I don’t know what I expected. I mean, maybe I didn’t really expect the white light and tunnel. And I’m not sure I expected to find myself in a queue on a cloud at a literal set of pearly gates. But what I wasn’t expecting was a massive necropolis with a serious Dia De Los Muertos theme going on.
And while I had secretly hoped I would be woken in the realm of the dead by the singing of a beautiful woman, that too turned out just a bit different than I had expected.
“My young love said to me, my mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kind
And she went away from me and this she did say:
It will not be long now till our wedding day.
She stepped away from me and she moved through the fair,
And fondly I watched her move here and move there;
And then she went homeward with one star awake,
As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.
The people were saying that no two were e’er wed,
But one had a sorrow that never was said,
And she smiled as she passed, with her goods and her gear,
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.
I dreamt it last night that my young love came in,
So softly she came that her feet made no din;
And she laid her hand on me and this she did say,
“It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.”
I’d first heard that song long ago, at a wake for my great grandmother. I had only been six at the time, so I didn’t get to stay up with the adults and do any of the heavy drinking, but I remember that song clearly. I had met her several times and had always like the crazy old woman. I remember bawling. The tune still brings a few tears to my eye.
As the song ended, I could feel myself start to stir and began to take notice of several things. The first was the scent of several flowers, including fragrant agrimony, marsh orchid and several others I could almost but not quite identify. I also noticed the feel of soft fabric on my right cheek and slightly damp grass beneath the rest of me. I felt a hand softly brush a loose strand of my hair aside.
A voice, the voice of the woman singing, whispered softly into my ear. “Time to wake up, dear brother. I don’t think the locals are very happy with your redecorating.”
I stirred. “What redecorating?” I murmured as I tried to rouse myself.
“Open your eyes, dear brother.”
I opened my eyes to see an alien sky above me. It almost looked like we were in a violet nebula or something. But strangely, the patch of sky directly above was clear and blue. So too it was with the ground around me. While the place we were in appeared to be some kind of Mayan or Incan temple in a jungle-like setting, the ground for maybe fifteen feet in any direction looked like it had been transplanted straight from an Irish meadow.
By the curious looks of those around us, I was guessing that this wasn’t exactly normal. Creatures of many types had flocked around us, trying to catch a glimpse. I recognized a few of the differing types of beings nearby. Some were angels of varying types, as well as their celestial kin, archons, agathions and azata. But there were other beings, not just celestials. Aeons, inevitables, proteans, Valkyries and even the occasional devil passed by, as if we were in the courtyard of some interplanar campus, or perhaps a park next to a courthouse.
Right. The Boneyard. The domain of Pharasma, goddess of death. That explained the psychopomps flittering all over, making everything look kinda like Tucson during All Souls Weekend.
I looked up at the woman cradling my head. To say she was beautiful is an understatement, but there was something more about her, a familial quality as well as a familiarity I was having trouble putting my finger on so soon after waking. It finally clicked. “Katie?” I asked, sitting up. It wasn’t quite right. Her hair was a bit different, much more red than my elder sister.
“You’re in the right neighborhood, dear brother, but at the wrong door,” she said, smiling sweetly.
I studied her features closely. She wasn’t Maggie or Molly. No she looked more like Katie, but there was something different. I almost couldn’t put my finger on it, but suddenly realized it. She looked a bit more like me, but in a good way. “…Kira?”
My twin sister threw her arms around my neck. “I’ve been waiting so very long to see you again,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
I hugged her back. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.” After several moments, I spoke up again. “So, going to give me the tour of this place?”
She gave me a look. “I just got here.”
“Where were you before?”
“I think I was with you, but it’s like I was half asleep.”
Well, that isn’t weird at all. “You should have said something.”
“I would have, but I don’t think I knew I was me. I thought I was you. Or something.”
That didn’t make any sense. Not unless… “Fleur.”
Her eyes went wide. “Yes! I remember that! That’s what you kept calling me.” Huh. So my crazy split personality wasn’t actually me being crazy. It was my dead twin sister’s soul living in my brain.
You know, when I see that written out, it doesn’t sound any less crazy than it did in my head. In fact, it seems even more crazy.
I looked around again. The crowd was growing. “Let’s get up and try to blend in while we figure out what’s going on around here.”
“Sure,” she said. She hopped up quickly, her green sundress barely even fluttering from the fluid motion. I considered lecturing on the poor fashion choice of combining a sundress with combat boots, but decided now wasn’t the time or place.
Not that I was dressed much better. I looked like the fashion result of a fusion dance between a BronyCon Starswirl the Bearded cosplayer and something out of Shadowrun. What I’m saying is that my goggles and bandolier clashed horribly with my starry robes. I really wanted to fix that.
I didn’t even have to focus. Just my desire manifested a change to my outfit. I found myself in my normal clothes, minus to the hat and coat. The shirt also changed to read “Don’t Fear the Reaper” above a picture of Ryuk from Deathnote, for some reason.
“Neat trick,” Kira said.
“No idea how I did it.”
Our attempt to hide ourselves in the crowd proved an abysmal failure. You wouldn’t think it would be difficult to hide a couple dead people in the land of the dead, but you’d be wrong. I mean, we clearly weren’t Outsiders, but we were far too well defined to be the quasi-incorporeal normal dead, which Golarion theology terms as “petitioners”. That meant we were either living planar travelers, or something else.
Of course, the daemon attacks didn’t help either.
Outsiders of all alignments can be found in the Boneyard, arguing for ownership of particular souls, but as I understand it, they mostly keep to their own sections, venturing to the edges to attend the courts that handle cases of souls that can be said to straddle a line. But that isn’t to say that none leave their domains to conduct business under the watchful eyes of the aeons and psychopomps that tend the realm.
Even then, daemons are mostly forbidden from leaving their section due to their hunger for souls. They do so from time to time, astradaemons especially, usually to plunder the River of Souls for a snack. Even then, it was beyond weird to find a distressingly insane derghodaemon deep in the inner sector of the realm like this, almost as though it was waiting for us. It certainly looked that way when it made a beeline for us.
I didn’t scream like a girl when it roared and began charging us. The angel that interceded must have just noticed the daemon on its own.
“Back, vile fiend!” the angel shouted, raising its longsword. The daemon was unfazed. Truth was, the daemon was much more powerful than the angel and there was nothing close enough that might help. Not unless I felt like making a pact with a devil.
“He’s losing!” Kira hissed. “We have to help!”
“I don’t disagree, but how?”
“That thing you did with your clothes, can you make a weapon?”
Now that was an interesting idea. Somehow I knew I could. “Any preferences?”
“Whatever! Just hurry!”
This was a dangerous foe. Not just anything would do. It had to be both strong and easy to wield. And it absolutely needed a bit of reach. There was only one type of weapon that fit the bill. I closed my eyes and focused my mind, just like when I Fabricated something. It needed dwarven craftsmanship. It had to be adamantine. But there was no adamantine around. And, being dead, I had no blood to sacrifice. But there was air, and water.
The air crackled as I tore the molecules of water apart with my mind. It then burned as I fused the hydrogen, again and again and again, into adamantine. The sounds of hammers striking metal sounded as the tip took shape, followed by the sounds of grinding as an edge was honed. The ground split and a tree grew. I sundered the darkwood and carved it into a shaft, perfectly shaped to my sister’s hands.
The tip attached itself to the haft, which grew around it, securing it in place. But that wasn’t enough. It needed magic. I wrought my will upon it. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of runes burned into the spear’s flesh. It would strike true, tearing the wind itself asunder as it passed. And what’s weirder is that I knew it had a name.
Kira grabbed the spear. “Gugnir?!” she exclaimed, either out of recognition of Odin’s spear or from reading my mind. Hey, maybe that’s a thing we can do. I don’t know. We didn’t have time to contemplate it further. The angel was in trouble.
I say “was”, because once Kira moved, it was over. She literally flash-stepped over to the daemon. She was a blur as she fought, dancing around the foe, striking multiple blows so quickly that I was certain only one had been made.
It seems that with a weapon in her hand, the daemon never stood a chance. Heck, I’m not even sure a nascent daemon-lord would have been able to go toe-to-toe with her. Not in a purely physical contest, anyway. That’s how fast she was.
“Stop!” someone shouted at us, once the fighting was done.
I knew that tone. I didn’t even have to look and see the stern faced psychopomp bearing down on us to realize the authorities were coming for us. I’ve been in that situation. Usually right after jumping out of a young woman’s window. So instinct took over. “Cheese it! It’s the fuzz!” I shouted. Because apparently I’m a character in West Side Story.
We took off running. We didn’t have a plan beyond fleeing. And, let’s be honest, I’m not the fastest person. But I had already discovered that I could quickly change my clothes. Frictionless was a change I could do. So I changed the soles of my boots and had Kira push me.
For the record, we went about fifty miles an hour. And in case you were wondering, yes, that’s faster than living humans should be able to run. But Kira wasn’t exactly a living human. So the rules don’t exactly apply.
Like I said before, we didn’t exactly have a plan. We were just running. We might have kept running, but someone yanked us inside a building as we passed as though we were in some kind of cartoon. And if we had been in bodies rather than some kind of corporeal-ish extraplanar entities, I’m pretty sure we’d have gotten whiplash.
A lean, semi-muscular man with brown hair and an amused smirk set us down just inside what appeared to be a tavern of sorts. It reminded me of the Hanged Man in Dragon Age 2, if I’m being honest. Also, for honesty’s sake, I must tell you that I did not in any way forget that my shoes were frictionless when he set me down. Which means I did not fall flat on my face. It also means that I didn’t scream in an undignified and hilarious manner. It also means that I didn’t have to wait until the laughter subsided to thank our rescuer.
“Don’t sweat it,” he told us. “Come, join us and have a drink. My treat. From what I hear, you kids have had a heck of a day.” We joined him and a grey-bearded dwarf at the only occupied table in the bar. I tried to introduce myself and the man shook his head. “We don’t stand much on formality here, even if T here is a bit of a stick in the mud sometimes.”
The dwarf drained his tankard. “Your bar, your rules,” he said sagely.
“That’s one of the most important rules,” the brown haired man said with a nod. “So, what kind of beer will you have?”
I gauged my surroundings carefully. I was pretty sure no one would make me a gin and tonic if I asked, and it didn’t look piratey, so rum was probably out. “I’m not a huge fan of beer,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to have mead, would you? Or I could do a root beer, if beer it must be.”
He gave me a narrow-eyed, suspicious look. “You don’t like beer?”
I had been afraid of that. I was going to school in Colorado before I left, so I truly understood that some people take beer far too seriously. I would have to be careful how I played it. So I shrugged. “Life’s too short to acquire a taste for something when there are so many things to drink that I like already.”
The dwarf laughed. “Lad has a point.”
“Fair enough,” the man said with a chuckle. “How about you?” he asked my sister.
“Something dark and thick enough to stand a knife in,” she said. I must have given her a look, because she shrugged at me and said, “What? Just because you want something with a little umbrella in it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good beer.” That got another laugh.
I would have been offended, but I found myself seriously wondering if the little umbrella was actually an option and if I could get it with some pineapple slices. I decided not to ask. Best not to press my luck. “So, is it usual for newcomers to get attacked by a daemon?”
“Not that far from their section,” the dwarf said somberly as we awaited our drinks.
“It’s also not every day that someone creates a miniature sun and pulls a spear out of it. Neat trick. Some sort of extra-dimensional carrying space?” News apparently travels fast in the waiting room of the dead. Most waiting rooms I’d been in before only had old copies of Golf Digest for entertainment.
I shook my head. “Not exactly. I was just fusing atoms to make the metal I needed to fabricate the spear.”
“You crafted that?” the dwarf asked, surprised. “May I see it?” Kira and I exchanged a glance and she handed it over. He analyzed it with a crafter’s eye. I was suddenly very self-conscious. He let out a low whistle. “That’s pretty impressive. Never met a demi-god who could put out this kind of work. Though, in the future, I’d recommend just willing it into existence. No need to make a miniature star to get metal.” He gave me a knowing smile.
“I’m a what now? I think you’re mistaken. We’re normal humans aside from the fact that we’ve been sharing a body since we were born.”
The dwarf gave me a look of disbelief. “That can’t be right,” he said.
“No, it’s true,” Kira said after taking a drink of her disgusting looking beer. “It gets a little cramped in his body, but I didn’t want to leave him by himself when I died.” The way she said it was hilariously nonchalant.
“No, the body thing is a little weird, but not what I’m talking about. The normal human thing is what I’m talking about. There’s no way you two are normal.”
Kira gave an exaggerated pout. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
“I only mean it in the best possible way,” the man quickly corrected. “Your souls are far more developed than one would expect from someone your age.”
I started thinking about it. There were quite a few possibilities that I knew of. “Would spending a year in outer space with a woman fused with some kind of dark space entity affect the strength of one’s soul?”
“You did what now?”
I took a few minutes to explain the whole Samantha thing. The two exchanged glances before the dwarf answered. “That…probably wouldn’t explain everything, but it’s a place to start. She might have done something. Mind if I take a look?”
“Take a look at what, exactly?”
“Just looking for blessings from gods and godlings. Those persist after death and might explain it, if enough power has been expended on you.”
“I guess it couldn’t hurt to check.”
He created a small globe of light and gently tossed it at me. It hit me and exploded, almost like a water balloon, releasing a soft resonant glow all around me. Within the glowing light were a number of small snowflake-like structures. Kira joined both men as they looked them over.
“There are a bunch of different ones,” she said. She pointed at one in particular. “There are a few like this one, which look more elaborate than the rest.”
“Good eye,” the man said. “Those are the direct blessings of deities and other powerful beings, where they’ve taken personal notice. That one, for instance, appears to be the mark of a particularly powerful nymph.”
“Is that normal?” I asked. “I mean, do deities take personal notice of people very often?” After all, if I was special, I’d need to know so I could start a Tumblr when I got home.
“For normal people, it’s fairly rare. But if you’re an adventurer, it’s more uncommon to not get the notice of a few powerful beings.” Ah, okay. So nothing all that special. No more than any normal adventurer. “The nymph one’s fairly interesting though.” He gave me a wink that suggested that he had made up a rather lascivious reason for its existence.
Kira missed the look and continued on, unfazed. “How about this one?”
“This one’s a blessing from a member of a god’s clergy. There are dozens like it. It seems that your brother has made quite an impression on the priesthood of Shelyn.” Made sense. Ever since I’d come to Golarion, I’d found the patron goddess of love and the arts the easiest to work with, and I’d done my best to be generous. “There seems to be one acolyte of Shelyn in particular who prayed for you every day for almost five years.”
Oh. “I think I know the one.” I’m sure I looked guilty when I said it. Mostly I was feeling guilty wondering if she might have survived if I had gone with her when I had the chance.
“Seducing one of Shelyn’s acolytes? You dog.”
Kira laughed. “Sure, if you count looking like a sad, pathetic puppy as ‘seduction’.”
“Truly?”
I sighed. “Yeah. I had just been dumped and was a bit disheartened by teleporting to Golarion instead of back home. I was desperately lonely and she felt bad for me.”
Kira thankfully changed the subject, pointing at another mark. “How about this one? It’s dark and foreboding.”
“Ooh, that’s a rough one. It’s a malus. Looks like you’ve personally pissed off someone. Let me see if I can see who.” He gently tinkered with it. The malus zapped him. “Yep, definitely Lamashtu.”
Kira actually laughed. “Cleanse a few shrines, kill a few priests and suddenly someone has to go holding grudges.” The rest of us couldn’t help but laugh along with her.
“What about these?” I asked, pointing to an odd looking snowflake. “They look different from the rest.”
The man examined it. “I’ve never seen one of these before. It’s a blessing from a priest, but it’s not for any god I recognize. T?”
The dwarf examined it and his eyes went wide. “Where did you say you were from again, kids?”
“Earth,” Kira said, taking another drink of her beer.
“We also call our planet Terra. It’s in the Sol system.”
The dwarf took a long swig of his beer. “You’re in the wrong place. Send for some of Pharasma’s people,” he told the man. “We need to make arrangements to send them to their correct afterlife as quickly as possible.”
Well that was interesting. Apparently our afterlife was segregated from the rest for some reason. I got the feeling that asking why would get me nowhere. Not that I had a chance. Suddenly, the mark from Lamashtu started flashing. “Uh, guys? What’s going on there?”
“It’s acting as a beacon. We’re going to be under attack any moment.” The dwarf grabbed a war hammer and prepared for battle. His friend pulled his rapier and tossed Kira her spear.
“You need armor,” I told my sister.
“I won’t argue with that. Hook me up!” I touched her shoulder and focused my will. As far as I knew, there were no limits other than that it had to be able to actually exist. In seconds, she was wearing a hi-tech hardsuit of ceramic plates – more than twice as strong as adamantine and about ten thousand times as expensive – on a mesh of carbon nanotubes and adamantine fibers woven together like human muscle tissues. All in all, it was very sci-fi looking. Maybe one day, this would be standard issue for human soldiers, but it would take some serious technological breakthroughs to make it affordable enough. “Holy crap!” she exclaimed.
“Enjoy it while it lasts. Even if they revive us, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to afford to make one of these back in the land of the living. Tap the nodule on your temple for the helmet.”
Kira did as I’d said and a helmet of ceramic plates unfolded, covering her head. “Promise me that you’ll make me another one of these one day.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised. I then willed another suit into existence, covering myself. I then armed myself with a surprisingly light rail gun. God, I love having access to high tech alloys and ceramics again.
Dozens of daemons of many types burst into the establishment from multiple directions. The man was as fast as Kira, while the dwarf relied on strength and an iron will over speed. Kira and the man killed fourteen each. The dwarf slew eight. I managed to kill one.
In my defense, it’s really hard to fire a railgun into melee when you’re worried about hitting allies who move faster than the eye can track. I needed a weapon I wasn’t worried would pierce Kira’s armor. That wasn’t hard. I slung the railgun over my shoulder whipped up a couple highly enchanted Pizzicatos. Something that low caliber would have trouble breaching my specifically designed bullet defenses but would be useful if we encountered any more daemons.
As long as none of them were cyberdaemons. In that case, I’d need a rocket launcher.
“Strange that Lamashtu is sending daemons after you. You sure you didn’t piss off the Horsemen as well?”
“I might have started a society on a path towards better sanitation, which will result in a lot fewer deaths from disease. So, yeah, probably.”
“Really? That’s a shame. I kinda like the muck. Gives cities character.” I’m pretty sure the man was joking.
We made jokes as we stood guard, waiting for the arrival of the local authorities. Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes later, a half dozen psychopomps and a number of aeons arrived, along with a dowdy-looking celestial woman in a gray business suit, glasses and sensible flats.
“What am I going to do with you two?” she asked, her voice very put upon. “I take my eyes off of you for a moment and you go disappearing on me.”
I stared in disbelief. “You’re the nun!” I accused. The ghost nun from that time I went back in time, if you’re having trouble remembering.
“Not exactly,” she said with a small smile.
“Greetings, honored guardian,” Kira said in the celestial tongue, bowing deeply. When did Kira learn celestial?
“Greetings, Gemini,” the angel responded warmly. “It is good to have found you both at last. Come, we have an embassy not far from here. You should be safer there while we sort all of this out.”
We followed her outside and boarded some kind of hi-tech celestial shuttle craft. The schizo nature of the tech in the afterlife was really screwing with me, not gonna lie. The seats were even made of rich, Corinthian leather. I couldn’t be sure if they were stuffed with eagle down, but I suspect there were no eagles under the floorboards. Which meant it was the economy model.
The shuttle took us to a building that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a framing shot of Earth on Star Trek. A number of azatas – bralanis, I think – dressed like Secret Service agents met us on the landing pad and escorted us inside. They were doing their very best to look serious, but small twitches on their lips made me suspect that they were constantly one mistake away from corpsing en masse and ruining the performance.
They led us into a rather spacious office, complete with a waterfall fountain in one corner and a desk made of aluminum and glass with some kind of celestial computer on it. The monitor appeared to be a holographic projection, as did the keyboard. I didn’t see a mouse, but I suspected that would be handled by using the monitor like some kind of touch screen.
“Neat,” Kira said what we were both thinking.
The celestial woman, Essielle, invited us to sit in the plush chairs in front of the desk and took her seat on the other side. “So, now that we’re safe, would you care to explain where exactly you’ve been?” She sat and listened quietly as we explained everything, stopping us only to ask clarifying questions. She seemed most concerned about Samantha’s involvement. “And you don’t know what kind of entity is sharing her body?”
“No. I suspect it’s one of those things so alien that we mortals might classify it as evil, but I’m not so sure that’s the case. Or maybe it is and being stuck with her really has mellowed it out.”
“Understood. We’ll have some agents look into it. But now that I have your stories, it’s time for us to begin discussing the big choice.”
“The big choice?”
Kira put her hand on my arm. “She wants us to decide whether we wish to reincarnate again or if we’re ready to pass on to Heaven.”
“We get a choice?”
“Free will and choice are God’s whole deal,” Kira said. “You really don’t remember?”
Essielle cleared her throat. “It usually takes longer than this to begin remembering past lives and this whole process. We can wait until you’re ready to decide if you want. Right now is just the point where we discuss things.”
“Okay, yeah, waiting would be good,” I said. “I have a ton of questions. First of all, why is Kira remembering more quickly than I?”
“We’re not sure. The two of you almost always remember at the same time. I suspect it’s because she’s technically been dead for years, so the death process is less of a transition for her. As a side note, we’ve been trying to figure out where she was for years. It never occurred to us she might have hitched a ride in your body.”
“Okay, that brings up another question. You’re talking as though we’ve been through this together multiple times. Is that normal? Do siblings usually get reborn into the same family? Also, how many times have we been through this?”
“Actually, no. You two are a very unique case. The truth is that you two existing as separate entities is some strange accident. During your first cycle, we only sent one new soul to be born. It caused a lot of commotion when two children resulted.” She laughed. “I thought they were going to fire me for messing up my paperwork and sending two souls, but then you two died and returned to us. Back then, it was very easy to tell that your souls had split. Now, after so many cycles, we’d have trouble telling if it weren’t for the secondary effects.”
“Secondary effects?”
“You can’t live without each other. It took us three stillbirths to realize that we couldn’t separate you. If one of you dies, both die. That’s why we were so concerned when one of you went missing but the other still lived. We thought your souls had recombined. Our best guess is that after so many cycles, recombining would give you enough combined life experience to evolve into something new.”
I could actually feel my sister’s shock. “Evolve? You’ve never mentioned that before.”
Essielle nodded. “It’s just a theory. No one does what we do. It’s one big experiment. The Lord wanted to see what you all would become if allowed to accumulate enough life experience. But, as Kira said, he’s also big on free will. He wasn’t going to force you.”
“So, do a lot of people take advantage of it?”
“Fewer than you’d think. Most people only go one or two extra cycles before deciding that life is too hard and messy to bear. In addition to the two of you, there are only eleven others who have gone at least ten cycles. Before you ask, the person with the most cycles is a bit past one hundred and the two of you are on your eighty-ninth cycle. There are three total with more than you.”
Something she said made a connection in my mind. “So, if you count us as a single entity, then that means that there are twelve total? And you called us ‘Gemini’, so…”
She laughed. “Somehow, I knew you’d catch that. Yes. Those of us in Heaven’s Bureaucracy have nicknamed each of you long timers after the signs of the zodiac. Capricorn is the oldest. Virgo and Pisces are the two behind him.”
“I doubt you remember yet, but we’ve actually met Capricorn and Aquarius before in the afterlife,” Kira added. “We ended up all dying at the same time during a battle back in the old Roman empire. Capricorn was the centurion I served under and Aquarius was our legion’s prefect.”
“I wasn’t aware women served as legionnaires,” I said without thinking.
“I never noticed any. I was a man during that cycle.”
“So it’s interchangeable?” I asked Essielle.
She made a “sorta” hand gesture. “For most people, they can choose before reincarnating. However, likely because of the whole ‘two halves of a single soul’ thing you two have going on, you have this weird yin-yang thing going on where you’re always opposite. There was even this one time that we put you two into the bodies of identical twins as an experiment, resulting in the first known birth of a boy and a girl who were nonetheless identical twins.”
“Monozygotic,” I corrected.
“What?”
“Not identical, just born of the same egg. And I seem to recall reading that it has been documented where a pair of boy/girl twins was monozygotic due to an XXY zygote forming before the split.” They both gave me a look that told me that they were shocked that I knew that. I just ignored it. Look, I get bored on Wikipedia sometimes too, okay? “So, that brings me to another question.”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Essielle said.
I ignored that. “Does this all mean that when I got hit by the cursed belt, I somehow managed to make myself look like Kira’s past life?”
Kira literally laughed so hard she fell on the floor. Even Essielle is caught up in her mirth. I failed to see what was so funny. “Sorry,” the celestial said. “It’s just that you’re working from a false premise. You have indeed correctly realized that Fleur and her brother were past lives the two of you lived. You just mixed up who was who.”
Kira snorted. “That’s right! YOU were the French stripper!” She lost herself in laughter again.
“Not quite the right word, but effectively true,” Essielle admitted.
Well, at least I was hot. Rather than linger on the matter and question what exactly I had done for information to help the resistance, I changed the subject. “Okay, next question. How are things back home? How is our family?”
“I can’t elaborate much on the state of things back home, but as a kindness, I can tell you a bit about your family. Everyone misses you, of course. Maggie is still in college. Molly is an architect with a large firm. Kenneth is in law enforcement. Katie became a surgeon and has a job at a hospital in Tucson. And Major O’Halloran joined the marines shortly after you left. Your parents are still in their old jobs, though your mother has retired from the city council to focus on her career.”
It was good to hear that life went on back home. I was curious as to what she couldn’t tell me, but I understood there were rules. I also understood that if she left to go to the bathroom, I was hacking her computer to find out what was going on, since I got a feeling from her tone that it was something big.
“So, anything else interesting about our past lives?” I asked.
“Nothing you won’t remember soon enough. I am curious as to how your second time as a man has gone.”
What. “Second time?”
“Your very first incarnation, back when your people spoke in mostly grunts, was pretty disastrous. A rival tribe attacked, tried to kidnap your sister. She was doing well enough defending herself, but then you got hit with a rock and died, taking her with you. You were so traumatized that you refused to be a man again until it was culturally acceptable for your sister to protect you instead of the other way around.”
“Sorry I haven’t been much help on that front,” Kira said.
“It’s not your fault,” I said immediately, patting her shoulder reassuringly. She seemed happy at that response. “That said, that’s a pretty horrible ratio. Have we had many lives like that?”
“I can count on one hand the number of lives you two have had that didn’t end with one of you dying in a violent and often horrible fashion. It honestly beggars belief that the two of you keep choosing to reincarnate after what you’ve been through.”
“That bad, huh?”
“You were burnt at the stake once.”
“Like witches? Yeah, that’s pretty bad.”
Kira laughed. “To be fair, you actually were a witch on that one.”
It was getting a little frustrating that my sister was able to recall everything like that while I wasn’t able to get more than vague flashes from my last couple lives. “While we’re waiting,” Essielle said. “Mind if I do a scan? I need to see what you were up to while you were away from us so we can log it in the research notes.”
I suddenly started feeling like a lab rat. “Um, sure.” She pulled out a tricorder. “Lol, what.”
“God’s a Trekkie.”
“I knew it.” No I didn’t. But what the hell can you say to that? I guess it explained the building.
She scanned me. “Okay, so let’s see. Wow, that’s a lot of women.” I actually felt kinda embarrassed. “You know, he keeps this up, he might actually break your record.”
Kira scoffed. “Never happen. He’s in llluurrrvveeee.” Constantly getting ripped on by Kira would take some getting used to.
“It’s academic anyway, since you both died before he had a chance.”
“Don’t count us out yet,” I corrected. “One of our friends can raise the dead.”
That surprised her. “Necromancy?”
“Well, he probably has that somewhere too, but no. Standard revival.”
“Impressive. It also says here that you’re a wizard. That’s definitely going to be interesting if you make it home. In fact, you’ve joined a team of adventurers? It’s been forever since that was a thing on Earth. I suspect that’s all anyone back in Heaven will be able to talk about for a while.” Why did I get the feeling I had just signed myself up for being followed a twenty-four seven angelic camera crew? Or dedicated scrying. Whatever it is they do.
An aide came in, seeking Essielle’s attention. “I apologize, but there’s a matter needing your immediate attention.”
“Of course. You two, there’s a game console over there,” she indicated a section of the large office with a sofa and television. “Feel free to play some Smash Bros or whatever while you wait. I hope I won’t be gone too long.” As she was walking out the door, she stopped. “The computer is set to explode in the event of tampering. Please don’t force me to get a new one.” Dammit.
Nothing better to do, we actually did as we were told. Not normally my first inclination, but we had been told to play video games and it has been almost eleven years. It was quite fun, though it was obvious just from that one game that I had been gone for a while.
For instance, when the heck did they put Bayonetta in Smash? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I love Bayonetta. I just never saw that one coming. What’s next? Ubisoft taking a full year and some change between releases of Assassin’s Creed titles?
Pfft. That’ll never happen.
We played a few matches before we began noticing the sound of gunfire outside. We looked out a window and saw that the grounds were being overrun by daemons. “Well, shit,” Kira said.
Essielle rushed back into the office. “We have to get you to the shuttle and get out of here! We’re under attack!”
“I’m pretty sure they’re after us, or at least me,” I confessed. “No idea why, though.”
“Then it’s even more important that we get you out. Follow me!” She pulled out a freaking Desert Eagle and began leading us through the halls. I didn’t unnecessarily roll across doorways, because that would be fun but completely undignified. And I’m nothing if not dignified.
<Margin Note: Funny, but I’m fairly certain I saw you rolling like a dork.>
<Margin Note: Nope. Never happened.>
We fought our way through the halls, celestials of all types covering our escape. On the roof, it looked like a scene out of Starship Troopers. Frenzied daemons were scaling the walls on the piles of their brethren’s corpses.
We rushed to the shuttle and were in the air in seconds. As suspected, the daemon onslaught ended and followed us as we flew off. Fire teams continued doing what they could to thin out the swarm, but they were running into ammunition problems, forcing them to fall back on spell casting and melee weapons.
“What the hell is going on?!” Essielle demanded.
“I have only a few suspicions,” I said. “Nothing concrete. But it is somehow tied to a malus from Lamashtu.”
“That’s it, we’re having a word with her representatives here. Pilot, plot heading for the demonic sector.”
“Roger that,” a voice from up front shouted back.
“Now, let’s have a look at this malus and see if I can –“ she didn’t finish her sentence because we were struck by something outside. The shuttle spun out and crashed hard into the ground. When I managed to free myself from my restraints, I found Kira alive – in the most broad definition of the term imaginable – with minor injuries and Essielle alive but unconscious. The pilot didn’t survive impact.
Outside, Kira and I found nearly a hundred daemons closing in on us. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Just a perfect day,” I sang as I fired my railgun into the mass of enemies.
“Drink sangria in the park,” Kira sang back, stabbing the first enemies in range. ““And later on…”
“…when it gets dark…”
“We’ll go home.”
<Both> “Oh, it’s such a perfect day!”
<Kyle> “I’m glad I spent it with you.”
<Kira> “Oh, such a perfect day.”
<Both> “You just keep me hanging on.
You just keep me hanging on!”
So it was, that the two of us – Kira and Kyle, Kyle and Kira, Gemini – sang as we slaughtered daemons by the dozens. When it was done, we twins stood victorious on a mound of corpses, as it perhaps was always meant to be.
But it seems that there was no end to the daemons that pursued us. In the distance, less than a minute away, was a swarm thousands – maybe tens of thousands – strong. Fuck this day.
“Kyle, leave me the weapons and run,” Kira said. “I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”
“No,” I said, resolve washing over me. Also, a lot of anger. “I will not leave you. We’ve been running all day. I’m tired of running. This ends here, one way or another.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, but I am,” I said, something between a smirk and a sneer on my face. I tossed her my railgun and both Pizzicatos. “Don’t take any risks, but buy me as much time as you can.” I focused, gathering my will, and began humming Morgenstimmung.
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