My death was a surprise. I knew I wouldn´t live forever, but I never assumed I would die on that very day. Interestingly though, I didn’t feel very dead. In fact, I felt great as I woke up on a patch of soft grass. It felt so rejuvenating to feel nature for the very first time in who knows how long. The air smelled fresh, without the oily note it constantly had on the spaceship. I knew it wasn’t an illusion as soon as I grabbed the ground and felt the dirt under me.

It was real. Somehow, I finally got back onto a planet, or at least something that resembled a planet. For a second, I thought I was in heaven and opened my eyes in anticipation. My friend Sofie was kneeling by my side, improving my mood yet again. But something kept bugging me as I surveyed the lush meadow with all my comrades on it.

“Where are we?” I sat up and looked around to find what made me slightly uneasy but couldn’t find anything right away. The others were already standing up slowly and even danced around happily while I was still looking at everything objectively.

Only as I looked down did I finally notice what weirded me out. Not only did the light look completely artificial, but it also didn’t create any shadows. Even as I formed an enclosed area with my hands and investigated it, it was still just as bright as the outside were. Heaven wouldn’t look like this. It was too sterile.

“Dunno. I just awoke here a minute ago.” Sofie said, stood up and looked around while I still sat on the grass. I really wanted to enjoy this sensation, but I wasn’t able to because I kept looking for unnatural phenomena. My friend’s acquaintances and even those I disliked were already forming groups to chat, with Sofie and me being left out in the beginning. “What happened? I only noticed the sirens and then …”

“I assume we died when we crashed into one of these creatures. Hey, look over there.” I said and waved to a group of three boys we used to hang out with.

“You were on the bridge, weren’t you?” Raul, the oldest of us all asked right away. Surprisingly, he knew my schedule better than I did which bummed me out quite a bit. We played cards the day before, so he could have warned me.

“Yeah … we are all dead. Raul, Nelson, Alexander, Sofie … it was nice to know you.” I answered while gazing into the distance. I was sure I noticed a shimmer there.

“Hey, this is heaven so let´s hang out for all eternity.” Alexander said and frowned as my words truly sounded like a goodbye.

“I doubt this is heaven. Or does heaven have boundaries?” Sofie asked while gazing in the direction I did. It seriously looked as if there was a nearly invisible wall there, constraining the space we had for ourselves to a few square kilometres.

“Let us ch-“ I felt my voice die down in the middle of the sentence, but not because I wanted to. I simply could not speak anymore as if all sounds ceased to be transmitted. Just to test out my theory, I clapped my hands with the same result. Silence. I couldn’t make any sounds at all. In fact, I couldn’t hear anyone and looked at bewildered faces. Nobody knew what was going on. Seemingly out of nowhere, I heard a crystal-clear voice speaking directly into my ears.

“Humanity has died in your universe. In fact, every intelligent being died out around the time you were attacked. The beings that destroy worlds are what we call demons. Once ordinary beings, they have changed to become bloodthirsty beings.

It was the fault of us gods that they could invade your universe and we are truly sorry for all the pain we have brought upon you. We can only try to make it up again, at least for those who didn’t die within the normal circle of reincarnation.

I do intend to give you hope for the journey you must now take, and the other gods intend to do the same. Therefore, you will be assigned a patron god which will grant you a few wishes so you will be able to live on your new planet without fear.

That world is completely unlike yours as technology barely progressed, but there is magic to replace it. We have great expectations for you, especially because you are given powers that surpass that of the locals. With your memories, you may even come up with innovative ideas or just live freely.

What I do hope though is that you will assist the gods, because demons, albeit weaker, will also be present on your new world. That is all from my part, so you will be teleported to your patron gods shortly.”

The voice died down again, but I still couldn’t help but wonder about it. I never got the feeling the god of hope was that concerned about us, and I was surely not the only one. Sofie looked quite confused, but the boys of our group threw their fists into the air. Sofie and I both knew they read quite weird stuff, so we left them be for the time being.

I just wanted to smile to her as everything went dark. From one second to the next. Even the dirt to my feet vanished and was replaced with something that crunched underneath my feet. I reached out to Sofie, but my fingers went through empty air. This god of hope truly knew how to pry friends apart without a care for our feelings. One could even go as far as to say that my hope was crushed.

Truly, he was the god of hope.

A bit angry, I crouched down to feel the ground and confirmed the hunch I had a few seconds before. The lush grass to my feet was replaced by stones, sometimes larger, sometimes sharper than usual. At least the ground to my feet wasn’t sloped, meaning I was probably in some kind of desert in the night. No stars were visible on the sky which made me curse my luck a bit, but at least the sounds of my movement reached my ears again.

I was supposed to meet my patron god, so what exactly did this darkness mean? I didn’t even want to answer that question. Sighing loudly, I stood up and slowly walked through the darkness while always making sure to have a steady footing.

“Hello?” I shouted out hoping to get the attention of someone. And unexpectedly, someone replied. Just like with the god of hope, I could hear a crystal-clear voice coming from everywhere. And unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find out the location of the speaker at all.

“A living soul in the land of dead, what a curi-“ I interrupted the person as I nearly fell over a larger rock and cursed my luck. I was quite scared about this development as everyone would be. Thrown into an unknown place and without anything to hold onto, my good mood vanished the moment I arrived there. Unlike others though, my courage never left me. And so, I voiced my displeasure about the current situation.

“Why is it so dark in here? Can´t you make it a bit brighter so I can see you? It´s weirding me out quite a bit.” I asked, even though I wanted to say so much more. I was scared, but also quite angry to be separated from my friends.

“No, I cannot. Normal light is completely absent from this space for various reasons.” He chuckled seemingly out of nowhere. If this was supposed to be joke, I couldn’t understand it. “Sucks to be me I guess.” He added shortly afterwards.

Living in this hellhole truly sounded horrible. How was he supposed to see anything? And who would choose to live in this rocky place anyway?

“Yeah … yeah it does.” His chuckling died down right away while it took a few more milliseconds to realize my mistake. Out of all times, I was screwing around when it mattered the most? He was my patron god, whatever that meant and I certainly didn’t want to be on his bad side right away. Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind my words too much as he continued to speak casually just like before.

“I am sure you heard the old geezer before, so what do you wish for in your new life?” That question sounded so easy but it was not. First, did I even want to wish anything? That god was pretty sketchy after all. Either he couldn’t pay his electricity bill, or somehow liked darkness more than being able to see. Both options were quite bad in my opinion. He was either some obscure god with no abilities whatsoever, or simply put evil.

“I want immortality.” I wanted to confirm right away what kind of god he was. If he was a minor god, he wouldn’t be able to grant it and rather present other, way cheaper options. In the case of him being evil, he wouldn’t be able to grant it either, but he would try to push me into some crazy direction with his next words. To conclude, I didn’t think one second to become immortal, but rather wanted to see his reaction.

“Sure.” That answer baffled me. I mean, it was obvious he wasn’t some kind of beggar god, but still … granting immortality was a crazy concept. Thus, there was only one option left, except there existed a god who liked darkness, but was otherwise nice. In all my history lessons about Greek or Roman gods, I sadly never heard of one though.

“Can I take back my wish?” If it was living with immortality granted by an evil god, or just living a normal life, I would obviously choose the latter. After all, I never thought about how he could grant me immortality. I was sure he would find an evil way.

“What is granted cannot be taken anymore. Well, it doesn’t look like this is going anywhere, so let me do this.” Something even darker than the pitch-black darkness around me approached. It was a feat that surprised, but also frightened my quite a bit. Stepping backwards and shivering slightly, I caught a glimpse of the pitch black being. I never seen anything like him before. He looked like a human at least by his contours, even though he was certainly not. His whole skin was weird as I couldn’t make out exactly where he started, and the usual darkness ended. But I immediately knew that looking towards his face was a bad idea as he had no nose, eyes, or anything else. The only thing I could make out about him were his human contours and that was it.

Something unexplainable happened as well. A feeling of dread I couldn’t exactly explain spread within me for several seconds until it vanished suddenly. In defiance, I looked at his face, or rather where his face should be.

“I can be considered lucky to have you, so I am feeling rather great today. I grant you three more wishes.” He said while I couldn’t observe any movement from the god in front of me. However he spoke, it wasn’t through a mouth but that much was obvious.

“I´m fine, thank you. If you could send me onwards, I would be thankful.” Honestly, I just wanted to get away from there. The god vanished in front of me and reappeared to my side and even though I couldn’t see him there, I could feel him.

“Take them, or else I will pick them for you. And I will screw you over so badly that you wish you wouldn’t exist.” And with that, he confirmed he was evil. Exhaling loudly, I thought about my options. Refusing anymore would be impossible as I seriously didn’t want him to pick my wishes. On the other hand, my guess was that he wanted to screw me over anyway.

So first, where could I start? What was specific enough so that he wouldn’t be able to alter it in a bad way. What about wishes that wouldn’t matter anyway? Along the lines of ‘I want to know what day of the week it is?’, just in slightly useful? A wish giving me information and nothing else? Information alone cannot influence you that much after all, and maybe I could do something useful with it.

“I want to be able to find other reincarnators like me easily.” Good luck screwing that one over, Mr. God of Darkness!

“Done. Quite a useful ability, well not for you, but certainly for someone who would like to use it against your friends.” I honestly didn’t think about the event where said information could be used against my friends. Just holding onto that knowledge put a huge target onto my back for everyone who wanted to find and possibly harm my friends. Seeking out information thus turned against me quite fast.

And thus, I could only go for the second option: To pick something banal.

“I want to eat the best food in the world.” No more cafeteria food for me, one of the things that I always hated about my life. Either it was something horrible to eat, or rarely something good. And if I would remove the bad, only the good remains. And even if I would suddenly like the most disgusting food, so what? If it is tasty, I wouldn’t mind. Truth to be told, I fully expected to find worms in my new life rather tasty, but so what?

“Oh, gluttony, directly sinning before getting reborn? I like you.” I somehow had a bad feeling about this one as well, but I just couldn’t think of anything less harmless. I only had one other idea, but even this one could turn out quite bad. I just had to hope for the best … or rather, I had to hope that the worst would come true.

“A family that I can love and that always loves me back?” I knew that if I chose to pick only a family that loves me, he could choose criminals as my parents which was unsurprisingly something I liked to avoid. But if I wanted to love them back, that couldn’t be the case. If I was correct, the god was unable to manipulate me directly and I wouldn’t be able to love criminals, no matter how hard he tried. Thus, my weirdly formulated wish.

“Two in one? Well, whatever, it doesn’t matter. The more wishes you make, the more fun I will have.” Once again, I wasn’t sure if I was correct as only time would tell. But honestly, I did think that I mitigated the damage he could have done by quite a bit even though he didn’t sound very bothered by all my attempts.

“Then, let me think about your wishes for a bit. After all, I must grant them completely and I still need to think about how to do that. So, just do your human things while I am busy. Bye-bye.”

And then, he vanished leaving me with nothing to do but my human things … whatever these were.