by David Burke
That was the way of things, though. This was where the story was. Winning the World Series six times in a row was the stuff of legends. He couldn’t help but grin even while soaking wet, thinking about it. Kyle had already gotten the text from his agent saying how his phone was already going crazy with offers. Kyle was a free agent now and at the top of his game.
Leading any team to a World Series victory in four games was gonna make anyone a hero, but he was the man the fans credited with six World Series wins in a row. It was a world record and the Chicago fans were not likely to forget this.
Kyle mused to himself that he had likely surpassed Michael Jordan and Mike Ditka for the title of the greatest sports figure in Chicago history. The best part, he was only thirty years old. Kyle felt on top of the world, and he still had the rest of his life in front of him.
His agent swore he could get a ten-year contract worth over $600 mil. And why not? Kyle was the first guy to bat over .400 for a full season in more than a generation. That, and what the press called a ‘rocket of an arm’ from third base, and ‘lightning-fast feet’ on the base path.
For all the voices that accused him of being dirty, doping, or cheating in any way, Kyle had always scoffed. Cheating stole the joy of victory, and he loved winning more than anything else. He just worked harder than the others, and that chafed them.
Hell, he loved winning more than money, more than a string of casual girlfriends, more than going out. There wasn’t really anything that compared to the rush, not that having money hurt either, though.
It didn’t get better than this, but the October wind was cold in Chicago. It didn’t care who you were, it cut through a jacket and reminded Kyle that he hadn’t fully dried his hair. It definitely made him grateful for a designated parking spot in the deck behind the new Wrigley Field. Thinking about that made him muse about how maybe someday the stadium would be renamed after him. It never hurt to dream big.
That was when he heard her.
“Kyle?” asked a feminine voice. “Kyle Hudson?”
He turned to see a drop dead gorgeous brunette walking towards him. Her breath was visible in the cold air, but he was more drawn to her killer legs. He had always been a leg man. She was trembling, and for a moment he thought something was wrong.
“Yes, that’s me. But how did you get down here? This is supposed to be players and staff only. Not that I’d mind taking you to dinner,” Kyle said. It wasn’t as smooth as it could have been but then again, when you were the world champ, you didn’t have to work very hard to pick up girls.
Rage, raw and unadulterated, flashed across her face. “I knew it. You don’t even remember me. You pompous, self-important bastard! I should have known better than to let you come back to my place. But you talk such a good game.” She was practically shrieking at him.
Over the years, Kyle had learned that there was only one way to deal with a woman like this. Maybe he had gone out with her. Maybe they had ended up back at her place. But there was no way that he could be expected to remember all the fans who followed him around. Hell, if they had even half an idea of what some women sent to him in the mail…
Best to try to end this as quickly as possible. Tonight was a night for basking in the win. The one game that he could walk away from and not have to immediately start preparing for the next. He didn’t want this dragging it down.
“I’m sorry for whatever you think it is I’ve done. Now, I recommend you find your way out of here, because when I drive out, I’m gonna let security know you are down here.”
Kyle tried to say it calmly. He didn’t want to show his frustration, but she had just seriously ruined his vibe. Now, he probably was gonna just go home, instead of out to a party.
“Just walk away,” he muttered to himself. “This isn’t worth it.”
As he turned to get into his Tesla, Kyle felt a sharp pain in his back. Even when he reflected on it years later, Kyle still swore that he felt that burning pain even before he heard the gun fire.
His mind started to wander. He remembered being hit in the back once by a Johnny Lawrence, 106 mile per hour fastball. That had hurt. This was beyond that. In fact, it was so bad that he almost didn’t even feel the pain.
That was probably just shock setting in. Shock at the injury. Shock at the fact that this could happen to him. Shock at falling from on top of the world to the gutters.
Looking down at himself, Kyle saw blood blossom on the front of his favorite Nirvana t-shirt. “Dammit,” was the thought that went through his head, but the bullet must have hit his spine because he couldn’t feel his legs.
Part of becoming a great at anything was learning about the tools of your trade. For him, that had meant getting to know the human body very well, his specifically. Knowing what it could do. Realizing its limits, and learning how to push past those limits.
This was new, though. He couldn’t seem to make his body do what he wanted. He slid down to his knees while clinging to the side of his car. All he could think was, “No, I’m not gonna die like this. Not here. Not now.”
He had always prided himself on being clutch. It wasn’t enough to be good, you had to be good at the right time. If there had ever been a clutch moment in his life, now was it.
His hand fumbled into his jacket pocket, trying to fish out his phone. He almost dropped it but, you know, golden glove hands. Still, his vision was getting a bit blurry, and he had trouble getting the phone unlocked.
Off in the distance, Kyle heard the sound of high heels striking the concrete as his attacker ran away. A defiant part inside him screamed out, “That’s right. Run away. You don’t wanna be here when I get up.”
Then there was a flickering in the lights. Even his phone screen flickered and went dead. Dammit. Not now. He wasn’t going down like this. Kyle might not be the world’s nicest guy, but he worked for every damn thing that he had. The screen cracked when he slammed it into the ground.
If crawling across the cold concrete, scraping his hands up and tearing his jeans, was what it took, so be it. Kyle would drag himself to the security station and they could call 911 for him. In fact, part of him was wondering why security wasn’t here already.
The lights flickered again. Worse this time. Suddenly, Kyle knew he was worse off than he thought. Slumped up against the concrete column ahead of him was the most colossal man he had ever seen. Think Andre the Giant, but completely ripped and more. He had to be eight feet tall, Kyle was sure of it, even while the man was sitting down, sprawled against the concrete.
Not that he was the kind of guy you were gonna forget, even if he wasn’t already the biggest guy on the block. He was wearing armor. Yeah, armor. Like from some Lord of the Rings movie, except this was actually cool. It was red and gold, really high quality, but looked like he had just been through one hell of a dust up. Kyle didn’t wonder about his clarity of mind, focusing on these strange details. The mind was a strange thing; even in death, he had a knack for sizing up the competition.
The giant had long cuts with jagged edges in the armor, like it had been ripped open in several spots by monstrous claws. Scorch marks marred the beauty of it, but somehow added to its badass appeal. Kyle might play baseball for a living, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t into the occasional video game. Even in the clubhouse, some of the guys played Destiny Online.
Maybe this guy was one of those geeks who took things too far. Then again, the muscles he had didn’t come from anything but the real deal. Kyle wasn’t sure what to do now. It wasn’t like he was in a position to offer help, right now. Hell, the way Kyle was bleeding, he assumed the giant was probably just a figment of his imagination, spawned as his brain started shutting down.
Then the armored man called out, or more accurately, croaked out, “Kyle Hudson.”
Kyle scoffed to himself. “Great, so not only am I bleeding to death as I crawl along the rough pavement, but now I’m hallucinating.” And the hallucination knew his name. Of course it did. A
ll this shit because some groupie thought their hook up had meant more than it did.
Still, as far as hallucinations went, Kyle had to give his brain credit. This one was pretty detailed.
“Kyle Hudson, I have chosen you.”
All Kyle could do at that, was shake his head and blink his eyes. What the hell had his hallucination just said? “What’s that mean?” he managed to cough out.
“My time is short, come close. I have a gift for you that will get you out of your current predicament,” he said. Blood came out with the words.
“Yeah, pass,” Kyle replied, as he kept crawling in the direction of the security station. Hallucination or not, you couldn’t give people like this the time of day or bad things happened. He had learned that the hard way when he first got called up to the bigs, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
“I tire, mortal. Even my chosen heir may not speak to me in that manner.” As he spoke, his right hand relaxed its grasp on the totally authentic broadsword he was holding. The hand raised up; it had a dark red aura glowing around it.
Maybe it was crimson or even burgundy. Tessa would have been so proud. She never thought that Kyle paid attention to the stuff she talked about. Of course, that was why she left. They always left when they couldn’t handle that baseball came first. Total dedication was the only way a person got to be the best in the world.
Funny how the mind works. Kyle was completely rambling at this point, even if it was only inside his own skull. Thoughts of the one ex he had really cared about coming up seemed odd, right now. That was why he didn’t notice at first that he’d been yanked up into the air, to hover only inches in front of Mister Grim and Scary.
Of course, that only sealed the deal. This was absolutely a hallucination. Kyle couldn’t help but wonder if he was too far gone to save himself. Hell, maybe he was in a hospital bed and they were shocking him with those electric paddles.
“I told you to come here, mortal. I am going to give you a great gift,” the freakishly huge man growled to him.
Since Kyle couldn’t seem to move a muscle, at least to do anything other than paw at the air like some squealing baby, he decided to play along with the hallucination. He wondered if that was the right thing to do. They say to do that, don’t they?
He couldn’t remember. Was he supposed to talk to the voices in his head or ignore them? He guessed it didn’t really matter; he was really gone if it was this bad.
“In case you can’t tell, I’m bleeding to death. I don’t really need a gift from you,” Kyle spat out.
Then the giant started talking a bunch of mumbo jumbo about sensing victory on Kyle and being drawn to it. He said that they were kindred spirits and that his life was destined to end today, and Kyle’s soul would go to whatever afterlife awaited it. That was all pretty depressing, but not all that shocking.
Then his hallucination said something that finally caught Kyle’s attention.
“I can heal your body, Kyle Hudson. In fact, I must if I am to dwell in it. I can’t return to my world now. The other gods will hunt me down. They would recognize my essence right away. But not if I alter it. You shall inherit my mantle as the war god of Verden. My powers are great, but will have a different flavor with you. That should keep you safe, at least for a while. You will need that time to build up your strength.”
Kyle listened as he spoke, even though what he was saying was making less and less sense. What Kyle got out of it was that this guy wanted Kyle to voluntarily give up his body, his life here on Earth, and in exchange he would give him a new body on some world called Verden.
It sounded like he was even promising to make Kyle into the god of war, like out of a myth, or maybe like Kratos from that old game his grandpa had shown him. The downside, was that he would leave Earth forever, but it looked like that was going to happen no matter what. Oh, and he did say something about having to beware the other gods of Verden?
Before Kyle realized it, he found himself nodding in agreement. The giant told him that he needed to take his hand and place some of his own blood upon the huge ruby set in the center of his breastplate. Luckily, or unluckily as it might be, he found that the stuff was leaking all over the place. It was easy enough to smear some on with his trembling palm.
As he did so, he felt piercing pain strike him to his very core. The pain robbed him of his breath, of his will to live, and made that pesky little bullet wound seem like a minor inconvenience. It went so deeply into him that he began to actually believe in the idea of a soul.
Blessedly, the pain lasted only an instant. Then Kyle found that he could see his own body. It was floating there in the air before the giant. No, giant wasn’t right. Somehow, in a moment of lucidity, he knew that body was his former residence just as much as Kyle Hudson’s body had been. At least the part of him that had been Krig, War God of Verden.
Slowly, like a feather, his body drifted to the cold pavement of the parking deck and settled prone at the feet of the now-decaying figure of Krig’s old avatar. Kyle watched as the bullet hole in his back closed. The body trembled, but why was he thinking of it as a separate entity? That was the only body he had ever known.
As it sat up, there was a gleam in its eyes.
If one’s eyes were a window to the soul, then these eyes showed that there was a new owner in this house, and he was settling in. The last thing that Kyle of Earth saw was Krig patting down the body that he had just co-opted. Something didn’t feel right about this, and he started to protest, but he had no mouth with which to form the words.
Then he felt like he was being flushed down a toilet. He had a sudden sympathy for every goldfish that had ever met its end this way. If this was the path to rebirth, then Kyle shuddered to think about some of the big loads he had sent to respawn.
He wanted to laugh at his own joke, but had no body. He couldn’t feel his shoulders shake with mirth and couldn’t hear the sound even in his own mind. He simply felt himself being swept deeper and deeper into the dark.
As he was leaving the mortal coil, Kyle heard his own voice speaking from the body that had belonged to him. Except the words made no sense. He tried to hold onto a bit here or bit there, but only a couple things really stuck with him. If this was a hallucination, it was definitely top tier.
If this was the end of his life, he felt cheated; no white light and definitely no life experiences flashing before his eyes. He would have wanted one more chance to relive each moment of victory, struggle, and bliss. Nope, just droning words which he barely understood.
“Avenge me. Let no foe stand against you. Find my sword. You will need it. And beware those who are too devout. They may see you for what you are, or more properly, what you may become.”
Chapter 2 - Rough Landings
A sudden feeling of falling swept over Kyle. He felt as though he was waking from a long sleep and didn’t know how either of those sensations were possible. The last really clear memory he had was of how cold the hard concrete floor of the parking deck had been, just moments ago.
Wait a minute, had it been just a moment ago? Or not? Somehow that didn’t seem right. It seemed ages ago and a world away. Then he remembered another detail.
That wasn’t the last. He hadn’t ended his life on the pavement alone, shot in the street like a common thug. Rather, he had been floating a few inches above the pavement. Or maybe… was that just a dream?
Yeah, likely a dream, Kyle thought, because now he was falling. He kept accelerating faster and faster. He definitely felt the sensation of falling, but there were no clouds, no sense of the wind in his hair. All that remained was a certain, unavoidable sensation that he was falling. Or flying, because what was falling but uncontrolled flying anyway?
That was an odd thought, he realized. Not really typical of the way he would have phrased things at all. Uh oh, maybe he was still dreaming. But, didn’t bad things happen when you were falling in a dream?
Or wait, Kyle realized, it wasn
’t the falling that was bad, it was the landing. If you hit the ground in a dream, that meant you died. At least he was pretty sure that was what Tessa had told him she read in a book.
Then that thought no longer mattered as he experienced what usually happened when falling. He came to a sudden and unwelcome stop. He felt himself crash into the ground with an astounding amount of force. Kyle didn’t know what was going on, but he could feel the ground around him break, and smelled the dust scattered into the air from his impact.
This wasn’t the sort of thing you walked away from, and certainly not without being broken into so many pieces that all the King’s men couldn’t put you back together again.
He decided he needed to move slowly, if he could move at all. He needed to see just how bad the damage was. Kyle figured it was a good thing that he wasn’t dead on impact. At least that meant there was a chance. Of course, he had just survived being shot, so maybe today was his lucky day. Unless that was all part of this same dream, too.
He reached out and didn’t experience any pain as he moved. The crew normally kept this private parking deck really clean, so hopefully he wouldn’t have any glass embedded into him. Yet as his hand moved around him, he knew instantly that this was not the smooth pavement of the players-only section behind Wrigley. No, it was just hard-packed dirt.
Or it had been hard packed until his impact.
His landing created a crater that was more than a foot deep, as well as quite a big cloud of dust. The building next to him rattled; oddly, no one came outside. That seemed bizarre in and of itself. He was in what appeared to be a narrow alleyway, and still not so much as a head had peeked out a window to see what the ruckus was.
The sky overhead was dark but filled with stars. Far more twinkled overhead than he remembered seeing of late. Of course, most nights he had been stuck under the glare of stadium lights, where it was hard to make out more than a few stars in the sky.
Even being night though, either these buildings were empty, or his neighbors were incredibly deep sleepers. He didn’t care to try to imagine what reasoning would explain the lack of investigation.