“Well this is unexpected,” I mutter to myself, shuffling from hoof to hoof on a familiar dirt road. Buildings made from logs and stones surround me, advertising what goods or services they sell with pictures I have not seen since I was still alive.
A flower with red petals and two eyes is painted on a post outside the shop where I got my first job, and I can hear fighting coming from the building beside it where I learned how to defend myself... The master of that forsaken place can burn along with his glowing yellow hair… and then join the rest of this damn town in Tartarus.
I sigh and turn around knowing exactly what is there.
Two buildings really stand out from the rest in this small town, the one that most would focus on is the castle made out of pristine white stone with a red roof. It is easily the largest structure in the town, but… it does not hold the memories that the other building does.
The final building that holds any meaning to me in the town is the place where it all started.
The building is unlike any other, made with blue stones and marble pillars. The defining feature that really sets it apart is the spinning roof that looks like it was crafted out of the starry night sky.
There isn’t anyone in sight, despite it being light outside, but I know with absolute certainty that the mage is in there, sitting on his fat ass, staring at that fucking crystal orb like always.
The scenery blurs and twists before reshaping into the barren looking house I know so well.
Most people, or toads, or whatever they call themselves now, seem to think that the fat bastard who owns this house never sleeps since there’s nothing but a chair and a table with a crystal ball on it. Most toads who come here never learn about the mansion he has in his attic.
None of that is important as I stare at the face, or at least the hood, of the one who started everything. The glowing slitted eyes staring out from the darkness of the blue robes radiate power and the mustache that flows over the front of his robes is as long as I remember it. He never shaves it, even when it is almost touching the floor, simply choosing to hide the braids he has made in the extremely long facial hair. A smaller crystallized orb sits right below his mustache with the ever present yellow star in it. The bastard doesn’t move a muscle, almost like he is trapped in time. I walk up to the figure, stop right across the table from him, and open my mouth.
“Merlon,” I start. “In all my years, I have made many mistakes both in life and in the afterlife, but none compare to my biggest mistake… letting you live.”
I push on as the bastard continues to stare, unblinking, into the orb on the table, “I really should have seen it coming, you, the legendary Merlon, teaching me magic out of the kindness of your heart?” I snort. “How did it feel, to watch the woman you taught being taken away by the guard? I know you saw what would happen in that ball of yours, and you just let it happen… You weren’t teaching a student, you were making a weapon.”
I laugh bitterly as the scenery flickers once again. Merlon is still in front of me, but all around us animated bones of bipedal turtles called koopas march towards a burning city. Three familiar dragons fly overhead, speeding towards the foreign city.
“You knew. I know you knew. You always knew…
“...Did you even mourn?” I ask as the scenery flickers once more. We are standing on opposite sides of an open casket, and looking down I can see a pale caucasian woman with blonde hair, in a black and purple dress, lying peacefully with her white gloved hands resting on her stomach.
“Or did you know I would come back?” I look back up at the wizard, my friend, my teacher… my executioner. He still hasn’t moved an inch, but now it seems like he is looking down at my unmoving body in the coffin.
I sigh and close my eyes, knowing that I would not get an answer from the motionless wizard in front of me.
‘...’
I like to think that I’ve seen quite a bit in both my first life and my long afterlife. Going from a teenager dressing up as a character in my first world, to being thrown into a world where dinosaurs can digest anything and squids can fly, to finding this world after putting on a performance where a plumber thought he could beat me with a hammer and some fancy shoes. I like to think that nothing could phase me.
‘...’
It’s moments like these that the multiverse whips out the most shit eating grin it can muster before pulling a pie out of nowhere, throwing it at my ethereal face, tripping me as I stagger backwards because the pie somehow hit me, and while I’m lying on my ethereal back having a joker doll somehow tickle me with a live shark, before leaning down close to my head and asking in a whisper next to my ear while I’m laughing like a loon, “Still think I can’t phase you?”
‘...’
Compound the fact that both my host and I are very light sleepers, if her memories are correct and… Well, the moral is that the multiverse is a dick and its younger siblings fate/coincidence even more so.
‘...’
So when we come to, in the back of a moving wooden wagon, tied to a spinning piece of wood, completely naked, with a fire burning below us that is somehow not spreading and burning the wagon to cinders, along with a grey minotaur rotating into view every few seconds, with a salt shaker in his meaty hands… I think my thoughts are justified.
‘...What the fuck?’