ook. I
don’t even know where to start.
If I had to explain it—and I
really don’t want to, but let’s pretend I do—imagine being
jammed inside a Rubik’s Cube mid-twist. Only the cube was made of
office furniture, the laws of space were in on the joke, and we were
apparently somewhere deep inside cosmic IKEA. One second I’m
standing—sort of—and then I’m not. Just… floating. Panels of
reality flip and fold around me like they’ve got somewhere to be.
The room—what I’m guessing
used to be a reception area—is shifting. But not in a
cool, Michael Bay, gears-and-explosions kind of way. No, this is
quieter. Slicker. Like shoji doors gliding on rails, except the
floor's made of powdered moonlight, maybe sugar, definitely something
mildly hallucinogenic. No sound. No tremor. Just this smooth,
rearranged elegance.
A desk blinks into existence.
Massive. It plants itself at the far end of the
now-completely-different room, which, surprise, is no longer a lobby.
Nope. This is full “CEO’s private sanctum” vibes. Think
high-rise evil overlord with a crush on nebula wallpaper.
Right on the desk. Gold-plated
name plaque. Ornate cursive.
Boss-Ass-Bitch.
I blink. “…Huh.”
Still stuck on that when my brain
finally catches up to something else: I’m standing. On a floor.
Upright. Gravity has opinions again. Which is weird, because I could
swear I was mid-astral tumble five seconds ago.
I clear my throat. Not because I
need to, but because it’s what you do when reality breaks and
you’re trying to pretend you’re still a person. “Okay. Let’s
just… shelve all that. What kind of afterlife is this
supposed to be?”
And then—footsteps.
Soft. Deliberate. Like someone
walking across polished marble with full legal ownership of not just
the floor, but the very act of walking.
The air shifts. Cooler. Sharper.
It slices across my skin. My arms prickle like someone just whispered
electricity into the room.
And then she enters.
Ishtar.
Not in a floaty, ethereal,
harp-solo way. No violins. No heavenly chorus. This isn’t “goddess
as concept.” This is capital-P Presence. The kind that
doesn’t announce itself—it just happens.
Her hair’s slicked back,
midnight oil turned to silk, falling over her shoulders. Her skin is
molten caramel with a sun-god afterglow. And her eyes?
Galaxies.
Spinning. Judging. Beautiful and
ancient and cruel. The kind of eyes that don’t just look
at you—they audit you. And not in the fun, flirty way. I
feel… small. Not metaphorically. I mean, literally smaller.
She’s stunning. Obscenely so.
But not in a “hot girl at the bar” kind of way. This is
weaponized. Strategic. The kind of beauty you’d expect to find
behind glass with a placard that says Do Not Touch (Seriously,
She Bites).
Gone is the void-silk nightgown I
vaguely remember. In its place? White. Business. Tailored. A power
suit so crisp it probably files taxes quarterly. It hugs her like
it’s scared to wrinkle, heels clicking a slow stiletto metronome as
she glides past me without a word.
I feel human.
Which, here, is code for: weak.
Confused. In desperate need of context. Or maybe a therapist.
She takes her seat behind the
mahogany monolith with the practiced ease of someone who’s been a
CEO of Reality for three cosmic epochs. Her fingers brush over a stack
of documents—only they’re not documents. Not really. The ink
gleams gold, but it moves. Slithers. Twists. Each word reshapes
itself as if flexing for my benefit.
Then,
just like that, she stands. No drama. No strain. One blink she’s
seated, the next she’s vertical—effortless, fluid.
She leans on the
desk—not in a casual way, but in a
queen-who’s-bored-of-your-existence way. Dominant,
practiced. Two fingers pluck a scroll—no, a contract, probably;
maybe both, who even knows—and she flips through it like she’s
reviewing my credit score before deciding whether I’m worth
reincarnating… or incinerating.
And I feel
it.
Not just the pose.
The pull. That invisible weight threading through my ribs
like silk wire, wrapping tighter with every heartbeat. A whisper
curling behind my ears. Pressure blooming just behind my eyes. Some
deep, ancient, lizard-brain urge to kneel. Submit. Worship.
Which—no, thank
you.
"Really?"
I mutter, like I'm trying to cough the feeling out of my throat.
“We’re doing this now?”
Her gaze finds
mine. Not sharp. Not sudden. Just… there—like she was
already watching, just waiting for me to catch up. She tilts her
head, curious-cat style.
“Interesting…”
she purrs, like she’s inspecting a line of bad code and deciding
whether it’s a bug or a feature.
I squint at her.
“So, is this the game? Soul DMV? Celestial HR? Purgatory with mood
lighting and a dominatrix theme?”
That earns a
smile.
Not a comforting
one. Not even a normal one. It unfolds like a slow poison.
Smooth. Pretty. Absolutely venomous. A smile that says yes,
and also you don’t even know what game you just agreed to play.
"Dominatrix?"
she echoes, almost laughing—but not quite. The sound slips through
the air like perfume laced with carbon monoxide. “No, darling.”
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I open my mouth to
fire back something clever and deeply unwise—
She moves.
No prep. No
wind-up. One second she’s across the desk, and then she’s behind
me, and I don’t even see it happen. Fingers—cool and
humming like static—brush the base of my skull.
And I’m sitting.
I didn’t sit.
I didn’t move.
I blinked, and
suddenly I’m slotted into the chair like a misbehaving NPC snapped
back to spawn by a smug dev running cleanup mode.
I try to speak.
Can’t. Thoughts buffer. Mouth open, words nowhere.
Her fingers drift
into my hair.
Slow. Precise.
There's heat—too focused, too alive. Something coils down my spine
like a whisper made of teeth.
“Son of a—!”
I jolt, lurching back like I touched a live wire with my soul. My
chair skids, heart doing cardio it didn’t sign up for. “Stop
that! What the hell was that?!”
She doesn’t even
blink. Just leans in again, like my panic is the punchline of a joke
only she knows.
Her breath brushes
my ear. Warm. Soft. Laced with static and intent.
“Oh, darling…”
Her voice? A scalpel in a sugar cube. “I can do many things.”
I swallow. Hard.
Honestly, fainting
dramatically is starting to sound less like cowardice and more
like a viable strategic response.
Our eyes lock.
The gravity-thing
kicks back in. Stronger this time. Everything in me just wants to
fall forward and call it enlightenment.
No.
I drag myself
upright, breath ragged, every muscle humming with leftover terror. My
lungs can’t decide if they're empty or overclocked. I can feel
her irritation now.
She twitches.
Just a flicker.
But there it is. A tiny fracture in her divine mask. She tilts her
head the other way now—recalculating, like she just discovered her
shiny new soul-toy came with a factory defect.
“That’s the
third time,” she says, voice lower now, laced with something almost
like curiosity. “Most don’t fight it once. Let alone thrice.”
Her fingers steeple under her chin, and her eyes narrow. “So now I
have to ask... how are you doing that?”
“Yo, Ish…
don’t break the guy just yet.”
A voice, lazy and
amused, echoes across the space like someone hit play on a stoner
podcast in a cathedral.
Zen.
Oh, thank every
pantheon and backup deity with a half-decent HR department.
He’s stretched
sideways across a floating couch—which, yeah, floats, because of
course it does—draped like a man who’s emotionally checked out
three dimensions ago. Long tangled hair, patchy scruff, and a purple
suit that somehow screams street prophet meets Coachella dropout.
He yawns. Waves.
Scratches his beard like he’s mildly inconvenienced by the tension
in the room.
Ishtar groans.
Audibly. Her eyes roll with such celestial force I half-expect a
solar flare to erupt behind them.
“Oh, all
right, Zen,” she sighs,
saccharine and deadly.
"You two just gonna sit there and mess with
me?" I snap, hands flailing. "Seriously? This is what death
looks like? Discount IKEA office, smug deities, and mental kung fu?"
Zen flashes a lazy grin. The kind that says he’s
either high or just way too comfortable being unhelpful.
"You
still don’t get it, do you, man?"
He stretches, bones popping like a bag of
microwave popcorn. "This whole place? It’s like… a divine
conglomerate. OmniCorp, but make it metaphysical. They run
everything—realms, rebirths, cosmic HR… whatever."
I blink. Slowly.
"...So you’re telling me I died and woke up
in a celestial call center?"
"More or less."
I rub my temples. "Nope. Nope, I reject this.
I am not some randomized intern in the goddamn spiritual IT
department."
Zen just shrugs. "You'll get used to it.
Everyone does. Or they implode. It’s like onboarding with extra
screaming."
I shoot them both a glare. "Right. And let me
guess—you two are in charge? Some divine sibling rivalry with
office perks?"
Ishtar chuckles. Low. Dangerous. Way too satisfied
with herself.
Zen lazily gestures toward her. "Ish? Yeah,
she’s head of ‘aggressive micromanagement.’"
Her smile slices through the air like a guillotine
made of lipstick and malice.
"I prefer ‘decisive oversight.’ Much
cleaner than ‘passive incompetence.’"
I squint at them. "Okay, then riddle me
this—what the hell is Eidolon?"
Zen cracks his neck. "Not Earth."
I blink. Again. "No shit, Sherlock. I figured
that out after the eight-foot orc tried to make me into a floor
stain."
Ishtar purrs, trailing a finger along my jaw like
she’s browsing a menu. "We saw that. Quite the performance.
Very… visceral."
I jerk away from her touch. “You two had
something to do with that, didn’t you?”
Zen raises his hands like a kid caught holding the
detonator. "Okay, yeah—so, about that—" He winces. “The
Board needed a body, man. And your nephew… he was prime
metaphysical real estate.”
My brain screeches to a halt. “Wait—you were
gonna kill my nephew?”
“What? No. No-no. Not kill. Just… coma. Little
celestial bump. Harmless-ish.”
I clench my fists. Tight enough my knuckles crack.
"You absolute—"
Ishtar laughs.
And then—of course—she swings a leg over mine
like we’re at prom, settles on my lap, and traces a line down my
chest with two fingers like she’s writing her name in invisible
ink.
I go completely rigid. "WOAH. Nope. HR.
That’s an HR violation. That’s, like, five HR violations."
Her eyes gleam. “Darling… I am HR.”
Zen groans. "Ish, seriously. Consent. Cosmic
backlash is real."
I look between them. One part divine dominatrix,
one part baked cult leader. And I’ve somehow ended up between them
like the world’s least qualified therapist.
All I can do is shake my head. Just… process
buffering.
“…Fuck.”
Ishtar leans in, her voice low and silk-drenched.
"Is that an invitation?"
Zen throws up his hands. “Whoa, man. Don’t
encourage her. That’s like—feeding a hydra espresso.”
I blow out a breath. "So now what?"
Ishtar grins, wicked and triumphant.
“Well, darling,” she says, brushing imaginary
dust from my shirt, “my twin brother’s little cock-up...
is now my new toy.”