Chapter One

I've always wondered how I would die. Not an obsession or anything, just an idle curiosity that never quite went away. Death is always an uncomfortable topic, but we've all had the best/worst way to die conversation right? Well I, Raymond Baines can now definitively say that death by runaway-bus-into-a-flooded-river sucks.

It feels weird to complain, but I couldn't help but feel cheated and unwilling. Just never had an opportunity to struggle or defend myself, you know? A couple summers of high school "survivalist workshops", keeping in shape and idly reading a few dubiously useful what-if scenario books had me feeling- if not survivor man- that I at least had a fighting chance. Nope! Wham, bam, broken limbs and drowning.

The worst part had to be how it just wouldn't end. The floodwaters kept rolling the bus and the interior was doing its best impression of a meat grinder on the bodies of myself and my classmates. Fresh impacts were barely even registering at this point because I'm pretty sure I was too broken to pick anything else out of the existential agony, but I still couldn't even pass out!

When the bus finally stopped, wedged by the raging waters against something I couldn't see, I was freed from the brutal beating to finish drowning in peace. So when things started going dim and I saw a light at the end of a long tunnel, I embraced it with everything left of my consciousness.

Like somebody threw a switch, the pain was gone. I wasn't drowning anymore and that horrible pressure of the floodwater was nowhere to be found, although I still felt like I was floating somewhere. At first all I could really sense was my body, or more accurately my lack of a body since I was currently something like a wisp with little tendrils of light floating around my core. Gradually, I started to sense more of my surroundings and man, it was beautiful. I was floating in a river of stars that stretched on infinitely into the distance. Swirls and eddies in an invisible current formed brief galaxies of lights and colors I have no words to describe.

The current pulled at me, and I heard a whisper from countless stars saying, "Come, little one. Join us and rest. Let the current take the heaviness of the past away. Let go your burdens and be free!" The words sounded beautiful and I could feel them pulling at me, but mistrust prompted me to ask, "What is the place? What do you want from me?" I hear a sound like dozens of tiny crystal bells being rung that somehow sounds like laughter. "This is the River of Souls, little one. The last and first peace, where even the greatest of life's troubles will flow away until you are ready to begin anew." The nearest stars crowded close to me in a sensation I could only compare to a mother's hug. "Rest, child. There are no traps or dangers here. Your end was hard, but we can help you. When you are ready…"

They slowly drifted away and I felt my limited resolve crumble. Dying was awful and fresh on my mind, plus it sounded like after all this I might get another chance at life somewhere new. Tentatively, I reached back out towards the stars- no, souls, before my vision lurched and a burst of nausea froze me in place.

A sense of wrongness filled me as the river faded. The brilliant stars quickly clouded over and hidden by a murky shade of red. The nausea grew as I looked down to see what looked like a massive fish hook had pierced my soul right in the center.

"Not so fast, mortal." A new voice sneered with a sound like shearing metal and nails on chalkboard. "The Fishers charged a tidy sum to bring you lot here whole. Can't have you throw all that away playing in the stream now, can we?"

A final wrench pulls me from the river and brings me face to face with my captor- which only makes my nausea worse, because it's one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. Its hideous face leers at me with swaying tentacles lining a lamprey's mouth dangling below a bulbous head covered in insectile eyes. The body stretched out behind it like a three-story engorged tick, filled with squirming lights that I realized, to my horror, were other captured souls like me. I panicked and tried to struggle off the hook only for the creature to chuckle cruelly as it plucked me off with a massive claw.

"Don't fret, mortal! Even fresh and juicy as new souls are, you're much too expensive to eat." It held up a bag that looked like someone had figured out how to weave tar into thread. "Into the sack with ya and you'll be reborn to your new master before you know it."

"Do you know how creepy it is you talk to them like that?" A new and equally horrifying voice interjected while the claw holding me was hovering above the mouth of the bag.

"It's just another soul, got more awareness in my theoretical arse than it does. Shit like that's why we get passed up for promotion. Nobody wants a weirdo to be the boss."

"I'm just trying to keep entertained!" My captor shot back. He turned and abruptly thrust the claw holding me into the face of a similar monster.

"We've been fishing this same bloody spot for eons! Catching these useless little motes with nary a break to be seen. I'm concerned for my mental health, I am." They both pause for a moment before breaking into a hideous cackle that sounds more like a live train wreck.

"Ha! Mental health! Brilliant one mate."

Their tick-sacks squirmed revoltingly as they chuckled. "Thought you'd like it. Ah well, back to work."

He resumed putting me into the bag and I felt an instinctive dread against going in. These things were obviously not friendly. If their monstrous appearance and literally snatching me like a fish weren't enough then that little bit about my "new master" would do the trick. I had to escape somehow and I just knew the moment I was in that bag my chances shot to nil. The only problem now was I no longer had a body; instead of arms or legs I had wispy tendrils of light and no idea how to really control them.

My ruminations ended as I realized I was out of time. The claw holding me let go and I plummeted towards the tarry bag. Desperation filled me as I in panic flailed and stretched to the edge of the hole just enough to knock me off course and send me tumbling down the side.

A flash of hope was crushed by the same claw that had released me grabbing hold as I tumbled. It quickly brought me back up to the monster's face. "Oy, this one seem a bit… Lively to you mate?"

"I just told you, they're only souls! No awareness to be had unless it's a damn sight closer to awakening than is possible this stretch of the river." The other monster turned back to the river and started to cast out another line like the one that'd caught me.

The claw holding me trembled a bit as the… fisher? Replied, "But it dodged the bag! What if it’s close? If we ship a soul that close to it… " It chittered in obvious agitation.

The other one didn't turn and shouted back, "If you're that concerned then just skim it a bit. Little drain'll keep it nice and quiet, and the ferriers will be none the wiser if you don't take too much."

"... You sure?" The creature mumbled as it brought the claw up closer to its now drooling lamprey mouth. "Guess a little bite couldn't hurt… Could always use a bit more… SuCh TASTY sOulS…" Its voice started to distort as the squirming mouth drew closer.

At that point rage overcame my fear and I knew there was only one option left. If these Lovecraft rejects wanted to try and eat me, then I was damn well going to fight back. So when I felt the cluster of slimy tentacles and lamprey lips latch on to me I shot my own tendrils around and thrust them into every eye I could reach on its hideous head.

As it turns out, sticking your fingers in the eyes of soul-eating eldritch abominations is a terrible idea. Right up there with bus drowning! Immediately the pain was back. My consciousness was crowded out by what felt like static between my thoughts. Then I started… seeing things. Concepts people have no names for floated among eons of limitless hunger and greed. An infinite void filled with ever greater nightmares and then, at the end, a new concept. Freedom.

These things were literal parasites on reality itself, escapees from a hellish infinite void growing bloated on the accumulated fate and destiny of captured souls. And if I didn't find a way free, I was next.

My thoughts started to clear and I found myself laying on a rocky surface. The ground trembled as my would-be devourer writhed and shrieked inhumanly with pain. I wasn't much better off, the previous pristine light of my soul was now tainted like an oil slick with twisted sworls of black and nauseating green. Aftershocks of pain still crashed through my psyche, though none as severe as when I first stabbed the monster.

I took my first real look around since the fishers yanked me from the River and couldn't help but be a little awed. They'd pulled me onto what looked like an asteroid the size of a small island. The River of Souls dominated the view, stretching along side and up into the distance with more islands floating in the dark sky throughout. The only difference in terrain came from giant multicolored crystals jutting out of the rock at random.

The admittedly spectacular view was blocked when ugly monster #2 hurried over to check on his friend who was still shrieking close by. "The hell happened?! You've tainted the merchandise!" It picked up my limp form like I was suddenly a used diaper instead of a tasty soul like before. "Ugh, not getting that out any time soon. It's ruined! Boss'll have our hides for this."

"It's worse than that." Came a furious hiss from the first monster. "Little shit got three of my eyes! The damn thing's awake." The monster was recuperating quickly, although the addition of three gaping eye sockets dripping ichor did nothing to improve its face.

The one holding me jerked like he'd been stung before he dropped me and hopped back as if I'd transitioned from "used diaper" to "horribly venomous snake". "The hell!? Awakened?! Void me, why'd you catch an awakened soul, you moron!"

They began to bicker back and forth between bouts of swearing and I did my best to squirm away towards the edge of the island while they were distracted.

What I wouldn't give for arms! My soul-tendrils could pull me forward but between my own unfamiliarity with them and the uneven terrain, my progress was slow. After a few minutes of crawling, I was barely halfway to the edge, the argument behind me was winding down and I knew the window for my escape was closing fast. "Hey, where'd it go?"

Shit! Out of time.

The ground trembled as the two rapidly skittered towards me. Lacking better defensive options I grabbed as many rocks as I could pry from the ground and threw them, determined more that if they were going to eat me then I was going down fighting. Admittedly, tiny tendril arms make for poor body mechanics so the rocks (more like pebbles with the size difference) bounced right off the approaching monsters' chitinous legs.

"Feisty little shit, aren't ya?" It said, pinning me to the ground with one claw. "How do we handle this? We can't just kill it, the emissary's on her way and clueless as those low-realm gods get they're not stupid enough to miss a ruptured soul."

The wounded one glared at me for a moment and then hissed, "Slug it. The shell will hide the taint and keep it paralyzed for a bit. When it discorperates going through the veil those upstarts will be none the wiser, and the only thing they'll have to blame is their shitty gate technique."

The claw pinning me shifted as the creature started to nod along to the idea. "Yeah… It's just the one right? Accidents happen after all, long as it's not the whole batch going tits-up." They both started to chuckle cruelly, the injured one darting off but quickly returning with a semi-transparent worm wrapped around one of its claws.

It looked like the nightmare version of a horsehair worm, writhing silently around the claw holding it until it seemed to zero in on me. Without warning it snapped towards me, latching on and burrowing into the "shell" surrounding my soul. That was probably the most disgusting and violating thing I'd ever felt. I struggled in vain against the claw and parasite both until paralysis robbed my ability to resist.

The poisonous looking shapes and colors tainting me quickly faded as the soul parasite masked both them and itself from outside view. To all appearances, I was now a "sleeping" soul with nothing abnormal to show. "I'd say better luck next time mate," said the first creature as it finally tossed me into the gooey bag. "... But seeing as how you're about to pop like a zit on the veil between worlds, fat chance of that now is there?" They both laughed as the bag closed and everything went black.

I don't know how long I was in there, surrounded by sleeping souls in the cramped dark. Something about the bag must be suppressing the normal light given off by souls since even though I could feel them around me it was completely dark. The more I concentrated on the nearby souls the more they felt… Familiar. Nothing I tried was breaking through the parasite's control enough to even twitch so I was limited to just those touching me directly, but that vague sense of familiarity just wouldn't go away until I realized something. My class… The bus! All the souls in this bag, or at least the ones close to me were together on the bus when we died.

This brought the Fisher's earlier words into more sinister light, "we brought you here…" They'd done it, somehow they'd killed us and brought us all here for some kind of soul/slave trade and I was the only one awake to see it. Only that wouldn't matter if I died again without anybody else realizing what had been done to us.

I fought down an increasing sense of claustrophobia as I struggled to move, to escape somehow. The bag jostled periodically with muffled sounds from outside gradually burying me deeper into the pile of souls. Nothings' working! Clamping down hard on my rising panic, I tried to set my thoughts in order.

I need to think. Plan. My only advantage here is that I'm awake, and that's a big enough problem that these things would murder me on the spot if they could get away with it. So I just need to figure out how being awake makes me a threat and I can use it to free myself. Easier said than done, unfortunately.

A particularly vigorous shake scrambled my thoughts and sent me tumbling around the bag. The bag opened abruptly and I would've flinched at the sudden light if I could move. Voices became clear as one of the Fisher's claws reached in to grab a soul at random before hoisting it out. "...s you can see Emissary, two dozen human souls in prime condition! Harvested naturally from a high-order world right at the start of adulthood with their memories intact. Full of dreams and ideals just ripe to make the next generation of champions!"

It tossed the soul out of sight and I heard a snort followed by a feminine voice tinged with disgust. " 'Naturally', right. I'll never understand how the gods tolerate you scheming parasites."

A simpering chuckle comes from the Fisher, "We perform a much needed service, Lady Emissary! They used to have to spend days if not weeks trawling for suitably heroic souls in the depths of the River. The gods' time is valuable after all, who better than the Fisher's Guild for such a crucial role?"

The Emissary didn't seem phased by the spiel from what sounded like the extra-dimensional equivalent of a greasy used car salesman. "And the fact that you grow bloated siphoning fate like leeches has nothing to do with it? Let's get this farce over with, the sooner I'm out of this rank abyss the better."

"As you wish, Lady Emissary." The bag of souls was poured out at the Emissary's instruction to "inspect the merchandise" and I got my first real look at them. It was… Weird, but kind of amazing. It looked like someone had built a massive gyroscope out of liquid mercury around a miniature star at the center like an eye. Four pairs of translucent crystal wings floated around it, framing it and reinforcing the "heavenly star" look. Honestly, if my situation wasn't so terrible I'd have been pretty psyched to see something like this.

Smaller versions of the Emissary with fewer wings were floating around and carefully examining each of the souls on the ground before moving on. I briefly hoped they'd spot the soul worm infecting me, but after a cursory inspection, my hopes proved in vain. Finishing up one turned and said in a soft voice, "All as ordered mistress. We are ready to depart at your command."

"Good." the Emissary's voice resonated with power as without another word she turned her wings and slashed a glowing rent into the air. The smaller emissaries gathered us up one a piece and flew into the portal without even glancing back at the Fisher.

The walls of the inside of the portal streaked by like hyperspace into the distance, though I couldn't pay much attention as the moment we began traveling the worm started writhing in pain as it broke apart. My soul shell had started to dissolve around the pair of wings holding me behind the minor emissary when the paralysis abruptly faded. My chance!

I snapped out with my tendrils and grabbed onto the crystalline wings with everything I had, trying to somehow literally pull myself back together. The minor emissary started and we jerked into the flashing wall of the portal with a crash. There was a brief sense of confusion and fear from the spherical creature before we hit the wall and I realized it was less a solid surface and more like a tidal wave of pure energy rushing by at ridiculous speed.

Then we were gone, tumbling in a current of brutalizing light that quickly tore the emissary apart and pounded my soul mercilessly. I felt bad for a moment between impacts until I realized the pieces of it I was holding onto were now fusing with the broken bits of my soul scattered around. Reaching out quickly, I grabbed as much of the now dead emissary's body as I could and gathered it around me, pressing it firmly against my shell while being blasted downstream.

The degradation stopped, although now my soul was a truly bizarre patchwork of sickly taint, bits of worm-parasite (shudder) and mercury/crystal. Then the impacts started getting worse. Live now, soul weirdness later! I held on as best I could as the light around me intensified and the pain built until something broke.

With a blinding, thunderous crash I was ejected from the tunnel of light and into a vast, dark space. I'm not going to lie, at this point I felt like I'd been going non-stop since my horrible death from one existential crisis to another and I was exhausted. There wasn't anything I could sense nearby, so I just kinda floated for a bit.

Holy shit… I just wanted to see some mountains. Now I'm a blob floating in 'space'. Scratch that, I thought after looking around. Space space. No marks for emphasis. I had rotated around and my vision was filled with a massive planet covering the horizon behind me. Well, I guess below me now that I had my bearings. I wonder wh--

ANALYZING

The hell!?

ANALYSIS COMPLETE

WELCOME [ERROR: CORRUPTED]!

YOU HAVE BEEN GRANTED THE FOLLOWING TRAITS :

[Inviolate Existence]

You have breached the walls of existence and brought yourself into being despite the very laws of reality saying otherwise. Grants immunity to all pure destruction based effects.

[Hybrid Awakened Soul]

Your catalyzation involved fusing your own Awakened soul with fragments of a Divine Messenger and a larval Abyssal Worm. Your future is uncertain, but know that death- short of your soul itself being obliterated- is no longer a barrier to your consciousness. Grants ability to preserve all memories and experience after physical death. Will require re-catalyzation to enter any material plane. Additional benefits unlocked with soul progression.

-Sub-trait Identified: [Soul Tongue]

Spoken language is such a primitive means of communication. By experiencing the River of Souls you have rendered such concepts irrelevant. Your soul will translate all communication within sensory range into an equivalent within your reference. Note: only applies to sapient creatures with souls.

BEGIN WITH THESE TRAITS?

Uh… I was momentarily confused by the screen suddenly appearing in my vision. It seemed like a very limited character creator almost, just giving me traits for showing up in universe? Despite my exhaustion and recent harrowing experiences, I couldn't help but feel a little excited. I'm going to get Isekai'd! Hell yes!

CONFIRMED

Wait, what? I didn't--

SELECTING PHYSICAL FORM BASED ON SOUL PARAMETERS

Uh oh. I looked at my current patchwork form. That's… Not gonna go well, is it?

COMPATIBLE SELECTION ACQUIRED

[Corrupted Blight Pit]

Oh that doesn't sound good at all…

INITIALIZING…

Wait! Can I cancel? Try again? The screen didn't reappear. For a few minutes I tried to bring it back up without success, but nothing seemed to be happening. Did it break? Nothings' happening… I looked around for a bit before trying to make out some more details of the planet nearby. It's beautiful, looks like the terrain is a lot more varied than Earth- lot less water too. Funny, it looks so much clearer than it did a few… Minutes… Ago… A sinking feeling formed where my stomach would be as the planet started getting a lot clearer, and closer.

Oh.

I looked at the utterly empty space around me.

Shit.