I floated weightless in a world without light or sound. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it also wasn’t pleasant. I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t sense anything. I tried to touch my face, but couldn’t seem to find it. My muscle memory was telling me that I was touching my nose, but I couldn’t feel it. Am I dreaming, or am I just dead?

  Something was approaching rapidly. I strained to see what it was, but my eyes were useless. I could feel its attention on me from a distance, and then suddenly it was right in front of me. I straightened the body I wasn’t sure was really there, and focused all my attention on the presence. Suddenly, a heavy weight was all around me. The weight battered me with concepts; authority, justice, dignity, decorum, and a declaration that everything was claimed. It demanded submission and my knees threatened to buckle.

  Oh, I see. It was an aura. Something fancied itself powerful, it was flexing its aura, and it wanted to see if I’d submit. It seemed irresistible, but a part of me was outraged at the insolence. I will not kneel. The aura retracted as quickly as it had deployed, and then I felt the tickle of telepathy.

  “Welcome, brave warrior! The Lady has claimed you. You will act as her champion.”

  The voice was female and had a pleasant regionless British accent. It was both a voice and a presence. There was power, but it wasn’t unpleasant to my mind.

  “Hello, there. I’m Conor.”

  “Hello, Conor. The McKenna of your group has given me the name Sophia.”

  “Hello, Sophia. Would you explain what is going on?”

  “You have died in glorious battle. You were then claimed by The Lady. Why do you not submit?”

  I considered a quote about Sophia merely adopting the darkness, but this seemed like a time for decorum. Why didn’t I submit? It wasn’t purely pride and stubbornness, was it? No, it was about dignity. “You have not broken me, nor have we negotiated. Therefore, your demand of submission is insolent and nearly intolerable.”

  “Nearly?”

  “As your guest, I shall be gracious and forgive a trespass that you have not repeated.”

  “You are indeed gracious.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Conor, I am what you’d think of as a deity. My power and authority is beyond your ability to imagine. My strength so eclipses your own, that I could destroy you with my will alone.”

  “So my strength, though incomparable, is still measurable on the scale by which you assess yourself?”

  “It would be my pleasure to negotiate.” Suddenly, I was sitting on a log before a perfect campfire. A pot rested on a stone near the fire, and I could smell coffee brewing. A beautiful Japanese woman sat next to me, gracefully eating a toasted marshmallow off of a stick.

  “Is this Valhalla?”

  “This is a pocket dimension that I created for our discussion.” Even her real voice held an undercurrent of power, as if she was somehow more than merely real.

  “Why go to this effort? Why not just make me see?”

  She handed me a stick with a marshmallow on it and gestured toward the fire. I obliged and started toasting my own treat. It was a moment before she answered, but I focused on toasting my marshmallow.

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  “I went to the effort because you had no body to fool.”

  “Because I’m dead.”

  “You were.”

  “I’m alive again?”

  Sophia nodded. “I crafted a body that your soul accepted, and then I declared you to be alive. While we’re in this pocket universe, the only thing I don’t have absolute authority over is your own soul.”

  I took a bite of the toasted marshmallow. It was sweet, and gooey, and smoky, and wonderful. “Thank you for bringing me back to life.”

  “It was my pleasure, Conor. And The Lady would have wished it.” She sensed my rising question and cut me off at the pass. “Who is The Lady? She is order and truth. She is justice and compassion. She is stoic dignity and grace and decorum, and she is who I serve.”

  “And she has claimed me and mine.” That small voice inside me bristled again. Suddenly Katy, Kaylee, and McKenna was also sitting around the fire. I passed a toasted marshmallow to Katy, who in-turn passed it to McKenna.

  McKenna offered me her biggest smile in weeks. “My champion.”

  My heart swelled to hear that again. “My Lady.” For the sake of decorum I didn’t mash the words together this time. “Lady Sophia serves another power known as The Lady, and The Lady seeks champions.”

  Sophia appraised Katy and Kaylee, and then looked intently at McKenna, who calmly met her gaze. “You are a Lady?” she asked. And then something changed, and McKenna was quite clearly more than she had been a moment before. There was a faint whisper of authority resting on her like a mantle.

  Sophia continued as if nothing about McKenna had changed. “The Lady is the embodiment of every virtue, as well as the most powerful deity in her universe. She prevents incursions by the most powerful of the outside forces that you four are already quite familiar with.”

  Now that was interesting. And it brought a question to Katy’s mind. “You say that as if by keeping the big bads at bay, that something weaker slips through.”

  Sophia didn’t immediately respond, and Kaylee took advantage to ask a follow-up question. “Do the weaker invaders somehow escape detection?”

  Sophia nodded. “The weak invaders are summoned to our universe by those that worship them. They possess hosts, so nature doesn’t recoil at their presence the way it does when the more powerful force their way in.”

  I turned to face Sophia. I thought I might know where this was going. “These possessed forces are mundane, and they require mundane solutions?”

  “In a sense, yes. A deity may smite outsiders, and they may smite their own. These mundane enemies are neither outsider, nor our own worshipers. We have the raw power to atomize their entire race in a thought, yet we lack the authority to use that power on them.”

  McKenna raised a hand for attention, and we all turned toward her. “You require agents to police your territory. What else do you require?”

  Sophia seemed excited that we had entered negotiations. “We require you to create a civilization that honors The Lady’s virtues, that expands and protects its territory against enemies and outsiders, and that you cooperate with our other allies and agents when you determine it to not be excessively burdensome.”

  That didn’t sound bad at all. Evidently McKenna thought the same, and she had an immediate follow-up question. “And what do we get in return?”

  Sophia gestured toward me. “Brave Conor here has surmised that while your own strength is beyond insignificant when compared to mine, that it is also measured in the same way that mine is.”

  I got a little smug at Sophia’s praise. A goddess thought I was brave.

  “We offer to place you on a path that leads to something more. You will be human, but also more than human. You will progress down that path to increased strength, intelligence, awareness, and even longevity. You can be slain, but you will never suffer sickness or disease.” Sophia let that sink in before she dropped a bombshell into our laps. “If you excel, you may one-day become functionally immortal. In the interim, we’ll provide you bodies that do not age.”

  Oh hell yes. I was loving this. “So what you’re saying is, unless we’re murdered or suffer a tragic accident, that we’ll live forever with healthy young bodies?”

  “Indeed. And you won’t suffer scars. Someone as fearless as you should appreciate that.” She quirked up an eyebrow as she finished talking.

  Kaylee beamed a smile at me and nodded in agreement. “Conor is fearless indeed. Our Lady’s champion.”

  I blushed a little at hearing that.

  “You all withstood the effects of my aura, but Conor called me insolent. How is it that you’re so unafraid?”

  Everyone look at me with interest, and I shrugged and took a moment to answer. “It is sometimes possible to beat the ability to fear right out of a child.” Everyone was looking at me like I hadn’t told them this before. I guess maybe I hadn’t.

  “Well,” began McKenna, a little hoarsely, “we’re the agents you’re looking for.”

  Sophia stood up and looked us all over one last time. “Fantastic,” she declared, and then everything ceased to be.