In The Land of Vraelin

  Written by: Zog Salken

  Prologue: Twisting and Turning

  They had, at one point in time, been a person. They didn’t quite recall how they perished. They knew it was slow and filled with coldness. The pain had dimmed, and they had passed. It was quite a strange experience, they recalled. Though, that was all they knew of it.

  Once, when they had seen heaven with fresh eyes, they had remembered their name. They had recalled what it was like to be one with themselves. Now, The night sky that was heaven, with souls all around them yet so far away, filled them with not but a solemn conviction to live.

  They wanted life. To breath once more. To feel the wind whip across their face again. They wanted to grow, mature like a tree, like and old growth of wood. The feeling was shared by many souls that glittered like stars across the void that was heaven.

  They still had some sembnce of connection to the material world, to the earthly pin. They could feel it. The body that had once been strong, ready for battle. At least, that was what they thought their body had been ready for.

  Male, they thought they were. They thought, if they ever got the chance, in this pce away from time and space, that they would like to try and being female the next time. It would give them a unique way of looking at the world.

  In the pce away from time, the pce that many would regard as the heavenly pin, She appeared. It had just been an eternity away, yet it had been no time at all. It was tricky to pin down.

  Reality warped, heaven bent and bowed. The thing that had once been of its own self, looked. Well, as much as one can look in this state of being. It looked unto what many would call a Goddess. This pce, a pce away from all others yet near, kneeled to her.

  “I am back,” she said, her voice was all of reality weeping and roaring in joy, “I just finished a new world, and I need some souls to inhabit it,” she announced, the soul that had once been kindred of man twitching.

  The soul watched as she spread her infinitely gorgeous, yet terrifying arms out in a way that meant little sense to their immortal soul, yet they did so anyway. It was strange, for change to occur in a pce outside of death. Where change and certainty did nothing for each other, and pyed no part in each other’s whims.

  For it was certain that nothing would ever change in this pce that was heaven. For it was certain that the souls that pyed and danced here would never see the sun ever again. Yet it was certain that She would arrive, and change would occur.

  The soul noticed that She was extending her arms out to the, what could be called, area where the soul had chosen to exist. Joy filled the soul, change and life would once again pervade it. Air would once again fill lungs, and it would feel these lungs. Joy was what one could call this feeling. Yet, it couldn’t even describe the utter and totality of what it felt.

  “Oh, some of you guys have been here a while, sorry for the wait, I had an entire universe to construct,” The queen of this pce spoke, and time once again hit the soul.

  …

  Pain, twisting and churning pain. That was what this was. There was little joy here. That much they could tell. Maybe this was what being born was like? Yet, such thoughts were pushed out by the immense pain that racked their tether, their connection to the old world.

  The soul could feel its old body pop. The bones cracked and splintered. The bone marrow boiled. The spine twisted and popped into a new pce. It was in pain. Its hips shrank. The muscle mass that it once felt had sloughed off, and all that was left, in the end, was a fetus.

  All the time it had spent waiting was leading to this pain. Unbridled pain was all that it could feel. All that it was once, that had been there and faded with the entrance into heaven, was twisted off. Now, it was done.

  All of a sudden, with no warning, the pain ceased. The light of the entrance to heaven was bleached out. Repced by red, flesh like light. So sudden was this change, that its own mind brought all to the forefront. All that it could bring was there, in an instant to try and figure out what to do after such an experience.

  It remembered what it once was. It had been a man. It had been a soldier. It had lived a life of regret and guilt. It had brought pain to so many. Yet it had died what many would call a hero’s death. Yet all that it had felt was regret.

  ‘I was once a man named Norman Richmond. Now, I am new. What shall life throw at me next?’ the fetus thought, warm in a mother’s womb.

  …

  Zogsalken