Chapter 1: Chapter 1: A Death in London

“Thanks for helping me move things about, Isabella! I really appreciate it!” said Maria, as with a groan and a final heave, we dragged the last box into her new apartment.

“No… no problem,” I said, gasping a little as I leaned against the wall. “I’m happy to help out. I’m a little confused though – don’t you usually ask your brother for help with things like this? I haven’t seen George around recently, and I was hoping all of us could hang out one last time. Our final semester starts next week, and we’ll be too busy to think about group gatherings after that. I know Olivia was interested in doing something as long as it’s before New Year’s, and Jo wanted to play board games if we have an opening in our schedule. The gathering wouldn’t feel complete without your brother, though. Do you reckon he’d want to join us?”

“George is busy for the next few days. His girlfriend got back from her study abroad program in Korea yesterday, so he’s helping her settle in. I’ll send him a text later to see what his schedule looks like. Even if he’s busy getting his girlfriend reacquainted with London, he has to make a bit of time for the group, right?” Maria said, pulling out her phone as she grinned at me.

I gave my best friend a tired smile, before I struggled back to my feet. “Well, at least we’re done with everything.”

“Of course! I really want to thank you for taking time to help me move furniture around. I know it was a bit last-minute because I messed up the scheduling, but thanks to you I still managed to get everything moved in on time.” She paused, then turned back to me. “Since we’re done, how about we go get something for dinner? My treat. What are you in the mood for?”

I thought about it for a moment, frowning as I tried to remember what was in the area. “I don’t know. Are there any good restaurants near here?”

“There’s a good Indian restaurant nearby, I think. I haven’t tried it yet, but my new neighbor strongly recommended it to me. Want to give it a try?” 

“That sounds lovely,” I said, giving Maria a much less tired grin this time. 

The two of us stepped out of Maria’s apartment, and after she locked it up, we started heading down the stairs.

“So, did you hear about -” Whatever Maria was about to say, she was cut off by someone else’s yell, from several floors above us. I couldn’t hear what they said very well due to the distance.

“What?” I asked, peeking my head into the stairwell to figure out what the person above us was saying. Then, right as I turned my head upwards, I saw a flash of a brown wooden box falling from the sky.

Huh?

The box slammed into my head after picking up momentum from falling several floors. I heard a snapping sound, and there was incredible pain in my head and neck all of a sudden. I felt myself slam into the railing as the heavy box bounced off of my head and then continued freefalling towards the floor. However, it was suddenly very hard to breathe, or think, and my vision was rapidly growing dark. I got one final look at Maria’s horrified face before I fell unconscious.

The next segment of time was a distorted blur of sounds and images. I heard someone yelling, crying, and a few beeping sounds. Then, I felt something…tear away from me. Then I became one with the darkness.

* * *

On December 19th, 2016, Isabella Patel passed away as a result of a careless group of teenagers playing around several floors up in Maria’s new apartment. They knocked a heavy crate of metal tools off of the railing by accident, which coincidentally managed to hit Isabella and seriously injure her spine and head. While she did not die immediately, she did not regain consciousness before her death.

The inscription on her grave was simple.

Isabella, you were the glue that held a group of friends together more tightly than any family. You were a beloved daughter and a loyal friend. We will never forget you.

* * *

When I came to, the only thing I could see was darkness. All around me was an endless inky. I also felt a sensation that reminded me of acid, swirling around me. It didn’t hurt, but I still felt a strange sensation of dissolving. Every second, I could feel something gently nibbling away at me, taking away bits and pieces of me every second. Even though I wasn’t sure what I was losing, I was sure it was important.

“Ma…. Ma… Mar?” Who was I calling for? I knew there was a name that was at the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn’t remember what it was. It was the name of…

What was it the name of? What was I even trying to say? Mar... The month of March? Mars, the planet? My brain kept screaming at me as I desperately tried to remember what word I had been about to say. It was important to me, even if I couldn’t remember why.

But after a moment, I realized something even scarier.

Not only was I confused, I couldn’t remember my name. What was it? Is… Is… my name had something to do with Isa…. Isa… I kept thinking about my name, but I couldn’t remember what came after ‘Isa.’

I tried to shake away the fogginess from my thoughts, but it was like there were cobwebs in my brain now. I didn’t know my name, and I didn’t know where I was.

As I tried to understand what was happening, I realized that there was something wrong with my vision. I tried closing my eyes and then opening them again. I couldn’t see a difference in the world around me at all. Was I blind?

I panicked, trying to wriggle my arms and legs around. Then I realized I couldn’t feel my arms and legs. Were they gone?

What was wrong with me?

I started sucking in air, trying to scream, but no air came.

I couldn’t breathe.

I flailed about in increasing confusion and panic. I couldn’t hear, see, or feel anything. It was just endless nothing no matter what kind of response I tried to get from my body.

Finally, as I wildly thrashed around, I managed to somehow shift… whatever my view was coming from, just enough to realize that there wasn’t only inky darkness in all directions. I could see one other thing in my surroundings. Myself.

I no longer had a body. Now, my body was comprised of a soft, silver glow. I no longer had limbs or a head - I was just a sort of fuzzy, blob shaped ball of light. And if I looked closely, I could literally see through myself.

Floating inside of me were two glowing orbs of light. One was located right where I felt that my brain would have been if I still had a head. The other one was located in my stomach. It was a bit pointier, and looked more like a needle than a simple orb. As I watched it, it was continuously growing brighter and brighter.

Why could I see through myself? What were the glowing orbs of light inside of me?

Was I a ghost?

I tried to focus on myself again, probing my memories to see what I could remember. I knew that there was something important to me called Mar… Mar… Mar - something. I also knew my name started with ‘Isa.’ There were other people that I knew were important to me – but I couldn’t remember anything about them. Their names, their likes and dislikes, the reason I cared about them, what their face looked like – all of those were hazy. It was like trying to look through a fog bank.

In fact, most of my memories were hazy. I could remember that I lived in something called London, but couldn’t remember what London was. Was it a country? A building? A city? Most of my memories, especially of my personal life, had been scrambled beyond recognition. Finally, however, I managed to scrounge up a vague memory, my final memory before waking up in this void.

It was the feeling of pain lancing its way through my head and neck. I could remember someone shrieking in the background, but couldn’t remember who it had been.

Finally, I realized what had happened.

I was dead. In that case, this was…

The afterlife?

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I closed my eyes again, before reopening them in hopes I might be able to see more around me. However, the only thing I could see was more darkness and the two blobs of light inside of me. I didn’t know what either of them were. Now that I had realized I was dead, I stopped panicking at the realization that I couldn’t breathe or move. If I was a ghost, it was only natural that I couldn’t breathe or move my limbs around. However, the realization that I couldn’t even remember who I had been alive rocked me to my core. I felt… uncomfortable at the idea that I had once had a name and people I cared about, but I had no idea who I once was. The feeling was muted, possibly because I didn’t have a brain to process emotions anymore, but I still felt like I had lost something incredibly important to me. Since I felt uncomfortable, I focused on my surroundings again. I didn’t want to focus on the growing realization that most of my memories were lost, so I started focusing on my situation instead.

I looked around me, and realized I still couldn’t see any other ‘souls’ nearby. Was I alone, or was I just unable to see other dead people? If I had gone to some sort of ‘afterlife’ I would have expected to see other souls somewhere, but I was just drifting alone through the void. 

After a few minutes of looking around, I started to become aware of a tugging sensation deep in my soul. The needle-shaped blob of light in my stomach seemed to be growing stronger, and I realized that it was trying to pull me somewhere.

Was it trying to guide me to the afterlife? If I spent the rest of eternity staring at abyssal emptiness in all directions, I would go mad, but if I could see other souls and go somewhere, I would be able to do… something. Talk with other dead people, figure out what was happening, maybe. Anything was better than this inky void. And the feeling of losing something every second I remained in this place was persistent and incredibly uncomfortable. 

I focused on the needle of light, and suddenly, it started to expand. From the size of a needle, it grew until it became a lasso of light.

It wrapped itself around me, and suddenly, the feeling of dissolving vanished. Then, I was yanked upwards. I could feel that I was moving at an incredible speed. However, even though I was moving incredibly quickly, there was still no light around me. I had no clue where I was going, or how fast I was moving.

I lost track of time as I continued to fly upwards. Time passed as I saw nothing but darkness around me. Hours turned into days, which turned into weeks. Eventually, I lost track of time completely, and started wondering how long I had been flying. Weeks? Months? Years? Did time even mean anything to me anymore?

Then, with a pop, the scenery changed completely. The darkness was replaced with glittering silver light above me, and I finally saw something new. Above me were all sorts of glittering lights, resplendent as they lit up the void and filled it with color, like a distorted rainbow.

I looked down. There, just below me, was the largest ocean I had ever witnessed. Endless black water stretched in all directions as far as the eye could see. The river dwarfed the size of the ocean by trillions of times. Heck, it seemed to dwarf the size of the planet I used to live on.

As I rose higher and higher, and time crawled forward, I started to notice other things in the massive black ocean. Occasionally, there would be little streaks of silver light. While I couldn’t see them clearly, I eventually realized they were other souls.

Unlike me, they didn’t seem to be aware of anything. They looked like they were asleep, as the ocean’s currents gently swept them along. They looked… lighter than I did. Cleaner, somehow. And unlike me, they didn’t have extra orbs of light in their soul. While their soul emitted a small silvery glow, they didn’t have the golden lasso pulling me through the air, and they also didn’t have an orb of light where their brain should be. Occasionally, one of them would suddenly fly in another direction entirely, shooting off into the distance at speeds I couldn’t track. Sometimes a few souls would also lose their silver glow, then collapse and turn into part of the ocean around them, becoming part of the black ocean of souls. Souls collapsing into the darkness was a rare occurrence, but gave me an awful feeling. Were those souls just… gone? Before I had time to process the idea that souls might be destroyed sometimes, I realized I was still getting higher and higher.

Soon, I was so far above the ocean that I couldn’t even see the little silver-colored souls in the ocean anymore – they were just too far away for me to see. I began to feel alone as time passed. Even if the other souls hadn’t been awake, knowing that I wasn’t alone in this glittering sea of lights above the black ocean had been comforting, and now I couldn’t see anyone but me.

Eventually, I felt another sudden jerk as the golden lasso started pulling me more quickly than before. My speed increased by leaps and bounds. If I was previously moving at around the speed of a jet fighter, soon I was moving as fast as a rocket. Then I accelerated far beyond that speed. Beyond sound, beyond light, beyond anything.

With a sudden crackling sound, everything changed around me. I flinched, but since I had no body it was an entirely a mental reaction. Color, sound, shape… all of them bent by a very slight amount. I couldn’t put my finger on what was different, exactly. However, as I looked at the endless black ocean around me, it seemed to be subtly different than before.

Then, after some time, the crackling sound came again, and reality changed. And again, and again, and again. Every single time, it came more quickly than the previous crackling sound. And every time a new crackling sound came, the giant ocean I was flying over would subtly shift and adjust itself, until finally, I could see with my ghostly eyes exactly what was different.

The endless black ocean that stretched in all directions was becoming more and more bizarre with each crackling sound. First, the water started to change – after about thirty crackling sounds, it became fog instead of water. Then, the color had started to change, from black to silver. Then, after a while, it transitioned into a giant flowing stream of giant green gas bubbles, all slowly bobbing and crackling as they floated along. 

Then, the ocean shifted again, returning to a black color. However, the gas bubbles did not transition back into water – instead, they started to change into shapes that were impossible for me to understand. They became non-Euclidean geometries that wriggled as I tried to nail them down in my thoughts.

Before I had time to process the strange shapes, everything changed again.The endless ocean turned into magma, then a layer of brown, leather like foam. Then it became a curtain of soft, yellow incandescence, akin to the gentle candlelight of a church in the evening. Every few seconds, the ocean changed color, shape, and texture again.

Then, I began to slow down. Changes in the endless ocean began slower, although it continued to swap shapes, colors, forms of matter, and sizes.

Eventually, everything changed for one final time. The ocean was currently in some sort of half water and half gas state, as if the ocean was boiling. Its color had settled on a deep violet color, bordering on black.

And I was now flying towards something sailing on the ever-shifting ocean.

It looked like a ship. A massive, seventeenth century pirate ship, except it had no mast. On this endless, infinite ocean, the ship simply sailed forward, despite the fact that it was the first and only thing I had seen on this river besides myself and other sleeping souls.

And the ship was large.

VERY large.

At first, I had just thought it was a normally sized ship. But as I got closer, it just kept getting bigger.

Finally I realized that this ship wasn’t just huge. It was literally larger than a galaxy - and not just by a tiny margin. I could see cities spotting the surface of the ship, each of which was dozens or hundreds of times larger than any city I had ever seen before. And there were millions of these cities on just the ship’s railing - I had no idea how many more massive cities lay on the ship’s deck, or if there were any further cities elsewhere on the ship.

Finally, my speed started to slow down as I approached one of the cities on the ship’s railing.

My destination finally became visible. I was approaching one of the smaller cities on the ship - ‘smaller’ meaning that it was only a dozen times the size of an average metropolis.

The city seemed to be hazy, almost as if it were a mirage that would disappear at a moment’s notice. It continuously rippled, swirled, and moved; buildings appeared and vanished every second as the non-Euclidean geometry of the city and strange movement of its surroundings propelled structures in and out of visibility.

The city architecture had no sense of cohesion. Some had massive neon advertisement billboards in front of them, advertising things such as ‘Tier 2 Soul fragments for low prices!’ or ‘Glut reductions for low prices! Get an appraisal now, before your glut cuts off your future growth!’ There were even more strange advertisements, such as ‘Missing Keyword Abilities? Don’t let your 10 slots go to waste! Get advice before you go down the wrong path! 50 Achievement per consultation from an expert!’  and even a few signs that advertised ‘How to innovate in new worlds with World Surveyor Vincent! The easiest ways to adapt inventions from the Laws of one dimension to the next and farm [Influence] Achievement in each world. Listening slots are only 20 Achievement each!’

These odd advertisements on modern neon signs were built right next to squat huts and castles made of stone and wood, creating an incredibly bizarre sight that was neither modern nor medieval in aesthetic. Floating above the city, there were even majestic floating islands, all glowing as they defied gravity with leisurely grace. 

Floating above the city was the largest advertising billboard of all. It was the size of a small moon, and so bright that it easily doubled as a sun for this starless city. 

‘Welcome to the Nurseries of the Market, Newly Deceased! Before your next life, LuxCorp strongly recommends that you purchase more Abilities, Stats, and Items! Buy ten tier 1 Soul Fragments now, and get your eleventh for free (while supplies last; may not apply to all Market-Associated retailers)! Buy a generic, no keyword ability and get a free consultation on how to train and apply it to worlds with the relevant Law(s). Get consultation from a Clone of Eluxia for how to plan your build and what Abilities suit you best for only 100 Achievement! 

Don’t settle for less - get advice from the best!

Please be aware that LuxCorp takes no responsibility for your original death, soul dissipation if you run out of lives, or any incidents of permanent death if you or your comrades are attacked by something that can destroy souls. Thank you for your cooperation!’

The city looked like a space age megacity mashed together with random high-fantasy architecture sprinkled in here and there. At least, that was what the city must have looked like in its heyday.

The city filled with strange and extraordinary buildings was in ruins. The giant, moon-sized billboard floating above the city was cracked. There was a giant, glowing hole near the center of the advertisement, and cracks and holes riddled its surface. The floating islands above the city were all tilted at crazy angles. I could see that the former buildings on top of the islands had fallen off of them, crashing into the city beneath them like billion-ton asteroids crashing to the earth. The afterlife which I had spent hours, days, or possibly months flying towards was a dust covered pile of rubble.