Prologue II

0 PA (Post Arrival)

Sam woke up again, this time without the headache.

He immediately tensed up, before relaxing again, feeling the mattress he was laying on.

‘Thank god,’ he sighed in relief, ‘it was just a dream.’

He felt exhausted, wanting nothing more than to fall back asleep and never wake up again, but unfortunately his boss wouldn’t take that as an excuse. With an agonized groan, he shoved himself off the bed. He was soaked in sweat and couldn’t help but wrinkle his nose as he got a whiff of himself.

“Damn, I need a shower,” he muttered, shaking his head.

It was then that he finally realized he wasn’t in his bedroom.

It was a small room, maybe half the size of his old apartment. It looked almost like the inside of a log cabin, with walls made of big logs piled on top of each other, and a steepled roof that looked to be made of a patchwork of… furs? There weren’t any windows, just a doorway without a door—instead the opening was covered by some sort of drapes, blocking the outside world. A bunch of bones were piled in the corner, sitting next to a couple of basic clay pots. Looking down, he saw what looked like a fur rug on the floor. ‘It’s actually kind of soft,’ he mused, wriggling his bare toes experimentally. Then he looked to his left.

“Ah, shit,” he muttered, unable to bring up the energy for anything else.

To his left was a simple wooden pedestal, with a glowing green orb sitting on top of it.

‘So that was real.’ He turned away from it, feeling uncomfortable just by looking at it. A soul wasn’t supposed to exist outside of the body.

Well, at least he wasn’t locked in here. Kind of hard to do that without a door.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself, “okay. Not a dream. That’s… a thing, I guess. So, what did that god-dude say? I’m immortal now? I’m a king? That’s just…”

Kind of hard to believe. The only way to really be sure would be to…

Sam looked at the ‘door.’

“Well, I might as well get this over with.”

After all, what was the worst that could—'Nope, not even going there.’

Taking a deep breath, he walked outside.

And was immediately underwhelmed.

What he saw could be called a ‘village,’ but only just. It sat in a clearing, a forest surrounding them on all sides, the mid-day sun casting the shadows of trees across the ground. In the distance he could barely see a river, half-hidden behind the trees. What looked like fifteen or so fur tents were set up in a vague circle around a large fire pit at the center, showing that the building he had woken up in was the only permanent structure in the village. And, of course, there were people.

More than a dozen people sat around the fire pit—most of them women. Some were weaving, some were carving what looked like furniture, and a couple were taking care of some children. They were dressed in linens and furs, with colors ranging from white to brown to red. Looking around, both men and women wore similar skirts, though the women also draped their upper bodies in a type of primitive shawl.

Sam barely took all this in. Even standing there and staring at it, it still didn’t feel real.

It was then that the people around the fire pit noticed him, conversation dying down as, one by one, they turned to stare at him.

And stare at him.

And… continue staring at him.

This was incredibly awkward.

“Uh… hi?” Sam called out, before wincing. Truly, he was a master of words.

But that seemed to break the spell that everyone was under, all of them suddenly jumping up and running over to him.

“He’s awake!” “How are you?” “What’s your name?” “Praise the gods he’s awake!”

Everyone rushed up to him, crowding around him and shouting in his face, causing him to stumble backwards, almost tripping over his own feet. Crowded as he was, he could barely hear a series of faint ‘WHACK’s and muffled yelps. A couple moments later, a short old woman shoved her way to the front of the crowd of people, knocking a stick against their thighs when some of them refused to move.

“Settle down, you lot! Settle!” The old woman snapped, shoving the others away from him. “I said SETTLE!”

The people quickly calmed down, moving away from the two of them with an almost embarrassed shuffle.

Sam, relieved, turned to the old woman. She was incredibly wrinkled—more than any other old person he’d known—and was clutching a long wooden stick with two elderly and calloused hands. She didn’t have any hair, being completely bald with a large mole on the side of her head, and her earlobes nearly stretched to her shoulders, being weighed down by fancy wooden rings. She wore the same shawl that all the other women did, but it looked almost as old as she was, full of moth holes and covered in patches.

“Hmph. Honestly, was that any way to greet your new chieftain?” She asked, knocking her stick on the ground.

“Oh, uh, about that…” Sam trailed off, unsure what to say.

“Ah? What, don’t tell me you don’t know? Surely the gods told you about this, right?”

“Well, I, um, I was told about that. Just, you know, not about anything else.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He was told about how he was now immortal, and about how he would be able to speak any language—wait, were they even speaking English right now!?

Before he could start thinking about the ramifications of that for too long, the old woman sighed.

“All right. You lot!” she snapped at the people still standing around them, waving her stick in the air. “Back to work, all of you! Lia especially! I know you’ve been slacking on your weaving! You’d better be done by the end of the week, you hear me!”

With some quiet mutters and lingering stares, the crowd of people slowly dispersed, going back to the fire pit.

The old woman sighed, before turning back to Sam. “Alright, if you would follow me. I’ll help you clear up… whatever it is you need to know.”

With that, she started walking past him, going into his hut.

Sam hesitated for a moment before turning and following her.

Entering the hut, he saw that she had sat down on his bed (which, on closer inspection, seemed to just be a bunch of pelts piled on top of each other). “Now,” she grunted, “what is it you need to know.”

Sam blinked, before clearing his throat. “Uh, I guess for starters, am I really your ruler? Like, are you guys really okay with some random guy showing up and calling himself king?”

The old woman scoffed. “The gods have appointed you as chief! Even if we did have a problem with it, what would we do? Tell the gods, no? I may be old, but I’m not daft! And either way, we’ve had good chiefs. We’ve had bad ones, too. But a chief appointed by the gods themselves? Why that’s something out of legend itself!”

Well, he supposed he could deal with that. Sam paused as he caught onto something she said, “Wait, hang on, gods? As in, they came down and told you I was coming?”

“Mn. I’ll remember that moment for the rest of my life. Probably because that life won’t last much longer!” she chuckled lightly, before turning serious. “I’ve been a shaman of this tribe, ever since Old Yin passed away, but a message from the gods has never been so direct as that one. The god descended out of the sky, right in the middle of our camp, right in the middle of dinner. He looked right at me, and told me, ‘The ancestors have decided, and we shall send you a new lord. One just, and kind, and divine, who shall lead your people to glory. Should he accept you, he may rule you for a thousand and one winters. Should you accept him, your people must turn south, and camp near the river. There, he shall appear.’ And then you did. Appeared right in the middle of the fire, falling out onto poor Lia. And so, we laid you down in the hut until you awoke.”

Sam leaned back, thrown off by that. For some reason, he hadn’t expected that god-thing to have actually gone and gathered people. Well, he hadn’t actually thought about that much at all, had he? He figured that it would have—what, just poofed them into existence?

Still, there was a part of her tale that stuck out to him. ‘Should he accept you.’ If that was word for word, then the god-thing was saying he had a choice. That he could turn this down. He wondered, if he turned it down, would he wake up back home? Would he think this was all a dream, and move on with his life like this had never happened?

He suddenly remembered the floating corpse of that man, who had been killed just to make a point.

No, he doubted he ever had any choice at all.

“All right,” he took in a deep breath. “If you’ll have me, I’ll become chieftain of this tribe.”

The old woman raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn’t comment. “So, its settled then. Do you have any other questions, here and away from prying ears?”

The idea that someone might be listening in threw him off for a second, before he remembered that a chieftain is also a type of politician. ‘Oh god, am I gonna have to deal with paparazzi now?’

Wait, that brought up a good point. “What actually are my duties, as chief? Like, what do I have to do?”

The old woman sighed, rolling her eyes upward, but answered. “You are chief. You hunt with the men. You make sure we have enough food. You pass judgment on any arguments that may come up, and decide who is in the right. It’s really quite simple.”

Sam flushed, feeling embarrassed by her patronizing tone, but pushed onwards. He needed to get this out of the way now—pretending to be something he wasn’t would only bite him harder in the long run. “I, uh, I don’t know how to hunt.”

She stared at him judgmentally. “You don’t know how to be chief. You don’t know how to hunt. Are you sure you’re who the gods sent to rule us?”

‘Considering I’m pretty sure he chose us randomly, yes.’ “Look, I understand it's disappointing right now,” Sam told her, trying not to feel offended, “but I grew up in a completely different culture than you all. We didn’t need to hunt our food there, and so few of us ever learned. That said,” he stood tall, making sure to look her in the eye as he did so, “I promise you that, no matter how many issues may come up now, I will be the become the greatest chieftain your people have ever seen.”

The old woman visibly mulled over his words. “You say that so readily. Can you really make such a claim so easily?”

“It’s not a claim,” Sam told her as confidently as he could make himself sound, “it’s a promise.”

The old woman was silent for a long moment, before nodding. “Very well then. This Zhizhe Mai accepts you as lord of our people. For all our sakes, I hope you don’t disappoint, Chieftain.”

10,000 God-Kings Remain