Sitting on the cold stone of the pristine floor, I swallowed as I looked up at the Goddess. Her face betrayed nothing, and more than a little fear ran through me. How someone could look so unthreatening and still be so evidently powerful… I couldn’t shake the sight of her waving her hand and the small group I’d known for such a short time disappearing.

Building my courage, I managed to ask, “What did you mean, fix me?”

She smiled at me as I spoke, before gesturing broadly at my legs. “I don’t know if you've noticed, but as you are, you’re not exactly hero material. I’m going to have to fix up your body. I will not have one of my heroes so crippled,” She paused for a moment, “It would look bad on me.”

I forced myself to ignore the sudden flood of anger at her blasé attitude towards the condition I’d lived with for years. “And.. how exactly are you going to do that?”

“Oh, like this!”

“Wait -” I barely managed to get out before she waved her hand again, and searing pain surged through my body. I felt like every cell in my body was immersed in a bonfire, as though my very essence was aflame. If I wasn’t screaming in pain, I would have heard horrific squelching noises as my body's flesh shifted and changed.

I had no idea how long I spent writhing on the floor, crying out for mercy. When the pain finally faded, I simply lay there, panting for breath. I could only barely hear the whispered words of Yuilana, but they did the opposite of reassure me.

“Oh well.. If you didn’t like that, you really won’t like the next part…”

I forced myself up to look at her, but before words could leave my mouth, I froze in place. I’d just… lifted myself up with one arm, easily. I twitched for a second before turning to look down at myself. I couldn’t even recognize my own body.

My arms that were normally painfully thin, were now filled out and had muscle. Nothing massive, but definitely there. My legs were no longer the weak things they were, but instead looked and felt strong, like they could support my weight and let me stand again. More than anything, my whole body had lost it’s emaciated look. I was still thin, but now it was due more to my natural build than to genetic disorders.

Almost in a trance-like state, I began to slowly push myself up. I moved painfully slowly, expecting at each stage for my limbs to fail me, but they didn’t. I rose to my feet, and even the extreme pain I’d felt just moments ago, even having experienced death, it did nothing to stop a grin from splitting across my face.

Laughter began bubbling up in my chest, spilling out of me uncontrollably as I felt my new body. For a short time, I forgot all about my situation as I flexed every muscle I could and marveled at standing and walking about again.

Before long though, Yuilana cleared her throat loudly, forcing my attention back to her. “I.. I don’t even know what to say.. Thank you, thank you so much..” I said, trying to keep myself from crying suddenly as the realization that I was truly fixed swept through me.

Yuilana only rolled her eyes at me, “I wouldn’t thank me yet. I had to expend more power than I thought by grabbing you as injured as you were, and then fixing you.”

I hesitated to ask, “If you’re a Goddess then..”

“Yes, I do have more than enough to actually do whatever the hell I wanted with you all, but this isn’t exactly the most important thing to me. I decided to only devote so much power to this, since I need a lot for other things that are taking up most of my attention.”

I nodded at that, quickly tempering my overwhelming gratitude by reminding myself that she really just saw this as an obligation and publicity stunt.

“Now, I was gonna just make all five of you just appear in my cathedral in the Capital of the Hierarchy, and that is exactly what I did with the others. You unfortunately.. I don’t exactly have the power left to do that with you…”

I blinked. “But then.. How am I going to.. What?” I started speaking before interrupting myself.

She shrugged, “I’m going to have to go old school with you. I’m just gonna.. Throw you at the planet.”

I felt my jaw drop and my arms sag. “Ex- excuse me?! What do you mean you’re just gonna throw me at the planet?!” I waved my arms wildly before stopping. I hadn’t realized I’d gotten that used to my new body that fast…

“Well, I’m gonna spit you out in the easiest spot, and then just.. Throw you. I’ll put a little something on you to make sure you survive the trip, but unfortunately… If I tried to do a full protective enchantment, it’d probably run out of power and you’d die before you got there.”

My eye twitched.

“So you’ll probably feel it all. It’s probably going to be extremely unpleasant.” She nodded and smiled like she hadn’t just talked about throwing me at a planet as a cheaper form of travel than teleportation.

“I don’t know if this is such a good idea..” I tried to reason with her, thinking rapidly of different reasons not to throw me like a goddamn baseball at the planet.

“Oh, it’s definitely not! But it should work, so off you go!” She spoke so cheerfully I almost didn’t realize what she was saying. A moment before I would have started to speak, I suddenly felt like I was slammed into the ocean.

A sharp, initial impact that broke under my weight, followed by an omnipresent weight. As I felt this, I watched as the spotless white room I had been in both evaporated and disintegrated around me. I was plunged into black roiling void at the exact same time I felt myself being plunged into a water-like substance.

I felt currents pressing against me, trying to push me in varying directions. Through it all though, I felt a steady, unrelenting push in a particular direction, as though being guided. Despite my flailing, I couldn’t seem to affect the direction I was being pushed in, and so I had no choice but to hope that the force guiding me was the Goddess that I had left behind, because at least she has a reason to want me to live through this.

There was a split second where I reflected on my lack of panic and stunning calm in the face of the many strange events that had happened since I died. I decided to chalk it up to being in shock.

After perhaps a minute of being thrust through this… material, there was a terrible ripping and tearing noise. For a moment, I saw ahead of me a gash in the roiling black around me. In the next moment, I was pushed through and into the otherside. The feeling of passing through felt strangely reassuring, as if I knew without knowing that I was emerging into a place I was meant to be, as if that sea of void was not meant for a being such as me to exist in it.

Before I even had time to recognize what was on the other side of the gash in what I assumed to be reality, I was thrust through into the other side. Immediately, I felt the most piercing cold and the most searing heat explode across my body. My flesh seemed to want to both implode and explode, wanting to tear itself apart. I knew that only the force that was guiding my movement was keeping me alive.

Whenever I could manage to keep my eyes open through the pain, I saw what seemed to be masses of mist, that existed in every direction as far as my eyes could see. When even the mist began cutting against my skin, I realized the force guiding me was pushing me faster and faster, accelerating me along a straight path. Melting heat, freezing cold, and cutting mists were all I knew for some time. My ability to judge the time it took to emerge from the mists faded as the overwhelming pain washed through me. All I could tell, was that the force guiding me never let up, and never stopped accelerating me.

With no fanfare, with no warning signs, I suddenly emerged from the edge of the mist cloud. Looking back, I caught a glimpse of it, and it was truly massive. For a long, long moment, I couldn’t understand how it could be so large. That was until I looked forward.

I was in space. A star lay directly in front of me, it’s brilliance shining across everything I could see. I could glimpse hints of what I thought might be planets around the star, but nothing was remotely close to as enthralling as seeing a star like this. The sight even managed to cut through the ever present pain I now understood the source of.

It wasn’t long though, until the pain returned, and even the sight of such beauty couldn’t help. Dimly, somewhere in my mind, I knew that Yuilana’s power must be responsible for keeping me alive, and for keeping me from going blind when I looked at the star.

I'd lost track of time, when I finally realized that I was slowly growing used to the pain. It didn't lessen, so much as I simply started to be able to push past it. Instead of being entirely rendered insensate, I was hampered.

Not long after, did I realize two things, very quickly. One, Yuilana's power was still accelerating me in a straight line, and I was traveling fast. Very, very fast. So fast I was sure that without her protection, I would have disintegrated from it in less than a millisecond. The second thing I realized was that the direction I was being accelerated towards, led me on a direct collision path with the star. And it was getting larger.

I struggled to speak, trying desperately to scream for the force to stop, or for anything at all. All it accomplished was making my lungs burn and freeze with the rest of my body. I was flailing, desperately clawing at the vacuum of space, doing anything at all to try and change course. But no matter what I did, the force pushing and guiding me was implacable. It did not change, it did not cease, it simply kept pushing me faster and faster.

I don't know how long I struggled, but in the end, I realized that nothing I was going to do would change what was coming. All I could do was hope, pray that Yuilana's power was enough to let me get through unscathed. Despite the insane speed the force guiding me had gotten me to, space was still vast, and it still took me quite some time to reach the star. I had plenty of time to rely on the protective blessing of Yuilana as I watched the star get larger and larger.

I passed out the moment I hit the edge of the star.

When I awoke again, I groaned in some mix of relief at being able to open my eyes again and remembered pain. Looking up, I saw a blue sky and a shining sun. After almost a full minute, realization of what that meant finally hit me. Quickly looking to my sides, I discovered I was laying on rough dirt that was strangely blackened. As my eyes traced along the ground, I found I was at the bottom of a fifteen foot crater. I could just barely see dark, dark green leaves over the lip, and faint trickles of water slowly making their way down the side of the crater.

Groaning again as I moved, I forced myself to my feet. I.. I had actually made it. I was standing on some world, and I had a working body. I forced myself not to marvel over my body working so well and faithfully obeying me without failing. Now that I was standing, I could see slightly more of the surrounding area. Incredibly large dark wood trees loomed over the crater I'd apparently made as I arrived. Impossibly dark leaves decorated the trees, and I thought I could hear faint sounds of a liquid of some kind.

Without hesitation, I began to half walk, half climb the side of the crater. I didn't need all the books I'd read to know that I needed to get some idea of where I was before anything. A short couple of minutes later, some more internal excitement over my body, and I finally stood atop the lip. My excitement slowly drained as I looked around me, taking note of the surroundings. I was in a marsh or swamp, I'd never quite learned the difference. Mud, water, and tree roots made up the ground for as far as I could see in all directions. The sound I'd heard earlier was the surrounding water adjusting to the sudden new feature of the crater.

"Could be better, could be worse.." I murmured to myself. I thought over what I knew of survival; food, water, and shelter. That was it. Looking down at the muddy, dirty water around me, I decided to leave that to a last resort.

Now that I was actively looking for it, I could see dozens and dozens of different plants growing around the trees and among their roots. Brilliant flowers of almost every color, what looked like roots, and even some kind of berries. Forcing myself to acknowledge that I knew truly nothing about whatever world this was, I mentally assigned all of the plants to being last resorts too. I refused to accidentally eat a poisonous plant and die without having exhausted all other options first. Not when I finally had a working body and a second chance at life.

As for shelter.. Aside from shallow hollows formed from tree roots, I couldn't see anything that might count. I let out a short breath and nodded as I finished taking in my surroundings. Not seeing any obvious reasons to head in any one direction, I decided to just start walking and see what I could find. I took one step before my foot sank into mud and dirty water flowed in after it. Gritting my teeth at the sensation, I forced myself to take another step, and then another. As much as I might hate the feeling, there was nothing I could do about it. I was mostly just happy that the swamp seemed to be on the warmer side than cold. While the hospital had made great clothes for me, they wouldn't be well suited to keeping me warm if I really needed it.

It didn’t take long for my feet and lower legs to be entirely covered in mud and muck. Half an hour of trekking through the swamp later, and not much had changed. During my walk I’d only found another two types of berries, judging by the color. I’d stopped counting the total number of new plants I’d seen after only a few minutes.

Looking around, I couldn’t help but curse. “I just bet the others showed up in the middle of a nice city.. Of course I wound up in a swamp.. Wouldn’t make sense unless I was not only separated from the others, but also totally alone..” I complained as I made my way around the side of a tree for the fiftieth time.

My grumbling was left by the wayside as I set my foot down onto something solid and semi-dry. I’d been walking with my head down, but now I looked up. A surge of relief flooded through me as I saw the swamp starting to thin out, mud becoming a little less thick and wet, and parts of the ground were actually solid. I assumed I had to have landed on the edge of the swamp to have made it to an edge this quickly.

Unfortunately, when I looked up, I saw the sun was starting to get low in the sky. Looking around again, I started to notice the lengthening shadows and fading light. “Time to look for the closest thing to shelter I can find..” I muttered to myself, thankful all over again that I was finding some solid ground now. I had not been looking forward to trying to sleep in mud.

A horrible thought occured to me, what if this was just a small patch of slightly dry ground? What if it wasn’t an edge of the swamp like I’d originally thought? Trying to ignore that terrible thought, I started walking forward again. After another ten minutes of walking, and I was slowly being reassured that I had been right the first time.

On the other hand, tree root hollows big enough to serve as a makeshift shelter were growing scarcer and scarcer the farther I walked. Finally, as the darkening shadows grew longer and longer, I decided to find the driest hollow I could. It was growing close to pitch black by the time I found what I was looking for.

While I still couldn’t find the muck of the swamp beautiful, I had discovered something. A surprising number of the flowers and plants were bioluminescent. For the last ten or so minutes, I’d been using the glowing hues to guide my way through the dark.

Settling down in the dark, I leaned my back against the flattest section of root, and simply tried to ignore the knot that was pressing against my lower back. Looking out from my lowered position, I had to admit there was an odd appeal to the swamp at night. Dozens of glowing red, blue, green, and purple flowers could be seen just from where I was. With their soft glow illuminating what would otherwise be complete darkness, I finally realized something.

My head immediately shot up as I looked at the sky. There was no moon. And for the first time, it really sunk in where I was. Now that I wasn’t focused on just walking forward, or finding shelter for the night, I had time to think.

I died.. And, here i was.. Huddled in a hollow in the middle of a swamp. On some world that I didn’t even know the name of, alone. I had spoken to what I could only call a Goddess. With what I’d experienced… Just the memory of the pains, confusions, and experiences were enough to make me flinch in the dark.

Swallowing hard, I realized that I truly had no idea what to do. Thinking back over the truly insane events of the last… However long, I remembered something.

“The Hierarchy of Desmon is begging me for some heroes, but I have a couple things in the air at the moment so.. I'm just gonna send you all!... As I was saying, I'm going to send you all as my heroes. So, go be heroic and help out…” The words of Yuilana echoed through my head.

She’d sent us here as her heroes.. Her heroes to do what? And for who? And perhaps more importantly, against who or what?

I’d spent so much of my life just coasting from one day to the next, each one only different by what I was reading that day. Finding a purpose, a goal in this world was something I hadn’t truly thought about yet. When I’d just started walking earlier, I’d just wanted to get out of the swamp…

What did I want? It didn’t take me long to come up with an answer. In the end, I wanted to live. I wanted to explore this new world, try new things, and meet new people. I wanted to run, play sports, do everything I couldn’t do before. I’d been given this second chance, and I refused to waste it.

Not even a minute later, reason tempered my goal into something more reasonable for the short term. Before anything, I felt that I should find the others who were supposed to have been sent here with me. Once I’d met up with them, then I could take stock and see where to go from there.

I nodded to myself in the smothering dark of night, a goal. I had a goat. Now that I had something to try and reach, I was able to slowly begin to deal with the insanity of my situation, one step at a time.

I slowly leaned my head back against the wood, looking up into the deep black sky. I closed my eyes to listen to… the…

It was silent. My eyes shot open as I realized it, but it was perfectly silent. There was no bugs chirping in the night, there was nothing. I didn’t know much about nature, but I knew that perfect silence was unnatural.

My heart skipped a beat when I finally heard something, a familiar sound. The sound of something stepping into mud and then being pulled out. The sound of something walking.