a non-permeant one was not something I thought I would want in the middle of a fight, or at all really, given there was no indication of how long a soul injury would last, or what the effects would be. Greater Regeneration almost sold me on Green on its own, but what made up my mind, was Lucky. Everyone knew that the one thing that made the heroes in stories and games heroes, was luck. And honestly, I thought Danger Sense would help with my anxiety.

I mentally selected each of my three choices and turned to Xiournal, finally done setting up the new me.

“I’m done, Xiournal. Body setup, abilities selected.”

“Wow, it usually takes agents a lot longer! Months, in some cases, just for that first set you asked about before. You must have really powered through the choices! All we have to do now is bind you into your new body and then bind your new body to my Processor here.” Xiournal held the glass tablet up for a moment before rapidly tapping her claws across its surface.

“I’m sorry, there are more -“

In the middle of my sentence, a sensation like falling inwards filled me once more with vertigo and I think I would have thrown up, if I had a stomach at that point. With a flash behind my eyes of a colour I found impossible to process, I started to feel again. While walking around as a soul, I had not been aware of the lack – of temperature, or the feeling of air circulating through me, or almost every other sensation associated with having a body. It all came rushing back at once and the thunder of my pulse filled my ears like when I was a kid, flesh tightening its grip about me as clouded glass fell away on all sides and I collapsed face first into the smooth floor.

It took me over an hour to learn to stand again – my new body felt strange and it was nothing to do with being young again, or even in being the best shape of my life. The race I had chosen, the Ren, apparently packed a lot of power into their muscles which coupled with my now faster nerve conduction meant that every move I made would send me careening about as I compensated for my new strength harder and faster than I was used to.

Xiournal, coiled atop her golden hemisphere again, was doing whatever the God-Dragon equivalent of hyperventilating was. Between gasps, she managed to get a few words out.

“It can’t even walk.” Another gasp. “It can barely think and can’t walk.”

It was at that point that I managed to both climb to my feat, and stay there.

“I’m not an it, thanks. And I can both walk and think. It’s just strange being in this body, alright? This is a really weird situation for me, maybe cut me some slack?” My voice was now a low rumble which vibrated my chest – I had always wanted a really deep voice, and now I had one. I also seemed to be reacting a little strongly – especially in comparison to what now seemed like the relatively level calm of my Soul... body... I would have to be on alert for overreacting – I wasn’t used to the endocrine system of a healthy human any more, let alone a healthy alien.

The heavy breathes came further and further apart as Xiournal calmed herself down.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault that your soul was born on a lower plane. Take some time and... learn to walk... and let me know when you’re ready to go down to the planet – I already synched your mind up with my Processor so I can provide you with missions. Take your time.”

I nodded in her direction, resisting the urge to growl and a little surprised at the apology. I decided to try and take a walk in an effort to calm down. It did take me a while, but I seemed to be getting the hang of it, as indicated by the increasingly rare faceplants.

After another couple of hours of walking, jogging, running and hopping from foot to foot, I felt like I was about as ready as I was going to be and moved back over the Xiournal’s golden seat.

“I think I’m ready to go. What’s my first job?”

“I’m really glad! And don’t worry, if I can find any tasks in my backlog that requires only the use of basic movement, I’ll send it your way while you’re still in practice... But your first assignment will be given once you’re on your new world! Bye!”

“Wait a-”

*

***

*

“-a minute!” I found myself standing at the base of a shallow hill covered in lush green grass and huge trees of a species I did not recognise. Looking around, it seemed a lot like Earth, even with the strange trees. The sky was blue, the sun looked about as right as it was possible to determine without staring and the plants were green.

I sucked in a breath of the gentle warm air and felt a rush surge through me – I was on another planet! The air smelled of warm dirt and grass, not surprisingly, but there was also the sweet scent of honeysuckle, almost.

The rush I was experiencing did not die down – I did not know if it was the body I was in or the air I was breathing but I felt fantastic. It was probably why I spent half an hour just revelling in the feeling, and the knowledge that I’d achieved my dream in a really weird way, before I came to a series of realisations:

1) I had no idea where I was.

2) I had no idea how to hunt or forage.

3) I had no water.

4) I was naked.

5) I did not know how to fight if it came down to it.

6) Xiournal may not have been quite as ditzy as she made out and may have been manipulating me.

It seemed like not having a body had really been supressing my natural tendency to overthink everything.

“Ugh, Xiournal? Where I am? Hello? How about some clothes, and supplies?” I looked up at the azure sky and tried to project my voice – I was not dumb enough to think Xiournal would actually hear me, but I hoped whatever she had done with her tablet and my brain would allow for some kind of communication.

The tablet in question popped into existence in front of my face, causing me to flinch back a step – It did not matter, the tablet followed me, staying at a fixed position in my line of site no matter how I moved.

Assignment Received... Difficulty E-… Time Limit: 15 days.

Make your way into Everwood City, locate the creator of the Grand Harvest Body Refining Pill and ensure another cannot be created.

Good Luck, Alex. Make me look good.

Bonus Reward: Do Not Kill the creator, or allow his death within the Time Limit.

“Well, thanks for that and everything, but where the shit am I? Where is Everwood City? C’mon!” There was of course, no reply. The tablet did however pop out of existence.

For a moment, I panicked – I could not remember the name of that pretentious sounding pill.

“Hey, come back! Xiournal!” Thankfully, it appeared about, right where it had been before. “OK, so I just shout at Xiournal when I want the tablet back. Fine, I have the name, go away again. Get lost.” I waved at it until it vanished, but I thought I probably had little to do with it – it seemed to be on a timer.

Looking around me again, I decided to climb the hill, hoping that I’d be able to see something from the top. Just as I was about to peak my head above the top, terror rolled over me live a wave.

I fell to my hands and knees, my heart pounding rapidly in my chest and sweat suddenly rolling off me. It was hard to breathe and there was a feeling of some vast pressure bearing down on me. I heard a whine and turned my head – behind me I saw a bright red wolf looking thing the size of a Clydesdale, with golden sparks rising off it like dander. The animal was running away.

Darkness was starting to close in around my vision, but I managed to just about hold on as I turned back to the top of the hill – the direction from which that pressure was pulsing and forced my shaking body to crawl forward.

The first thing I saw, was the top of a tower in the distance. Emerald green and a deep golden brown, the tower stretched skywards as I crested the hill, with hundreds of smaller towers crowding around its base. I saw a city stretching to the horizon, all in green and gold and browns. It was massive, bigger than any city I had visited, and beautiful. Every building seemed graceful and delicate, all surrounded by a vast wall which exuded a strength I could feel, even miles away.

The wall did not, however give off as much strength as the vast army surrounding it. The army too stretched as far as I could see, hundreds of thousands, at least – too many to count, all dressed in white and yellow. As I watched, the army pivoted in place, each member turning away from the tall walls of the city I had hoped for a moment to be Evergreen City, and towards me.

Well, not quite towards me - midway between myself and that vast army, stood two people maybe 40 feet apart from each other. One was tall and dressed all in black armour, and the other hovered a foot off the ground, and wore a white and yellow robe. I thought they were talking, but I was too far away to hear what was said.

Against every instinct I had, I crawled close to the pair, refusing to let fear rule me in second life, as incredibly stupid as that resolution seemed in the moment.

“... Again, you have no right here, Walker. The Sect of the Living Flame has business with this city! Leave or be killed! Even you cannot stand against our army!” The floating shape in the robes turned out to be a woman with strawberry blonde hair – she had a spear longer than she was tall clenched in her left hand and her face was turned town in a scowl.

Her opponent, Walker, had to stand at least 7 feet tall, and had the ears of a wolf or dog standing out from the top of his black hair and was wearing a blindfold.

“You would tell an Apex where he can or cannot tread? Your army makes you foolish, flame spitter. You may be many, but you are not infinite. Take yourselves home, before my patience ends.”

Walker’s voice was rough and deep, every word a growl. From my closer vantage, I could tell that it was from him the pressure I was feeling was coming.

“So be it. Perhaps a new Apex will rise this day?” She spat the words, rage and frustration marring her otherwise beautiful face. As the woman finished speaking, she raised her spear above her head, and brought it down to point directly at her dark opponent.

With a roar, the army surged forward in formation, and a ball of incandescent flame leapt from the end of the spear and screamed towards the unmoving man in black. He did not move until the flames were within an arm’s length of him, and then he punched it.

The flame shattered as his fist impacted it, the ragged shards of fire quickly fading from existence.

Walker said something then, though I could not hear it over the roar of thousands, and swords began to spin into existence about him, thousands upon thousands in a vast glittering swarm, blanketing the sky. All at once, the ocean of blades moved to intercept the approaching army, 4 or 5 swords for every member of what had once seemed a large army. Darting and cutting from every direction, swords of every shape imaginable, moving in ways no human could wield, rendered more than a hundred thousand people into meat in seconds.

The world was silent, apart from my pulse and ragged breath as I stared at the carnage arrayed before me, and in that moment, I made a second resolution firmer and more unbreakable than any I had ever sworn to: Do not piss that guy off.

The leader of the now fallen army alighted slowly and turned to survey the bloody waste, falling to her knees and speaking, with horror in her voice.

“H-how is this possible?” Turning to look back at the living catastrophe, I saw tears rolling down her cheeks and confidence clearly broken.

“You’ve never seen an Apex fight, and yet you challenged me so easily? You should be more mindful of the meaning of strength before making threats, little flame bringer. Just because you are stronger than many is no excuse destroy a city. Your Sect has suffered much for your hubris, and for what? Your own arrogance and a single pill? Would it have been worth the price of the millions of lives in Evergreen City? Is it worth this price? Go now, I grant you life to make clear to all you meet that there will be a price to pay for any who come to slaughter innocents in the name of advancement. There will be no more warnings.” His voice held rage and disgust in equal measure, and I hoped the robed woman would take his advice and leave.

She stood then, slowly using the spear to prop herself up, and with a shaking voice edged with rage, she spoke one last time.

“I will go, but know this, Apex of the Infinite Blades: One day I will be strong enough to repay this debt, and I swear it will not be paid swiftly.” I flinched at the threat, expecting blades to spin out of nowhere and eviscerate the woman, but nothing happened.

"I will be waitng." The terrible pressure rolling off him faded in a moment and was gone - I breathed in a deep sigh of relief and began to bring my heartrate under control.

The broken leader of the sect in white and yellow stood a moment facing the Apex, chin high and daring, before with a flare of heat I could feel from where I crouched, she lifted into the air and sped off out of sight, a trail of flame glowing faintly behind her.

“Come here, Nadir.” I looked back at the tall terror to see who he was talking to now, only to find him facing me. I froze, staring directly into the strip of cloth covering his eyes. After a moment, his hand rose and he crooked a finger my way – remembering my resolution, I scrambled to my feet, forgetting my nudity and walked stiffly towards him, until I was 10 feet or so away.

As I stood before him, I noted his features were mostly human, other than the ears, but with a slight feral cast – the difference was subtle, and reminded me of the changes to my own face when I had altered my race. He was wearing a frown as he appeared to look me up and down, and I wondered how he could see with the band covering his eyes.

“Why are you here, Nadir? There is no sanctuary within ten thousand miles of his place, you are an impossible anomaly.”

“Ugh, I was sort of sent here – I just arrived, a few minutes ago, on the other side of the hill. Not to be rude, why do you keep calling me Nadir? Ugh, Sir?” I raised arm and pointed at the hill I had climbed over, and raised my eyebrows in question at him.

“You are beyond childhood, and yet your strength has not progressed. You are Nadir. Is your mind as addled as your spirit, boy? To have lived so long, so weak, you must have been raised in a sanctuary, knowing what you are?”

It was a moment before I could process the fact that I had just been told I was as weak as a child – which did not bode well for my chances.

“It’s hard to explain, but let’s just say I’m from really far away, and where I’m from we don’t do... whatever it is you do... to get as strong as you.” I did not know if the locals knew about Ascended and their agents, or even about planes and all the rest, but I figured that this was more believable.

“I see clearly your lies, but I also see that it has been too long since you were cleansed by the River to look as young as you do, with the Experience held within you. There is a simple test, however.”

Holding up his dark hand, Walker took in a deep breath and a gold and silver wave of light rose from the bodies of the recently dead army and swept into his grip, compressing into a ball like a miniature sun, almost blinding in front of me. Reaching up with his other hand, he places his thumb and forefinger within the light, and pulled a much smaller ball out of it.

Before I could react, the hand holding the smaller of the balls blurred towards me, slapping into my chest with a flash. The sensation was indescribable – every sense was turned up to 11 and everything around me looked, felt and smelled more real. Most of all, I felt something swirling inside of me, like the rush of my arrival turned up by a factor of thousands.

I fell to the ground, convulsing as that rushing energy soaked into me and for one sweet moment I experienced true happiness, before darkness finally succeeded dragging me down.

*

***

*

I woke up again in the dark, a warm fire beside me. Sitting up quickly, I looked around, spotting Walker sat cross legged across the fire from me.

“You are interesting, Nadir. You successfully integrated the Experience I gave you, though only just. You are indeed an impossibility. Even should you be from a place and people absent the cultivation of Experience, you should have passively absorbed enough by now to at least form a Focus. Yet here you are, as empty as any child.”

I felt great, and if I kept feeling this good, or better, would cultivate whatever the hell he said I should.

“I was really telling the truth, before. I’m from a place where there is no Experience – I mean, there’s experience, but there’s no capitalisation. What is that, by the way?”

“Experience is what it sounds like – the act of experiencing the world. Experiencing the world generates energy. When you breathe in the air, and truly stop to feel it, the act of Experiencing the air generates energy. When you raise a crop – mindfully – you do the same. All acts when truly lived generate this energy, and it makes us stronger. It is a fundamental part of life, wherever there is life. There exist those with crippled souls, who can Experience the world, but cannot retain the energy generated – they are the Nadir until the day they die and are washed clean in the River of Souls.”

“Well, whatever it is, it feels pretty awesome. How did you pull it out of the... dead? Is it their Experience?”

“Correct, at least a part of it. When you die, your soul returns to the River of Souls and is washed clean of Experience to start anew, but a portion is left behind – the small portion used to directly strengthen the body, rather than the soul. I collected this energy, and pushed a tiny part of it into you – about the same amount as a child of 10. You will need to cultivate Experience quickly, if you expect to walk the world and survive.”

“Could you not give me the rest of the ball you collected? There was a lot of them, wouldn’t it, I don’t know, catch me up? Or did you... cultivate that, already?” I was pushing a little, hoping my Danger Sense would warn me before I said anything too dangerous.

“There was too much energy there for somebody without a Core and working circulation system. Without even a focus, you would have been returned to the River in moments, boy. I donated the excess to the City, but even if I had not, it was too much for you to cultivate. You’ll need to catch up the old-fashioned way – pills and hard work.”

It was a hard thing to grasp – I had fashioned my body to the peak of human potential, and then beyond by switching my race from human to Ren. Maybe I was stronger than my soul would suggest?

“Ugh, sir, I’m considered very strong where I’m from, perhaps I’m stronger than my soul looks?”

He considered me for a moment before picking a palm sized rock up off the ground nearby, and tossing it to me.

“ Call me Walker. Now, break the rock in your hand.” I looked at the rock in my hand considered trying – I was pretty sure my new body could put out enough force to do it, though it might take some adrenaline, but I was not about to just not try in front of my apparent saviour

I wrapped fingers around the rock and began to bear down on it with all the power I could muster. A moment passed, and then two before I started feeling a shifting in my hand, I grinned and it was a moment more before pain flared in my hand and I realised it was my hand about to break, not the rock.

“I think I have the power to break it, but the rock is harder than my hand, so my hand would break first.”

Walker nodded and gestured for me to toss the rock back, which I did, shaking my hand afterwards, the pain fading. With the rock now in hand again, Walker simply closed his hand around it and it exploded into splinters and dust, without even a split-second of resistance.

“You may be strong, for somebody at your level, but you must remember, your level is still close to the Nadir. Almost everyone you meet until you can cultivate enough Experience to catch up, will be beyond you. You must stay conscious of the relative strength of you and those you may face. Once you have your Focus, I will teach you to feel it.”

It sounded like he was willing to teach me, which was something I was incredibly grateful for. He would help me get stronger, and in the meantime, who was going to – successfully - mess with somebody who sounded like they were at the top of the Foodchain. Hopefully.

“You’ve mentioned Focus a few times now, what is that?”

“Later. For now, you must learn to cultivate. Breathe boy, but this time, with feeling.”