Past Life Hero, ch 9

Max found himself in a large stone room. Actually not exactly a room.  It was an empty space with a stone floor. He couldn't see any walls. On top of all the other weirdness, he could tell he hadn't exactly lost consciousness or experienced any sort of transition. One moment he had been back on Earth and the next he was in this new space. Whatever it was.

He wasn’t breathing fast anymore from stress, his heart rate was not up.  It definitely felt like his emotions had been manipulated a bit, but not in a malicious way.  He tried to observe himself as objectively as possible and decided he was still rational, and definitely more relaxed than he otherwise might be.  Since Max had already experienced so much strange stuff over two lives now, he was feeling so laid back he was practically ready to take a nap.

There was a shimmer in the air about thirty feet in front of him which eventually materialized into a beautiful floating woman with wings. She said, "Do not be afraid."

Max nodded at her and replied, "Don't worry. Other than worry about my parents right now, which is something I don’t have any control over, I'm more curious than anything."

The floating woman said, "Oh?" and behind her, her pristine white wings unfurled.

"Yup," said Max. "After all, my world is under attack and the message I got said I could get more power if I accepted. And I figured that either the offer was on the up and up or if it was a scam.  If it was a scam, I suspect I might be transported to whoever or whatever had just attacked my world with monsters."

The winged woman nodded, "Astute reasoning, and I admire your courage. But rest assured, the offer was made in good faith."

"By you?"

"No, not at all. I am just a messenger."

"Not an angel?" asked Max.

She hesitated and said, "’Angel’ is such a loaded term, often couched in tradition or underlined by religious expectations. I prefer that you just think of me as a messenger."

"So is that your real form?"

The angel smiled and said, "Ah, you truly are clever. No, this is not my real form, if I could even say I have such a thing. Instead, this seemed the most widely beneficial form to meet those from your world with, at least from your general location."

"So I am not the only person you'll be meeting?" asked Max.

"No."

"Well, that's interesting. But I also have to wonder how badly you really don't want to be called an angel when you're showing up in the form of an angel."

The woman laughed, her voice like the tinkling of bells, and she descended to the stone floor, walking gracefully but powerfully closer to Max. "A bit cheeky, but I cannot deny your logic. What an interesting fellow you are."

"I’m just being straight with you.  But I bet if you're meeting a bunch of people from my world, most of them are probably a bit more screaming at this point, despite whatever spiritual or magical sedatives you hit us with."

"Yes," she said. "Although you have been one of the first I’ve met."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Yes. There are a limited number of slots for those who will be offered this expedited path to power. If one refuses, another may be offered a place instead. But the core requirement to get the offer in the first place is to have killed a monster.  You were one of the very first."

"Ah," said Max. "Okay."

And it truly did make sense to him. If there were multiple parties at play, those who were giving humanity weapons wouldn't want to give power to somebody hiding in a closet or pretending that the monsters killing their friends didn’t exist.  Weapons should be given to warriors, after all. And if one thing had been clear to him back on Albion, and been proven again on Earth, it was that the forces of good and evil were constantly in conflict. Whether it was an army of the Demon King threatening an entire nation of free people, or a gang engaged in human trafficking back on Earth, evil was evil. It had many forms.

"So how about you level?  What is this all about?" asked Max.

As you have said, your world is under attack, and it will be destroyed if it is not defended. The first wave is always terrible, and there is no way that your world was ready to defend itself. But it will get worse before it gets better.

"To give your world a fighting chance, the forces of good have banded together and paid for Challengers like you to receive an opportunity not only to fight, but to defend your world. You have to find your own Path of power, and bring that precious knowledge back to your changed world.

"Changed? You're talking about the mana, right?" asked Max.

"That, among other things," said the angel.

Max nodded slowly. "Okay, so what path of power are you talking about?"

"Ah, the PAths."   This time Max heard the capitalization.  The angel smiled and said, "This is my favorite part. Every individual that I meet–"

Max interrupted, saying,  "Are you the only messenger who is dealing with people like me that accept the prompt?  I’m assuming not based on what you said earlier."

“You assumed correctly.  I am not the only messenger, but the rules for the others will be the same as well. Every mortal I meet has a set number of Paths that they can receive, then travel. But the laws of the universe require that an element of chance is at play. The choice to receive a Path was made when you accepted to come here, but now the universe will decide where you go from here."

"Hmmm.  So…you're going to roll some dice, and then out of a pool of jobs or powers I could get, that's what I'm going to receive?  It’s random out of a set pool?"

The angel smiled. "Something like that," she said. "But you will not merely receive a seed of power. A Path.  After all, handing a–” She paused and continued, “Handing a rifle to a child has limited usefulness without training the child how to use it, correct?"

"Uh-huh," said Max. "So I'm going to get something, or learn something, and go to training." His voice trailed off. "So is this dangerous?" he asked, "Is it possible that I can die?"

The angel's expression stilled and turned sober. "That was a very good question. And even if I were not sworn to honesty, I would tell you true. Receiving a new Path will cause you no harm.  But  though we expect most of the people from your world will return complete from their pilgrimage, not all will survive their training.  It is more complex than that, but you will learn how soon."

"Got it," said Max. He thought that was a really flowery way of saying he could die. Just to be obstinate he clarified, “Just the training can kill us.”  The messenger didn’t react, just smiled.  Max grunted and asked, "Okay, so how do we do this?"

The otherworldly woman held up a hand, and above it, a group of dice began to spin. Max counted seven of them. "Since you gave me the analogy of dice, why not use truly dice?" She inclined her head at the dice spinning over her palm. "Seven.  Oh my! You had quite a few...picks."

She began to gesture with her other hand, but Max said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Could I get some more information first?"

The messeger raised an eyebrow. "What kind of information? I thought you understood the situation now."

Max gestured vaguely and said, "Yes, I understand why I'm here and what you're doing, but... Isn't it a long tradition of gambling that we know our best option and our worst option before rolling?  Gotta have something to hope for."

The angel looked surprised for a full second before she laughed. "You truly are a strange one." She cocked her head as if she were listening to something and then said, "It seems that giving you this information doesn't break any rules, so I will...humor you. What would you like to know, specifically?"

"Well, I'm sure it's hard to quantify this sort of thing, but in all the jobs or Paths to power or abilities or whatever that I could roll there, and it seems I have a lot of them... What would be the most powerful and what would be the weakest?"

"Ah, as you said, such a thing would be..."

Max waved a hand. "Okay, let me rephrase it. In your opinion, what would be the most powerful? And in your opinion, what would be the weakest?"  For me, that is.

The angelic woman nodded slowly and stared at the dice gyrating above her palm before she said, "I believe the strongest would be...Blade Sorcerer Path. And the weakest..." She hesitated before answering, then said, "Probably Summoner Path."

"Thank you," said Max. "Okay, go ahead. Do your thing." Internally, he thought, How ironic. Wow. Blade Sorcerer. Wasn't that an archaic term for my magic style on Albion?

Suddenly, Max thought of something else to ask.  He opened his mouth, but the angel  beat him to it.  She smiled and said, "As for the number of options, you have around a thousand."

Max's jaw dropped and he blinked rapidly as the winged woman finally finished gesturing with her one hand. The dice spun faster, flew around the not-a-room, and then arced towards a space on the stone floor between Max and the angel. Each die stopped moving and settled with the finality of a two-ton brick. When they were all still, Max scrunched up one eye in confusion. Every single one of the dice had landed on a one.

"What does–?" he began.

The messenger shook her head sadly, but with a bit of humor as well. "What are the odds?" she intoned. "Chance can truly be unfathomable.  For such a bold, brave, potential warrior, it seems the universe truly has something interesting or perhaps tragic in store for you."

"What are you talking about?" asked Max.

"It seems you have been fated to receive the Path of the Summoner."  The angel spread her arms, and Max felt like he was fading away.

Before he was gone from the room, he managed to get out, "This is some bullshit!  Was it rigged?"

The last thing he saw was the angel giving him an apologetic wave.