NOVEL NEXT Ch 1: Rumors of my death have been greatly underexaggerated.
I knew something was wrong the moment my feet landed on the springboard, but I had no idea how wrong. The first thought that ran through my mind was that I was probably going to be docked points, lose my chance at the gold medal. It was only a fraction of a second later that I realized just how broken the springboard was, and that there was nothing I could do as I spun off course, over the target, over the safety mats to the side, and realized I had more to worry about than losing out on the medal.
I guess I should be thankful I didn't feel it when I hit the ground, or at least didn’t remember it. There was no grogginess when I finally did wake up, no haze like you would expect. I just opened my eyes, expecting to see the gymnasium of stunned spectators, and instead found myself in a new place entirely.
I wasn’t completely surprised, honestly. I’d hit my head in training once before and woken up in my college infirmary, but this was different. I wasn’t in an infirmary or a hospital, for one, but some simple stone room, only lit by a few candles. The two brightest candles were in front of me, each on the side of an elderly woman with a close-shaved head, sitting on her knees. She definitely wasn’t a doctor either, wearing just a simple set of flowing green robes, but she did have an air of authority around her, with large brown eyes that seemed to eat into me.
“Hello,” she said.
“Where am I?”
“This is the afterlife. You’re dead.”
“Oh,” was the first word that came to mind. “Guess dad was wrong then.”
“Most people are wrong about the afterlife.”
“Figures…” I glanced around the room some more, finding nothing but stone walls and a couple more candles, no exits to speak of. “Was anyone right?”
The woman chuckled. “Yes, but only by chance, and not anyone you would think either. You haven’t even heard the theory, is my understanding.”
A sense of dread was beginning to fall over me. I looked down, but didn’t find my body. As uncomfortable as having and maintaining it was, there had been some sense of security in the muscle I’d cultivated, but wherever I was now it wasn’t going to do me any good. Years of training, all to waste. Not like I’d ever really thought otherwise, to be fair.
“Bodies do not carry over, I’m afraid, no matter how hard you worked on yours.”
“Who are you?” God, devil? Neither, probably. Like she had said, pretty much everyone would have been wrong about the afterlife.
“The best name I can give is Altris. I am a sort of god, in your understanding of the word.”
“God of what,” I said, trying to step back. I couldn’t move, of course. Just trying to made me aware of the situation I was in. My soul, if that’s what it was, was trapped, bound by her.
“You can think of me as a god of service, of helping others, though it’s not really so hard a set thing like some of the pantheons you’d be familiar with. But I’ll answer the question you’re too scared to ask. You’re here in this room because I brought you here. I brought you here because I took an interest in you during your life.”
An interest in me? It was hard to imagine why a god would care. People on Earth had cared a lot, too much, but I knew that I’d never really mattered. “I don’t understand… Are you a fan of sports?” I asked.
Altris smiled, standing up and walking towards me, robes somehow still as she moved, like there was no wind to blow against. She was taller than I expected, easily twice the height of wherever I was. “No, like you I find them rather dull. Physical displays do not impress me, I’m sure you can imagine, and to be frank the physical feats of Earthlings do so even less.”
I turned with her, against my will, as she walked by me, now facing the back wall I’d looked at only moments ago. This time though, there was a doorway, an open passage to the outside, a long winding road of dirt through endless fields of green. I was pulled along, captive as she walked down the path.
“I’m a god of service, as I said. I say that, but I don’t hold power over or supervise the idea of service, it’s just how I achieved divinity. You’ve learned quite a bit about working for others in your short life.”
I wanted to recoil at the notion, look away somehow, but my sight was glued ahead, looking over her back as we crested a hill and started down a valley filled with bright yellow flowers in the shapes of cones, a kind I’d never seen nor heard of.
“Tell me, when was the last time you told someone no? Or asked for something for yourself?”
She stopped after asking, turning back towards me at the bottom of the valley. “I mean… you’re the god, you probably remember better than me.”
“I’m not omnipotent. I can cast my gaze anywhere, but not everywhere, and I did not keep track of you your entire life. Still, I knew before I asked that you wouldn’t be able to remember those times. I’ve never seen you do either, after all.”
I felt an undeserved level of shame at that. “I just like helping people, don’t want to be a bother… You’re the goddess of service, right? Shouldn’t that be what you’re all about?”
“Again, the concepts aren’t so rigid. I’ll be frank once more; I do not like how you were treated in life, nor how you responded to the treatment. Service is something to enjoy doing, not to be done out of obligation, or fear.”
I wanted to ball my nonexistent fist, to fight back the shame that was still growing. “I was a kid. I was always going to start standing up for myself once—”
“You were twenty eight years old when you died. A third through your natural lifespan. And you died doing something you hated.”
“Once I’d… once I’d finished competing,” I said, finishing my sentence.
“Competing in a sport you dedicated your life to, which you never once cared about yourself.”
“Can I go?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what I meant, where I wanted to go. All I was certain of was that I wanted to cry, but at least I didn’t have to hold back the tears this time, not without a body.
“Yes, in just a moment.” She knelt down, placing a hand on “me,” whatever I was. I somehow felt it, not the physical sensation, but a warmth inside of me, inside of my core. “Service is a wonderful virtue, one you have a natural predisposition towards. It brought me enlightenment, raised me to godhood. But what you did on Earth is not the path to such things. It was the path to ruin, a path you were only plucked from due to sheer chance and faulty athletic equipment.
“Though your body is gone, your spirit lives on. I fear without my intervention you might fall down that path to ruin wherever you end up again. I don’t want that to happen, so I’m offering you a second chance. A reincarnation of sorts, though not of the type you’re familiar with.”
Offering. It was a choice, at least the way she was presenting it. “What if I say no?”
“Then I release your spirit, and any number of things could happen. The only thing I can guarantee is that you would not keep your memories.”
“Memories?” I said. “If I say yes I get to keep my memories?”
“Indeed,” she said. “As I said, it’s not a type of reincarnation you personally are familiar with. It isn’t an easy path I present to you either, but it is a path that can steer you from the ruin I fear you head towards.”
“What’s hard about it.”
“Earth is but one world of many, though one in particular struggles more than any other world. I would send you to it as my champion, to help the citizens of that world, and yourself.”
“How can I—”
“It is against the rules for me to offer further information. Not until you accept.”
Rules? She was right, things weren’t like any religion I’d heard of. But I’d never really been religious anyway, not since I was a teenager. Though I did know one thing, if I kept my memories, I was as good as alive, and if I lost them, then I was as good as dead. That in mind, there was really only one choice, assuming Altris was telling the truth anyway.
“I accept then.”
She smiled once more, taking her hand off of me, though the warmth remained. “I’m glad. I still cannot tell you much, but what I can say is this: you will not be strong enough to save the world, to do the good required of you, not at first. As my champion, your method of gaining strength will be different than it would be otherwise. You must help others, but only when doing so brings you joy.”
I blinked in confusion. Had she said save the world? And wait, how was I blinking? “Why can’t I just help people? And why do I need to be strong?”
“Because I am the god of service, not labor. And because the world you are now in needs the strength of warriors.”
“The world I’m in?” I asked, turning my neck.
My neck? I thought, bringing my hands up to my head, rubbing my face.
“My body,” I said, turning back towards Altris once more, or where she had been at least. She was gone now, leaving just me in the valley of strange yellow flowers.
And I realized as I was touching my face that something was off. This most definitely was not my body. My hands and cheeks both were too soft. I felt up, touching hair far lower than it should be, and let out a piercing scream as I realized my ears were suddenly gone. The voice was foreign too, the voice that I somehow heard despite my missing ears as I felt a strange twitching on the top of my head, and as a long, pink, tail-like object entered my field of vision.
I turned to find the source of the fuzzy pink thing, doing a complete three-sixty as I chased it before falling back onto my butt, catching myself with my elbows. I wasn’t hurt, had trained on how to fall properly enough to avoid that at least, but nothing in my entire life had prepared me for what I saw as I looked down my body. I wasn’t a hunk of muscle anymore, but a lithe figure, with two modest breasts on my chest, and two glistening lips between between my legs.
I was a girl now, and I was also naked.