(James)

James had a moment of confusion when his view had turned black, but his consciousness was still intact. He couldn't see anything in his HUD, and as he couldn't move or speak at all, couldn't see his status.

Was he dead?

Was this the end?

If James had been able to, he would have shivered. He was almost certainly dead, and there was no sign of an afterlife. He would almost certainly go insane if this was all he had to look forward to for the rest of forever. And his regrets. He regretted so many things about his short run on earth.

Mainly he regretted not getting help for his dad when he noticed him getting worse. He might have had a better relationship with him, but instead, his last memory of his father was of a hungover, sleeping shadow of a man.

He also regretted leaving Dana behind. How would she react to their newfound love for each other being cut short?

Again, James missed having a body because he just felt like curling up in a ball and crying.

An unknown amount of time later, James felt a pull on him. It was like he was about to fall upwards but he was still anchored to the ground. The pull got stronger, and James saw the darkness around him begin to lighten up.

He rose, slowly at first, then faster. His surroundings continued to get lighter and brighter before he was shooting upwards, trying and failing to keep whatever passed for his eyes shut.

Suddenly he stopped again. A breath shuddered in, and he felt himself breathing again. He looked down at his body, and saw a blank smooth white figure, like a mannequin. His fingers had no joints, nor his toes, but he could move around fine and jumped a few times.

He couldn't feel anything beneath his feet but could see it was a spongy material that seemed to bounce with him. It was a strange feeling, he could almost feel due to the resistance, but he had no senses other than sight that he could use. But he could breathe, so he should be able to speak right?

He cleared his throat, hearing the beginnings of a voice unfamiliar to his own and spoke one word.

"Hello?"

The voice was soft and a little shaky, but at least it worked.

He couldn't begin to wonder what his head must look like, a mannequin that had eyes, ears and a mouth. Unfortunately, he couldn't breathe in through his nose, if he even had one. It was a basic body apparently.

James looked around at his surroundings. He was surrounded in white that was almost familiar to him, and the ground looked like clouds. Maybe he was in heaven? But it seemed far too unreal to be heaven. He was sure the system had some afterlife, but he doubted this was it.

Doing a full 180, he was faced with a door that simply said enter on it. There was nothing on either side of the door, and when he tried to look around It, there was nothing on the other side of it.

James attempted to shrug before finding his body couldn't do that, then pushed open the door and walked inside.

The first thing he noticed was that the other side of the door looked exactly the same as wherever he previously was. Except for this time, there was a chair with its back to him, and a plain looking silver cube on a small table in front of it.

James tried to use Analyse on It, but nothing appeared. He then tried to open his status, but still got nothing.

The only thing left for him to do was follow whatever was attempting to guide him. He sat on the chair a little awkwardly, as not having any moving fingers meant he had to move a little weirdly before sitting.

The box started to emit a little whirring noise, and a circle appeared on the top. James leant closer for a better look and saw that a lense was being uncovered. What the hell is this thing?

As soon as the hole stopped expanding, a projection of a small angelic figure flickered into life.

Though it was only a few inches tall, it had some amazing detail, and James wished they had technology like this on earth.

The little person then cleared it's throat, identifying its gender as male, then proceeded to talk.

"Welcome... James Lander to the office of the Shift System. What can I help you with today?"

Surprised at the official way this Angel figurine was talking to him, James stuttered a little bit.

"I, um. I guess. I don't know. I died?"

The angel nodded and pulled a small device from its robes and pulled up its own smaller hologram then tapped on it a few times.

"O.k. and how did you die?"

"I guess I overused a spell that I shouldn't and it killed me. It was called Divine Contract."

The angel acted surprised and put away its hologram then continued in a more energetic tone.

"Oh, you're that James Lander. Lucifer is ready and waiting in his office for you. I'll send you there now."

"Wait, what's going on?"

Despite his reluctance, James and the chair he was on fell through the floor, or rather where the floor once was. He felt a second of weightlessness before the chair slammed down on another floor, bouncing a little as it settled. He managed to keep his balance and stay seated on the chair more by luck than anything.

His surroundings had changed significantly too. Instead of the white walls and the cloud, the walls were a faint but dark red, and the floor looked more solid, like a thick fog over something bright and orange. Fire maybe?

This wasn't the time to criticize some interior decoration here, so James averted his focus to the man sitting in front of him behind an impressive looking obsidian desk.

He was a tall person, perhaps an entire meter taller than James was now, though he had no basis for comparison as he was clearly not on earth. The two of them could be several miles tall for all he knew.

But the man in front of him was altogether quite impressive, with fiery red hair that had been combed back but was still unruly. A pair of odd coloured eyes glowed from beneath a thick brow. One dark red, the other white rimmed with gold. His face was stuck in a grimace as his view swept over James.

James got the distinct feeling he was in trouble.

Despite James wishing the awkward silence would last forever, this red themed disgruntled man spoke first. His voice rough, reminding James of every unconventional action hero he could think of.

"So. James. I'm Lucifer. We meet at last."

James was expecting this. That small angel had mentioned Lucifer, and when this world had shifted, Lucifer was the one that had stopped him from rejecting the change. James felt he should be angry at Lucifer, but there was something overwhelming about the fallen angel that kept his nerves steady.

"Uh. Hi Lucifer. Why am I here?"

James' nervousness made him get straight to the point, somehow in one clear and coherent sentence.

Lucifer laughed once through his nose without any semblance of a smile.

"Straight to the point. Good. I'll get to the point too. You remember the description of the feature called ultimate chance?"

James thought back to the day before when he had received it. Something about not missing off the gods again.

"Um. Something about not pissing off the gods again?"

"Good. You know why you're here?"

James squirmed in his seat. He was certain he was in trouble now.

"I pissed off the gods again?"

Lucifer nodded gravely and tapped his desk. A set of hologram screens flickered into life in front of him, and he tapped a series of glowing symbols on his desk, then motioned for the central screen to rotate and face James. On it was a bar graph with a relatively high set of values unroll the last, which was almost at 0.

"You understand this?", he tapped at the highest bar, showing a value of tens of thousands.

"This is where my divine power should be. This", he started, pointing at the lowest most recent value, "is where I'm at now. So who's fault do you think this is?"

James just wished he could fall through the floor. He was so dead, he could tell. But very reluctantly, he answered.

"Mine."

"You're right. Because of that stupid subsystem, I got stuck with a reject leech, and you get to steal a 3rd tier deities power whenever it takes your fancy."

Despite the fear he still felt towards this obviously angry being, James got the sense Lucifer wasn't explicitly angry at him, so he pushed for answers.

"What do you mean by reject leech?"

Lucifer sighed. It was the sigh of an emotionally defeated man.

"You were one of the few million that tried to reject the system. Usually, when that happens, we let second-tier deities take care of this, but earth and its inhabitants were more rebellious than the usual crowd, so I was called in to help. You and a few hundred others now have contacts that let you channel my power. You are the first to try. It's supposed to be a final tier spell that you only use when your mana is in the tens of thousands. You, on the other hand, had... "

Lucifer took a moment to scroll through some data on one of his screens, likely looking for James' stats.

"Not even 80 mana. That meant you could use the divine contact for less than one-hundredth of a second. And spell costs round to the next highest second. I don't know how you're not dead right now."

James perked up at this. He had just naturally assumed he was only here because he had died.

"I'm not dead? Then how am I in heaven?"

Lucifer simple laughed under his breath.

"This isn't heaven. There is no heaven. You unlucky mortals don't even have an afterlife. No, this is the system hub. Specifically my office. Here, the deity community manages the Shift System."

Though he revealed it as if it was the answer to all James' questions, he was only left with more.

"So how am I here, and what even am I?"

James gestured to him mannequin-like body.

"Your spirit was pulled here as per my request, and you are currently inhabiting a divine golem. An empty body, if you will. And before you start to panic, you will be sent back as soon as your body can fix itself. You did a real number on it by using such a strong spell at such a low level. You're going to feel that in the morning."

There was an almost awkward pause before Lucifer jumped as if shocked by something.

"Oh yeah, about my power. You weren't meant to use it before I could gather enough power from worshipers. If that spell is used again, I'll be demoted. If that happens, I can guarantee that whoever used the spell will die."

This seemed wildly unfair to James, so he voiced his frustration.

"So what am I meant to do about it?"

Lucifer grinned this time. A grin of self-satisfaction. James felt his mood sink again as he realised he had fallen into a trap.

"Ah. The immortal question. What are you supposed to do about it? Well, James, I am in need of power. But I know what you're thinking; how does a deity gain power? The answer is belief. I'm assuming you've encountered something with the holy affinity?"

James nodded slowly, realising Lucifer didn't actually know why he had used Divine Contract

"Good. Well. Holy things are things we the deities can influence in your mortal world once we make them and put them there. Holy monsters fit into this category, for example."

James made a dubious face as the explanation went on. People only went out of their way to explain something if they wanted him to do something complicated.

"Deitys get the ability to do this when people worship them. But right now, not many people know of the individual gods, much less who to worship. So you're going to tell them."

James twisted his face in thought, earning an entertained face back from Lucifer.

"So I'll essentially become a priest. For you. A devil."

"Essentially. But I should tell You, while many of the deities have interacted with earth in the past, testing it for shift compatibility, myself included, there are no deities that go by as devils."

"So you're not a fallen angel?"

Lucifer let his head fall into his open hands and appeared to shake his clutched head a little.

He took a deep breath though and looked back at James.

"I can't tell you how tired I am of that story. None of the other tier 3's let me live it down. The fifth wouldn't do that."

"Who's the fifth?"

But despite James' question, Lucifer merely swept his hand along several of his screens one after the other making a rippling effect. He had a wistful smile on his face.

"While I would just love to answer your questions, my dear zealot, it's your time to go back. Much sooner than you were supposed to though. Someone's healing you it seems."

Before James could ask what he meant again, Lucifer loudly stood up and walked around his desk.

Contrary to what James had expected, he had just normal human legs clothed in a pinstripe set. No sign of cloven hooves or a spiked tail anywhere.

Lucifer held out his hand in front of James, and a rough red stone the size of a tennis ball formed. The hand forming the stone almost looked to turn to jagged stone with veins of bright magma flowing within it, if only for a moment.

"This is your new religious title. It's a little different from a class or occupation, so don't worry about trying to train any of the things you get."

With that, he dropped the stone into James' palm, almost bouncing out as he failed to grip it.

"Good luck out there. Oh, wait. You don't have any right?"

Lucifer leant closer to him, pushing the chair back so the body James was inhabiting was cradled in the chair.

James defiantly stared back at Lucifer as he felt his mind slipping from the body he was in, his already useless motor functions failing harder. With the final breath held in this golden, James swung the glowing stone in his hand into his smooth chest, cracking it and forcing every drop of loathing he felt into one syllable.

"Ha."

Then everything faded into the familiar white clouds and mist.

James felt himself falling and motioned to move his arms in panic before remembering he didn't have a body.

He descended back to earth through a bank of clouds and unlike the ascent, could see what was happening around him. It was still night, but the sky was a dark shade of purple. It was only a few hours after he had almost died.

Looking around at the rapidly approaching ground, he could just make out the glowing green circle of the garden, a few limericks of fires dotted around, and nothing else. There was nothing in the sky. No birds that he could see. Not even any monsters.

He tried to stay calm during his descent. He was scared of what had happened to his body while he was gone. He was sure using that spell would do more damage than a few hours could heal. Speaking of, why was he so eager to open the damn cache? James wasn't the kind of person to endanger himself like that, especially not Dana.

He could only hope that whatever was in the cache was worth the trauma he had been through. And Dana too. From her perspective, it must have been like he had died...

What seemed to be an eternity later, he was finally close enough to the ground to make out the shadow of the college. He couldn't see any lights other than the garden, so he had no clue where the others were. But that wasn't a problem yet.

As he got closer still and could make out the paths of the garden, he must have been no more than 50 meters up. He could see the circle of benches had been wrecked, and there was his body. Next to it was a familiar figure too. Curled up around the corpse-like shell, was Dana holding its hand and breathing softly.

In the final few meters, James adjusted himself in his mind to what might be a very painful awakening.

He was right.