Upon your death, you will get to see a whole other world with its own laws and rules. It is the land of the afterlife, and it is quite a sight to behold. Your stay there will be brief, but memorable… in its own way. – An advertisement for Divine Intervention Online

Before I could open my eyes, I knew I was someplace else, someplace terrible. I could smell decay and sulfur, like rotted eggs. I felt a bitterly cold wind on my face, and I could hear cried and screams for help.

Slowly, I opened my eyes. Everything was a muted grey and black. I could see people wandering around, wailing and moaning. Everyone had wounds or other visible details of how they died.

“Where is my daughter, have you seen my daughter?” a passing woman cried. Her head was crushed in, and brains and blood oozed out of the mortal wound.

“Help me! I am in pain and can’t breathe!” a man shouted panicked. He was moving in slow motion, almost as if he were floating. He coughed and spectral water flowed out of his mouth.

“Please let me out of here, I was a good man!” another man begged, on his knees praying. He had blood pouring out of his mouth, and what looked like a chalice in his hand.

I walked around a little bit, seeing this version of Hell or Sheol. My heart broke watching a little girl walking around with a doll. “Don’t hurt my daddy! Daddy where are you?” She had a wicked gash running across he chest.

The place was packed with lost souls, each moving and jostling each other while lost in their death throes. There was only one knot of calm in the crowd. I saw 10 Gar’shan praying together from what sounded like their scriptures, calling for those around them to pray, to alleviate their pain and suffering. They too showed how they died. One looked to have been whipped to death, skin peeling off between the wounds inflicted on his back. Another looked so hungry and frail that even looking at him made me uncomfortable. A woman whose neck seemed broken, her face blue and her lips swollen. But each of them seemed to find solace in their communal prayers.

I had to get out of this place. I had no idea how, though. I decided to pick a direction and move in that direction. As I walked, I got the sense that the direction was meaningless, that it was what my will wanted that made me move distances. I walked for what seemed to be a half hour, when I finally heard a river over the cries of the people. I walked towards the river, passing by a group of men, all fighting each other. They were each dressed as soldiers from differing places and times. One man looked like he was a legionnaire from ancient Rome, while another man looked like a knight from the late medieval period. The fight looked frenzied and blood thirsty, it was a fight to the death- or would be if they were alive.

Finally, I got into the river. The river was swollen with bodies. They were appearing out of nowhere and landing in the water. A ferryman was trying to take his boat across the river, and he was hitting people who tried to board the boat with his oar. The man was coming to the shore I was on, and I made sure I was where he would land.

The man in the boat was large muscled and wore a black coat and cowl, so his face wasn’t clear. His body had some color to it, not the endless gray and black that surrounded the rest of the world in this evil place.

His boat finally landed on the shore in front of me. He looked at me, and I could see his eyes. They were a fiery red, like laser pointers from Hell. They drilled into me. He seemed to be looking at me and no one else.

“Give me your gold, young immortal.”

“I do not have any.”

“Then give me your most prized possession,” he responded.

I noticed, then, that I had my backpack on. I took it out and looked through it. I sighed and handed him my sword.

“Not that, foolish one. That is part of your starting gear. Give me the most valuable thing you have on you that you have gained since your last death.”

I looked through the backpack. Had I gained anything? My hand bumped against the heart of the flower that I got from the mantrapper. “Does this work?” I asked. He looked at the small bulb in disgust.

“This is the best you got?” I nodded. “This is not worth passage, immortal. I will take it, and I will take a memory as well.”

“Wait- wait, a memory?”

“Yes, I will take a small memory from your previous life, a happy memory. Something nice.”

“I do not like that cost. I will swim across myself.”

“You will drown, you cannot cross on your own, though every immortal has tried at least once.”

I looked at the river. It was teeming with drowning souls. They all tried to cling to each other which resulted in a mad scramble to be above the water. As soon as a person got to the top, they were pulled down by another soul who then got to breathe for a second or two before being pulled down by yet another soul.

There was no room to swim across. It would be horrendous torture, in the least. I needed to get to the land of the living. There was no choice for me. I sighed and nodded. What was one happy memory?

He reached out and grabbed the heart of the flower, and then touched my shoulder with his other hand. I could feel his mind searching through my memories before he focused on one.

I was sitting in bed with Jason. It was a lazy Sunday morning. Neither of us had work to do, and it was before we adopted Alexis. We were cuddling and just falling in and out of sleep. At one point, Jason sat up and looked at me.

“This is perfect, you know? A perfect moment. I am laying down next to the man I love. I have no worries, nothing to do other than to be with you. You make me so happy,” he said, leaning over me and kissing me on my forehead. I felt so happy and peaceful in that moment, as he laid his arm around me and cuddled up behind me.

“No- not that one!” I said to the ferryman. I felt the life go out of the memory, and it faded away. I could vaguely recall the memory, but it was like I had read it from a book or saw it on a movie. It had none of the feeling and emotions attached to the memory.

I felt a little hollow inside, and then I felt as if I had lost something, but I did not know what. In my head I knew it was a memory that was fading fast, but I couldn’t quite get the details of it, although I was sure it was a dear memory that I had lost.

“Payment had been received, thank you for the engram… and the heart of the flower, I guess. I will take you across now.” The ferryman helped me on to the boat like a proper gentleman, and I sat down. He used his oar to push off the shore, parting the bodies in the river that he passed through.

“Is this the afterlife, I mean do all the AIs come here and get stuck here?” I asked.

“Sooner or later, the gods of the underworld will stop their petty squabbles that have distracted them for the last 700 years or so. They started off like you, you know. But as they got stronger, they chose domains to hold power over. They use the power of the domain to wield powerful magics. But they do not use the responsibility of the domain that they choose. The gods are very selfish. I remember when the souls would only be here for a week or two before they were passed off into the permanent afterlife. Maybe when you grow strong you will remember this.” The ferryman’s voice was gravely, and hard to listen to, but I caught what he was saying over the wails and moans that surrounded us.

It took an hour or so to go through the river, mostly because of all the bodies blocking it. I could see the opposite bank, now. It was full of vibrancy and light. The grass was green, and I could see trees and flowers. It was the land of the living, all dearer to me after I had been in Hell for what seemed like hours.

I wondered what it was that stopped the bodies in the river to go to the shore on the side of life. That question was easily answered. There were large dogs patrolling the shore, and any person who would dare to get on land would get bitten and tortured before being flung back into the river by the dogs.

I shuddered as I saw this and for the hundredth time in the afterlife, I wondered why the devs had been so cruel. It was created to torture us, it seemed. A logical part of my mind said that the Deadlands were made as a repercussion of death, something that we should try to avoid at all costs. The taking of the most valuable possession and maybe a memory was a harsh measure, however, and I knew that I would avoid death as much as I could. I wondered how many memories the other players had lost over 800 years and wondered what they would be like when they awoke from the game. Would they even be people I would want to be around on the colony? The combination of memory loss and overwhelming power probably made them into dicks beyond measure.

I did not want to ever meet them while they were all-powerful, and was glad they were off playing their endgame. I asked the ferryman about them.

“Oh, you will meet them I am sure. The last part of the game is to expand your consciousness over the entire land in Divine Intervention Online. They will take over the whole planet from the Elder Gods and will enact their will on their worshippers and enemies alike.”

“What?” I asked shocked. The players would be coming back? That would be horrible! They would be so powerful and if their lack of attention to the underworld was proof of anything, they would be terrible to those under their command. I felt lost and weak. How would I survive 200 years or however long I had after they came back?

I would simply have to get as much XP and rise to be as powerful as I could. The ferryman confirmed what he had said, and we got to the opposite bank.

“Do not worry about the dogs, they will not harm a living being, as you are now living again.”

“How do I get back to where I need to be”

“Simply think about the location you want to go to, and you will appear there. You will have a choice to fill two of your expendables to the max. One should always be health, lest you want to come here again. As for the other, choose wisely as the rest will take time to refill.”

I nodded and thanked him.

“Oh, and there is a way to get more power when you become a Hero… I like the underdog, and I think I might back you in this. You seem to be a decent fellow, not like the other gods and goddesses. If you serve your domain well, you will get XP from it. You can stand to gain more XP from maintaining the domain and serving it than you ever could fighting and dying. So, once you get to be a Hero, select your Domain wisely.”

I nodded and thanked him for the information. He then pushed off the shore and went to cross back into the land of the dead.

I started to think of where I wanted to go, and I knew I would go to where Jonar and I had met up. I hoped he would be there, dying for the man barely seemed worth it now. Hopefully I had an ally, though.

Which 2 expendables would you like to refill?

Current Willpower: 1/7

Current Health: 0.1/6

Current Social Graces: 0/5

Current Zeal: 0/5

I chose willpower and health. Willpower seemed way better than zeal as it could provide extra, temporary health that could soak incoming damage, as well as increase your Brawns. I supposed it could be used to do the same to the other attribute categories, but I bet I would use the Brawns to boost way more than any others. Zeal only healed 1 point of damage. It also didn’t scale upon multiple uses during the battle. It did sound like it would fuel the Domains when you got to be a Hero and higher in power level, maybe zeal would be more useful then.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to be back to the meeting spot.