Jonathan supposed that there had to be a first time for everything. Even dying had a first time, it would seem. Maybe he was in heaven. The humorous thought crossed his mind as he felt himself return to consciousness. He had always been a Christian since the time he was small. Being brought up in a strict, conservative household; God was just kind of something that he had always done.

Later, when he was an infantry commander in the Marine Corps, his faith was renewed as the adage “there are no atheists on the battlefield,” seemed especially poignant in the winding, bloodstained streets of Iraq. At that point in his life, he was sure that heaven would be waiting for him. After all, God wouldn’t send him to hell when he had already been there.

After a time in politics, Jonathan knew there would be no place for him in heaven. What was it that Harvey Dent had said? “Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain?” In a politician’s first term, they all thought they were the hero. Jonathan had no such self-deceptions. He enjoyed the battle and power. Or at least, he didn’t enjoy the feeling of being powerless. So if this wasn’t heaven, then what was it?

There was a population of people who thought that all things in life were material. Consciousness was simply the travel of electrical signals across neurons in the brain. Intellectual elites would scoff at the idea of a soul, magic, or the supernatural. Jon wasn’t sure how he knew he was conscious, that was as of yet, an unexplainable concept for the living. But a kind of magic did carry on after that bullet to the chest had robbed him of life. There were no neurons to carry a current. He had no eyes to open, no limbs to move, and no senses to rely upon. Objectively, it was a terrifying experience. Yet, he existed. He hadn’t realized how comforting the sound of his own heartbeat or the steady inhale and exhale of his breath could be until he found himself bereft of those sensations.

When those things were stripped from him, all that existed was an endless darkness.

All that was left was one’s thoughts, and the self-reflections of a life lived. Jonathan didn’t like what he saw there. This obsidian dream was as deep and unknowable as the question of life itself.

Eventually, a heavenly luminescence did appear, and Jon found himself in the tenebrous vacuum of space. Populating the emptiness lived a bounty of stars, planets, and all manner of celestial bodies.

It was a sublime and humbling experience to witness, the grandiosity of the universe and to know how small one’s place in it. In comparison to the vastness of heaven, being president of a nation on a tiny rock didn’t seem so exceptional. His mind had no hope of comprehending the complete splendor of his surroundings. There was no anchor, no planet to connect himself to. He simply drifted in the endless complexity of the universe.

For someone like Jon, whose entire life experience had been built around his own ego, the vastness of space held its own kind fear. At least it’s something. Jon reflected. Anything was better than death. He was unsure of how long he spent in the place without time and substance, but he didn’t want to go back. At least here, he could watch the celestial forms of the cosmos dance in their circular orbits. He observed the universe around him without eyes and basked in the beauty of its austerity.

To pass through this realm to the next, he would need to be remade. For too long, he had been unaccountable to anything but his own desires. He had forgotten what it was to truly live. Life was agonizing. It was the pain of lost love, the jealous burn of a lover scorned, and the icy derision of his father. It was the knowledge of a best friend’s betrayal, the death of an unborn sibling, and the wasting frailty of elderly parents all at once. These were bitter brews that made the rest of life taste sweet.

As Jon’s spirit was flayed by the tragedies of life, Jon was sure that this must be hell. His pastors had gotten it all wrong. Hell was not a place of warmth and fire, it was the cold and hungry shadows that are ever-present between the light. The soul is timeless. One simply needed to turn from the warmth of a life well-lived to find themselves in eternal torment. Like a simple creature, Jon could not fathom why he was suffering. It had started with no warning, and it continued with no context. Like a beaten beast, he cried for succor.

Yes, this is hell. The acknowledgment of this experience as hell brought a measure of relief to Jon.

Through the grief and fear, at least the realm of pain was something that fit within his worldview: It was context. Pain without a frame of reference is madness. This place would surely drive any reasonable person mad. He could only track the sands of the hourglass by the way that he was slowly getting used to his burden.

The ice didn’t seem so chilling, and the knifelike pain didn’t seem so profound. Jon thought, perhaps insanity is finally claiming my soul. The realization was a pleasant one considering the circumstances.

A part of him hoped that a real death awaited him. While another clung to life with whitened knuckles.

The endlessness which he had spent in this form, had made him infinitely tired. Shaken from his maudlin thoughts, he noticed a star seemed to be approaching him from a vast distance. Jon supposed that it could be a trick of perspective. It was hard to tell the size and position in reality without measurement. Perhaps the star was merely growing. Something in the depths of his being— maybe it was a helpless hope, the same faith that clung to his life, such that it was—informed him of the star’s movement.

As it drifted closer, the light began to burn Jon. It was like holding an ember with winter-chilled hands. What should have been a comforting balm, instead became an unbearable burden. His soul had almost become used to the iciness of space, and now the gentle warmth began to slowly increase in intensity until he felt as if his very soul were alight. He screamed endlessly in the depths of his own soul as the burning ripped its way through him.

If the ice were a parade of pain and cold, this warmth would become a bonfire of emotion. The presence that molded him filled him with her holy essence. These flames scourged his heart, cleansed it of taint, and filled it with the desire for victory on the battlefield and conquest of a nation. It bundled pride, tribalism, and righteous anger into an indomitable will. It was courage and belief in the individual as part of a collective.

It was the antithesis of the arctic chill that had taken hold of his being before and his fundamental essence split at the seams. As the star neared him, the light passed over and through him until his world was only the harsh whiteness that endlessly scalded.

Jonathan remained ignorant of the purpose behind this process. The ice and the fire had thoroughly broken the proud politician. He would have done anything to make the pain stop. He simply wanted to live again. This afterlife of ice and fire was nothing like the heaven and hell of his faith. Any lesser human would’ve died long ago and faded into the obscurity of the Beyond. All who died would eventually reach the Beyond, a final resting place for the departed soul. Jon had simply refused to go and had been selected by an immortal who found use in the strength of will he possessed. For what she had in mind, he would need every bit of it.

The deity that put him through her trials, idly decided it was time to reveal herself to her future servant. Only now, would he be receptive to her wiles and bend to her will with pliant acceptance. A voice reminiscent of thunder resounded through the realm of light. “Jonathan. It is I, your Lord, that has delivered you from your flesh and brought you here to my realm of light and fire.”

Jon had never read in the bible about a realm of light and fire. Heaven was supposed to be made of light, and hell was supposed to be made of fire. He was dazed from his experiences. The voice answered his unasked question. “There are a great many things that your world has gotten wrong. However, there is only one thing that you need to be concerned about.”

The voice paused. “I have need of you, Jonathan. Not in your world but in another. You have earned your place as the most powerful man in your world. You were a warrior and a leader. In pursuit of your goals, you have done terrible things. I require those terrible inclinations now. You will become my Scourge. You will be the tool that I use to remake another world and bring it back into my grasp.

Still confused, Jonathan thought about what the Lord had said after the infinite slowness of his torture, events were moving too quickly for him to comprehend. He asked the first question that came to mind. Had he been in control of his former faculties, he would’ve have cursed himself. “Lord, why me? Why not use your own powers to bring about your will?”

The voice thundered, and Jonathan sensed that he had angered the ubiquitous presence. “Evil has barred me from this world. You will have to play by its rules to be successful in your new capacity. Once I place you in the realm. I will not be able to assist you. You will have to use your cunning, your strength—and yes—even your cruelty to be successful.

“If you fail me, I will return you to the Between where you will wait in icy purgatory in perpetuity, cursed to never reach the peaceful retirement of the Beyond. You will be tortuously aware of your existence the entire time as a punishment for your sins. Salvation and life can only be found in your success.”

Jonathan did not believe that this presence was the loving God of his faith. However, he did believe in the punishment. He had already experienced it, and he would do anything to avoid that fate. Even now, he was a practical person. Frankly, he also did not want to be dead. He didn’t care if some force of nature wanted him to scourge a place he had never visited in a realm that wasn’t his own.

In his lifetime he had done far worse to people who looked just like him in cities that could’ve been his hometown if not for an accident of birth. If this force was going to offer him a way to live, then he was going to take it. He couldn’t accept the possibility of merely giving up to die.

The force rumbled in approval. “You’re learning. Good. You’ll need to evolve in this new world or die. Those are your only options.”

The light began to fade quickly, leaving Jon in absolute darkness. Not even the stars could break the inky silence. With one last thunderous declaration, Jon could sense his newfound God leaving him.

“Welcome to Somnium.”

The darkness did not completely recede as a different series of sensations pressed upon Jon. First, he realized that he could not hear, taste, or see. At least, not in the traditional way. The world around him was strange as shapes and figures were revealed to him as a series of reflections. He imagined that this is what echolocation must look like.

The difference as far as he could surmise, was that some items in his field of view gave off better reflections than some. Small insects and some plants had more vibrant reverberations than things like stones or trees. As automatically as his own breathing, he felt a series of waves extend from his body.

They originated from two small pits above his mouth, just under where his eyes would be if they existed. When they hit something like a tree, of which there were many around him, a resonance of sorts was generated. This phenomenon manifested itself as a blue-white outline of the world around him.

His “vision” as it were, only extended fifteen feet or so in every direction around him. He realized that he did not need to turn or move to “see” the terrain around him. At first, the sensation gave him vertigo, but it quickly became to feel natural. Once the feeling of nausea passed, Jon realized that he could see the area around him in more detail than his conventional vision could ever hope to collect.

It wasn’t that he could distinguish the striations in the wood around him or the faceted wings of buzzing insects. It was the fact that he could see everything at once. He could determine the outside edges of objects with incredible accuracy, and seeing behind a tree was just as easy as seeing in front of it.

He accomplished this by having the ability to see the world around him in layers. It was a simple matter to see an unusually bright object behind the tree by removing the tree from his vision while remaining aware of its presence. His mind was easily and naturally able to accomplish the task. However, seeing into the center of the tree simply wasn’t possible, and Jon surmised this was because his senses couldn’t actually penetrate the tree itself.

Every breeze that blew through the vegetation around him caused his attention to dart there with laser-like intensity. This happened simultaneously all around him, and Jon never felt as if he had missed anything of importance. What was more interesting to Jon was the fact that he could comprehend and pay attention to most, if not all, of the minor movements around him. As soon as he was able to determine that the activity wasn’t prey, it ceased to be consequential.

Jon mentally paused at this realization. This was the type of sense that was built for a predator. He attempted to focus his vision on himself and was pleased to discover that he could study his own body in great detail. He was stunned to learn that he had no arms, no legs, nor anything resembling his human form. He looked similar to a snake.

Well, not exactly. He was about six feet long and about the width of a human wrist at his fullest point. Using his senses, he could see that he had a variety of organs that pulsed with blue light more vibrant than anything he could sense in his immediate vicinity. Unfortunately, his vision did not reward him with any knowledge of what these organs were supposed to do.

Physically, his hide consisted of dirt-colored, soft, delicate scales that fit together smoothly. They were more sizeable on the top of his body and got smaller until they were almost indiscernible on the underside of his body. Looking closely, he observed that each of the scales were covered in tiny, nearly invisible ridges. The overall effect gave it the consistency of sandpaper. He couldn’t be sure, but he intimated that this was a method of attacking with his body. The ridges looked small enough that they could be used to slough off the flesh of enemies. With a bit of focus, he realized that his new senses could actually penetrate his body beyond the bright blue-white organs and study the structure beneath.

His skeletal and muscular structure resembled that of a snake as well. However, his bones weren’t very dense, and he didn’t have any of the traits that could be used to house sensory organs like a nose or eyes. Studying his body, outside of his skin, he couldn’t find any offensive features at all; no fangs, no claws, no stingers, no anything. How was he supposed to defend himself as this six-foot-long piece of rope? His mouth was soft, and his scales were flexible and weak. The only redeeming factor seemed to be the sharpness of its edges. He looked as if one good stomp would send him back to the hell that he had been retrieved from.

With little thought, he slithered along the ground for a small distance. He was relieved to learn that he had a highly attuned sense of touch. He could feel even the subtlest differences in the soil beneath him. An exploratory darting of his snake-like tongue made him realize that he didn’t have a sense of taste or a sense of smell. It was a fact that saddened Jon. In his past life, he used to enjoy exquisite dinners and liquors, and now he would have to forget that. Even his incredible sight, as fascinating as it was, couldn’t cheer him up.

Jon realized that he needed to collect more information about what he was, where he was, what he needed to do, and to create a plan. The first step was observation. Ideally, he would gain a higher vantage point and figure out what to do next. Satisfied with making a decision, he began to move toward the tree in front of him. He soon realized that he could travel far faster than he originally estimated. The tiny ridges in his scales acted like the tread on a tire and gripped the soil around him. When he flexed and moved his muscles, he rocketed across the forest floor.

A few seconds later he felt his body slide over a small bump in the ground. The jolt threw him off balance as it plunged out of the earth. The abrupt change in direction startled Jon, but he quickly righted himself, coiling himself instinctively into a defensive position. He extended his upper body, and a snarling hiss came from his mouth. The entire adrenaline-driven movement took less than a second. Automatically, Jon tried to use his senses to identify what had attacked him.

As he focused his sight on the attacker, he realized that he could see lines of blue-white veins that extended into a core about the size of a small marble still buried beneath the earth. Relaxing his vision, it became more like sonar or echolocation again.

What he saw made him shudder. Eight long and hairy legs were ascending from the small hole. It turned out that the little bump Jon had slid over was, in fact, the hidden head of a hulking spider. Jon usually didn’t have a problem with spiders. Many times, he had admonished his daughter that they were useful creatures.

In some ways, Jon saw some of himself in their essential role in the universe. A spider was meant to eat the less desirable insects in the garden. It laboriously created an intricate web to trap those less evolved than itself. Overall, it wasn’t a very honorable creature, but it had a noble occupation. This was something that Jon empathized with himself.

Something was odd about this particular spider. Well, something more bizarre than the fact that it was more than half the size of Jon himself. If Jon had still been human, the size of the creature alone would have been nightmare-inducing.

As it was, Jon felt the slight edge of panic that the mind produced to keep the body alive in combat. It had been a while since Jon had felt this kind of fire in his veins. As Jon studied it, the spider wobbled drunkenly as it attempted to right its many legs. It seems to be having a difficult time focusing on Jon even though he was only half a meter or so from the creature. It’s a multitude of eyes spun in various directions. The two directly in front of its head couldn’t seem to hold still as they slightly vibrated, trying to lock onto Jon’s exact position.

Besides its drunken behavior, this spider was like no spider that Jon had seen on Earth. First, the size of it would terrify humans to the point that they would probably burn down the whole forest just to make sure they had killed this one creature. Second, the spider seemed to be part arachnid and part stone. The abdomen and head of the spider looked like basalt had been fused into the carapace. The legs themselves looked like pieces of polished stone stacked together. If Jon’s life hadn’t been in immediate peril, he would have been fascinated at the amalgamation of creature and rock.

As it stumbled drunkenly towards Jon, he decided that he didn’t want to wait for the creature to snap out of what fugue it had found itself in. Launching himself forward, he tried to bite down on the leg closest to him. The resounding crunch of his soft mouth closing on the stone made him curse.

Fuck! That hurt. What the hell is wrong with this body?!

Jon quickly backed away from the spider who halfheartedly tried to bite him with its oversized mandibles. Thinking rapidly, Jon launched himself at the spider that was almost as large as he was and tried wrapping his body around it like a python from earth would try to do. He found that the same traction provided by his hide also worked on the spider. With a bit of thought, the ridges on his body slightly extended, and he realized that he had a measure of control over this natural weapon.

A horrible screeching sound came from his scales cutting against the stone legs of the spider. It wasn’t very effective in removing any of the limbs from the spider. His exterior was still soft and flexed instead of remaining rigid when pressed against the body of his opponent. He did succeed in trapping the spider and coiling around its significant bulk. Some of the legs broke simply from the awkward angle Jon had caught them in.

Jon thought that the spider would begin to fight more, but the opposite was happening. As Jon wrapped himself around the spider, it began to struggle less. After a few moments of Jon holding on for dear life, the spider had stopped moving altogether. Confused, Jon relaxed his coils until the spider dropped to the ground in an awkward sprawl. He nudged the spider with his nose, and there was no response. The unexacting victory actually put Jon in an awkward position.

He was happy that he was able to win his first fight in his new body, but he wasn’t sure what he should do with it. Leaving the body here could attract larger predators that would make simple work of a creature like him. Additionally, Jon didn’t know if he would be able to kill anything like the spider again and would likely need this body for sustenance.

As Jon thought about the problem, he positioned himself until he could rest his chin on his tail like a human in a classic thinking pose. Any onlookers would have seen a small snake-like creature tugging on its jaw as if it had a beard. The pose was comical, but Jon didn’t seem to notice the remnant gesture from his old life. He decided to try eating the spider. At first thought, the idea was crazy. To his critics, Jon would note the fact that being transported into the body of a snake in a new world was also patently insane.

He had logical reasons for his decision. He didn’t have a sense of taste, so it shouldn’t be all that bad to try eating the spider. The stone parts of the spider would likely be inedible, but the innards could be nutritious and who knew when another meal would present itself. At least, these were the reasons he used to try and convince himself that eating a spider wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Summoning up the courage, Jon slithered closer to the spider and tentatively placed his mouth on the head up the spider. After that, he gummed on the head of the spider, like an infant with a teething toy. He noticed that while he couldn’t break off any pieces of the spider, he realized that some form of saliva was being generated in his mouth. After only a couple seconds a sizzling sound could be heard from the spider. Jon drew back a little to study the effect.

Excellent! My saliva is acidic! It’s tearing down the spider. He crowed in his head. Even the stone is starting to melt into a liquid. THIS must be how this snake eats.

Drawing closer, Jon went to tentatively lick the spider head and instead, a small organ shaped like a straw, extended from beneath his tongue. It seemed that his tongue served dual purposes as both a potential sensory organ and proboscis similar to that of a mosquito.

The organ seemed to stick to the underside of his forked tongue, and he was able to use his tongue to guide the small organ until he began to suck up the dissolved spider, like a thick milkshake through a straw. Feeling inspired by this revelation, Jon wondered if he could weaponize his acid saliva.

Drawing back once more, he tried to launch the spit like he would if he were a human. As he tried to do so, two membranes in the top of his mouth opened and acid was launched from the orifices. With a bit of study, Jon could see that these membranes connected to two organs within his skull that Jon had previously identified with his vision. The spit landed on the spider and immediately began to hiss.

Congratulations! You have slain a level 5 Giant Stone Spider. You have been awarded 200 experience.

Jon did a little snake-shaped dance. He wasn’t quite sure what experience could be used for but all of a sudden, the world was looking a lot more positive. Now he just needed to eat. Jon chowed down on his liquid diet with fervor. He couldn’t taste what he was drinking, but it didn’t much matter. He wasn’t sure that tasting the liquified remains of a spider appealed to him very much. He had once eaten a cricket after a dare and the struggling, unfamiliar creature in his mouth had been vomit-inducing. At least this bug was clearly dead. He just had to pretend it was a protein shake. After a few moments, another system message crossed his vision:

Congratulations! You have consumed a Giant Stone Spider! You have been awarded 1 biomass.

Jon stopped eating, in shock. The message was in the bottom corner of his vision like a chat log in a video game. After a few moments, the message disappeared.

Wait, come back! Jon thought. As if summoned, the message returned to its previous state. Jon’s mind worked overtime to consider the ramifications of what had just happened. He wasn’t completely familiar with videogames. It had never been something that he had been interested in. Maybe it was his generation or his lifestyle, but he had always believed that people who play videogames simply did so because they couldn’t accomplish anything in their actual lives. It was a sort of fantasy escapism that Jon attributed to a lack of motivation.

It wasn’t until his daughter, Autumn, had started playing massive multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft that Jon began to see the value. He had always lived a high profile life, and his daughter had suffered the brunt of that exposure. Being online had allowed her to pretend to be a different person and make friendships that were outside the strictly regimented realm of politics. Once he realized that these relationships made her feel just as fulfilled, if not more so than the ones in real life, Jon decided that he should make it a priority to understand where she was coming from, even if just from a safety perspective.

As a result of his diligence, he had learned the basics of the games that she had loved to play. He didn’t embed himself any further for fear of becoming the kind of dad that embarrassed his kid because he wanted so badly to relate. Instead, he just asked Autumn questions about it and allowed her to show him on her own terms.

The messages that had appeared in his vision brought up a host of questions. Even more so, the way that it was presented hinted more to its function than the message itself. He wasn’t sure what the context of experience or biomass meant. He wasn’t sure if it was significant that he had one. But the fact that he could use his mind to control the game-like interface was more important than anything else that had happened in this world so far.

What had God said to him? That he would need to evolve to survive in this world. At the time, Jon had merely taken it as an odd form of phrasing, but perhaps it needed more consideration. What if God meant that he would actually need to evolve his physical body? If that was the case, then Jon would need to be exceedingly careful about how to develop so that he wouldn’t make any mistakes that would affect his long term goals.

After all, his true long-term goal was to survive for as long as possible, and it looked like the way to do that was performing as he was told. What that meant precisely, John wasn’t sure. The first step was mastering his interface and then figuring out if everyone else in this world operated by the same rules. If he could figure out the rules to this game, he could win it. He was sure about that fact. Competition was what he was born for.

Finding his resolve, Jon paused in the act of eating to try and control other common aspects of a videogame. He had already discovered that it was mentally controllable. Now he just had to see what was available to control.

Status. He thought.

A large screen appeared in his vision.

Jon was astounded at the new information presented to him. He discovered that if he focused on a particular subject that a description for each one would appear in his vision. Looking at his information, most of the things were pretty standard in games that he had learned about. The items of particular interest to him were his faction and race.

It seems that the Lord wasn’t kidding when he said I would be her Scourge. Who knew deities take such things literally. He mused.

Jon figured that this was the first step in unlocking the reason he was here. If he was to be the beginning of a new faction, then he would need to evolve his abilities intelligently. The mutations portion of his status made sense after his fight with the stone spider. These were inherent qualities of his current form. The acid was self-explanatory. Additionally, if he had a paralytic hide that must mean that it excreted some sort of substance that paralyzed the spider.

It must have been extremely potent if just brushing the spider caused the spider to become affected. Mana vision was the most unfamiliar term, but there was an Earthly equivalent in some animals. Jon knew that sharks, fish, and platypuses could sense the electric current of other creatures. It didn’t work in the air because the air couldn’t conduct an electrical charge, but if mana was a form of energy that was all around this world, then mana vision was a hugely beneficial evolutionary adaptation.

Satisfied, Jon considered his status in its totality. It seemed to Jon that he was some sort of ambush hunter. The hide would be extremely useful on someone unaware he was there, the acid spit would be helpful for an ambush, and the sharpness of his skin would be useful for straight-up combat. He realized that he wasn’t quite as helpless as he had thought. The problem was that he was a six-foot-long-snake thing and there’s no way he could start a movement on this world that will give God what she wanted.

I’m missing a piece of the puzzle, he mused. Right now, my best bet would be to continue attacking creatures within this forest in the hopes that I can unlock more of my strength and find the missing link between this body and the form I am going to have to take to conquer this world. Feeling better now that he had a plan, Jon went back to finish his spider meal.