by Eric Vall
Chapter 1
“Mason. Mason, it’s time to wake up now.”
My eyelids fluttered as I drifted to the surface of consciousness, summoned by the beautiful, lilting voice that echoed around me.
“That’s it,” the voice coaxed. “Open your eyes now, love.”
I did as the voice instructed and blinked into a blinding light. I tried to shy away from it, but a gentle hand on my chin held me fast. A silken pair of lips brushed against the back of each of my eyelids, and immediately, my body went lax. When my eyes drifted open again, my vision was clear, and my heart just about stopped.
The most gorgeous woman I had ever seen stood before me.
My breath actually caught in my throat as I laid eyes on her. Her hair was a dazzling silvery white glittering like strands of diamonds, and it cascaded down her shoulders like liquid starlight. In fact, her entire body gave off an ethereal glow. My eyes traveled down past her lovely bare shoulders, and her dress immediately made me lightheaded. It was an off the shoulder number with a deep V cut that ran nearly to her navel. The purple fabric of the dress was completely sheer, and the dress itself was mere scraps. I didn’t understand how the two pieces of sheer fabric that ran down either side of the woman’s chest kept her ample cleavage at bay. Unable to stop myself, I let my eyes continue downward, past her belly button, and then I got sidetracked again by the slit in the dress that ended right at the junction of the woman’s thigh and hip.
I would have been derailed completely by that sight… if I didn’t happen to glance down quickly at her feet and realize she was standing on nothing.
As in she was floating, and in space apparently too, because below her feet stretched an endless purple void of stars and swirling galaxies and flashing nebulas.
I gasped in shock and then panicked because, well, there’s no air in space, right? I would have stumbled if I had been standing on my own two feet, but as I looked down my own body, I realized that I was floating too.
“Oh my god, I’m dreaming,” I murmured in disbelief. I kicked my feet like I was trying to tread water, but I only thrashed in place uselessly. “Holy crap.”
The ethereal woman before me laughed, and it was like nothing I had ever heard. It was like the very stars that swirled around us were singing. I found myself relaxing completely at the sound, despite my strange circumstances.
“Who are you?” I mumbled with awe as I took in every inch of her beautiful face. I realized her eyes were a snapshot of the galaxies that eddied around us. They had no pupils, and I was captivated as supernovas flared and died and were reborn within their depths.
Still disoriented and not a hundred percent in control of my facilities, I added, “How did I dream up someone as gorgeous as you?”
The woman laughed again and reached out to touch my face. Her fingertips skimmed lightly over my cheek, and my body went hot and cold simultaneously.
“Oh, Mason,” she sighed as a bewitching smile stretched across her radiant face. “You may be powerful, but not so grand as to have created me.”
I blinked as my frazzled brain attempted to process her words. “Wait, what?” I asked rather ineloquently.
The woman’s smile grew, and she took a step back. Or I guess floated away? I shook my head and forced myself to concentrate as the woman began to speak again.
“I fear I am getting ahead of myself,” she said. “This must all be confusing for you.” She tilted her head sympathetically toward me, but I thought I saw something like a smirk twitch across her full, pouty lips.
“I am a little lost,” I admitted with a shrug, “but dreams typically don’t make sense, anyway.”
This time, the woman smirked unmistakably. “Dreams are perfectly sensible if you remember and put them in the right order,” she replied, “but that is beside the point since you are not dreaming, Mason Flynt.”
The logical part of my brain wanted to argue with her immediately, but something deeper inside me knew that she was right. Never in my whole life had my dreams been this vivid, and I had definitely never been able to imagine such an absurdly, insanely, breathtakingly sexy woman like the one before me.
“Okay, let’s say you’re right,” I conceded with a small frown as I crossed my arms in front of me. “If I’m not dreaming, where are we? And it seems a little unfair that you know my name and I don’t know yours.”
The woman smiled again, more sincere than teasing this time. “My name is Nemris,” she replied softly. The word echoed around us and rippled out into the cosmos.
“Nemris,” I repeated almost instinctively, and a zap of déjà vu ran through me.
I had said this name before.
As I tried to sort through the convoluted feelings that were rising up within me, the next question just fell out of my mouth. “Where are we exactly, Nemris?”
“Why, we are in my domain, Mason.” Nemris grinned, and the joy that radiated from her face was brighter than any sun or star. She spun in place and as her dress fanned out around her, all the stars surrounding us flared in unison. When she stopped spinning and the stars had dimmed back to normal, she faced me and extended her arms out from her sides.
“I am the Goddess of Peace and Transition.” White light spilled from her skin, and her eyes glowed an eerie but beautiful purple. “I am the gatekeeper between the realms. I am the guide to all souls when their time has come.”
I shielded my face from her brilliance, but her words rang through my skull like bells. Somehow, each one of them rang true. Part of me was pretty sure I should have dissolved into incoherent panic at this point but… I felt fine.
More than that. I felt relaxed in a way I never had been before in my entire life.
“So you’re a goddess,” I said as I still tried to wrap my head around her words.
Nemris nodded.
“And your job is to guide people to the afterlife,” I added for clarification. Below my feet, either a billion miles or mere inches away, I watched as a star went supernova and I had to add, “Does this mean I’m dead?” The thought didn’t exactly fill me with fear. In fact, I was more curious than anything.
Eager even.
This time, the goddess shook her head in response. “There is not so much an ‘afterlife’ as the religions of Earth describe. It is more an… other life. As for you being dead, the answer is both yes and no. Technically, individuals do have to perish from their previous life to arrive here. However, your case is different. You didn’t die so much as I summoned you here.”
Nemris sighed, and I guessed that she knew I was as confused as I probably looked.
“It will be easier if I simply show you.” She turned around, held her arms above her head, and I could have sworn I heard her add under her breath, “Again.”
Before I could ask what she meant, the goddess chanted something in a low voice, and I felt a zap of electricity pass through me. As I watched in abject awe, dozens of holes ripped through the fabric of the cosmos in front of her. Well, perhaps ‘holes’ was the wrong word. As I took in their detail, I realized they were more like windows or screens, each one of them perfectly round, bright, and clear.
“Each of these portals you see,” she explained as I floated to her side, “is a window to another world, another universe, another realm.”
“So, parallel universes?” I asked.
“Exactly.” She reached out toward one of the portals and ran her finger over its surface, which in turn rippled out like water. When the surface had settled again, I leaned in and saw the profile of a huge, hulking creature slither into a gray-green bog. It didn’t look like any beast I had ever seen.
Curious, I reached my hand to poke at the portal, but Nemris gently caught my fingers.
Her touch was electric, and a wave of pleasur
e flowed through my entire body, mind, and soul.
“Don’t touch until I’m finished explaining, okay?” she instructed me with a small, teasing smile.
I nodded, gave her a wide smile, and let her continue.
“As I was saying,” she went on as she released my hand. “There is an infinite number of realms and realities. Anything and everything you could possibly imagine wouldn’t even begin to scratch the surface. My job is to oversee these worlds and ensure that souls move between them properly.”
Nemris reached out and stroked her fingers across another portal. Beyond the ripples, I could see a bright red planet surrounded by the glinting silver hulls of spaceships.
“You see,” Nemris continued, “even for a goddess, there are rules, and the number one rule that dictates everything is that nothing can truly be created or destroyed. Matter and energy merely… transition and shift. This applies to physical things like ice melting into water, but it also applies to less tangible concepts like souls sliding across the universes, worlds, and dimensions. So, when someone dies, I help them to their next life. Does this make sense to you?”
“So you’re saying that instead of going to heaven or hell or whatever, I’ll be reborn into one of these worlds?” I asked as I gestured to the portals that stretched out forever to either side of us.
“Any realm you so choose,” she replied.
“I get to pick?” My eyes went wide as I considered the options immediately around me. Just in my direct eye line, there was a portal with a city that looked like it was constructed underwater, another portal which only showed a bridge suspended between two pink mountains, and a third portal from which a giant, orange eye blinked at me.
“Of course,” she replied.
“Does everyone get to choose?” I asked as I looked back at her.
Nemris’s smile grew into a sly grin, and every hair on my body rose as my skin tingled. “No. Everyone else is cycled through none the wiser of the truth though I do my best to place them in worlds where I think their souls will be happy. No one else has a direct choice… except you. You are special.”
She reached out and dragged her fingertips across the stubble on my jaw, and I was overwhelmed by déjà vu again. Without thinking, I lifted my hand and pressed it down on top of the one the goddess had laid against my cheek.
“What makes me so special?” I asked quietly.
I hadn’t really amounted to much on Earth. I was just an average guy. I worked a mundane office job as the operations manager at a semi-large steel company outside Chicago. It paid nicely, and I was home by five every day, but I hadn’t been exactly passionate about overseeing the people who oversaw the production of steel construction beams.
Most weeks, I couldn’t tell you a single thing I had accomplished or a single person that I had a meaningful conversation with. I had always struggled with making connections to people, and after my adoptive parents died my second year of college, I kind of gave up entirely. I had graduated top of my class and landed my current job pretty easily. I had a few girlfriends here and there, but nothing had ever felt… right. Nothing had ever sparked my passion, and I found myself just going through the motions that society expected from me. The only things that came even close were the pulpy fantasy novels I had stacked up all over my house and the occasional… okay, frequent… renaissance festivals that they had led me to.
However, Nemris looked at me like I was the most interesting man in the world. No, in all the worlds, in all the universe and realities. Her eyes, which were themselves swirling galaxies, roved sweetly over my face, and instead of responding to my question, the goddess leaned in and pressed her mouth gently against mine.
It felt like the Big Bang went off in my head. Instantly, a million images exploded in my mind as the stars whirled around us. Most of the pictures flashed by too quickly for me to see fully or make sense of them, but there was one that stuck out: a snapshot of me pressing Nemris up against a wooden beam, her head thrown back in ecstasy, and her legs wrapped around my waist, from which hung a gleaming yet bloodied silver sword.
I inhaled sharply as Nemris pulled her lips from mine and the images faded away to nothing. Then I blinked open my eyes in disbelief.
“Those were… memories,” I rasped, my voice hoarse as realization crashed down over me. My lips still burned with the real and remembered taste of the goddess.
“Just a few.” Nemris grinned slyly, her nebula eyes hooded and still trained on my mouth, as if the kiss had stirred up her passion, too. “Enough to show you that we have a shared past, you and I. A past in which you helped me greatly and, in return, I granted you a little autonomy in which world you would live in next.”
“In how many lives have I known you?” I asked. I tried to think back to all the images she showed to me, but they slipped through my fingers like smoke.
“One or two,” the goddess replied, but something about her smirk told me she might not be telling me everything.
“The life you had before Earth had been a particularly… hard one,” Nemris went on, and I recalled the bloodied sword from before. “In result, when it came time for you to choose your next path, you asked to be reborn on Earth, as a baby, free of your past memories. You said you wanted a tranquil, easy life. I had my doubts, you were never one to sit still before, but I granted your wish and gave you my blessing, which manifested in these lovely new eyes of yours.”
With one hand, she reached out and ran a fingertip around the corner of my right eye. With her opposite hand, she coiled a lock of silvery hair around her finger, and it took me a moment to realize the color was the exact shade I saw every morning when I met my eyes in the mirror.
“But now,” the goddess declared as she danced out of my reach again with a grin, “it is time to choose a new path once again! So, where would you like to go next, Mason Flynt?”
She raised her hands above her head again, and all the portals flashed and flared white, like flickering Christmas lights. I looked at the infinite amount of choices, but then a thought occurred to me.
“Will I have to be reborn as a baby again?” I asked as I looked back to Nemris. I wasn’t actually looking forward to the idea of puberty again, or high school.
“If you were anyone else,” the goddess crooned as she ran her fingers up my sternum, “I would say yes, but I rather like this particular body of yours.”
“I do, too,” I murmured as my eyes zeroed in on her luscious lips again. Every atom of my being ached to kiss her, and by the look on the goddess’s face, she knew it.
“Then I can drop you in whichever realm you choose, just as you are,” Nemris whispered as she reached her arms up around my neck, tilted her head to the side… and spun me around to face the portals head on.
“To make things a little easier, however,” the goddess went on as if she hadn’t made all my blood rush down south, “I have pre-selected several worlds which I think you would enjoy, but if none of these are to your liking, we’ll find one that is.”
Nemris waved her arm, and three separate portals floated down until they were suspended right in front of us. The portals stretched and elongated until each one was about the same height and width as I was. The goddess leaned forward and tapped the center of all three of them with a long, slender finger.
The portal on the left looked out over an alien, magenta landscape. I watched as a herd of blue creatures as large as elephants but with twice as many legs thundered across a meadow, hounded by a pack of humanoid figures in what looked like strange all-terrain vehicles. As I watched, one of the humanoid individuals launched themselves off their truck, scampered up the back of the lead stampeding creature, and somehow brought it to a halt.
It looked like any and every reality really was possible.
The alien portal intrigued me, but I moved dutifully on to the next one. The middle portal might actually have been the underwater city I caught sight of earlier, but I barely had time to spare it a glance before movement fro
m the third and last portal caught my eye.
Instinctively, I was drawn to this third portal, so I walked over to it. The flash of movement I had seen had actually been a woman, a gorgeous woman in fact, with blue hair and dark green eyes. At her hip hung a long and curved silver sword, and the gleaming metal surface reflected the orange light from the flames that danced all around her. As I watched, the woman’s face twisted in a snarl and she dashed out of frame with a wild, silent cry.
“What is this world?” I asked hurriedly as my eyes scanned the surface of the portal for a glimpse of the blue-haired beauty. My heart began to beat rapidly in my chest though I couldn’t exactly say why.
“That portal is to the kingdom of Illaria,” the goddess responded. “It is a realm of magic. Humans are just one of numerous species, some magical and some not. It is similar to several lives you lived recently.”
I thought back to the memory of me pressing Nemris against the wall, a broadsword at my hip. I thought back to all those fantasy novels I hoarded, how each one sucked me in and felt more real to me than my office job and cushy apartment. Lastly, I thought back to all the renaissance festivals I attended, and how I could never quite figure out why pulling into the grounds felt like coming home.
“Is this why I never felt like I belonged on Earth?” I asked Nemris as my blood thrummed with eagerness to jump through the portal and join the blue-haired woman in battle. I looked back at the goddess. “Why I could never form connections with anyone?”
“You always thought best on the battlefield and in motion, my love,” she told me as she reached out and gently cupped my face. “I tried to warn you that your heart would feel restless if you chose a simple life on Earth, but that time is over now. You have a whole new journey before you.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“A fresh start,” I replied as my face slowly stretched into a broad smile. I looked over the three portals before me, but the goddess and I both knew that I had already made my choice.
“Illaria,” I said aloud to test the word on my tongue.