“I’m dead?”

For some reason, that was the first thing out of my mouth. I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet and the whisper had already left my lips. Why had I just thought that? Trying to remember gave me a killer headache, and I instinctively brought a hand to my forehead to dull it. It didn’t help all that much, but it did distract me enough that the pain vanished on its own.

I slowly opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was an unfamiliar ceiling painted in a weird pattern. It was an arrangement of overlapping circles split in half by a grey line. The left half of the ceiling was in monochrome black and white, while the other seemed to contain all colors of the rainbow mixed in a hypnotizing pattern. I also could have sworn that some circles changed their colors from time to time, but I had difficulties pinpointing when exactly that happened.

Looking around some more, I saw that I had woken up in a grey armchair. I didn't recall owning such a piece of furniture myself though, and, looking around, the rest of the room wasn’t what I expected, either - not that I was sure what exactly I expected. It looked like a sparsely decorated waiting area for a doctor or something. A few chairs, similar to my own, were arranged in a semicircle in the center of the room and all but one of the walls was taken up by an enormous bookshelf wrapping around the room. There was only one way into the room, but it was closed right now. I saw, that the door was decorated with a weird sigil of a bird on it. Similar to the ceiling, the door was split from top to bottom with one half being a wooden brown color and the other an ashen gray.

The strangest thing about the room, however, were the other... occupants. Most of the before-mentioned chairs were actually taken by some weird statues. They looked like movie props for some new fantasy movie or something and there were four of them in total. The two on my left didn't exactly look human. Deciding, that I might as well have a look around, I finally got up from my seat and approached the first chair to my left.

If someone were to guess, what race the woman belonged to, 'Orc' would probably have been the first thing that came to their mind. Her sitting down made it hard to judge her height, but I would have guessed she was at least a head taller than me. Despite that, the woman didn't exude the barbarian-esque feeling, one associated with the race. If anything she seemed quite the opposite. Her skin was smooth and her hands seemed devoid of calluses or blemishes. Looking up at her face, the most striking detail, besides the weirdly protruding lower jaw, were her eyes. They had a vibrant yellow glow to them, that made the thousand-yard stare she had all the more unsettling.

In terms of clothing, the orc wore a grey tunic covering most of her torso and down to her knees. It was only held in place by a black belt. Besides that, she only wore two bracelets around either arm. They were covered in a weird alphabet I had never seen. It reminded me a bit of old norse runes - with lots of right angles and straight lines - but I didn't recognize any of the letters used. From what I could see, both bracelets were covered in the same words, though.

However, as I was observing the statue, a nagging thought crept up on me, and I couldn't quite keep it out of my head. Were those really statues, or movie props, or whatever? If I pushed my finger against their skin, would it feel like flesh? Or like a wax figure? Maybe hard plastic? The thought mainly struck me, because of what I had said when first waking here. I was dead. There wasn't really any internal debate about that for me. But did that mean the other people here were in a similar position?

Cautiously, as if I could break through the skin at any moment, I pushed one of my fingers against her upper arm and watched - no perhaps more felt - how the skin, muscles, and other tissues gave way to the probing until I met more resistance. All in all, I had probably pushed in less than a centimeter, but the sensation wasn't like that of plastic, and the way it bounced back into form once the pressure was gone also excluded wax, so the most logical conclusion, in my eyes, was that it probably was real flesh and bones.

I wasn't really sure how to react to that. I mean learning that fantasy races apparently existed was all well and good, but learning it when I myself was already dead was a bit late for such a revelation. At least I wasn't one to believe that humanity itself should be held on some sort of pedestal. It was just... surprising that a humanoid archetype seemed more common than I would have believed. Unfortunately, the philosophical debate over the nature of sapient life and its development could only distract me for so long, especially without anyone to share them with, so I moved on to the next chair, instead.

If the orc before was at least a head taller than me, then the boy - or maybe man - beside her was tiny in comparison. He seemed to only reach up to my waist and the differences didn't end there. His arms, legs, and face seemed to be covered in dark patches and dots all over. They didn't look like they came from an illness or disease, though and for a moment I thought about why they looked familiar before I realized what they reminded me of. They looked like gunpowder burns. As if a bit of the explosive material had been embedded into his skin and effectively tattooed him. Maybe he had spent a lot of time around firearms and for some reason, that damage got carried over into the afterlife.

That theory was also supported by the piece missing on the end of one of his ears. Thankfully for him, he had more than enough ear to go around. His absurdly long pointy ears basically screamed 'Elf', after all, although his small stature was a bit contrary to what I believed elves were supposed to look like. Maybe he was still a child or just an exception among his race?

Anyways, except for those few features he had a lot in common with the orc beside him. Same lifeless eyes staring at nothing, same grey tunic, and similar bracelets, though his were covered in a different script. The letters used looked how one would imagine an elvish language to look like. No hard angles anywhere and it seemed to flow from one word to the next. Because of the similarities between the two, I also looked down at myself for the first time and saw that I was apparently wearing the same things, though my bracelets were devoid of any letters. Weird, but nothing I could do about it, so I moved for now.

On the opposite side of the room were two more people. Both humans, by the looks of them. They were both the same age if I had to guess and one was a boy, the other a girl. There wasn't anything remarkable about the two, except that they didn't look straight ahead, but instead seemed to gaze into each other eyes. Unfortunately, they too didn't react when I waved my hand between them. As for their bracelets, their language looked somewhat familiar. As if it was a foreign language that used the same alphabet I was used to. I also saw that some of their words matched, but I obviously didn't know what they meant.

I couldn't really do anything with these statues, though, and decided to move on with my room tour. I could check out where the door led to but thought I should at least look if I could read any of the books and to my surprise, I actually could. Well, kind of. It wasn't that I could decipher the letters themselves, but more like the meaning of the words was instantly put into my head - as if my brain skipped the normal process of understanding the written word and instantly arrived at their meaning. Most of the books seemed pretty boring, though.

Thick encyclopedias about all sorts of things ranging from different species to architecture over to physics, metaphysics, and apparently even magic. A lot of the books seemed unread, however. Only a few near the door had crevices in their spine. Those were generally about the more occult side of things, with rituals, rites, and myths about the afterlife being the common thread between them.

Before I could grab one of them about humans, however, the door suddenly opened. From my position behind it, I didn't see who opened it, and almost got hit over the head by the weird bird sigil, instead. Not a moment later, that was fixed, when the new arrival entered and the door quietly closed behind them again.

The first things I noticed were the two enormous wings on their shoulders. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised; expecting angels to show up after death was a lot more common than elves and orcs, after all. What I didn't expect, however, was the color scheme. Like the ceiling and the door, one wing of the newcomer was held in monochromatic black and white, while the other was a weird light brown in tone. They honestly looked less like the wings of an angel and more like those of a big falcon.

I didn't see what the angel was doing, but I heard the shuffling of some paper before they approached the chairs and did... something. I couldn't see, as they were still turned away from me, but for a moment I saw a dim light coming from the angel before just as quickly they moved on to the next chair. I had been too stunned by them suddenly entering the room, to speak up until they had already moved down the line, looked over their clipboard again, and were apparently ready to leave when our eyes met.

We stood there for a few awkward moments, and for the first time since the angel entered, I got a good look at them. She honestly looked younger than I would have guessed, possibly even younger than me, and I also saw that the color separation wasn't just limited to her wings. Her hair, and to a certain extent even her skin seemed greyscale on one side and normal on the other. Her eyes were the one notable exception, as they glowed in an otherworldly light. It felt as if the girl could look right into my core.

Before I could speak up, though, she checked the few papers she had for the third time and then a fourth, before looking back up at me and saying something in a language I couldn't understand. While the words were lost to me, the meaning was a bit more clear. She had asked a question. Probably about who I was or why I was here, and honestly, I would like to know that myself.

When I didn't answer for a few seconds, she repeated some of the words, but in a less surprised and more suspicious tone. I thought there was no harm in asking her something myself, though. Maybe she could understand me better than I did her. “Umm, hi? Maybe you could help me? I think I am kinda lost.” From her expression, it didn't seem like she understood me as she turned away again, before doing... something with her hands. I couldn't quite see from this angle, but a moment later she started talking again. Not to me, however, as she spoke into her dimly glowing hand.

I was contemplating moving closer to get a better look, but before I could, the angel suddenly spoke up in a confused tone. It seemed more like a one-sided conversation with her hand, as I still heard no reply to her voice, but that didn't stop the girl from saying a few more lines before the light vanished again.

Finally turning back towards me, the girl didn't say anything and just motioned for me to follow, as she opened the door. I didn’t have any better ideas and wordlessly went after her. The outside corridor seemed to be just as sparsely decorated as the room was. The only interruption to the monotony were those weirdly colored doors with the bird sigil.

We walked for a few more minutes in silence, with the girl checking every now and then if I was still behind her before we reached a junction with another corridor to our left. On our right, I finally saw something new, though. A big double door, which had been subjected to a coloring scheme, that was getting a bit overdone at this point. I suspected an elevator behind and wasn't disappointed when the door slid open.