Chapter 1: 1.1: A Frightful New Beginning

Nobody had planned for the horrific event on April 26th. The midday sun glistened on the receding, dew-covered grass, whilst metallic shrapnel and chunks litter the ground that came into view. Screams overtook the sounds of nature as creaking metal settled. The stench that filled the air was enough to make people squeamish, but it was not the smell commonly known as blood. The foul, oily smell filtered through the crisp air and blocked out the smell of burnt flesh.

The beginning of the path that led to a young boy’s fate is now in his own hands. The news would later report this being the first time only a single person had died in such a monumental event. On a train with no less than seven hundred and thirteen passengers on it at rush hour. Now then, I bet you're wondering, how did it all come to this?

Let us roll it back a few hours before this scene plays out. Let’s say… five hours? No, that’s too far. He wouldn’t be awake then. Let’s go back about… two hours? Yeah, looks like he’s just waking up then. Let’s see how the young man lost his life in this world.

< # # # >

The blaring of a horn in a musical tone suddenly filled the room. A low, bassy rumble softly echoed from the bed, as a slowly moving limb stretched out, searching for the noise. After a few attempts, a lazy thump silenced the loud noise, which was replaced by gentle chirps, squawks, and distant rumbles of car engines.

The arm, that had quickly retreated to the warmth of the duvet, belonged to that of a young Reiki Honoka. A new rumble filled the room, followed by a face slowly peeling itself from the page of a comic. The tired look he wore could probably be from his late-night antics, but that wasn’t the case this time.

‘Ughhhhh… Why did I stay up so damned late last night?’

Groggily, he heaved his body out of the bed and dragged his feet towards his clothes drawer before heading to the bathroom. Just like anyone else, he hated early starts. But today? Today was an exception. Reiki was, for one of the rarest times in his life, excited for this very day.

‘Reiki-san! Get up!’

‘Nngh… Fine. Gimme fift—’

‘Or I’ll eat your breakfast I made for you!’

‘Coming, Halea!’

Even though he was excited about his first day at college, he was still afraid of his sister’s determination to make his days feel awful. Despite living at his sister’s family residence, he was looking forward to living on his own at the university. Sure, he was a bit of a shut-in, but his sister did her best to get him to experience the outside world from time to time, and it looked like that was about to pay off.

Today was no different either. But at least his hopes were high for probably the first time in his life.

< # # # >

The rest of his morning continued slowly. However, his sister was still rather annoying to the extent that she was almost constantly teasing him or invading his body space every few minutes. He knew that he was the younger brother that she was being protective of, and possibly still not ready to accept that he got the grades for university, and yet he couldn’t help but wish he could get on campus sooner to avoid her overbearing behaviour.

The traffic was immense, but that’s what they got for taking the bus to the train station. He knew that Halea could be overbearing at times, but he dealt with it by hanging out with her husband. They didn’t talk much, but when it came to hobbies, the two of them bonded pretty quickly in the first month they spent together.

Now, I bet you’re wondering “Wait, why is he living with his sister?”. Here’s where her overprotective nature makes more sense. After their mother was caught in the middle of a hit-and-run, she managed to survive long enough to get to a hospital, but her injuries were too severe to save her. Reiki had spent the best part of a month crying over the fact he’d not told his mother that he wished he’d been there for her.

Then a few months later, after her funeral, their father got sentenced to fifty years of jail time for drink-driving whilst on a delivery job and causing about five thousand dollars in damage. It was then that Halea decided that she’d take her brother under her wing and support him enough that he’d be able to get through the trauma they both shared.

Halea’s eyebrows raised and she stopped babbling about something she had no interest in when Reiki had unknowingly shifted his head to lean against her. He’d just been thinking of his mother and how kind she was when she was one of the most active members of their local community. His sister just sat there quietly and gently wrapped an arm around his shoulders as a soft rumble came from his mouth. This was going to be a long ride if the traffic was going to keep moving at a snail’s pace.

A loud ‘di-ding’ chimed, followed by a brief announcement that made Reiki snap his head back upright, a soft glow that looked unwanted on his cheeks. He looked to his right, trying to hide his face from his sister, who’d just cuddled him for pretty much the entire journey. All he could do was mumble through his broken facade.

‘Uh, you didn't see anything, right?’

‘Nope. I didn’t see anything. Just rest and I’ll wake you when we get there.’ She chirped softly, her lips gently turning up as her eyes softened. ‘Looks like it’ll be a long trip. Hope the train won’t arrive or leave too early…’ She added, as she started to babble about his future, which left him to disappear into his daydreams once again.

Despite having a rather average build himself, excluding the fatherly pot-belly stereotype, his sister was a lady with a rare eye-catching physique. One which often caused her to get a few looks now and then, but most of her friends managed to get their community to help out after they heard of their issues with their father.

Moving on from his thoughts of the past, he was looking forward to seeing what his future held and prayed that his mother was looking down on him from above. Just picturing her left him with a mental image of her reaching her arms out for a hug and smiling proudly at him.

Without realising it, some of his future classmates were on the same bus, heading to the same train station that he would be taking to the university he’d been accepted to. Luckily the train wasn’t early, or on time. By the time their bus arrived, they were about twenty minutes late for the train.

At first glance, they thought he’d missed the train, but it seemed like there were so many other young adults like Reiki, that the trains were being delayed by how many new students were arriving and how much luggage they were bringing.

Reiki felt shock travel down his spine when he saw how many new people were going to their shared university. Something didn’t feel right to him, but he pushed those thoughts away and decided to let them drift to happier ones as he eventually got on his designated train. Albeit a rather late one with walls of bodies lined up so close to the closing doors. One that out of pure chance snaked its way through the countryside and almost directly in front of the campus itself.

< # # # >

Watching the countryside fly past, his sister knew that he could do it. That he could improve and make lots of friends. She desperately wanted to see him at the end of the year with a group of friends she could trust to keep him busy, focused and distracted. Especially from those same thoughts that she burdens herself with to keep him from falling prey to his anxiety demons.

No sooner than the train had sped off, just twenty-six minutes earlier, had a black Mercedes with a vivid red stripe down one side pulled up to take his sister home. He knew her husband’s car just from a first glance. Nobody in their neighbourhood had the same car. Who would figure, that out of everybody for his sister to date, it had to be the guy whose garage built, low-budget Kickstarter project would blow up to be revolutionary and put him into the celebrity spotlight?

The train had just started to enter the city districts of Fenwick when the carriage started to pick up speed instead of slowing down and was suddenly lit with heavy orange light. The sound of mindless chatter stopped for a few seconds, then changed into a deluge of panic and screams as the train started rocking haphazardly on the tracks. It didn’t take too much thought to recognise that something was wrong.

Extremely wrong.

The jolting of his carriage, the panicked yelling, the increased screeching of the train along the tracks. It all started to hit home what was happening. His heart started to race, his hearing started to ring, and his palms and face started to bead with sweat. Despite making no noise himself, the sound of metal scraping on metal made a nauseous chill rush up his entire body.

Without a second thought, Reiki tried to stand, but a hand pushed against his chest a bit too harshly and at that exact moment…

The train derailed.

< # # # >

His life didn’t flash before his eyes like articles said they would, but instead, he saw blurry, flickering orange pillars fill his vision. He blinked a few times, then started to feel extreme pain in his chest and legs, but nothing in his right arm. As he attempted to get into a crawling position, he stopped and stared at where his right arm should've been.

Instead, he simply found himself looking at nothing more than a heavily damaged stump where his bicep should have been. The sudden register of a high-pitched ringing in his ears seemed to override the scream that came from his throat. He attempted to look around but found himself with large, badly cut shards of metal that stuck out from the rest of his body.

As he stared blankly, he barely noticed someone attempt to pull the shards from his body. He could immediately tell he was dying and he didn’t want to see his mother this early. She wouldn’t have wanted this. He realised that that shock from earlier could have been a sign that he was not supposed to have gotten on the train, but it was too late now.

‘I guess it’s too late for me now.’ He thought, as his vision, senses and someone’s screaming faded off into the background.

It didn’t take long, but he did feel a sense of serenity when his eyes suddenly got filled with a flash of silver light. Or what felt like silver light.

‘That’s impossible. I thought I was dead?’

Scrunching his nose and tightening his eyes, he felt himself getting gently lifted as if he was as light as a cloud. Then voices started conversing in a concerned manner around him as he felt himself being rested on a luxuriously soft surface. That’s when he felt his right arm had returned to his right-hand side. His body didn’t hurt either. It was like he was in a world of blissful pleasure.

Focusing on the voices without opening his eyes, they spoke in a language he hadn’t heard before. It wasn’t English, nor was it a language he could recognise.

‘Deos, agu hol va nivelei houm aval?’

‘Eisa va, bi fora deto, Solu. Agu hol sei no vyi deto lin houm. Devo asa, Gea?’

‘Eisa koku, Deos. Deso ei venheim?’

‘Nei, Gea. Deos di neo houm hol. Deimo, des wouka.’

The words sounded so foreign to Reiki, but he felt that they noticed he was awake. After opening his eyes, he quickly had to shut them again when the light that enveloped the bodies threatened to burn his eyes out. However, he felt no pain from the light. A surprised gasp came from the host of the female voice when he finally opened his eyes and ignored the feeling of what he could only call divine pressure washing through him.

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Before him stood three figures; one surrounded in white light with silver strands waving around, one warm red light with fewer yellow strands and the last in soft green light with only two brown, almost maroon-coloured strands.

‘... Hi?’

Out of everything he could ask, he suddenly felt embarrassed beyond belief at the informal introduction with a hesitantly raised hand. He felt an awkward buzzing in his head just before his mind felt dizzy which left him feeling a little queasy afterwards.

‘So sorry about that, we hope you can understand us now.’

The one with the white light looked at him, bent down a little and held out a hand. Not acting hesitant anymore, Reiki reached out and grabbed his hand.

‘I’m sorry that you didn’t survive that little accident. I tried to save everybody, but you were the only fatality. You see…’

Reiki just looked at the person before him, confusion slowly spreading across his face, from his eyes to his expression.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well… It was part of a bet that was to demonstrate that I’m not all that miraculous of a God.’

His eyes shot open at the word of “God”.

‘Wait, you’re… why are there three of you? Are Gods standing before me?! I thought they were just fictionalised from religious beliefs!’

‘Good question. I don’t even know why ther— Anyway, we need to make sure you’re okay with knowing that we’re indeed real and not figments of imagination or anything.’

‘Okay. I’m going to guess that this has something to do with my death?’

As he subconsciously prodded at the places where he’d been impaled, all three of the Gods nodded in sync. The other two who now sat at a table that wasn’t there just a few seconds ago started idle chatting whilst the current God was preoccupied with Reiki.

‘I’m fine with whatever you’re going to give or tell me. But please, give my sister a sign that I’m okay. Despite feeling clingy at times, she has been a lovely sister and I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for her safety. Could you do something, like a sign from something around her falling, or something to remind her of me when she starts daydreaming, or when she looks up a flock of birds appear in the shape of a midd–’

‘Okay, fine, I’ll send your sister some sign that isn’t so obvious as to what your last request was going to be.’

Despite the atmosphere around the two of them, the Goddess who’d overheard struggled to stifle a laugh at the imagery Reiki had given her. This caused the main God's left eyebrow to start twitching so the young man decided to hold back his comments just to let the God before him finish talking.

He was aware enough to quickly realise the God before him had no harm or threat in his words. It felt more like he was amused and was near perfect at hiding it.

‘Right, ahem.’

‘Oh?’

‘It seems like we’ll need to introduce ourselves. Probably starting with the God who thought it was a good idea to bet on saving everybody on that train from your world.’

Reiki shook his head and then slapped his cheeks, looking forward to learning their names.

‘I’m Reiki Honoka, well, my real name is Reiki-naki, but my family and close friends call me Reiki whilst my online friends know me as James Gourde... You probably didn’t need to know that last bit.’ He replied, rubbing the back of his head out of habit, which got the others to chuckle warmly.

‘Haha, it’s fine, young boy. If we’re introducing ourselves, my name is Solu, and I’m the Sun God. I’m the other one who bet that he couldn’t save everyone.’ He pointed jokingly at Deos, his older, much wiser friend. ‘The one you’re talking to there is Deos and the goddess before you is Gea, the Earth Goddess.’

‘Nice to meet you? So, what’s the plan now? Seeing how I’ve reached my untimely demise, I don’t think I could last much longer... Mentally that is.’ Rubbing his forehead with his fingers, he focused on keeping a weird headache from forming. ‘...I might start to think this is a hallucination or something soon.’ He added under his breath, as he tried to chuckle away his worries.

‘Okay then. One thing that surprises me, is that you're the first person we’ve met here who hasn’t lost their mind upon meeting at least one of us, let alone three.’ Gea replied, summoning another fresh cup of mint tea.

Reiki was expecting something to happen, but as time went by, nothing happened and Reiki got his hopes up for nothing. It only took a few relatively long minutes, which felt like hours to Reiki, for a golden light to suddenly emit brightly from the floor, spreading out into shapes and symbols unknown to Reiki and got so bright he had to cover his eyes.

‘Guess I’m just lucky then.’ Reiki replied, his lips quivering as he joked. His predicament.

‘Oh, where are my manners! Reiki-kun, come sit down with us.’ She gestured with her hand in a ‘come hither” motion, which also created another chair around the round table. ‘It’s poor manners to leave people standing you two.’

‘Sorry Gea.’/‘Condolences, my lady.’ Deos and Solu spoke simultaneously, Solu bowing in a pose similar to Reiki’s memory of how the Japanese bowed.

‘It’s all right boys.’ She brought a hand to her face to stifle a small snicker. ‘Now, unfortunately, we can’t send you back to your work, but there is an alternative, but I can’t perform the ritual for it. Deos, could you call on Kaeo for me?’

‘Oh, sure. Shouldn’t be too hard to get him to “summon” himself to us.’

Deos whipped his hand through the air a few times, a trail of some golden ether flowing from his palm, then a golden ball blipped briefly when he snapped his fingers. When the light simmered down, Reiki uncovered his eyes from the golden light and heard a voice coming from where it had just been.

‘—nd this is the reason why I need more of a forewarning when you say that you need my help!’ Came the voice, soft yet authoritative. ‘Oh... Right... I see. You’d like me to attempt sending his soul to that world?’

A stern look fell upon Deos’ pained expression, which cause a bead of sweat to comically drip down the side of the newly arrived God’s face.

‘Kidding! I’m kidding! I briefly read that bit about him being the casualty of a bet, but to be the only casualty is a testament to that crazy amount of power you have.’ He bowed to Deos, as if out of respect for his powers, despite having His limits.

It didn’t take him long to join the group at the table, pulling out a chair that hadn’t been there previously. It appeared in the same way as Reiki’s current chair, but this time with a noticeable, dark red flame that seemed to flow like liquid from out of nowhere. It was warping and twisting around as if it was made from a liquid fire until it vanished and a solid, pearlescent white chair replaced where the fire just was. The situation suddenly dawned on young Reiki that he was indeed dead in his world now.

‘Right... Let’s get you ready for this New Earth of yours. Not to worry, they essentially have the same days, months, years et cetera and also call it Earth, so you’re good there.’ As soon as he eagerly clapped his hands together, a sudden rush of wind billowed around Reiki.

‘Wait, don’t I need a new identity or something before I go? That’s what I read in all those mangas about characters reincarnating!’ Reiki panicked, before a gentle hand rated on his shoulder.

‘If you'd like to live under an alias, that's for you to decide. After all, we aren't always able to do what everyone believes we can do. Deos is a good example of this.’ Turning his head, he looked at Gea and her soft smile whilst her head was surrounded by oddly floating but relaxing shapes and colours. ‘Even so, what name are you thinking of using?’

‘Well, I'm normally a bit of an emotional shut-in, so I've been using the personality of a character I've used in an online roleplaying game whilst speaking with everyone here. His name is, uh, well was James Gourde.’ He replied, habitually scratching the back of his head.

Smiling, Gea uses her finger to trace a few lines with a minty-green coloured trail that formed a few small circles, each imploding into a ball of light in her palm. Reiki, no, James couldn't hear the words over the sudden increase in the sound of the column of wind rushing past his ears, but he knew it was probably a gift being blessed onto him. Just before he left, all three seated Gods waved goodbye to him as his vision was blinded.

‘Well, I guess this is it.’ He thought, as an odd feeling entered his chest and his vision suddenly went completely dark.

This was the new beginning of his journey into another world. But it wasn’t what he was planning it to be. Anything going through his mind now felt foggy, as if waking up from a dream. His body felt like it was as light as air, drifting in the vast void around him. An odd pressure around him flowed like the surface of a soft, cotton duvet fluffed to almost absolute perfection.

For young James, he couldn’t describe in words how relaxing and freeing it felt to be in this void of pleasure until a brief spark lit up the vast, comfortable blackness around him like fireworks had gone off all around him.

At the same time, sparks flew not just in his vision, but in his mind as he reflected that this was the last time he would ever have a connection to the world he was once a part of. His last wishful thought, making what felt like his facial features stretch out and his cheeks heat up, left a fuzzy feeling where he felt his chest was.

Not so much a buzz, but a warmth that slowly spread through his body in his mind's eye. The thought?

‘I hope my sister gets the sign that I’m okay.’

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