Order and Chaos

an asteroid fell from the sky and conked you in the head. sorry! that's just bad luck

As I was contemplating my happiness, which seemed as though it would last forever, I heard a loud noise, as though something were crashing through the ceiling above me.

In fact, something was, and it landed right on me, striking me right in the head. At first I thought it was a star falling from the heavens, a last taunt from the gods, but then I realized it was just my father.

"Get up," he said, standing over my body. Never mind that my head was bleeding from where his boots had collided with it.

"You're not actually wounded. Because you're already dead. This is your personal Heaven, where your spirit experiences everything you ever wanted for all of eternity."

"That sounds pretty good to me," I groaned, picking myself up. Unfortunately, now that I realized it, the whole thing melted away. "But I guess you just can't let your daughter have any fun."

"If I'm dead, and you're dead, that means Milton is heir. Not to mention the whole apocalypse, which I'd like to see stopped just to spite the surviving gods. Oh, and there's a nonentity trying to become a god, too. You killed yourself trying to prevent it from assimilating you."

"Didn't... didn't it kill you?"

"You mean the gauntlet? It's just a black metal glove. Plenty of warriors wear them, especially the ones who dare to think they can be the next Malcolm Vindictus. Regardless, you have to go back."

"Why don't you go back, if it's that easy?"

"Well, unlike you, I don't have a body to go back to. The gods tore it apart, and made sure I was aware of every excruciating moment of pain as they did so. Got to admire how thorough they are."

Dead or not, Malcolm Vindictus was still Malcolm Vindictus, and appreciated a good bloody and needlessly violent death. Even if it was his own.

"In fact, something's happened lately and I haven't even been able to get my spirit across the boundary. I don't know what's going on in the world of the living any more."

"I don't see why I should leave." But I did. There wasn't even any use remaining here, now that Heaven had been taken from me. I was just being stubborn.

"You know, souls captured by the Nothing can't pass on to the afterlife. They're trapped in its being. Your girlfriend will never know the joy you knew here, even as an illusion, while the Nothing still exists."

"I didn't know her that well," I muttered, mostly under my breath.

"You knew her well enough for Nothing to kill her to get to you."

I couldn't take it any more. I couldn't take Father's condescending tone, especially not when I knew he was absolutely right. So I punched him right in the helmet. Since I was just a spirit, I didn't feel anything, and I assume he didn't either.

But damn, I needed that.

"I'm going back, but I'm not going back on your account. I'm going back for my own reasons. And more than that, so you can't bother me."

And with that, I found myself awake at the bottom of a sheer cliff inside a cavern. My neck was still wounded and my body felt broken.

Had I come back to life only to die again?

But I soon realized that I wasn't quite alive. There was no blood coming from the cut, and more than that, I wasn't breathing. I still felt pain, but I wasn't hungry or tired.

Apparently, reinhabiting your body after you die isn't a smooth process.

Nothing had probably decided to dispose of my body here. I had to find a way out. And all I could think of was to climb.

I have no idea how long it took me, but just as I drew near the top, someone came and pulled me up.

I couldn't believe my eyes. It was Commun Marx, and he seemed baffled by my appearance. A quick glance in the nearby water revealed why.

This was what I looked like in my dream.

It had been only a few months since I had that dream, but it felt like so much longer. Yet I still remembered the moment when I looked at my reflection and saw that face.

And here, I was... whoever that person was. Had I taken over someone else's dead body? Or did I, in my heart, see myself as a 27-year-old woman with dark skin and white hair, and now my body was reflecting that?

I couldn't say. I couldn't even figure out what to do next. The best idea I had was to somehow prove to him that despite appearances, I was Mary Vindictus.

But how could I do that?