The Shards Of God's Eye

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{The place between worlds looked like one of those tea shops, complete with steaming samovar with a fragrant pot of hot zavarka on top.

There were at least a dozen empty tables around them.

The view outside the window was pure shining white.

"Is this where my soul is weighed and measured?" He sat down before the person offering him a cup. It was one of those bowl-shaped cups in the Mongolian style. "I don't actually drink that much tea."

His grandmother was the one who owned a teashop. It closed just after he graduated from high school, when she could no longer brew the tea properly.

There were three seats around the circular table. The person, the being in the shape of a grey-haired woman, only smiled and said something.

No sound came out of the being's mouth. For some reason, there were large cat ears on her head.

He leaned closer. "What?"

A shadow formed where the empty seat was.

The picture dream –or was it a memory-- fractured with a scream.}

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* * *

Leon jerked awake. What the hell? What was with that dream?

He…he remembered dying. He closed his eyes again. Was that a dream too? He lay back, disoriented. He was cradled by something soft.

How did he know it was a place between worlds?

He opened his eyes. Above him was…a roof? He squinted. Information flowed into his head. What?

[House, aged 22 years, common stone, common wood, werefur thatch, good integrity.]

He blinked and the information settled in his brain like strands of cobweb – part of the landscape but not really.

He pressed his eyes closed, then opened them again.

The 'roof' was actually the eaves of a roof. He lay at the side of a house. He pushed himself up. His hand sank into the material under him with a squelch. He looked down and gagged in disgust.

"Eh? Ugh!"

He'd been lying in mud. He scrambled to his feet. The mud was now smeared on his hands, his feet, his clothes. He thrashed around, trying to get rid of the stuff.

Now that he thought about it, the place stank and the mud stank more.

How long had he been lying in an alley gutter that his nose had gotten used to the smell?!

Oh gods, if he got sick from this and have to spend money on antibacterials, he'd sue someone.

He quickly looked around for a store, an open pipe, a public restroom. He blinked as he took better note of his surroundings, his heartbeat ticking faster the longer he stared.

Where was he?

The road was made of muddy cobbles, with excavated ditches at the sides. Which town didn't even have concrete gutters these days?

The houses around him were made of wood and rough stone, none rising higher than two levels. The windows had wooden shutters, and half the houses had thatch instead of tiled roofing. It looked like he'd stumbled into a historically preserved section of some old town.

He mentally knocked himself on the head. Historically preserved? No glass windows, no painted signs, no water lines, and no electric posts?

Get real!

Even for historical accuracy, no town in the twenty-first century would ever be built without electricity. Who would live there? Did they think they were holier than even a Himalayan monk?

He rubbed the malodorous mud from his hands as best he could and patted his pockets. No phone, no wallet, no music player.

No people. The town was deserted. It really looked like a movie set. Where was everybody? There weren't even cats or dogs prowling around.

He shook his head.

Some random punk cosmic power had robbed him and left him for dead in another world, the filthy felon!

He waited for a ten-second count, but no lightning hit him out of the clear sky.

No one listening to my thoughts, he concluded. Or they were listening but not acting to lure him into a sense of complacency. He nodded and took a leap of faith.

"May the idiots who brought me here flounder in a smelly mire of their own making forev – gah!"

His foot slipped on the muddy cobbles, nearly sending him right back into the gutter. He clutched at the rough stone wall of a nearby house. "Sorry! Not idiots. Definitely not idiots!"

He tapped a ten-count and straightened when nothing more happened. A nearly unnoticeable crease formed between his brows. There was someone watching him, even if only listening.

That was not ideal. Well...at least he could curse them out in his mind, the shameless voyeurs!

Then he brightened. That data-dump earlier…could it be? He fortified himself with hope and spoke.

"Status."

"Menu."

Nothing.

"Game menu."

Again nothing. With each lack of reaction, he deflated. Of course it was wishful thinking. Reality-Game systems were fantasy daydreaming hooks for escapist saps. He definitely had never wanted one. Seriously.

"Profile –aaagh!"

Pain hit him like nails being hammered into his temples.

[{LEOnidas PavEl} AGe: errorerrorerror, ViX_lity: errorerrorerror, 3ndurAnce: errorerrorerror, Tixxe: errorerrorerror, Ixx__xxxx.xx: errorerrorerror, Psy-xx_xxx: errorerrorerror]

"Stop! Stop! Aaah, exit!"

The pain ceased. He slumped against the stone wall, panting. His hands trembled, falling from his head. "Wh-what...in the world was that?"

Still, it was confirmed. He had some sort of video-game-like interface. Then, the possibility of actually not being in his own world was…

He grimaced as he looked around again, tucking his unease into the back of his mind.

There was no chance of him being in a technological future. When transmigrating or reincarnating, wasn't the future a better bet? It would definitely be more comfortable.

This place...being hundreds or thousands of years in the past was a nice fantasy story hook, but it was not a reality to be lived. Especially for him. He was a child of the Internet and smartphone age. Even now, his hand constantly strayed to his pockets.

This was intolerable. Was this what alcoholics went through in a twelve-step program? His fingers itched for a keyboard. He flexed them repeatedly, tapped them on his t.h.i.g.h.

What did he know of history? His practical historical knowledge was playing a few rounds of tabletop roleplaying games when he was in high school before being distracted by the first-person shooters on his sister's laptop.

Vividly, the lesson he took away from that experience was: stay away from the outhouses.

Once your character experiences getting blown up by a lit match in an outhouse ten times in one campaign, you start to get an appreciation for u-bends (and friends who do not keep pushing your character into toxic outhouses).

Concluding, he was in the past of some world, where most likely they did not have good sanitation or junk food and soda or information systems….

Wait, most twentieth-century technology in novels would be replaced by some kind of 'magic' so the main protagonist would not have that much of a hardship adjusting.

If he had a reality-game system, wouldn't that make him a main character?

Hoho.

That gave him options, didn't it?

The first order was...ah, testing. He mentally cringed at the thought of the pain but he had to do it just the once. One last time to test. He took a deep breath and readied himself.

"Inventory."

There was a shaft of pressure in his head similar to the time he called for his profile.

"Exit," he quickly said. He let out a disappointed breath. It looked like the Inventory was similarly bugged.

"Quest." He jolted at the now familiar prelude to stabbing pain. "Exit!"

These were the facts: He died. He woke up in an unfamiliar place that may be the past. He had a System. It was broken.

Crap.

"What the hell, is this even fair? Got killed for no reason, brought here for no reason, and the only advantage I may have in this cruel world is unusable for no reason? I didn't even get to upload my last masterpiece? God, what did I do to deserve this?"

"You have the gall to ask so sincerely," demanded a voice, "after everything that happened?"

He whirled to see the ghost who killed him looking at him with burning eyes.

Eyes of vengeance.

Eyes of unmitigated rage.

Her face was pale, bloodless against dark hair and dark clothes. Her fine features were cast for gentle smiles but took to the hard lines of grim anger beautifully.

It was an unforgettable face.

She looked more corporeal than the last time he saw her. But from her waist down there was nothing but curling smoke-like mist tapering to nothing.

What, was she trying to destroy his warm childhood memories of singing along with a magic prince? He'll be taking compensation in flying carpets, please.

Wait, why was that his first thought?!

There was only one possible reaction to this.

He screamed.