Mike could only stare in wonder at the woman standing in front of him. She was achingly beautiful. With platinum blonde hair, pale golden eyes, and facial features seemingly sculpted by a divinely-inspired artist, she took Mike's breath away. She had the figure of a model wrapped in a soft white dress of a silk-like fabric, and she seemed to emit a golden light that filled the surroundings. But more importantly, he was quite sure that she wasn't a figment of his imagination, since his imagination was never this good to him.
"Oh God, *hic*….... I-I'm so glad there is someone else here. The loneliness was driving me crazy." Tears, and not a small amount of snot started dripping down his face.
"Ugh, please try to keep your mortal fluids away from me, I just manifested this dress." The woman said while taking a few steps back. "I understand you're probably upset about the whole dying and being stuck in Limbo for a few days thing, but try to keep yourself under control."
She frowned while looking at his lower half, "Where are your pants?"
"Long story." Mike took a few seconds to process this information. "So I really did die?"
The woman blinked, and clipboard appeared in her hand. She started glancing through the contents.
"Yes, it says here you got impaled by shrapnel from an exploding fuel tanker and bled out before help could arrive."
Mike placed a hand on his stomach as if trying to find the offending pieces of metal.
The woman continued reading through the papers attached to the clipboard. "Michael Rasmussen, 28, lives alone, no close friends, no current romantic partners, little to no interaction with your parents and two siblings. Hobbies include reading and watching television. Graduated with a literature degree, but was unable to find work for two years until an acquaintance managed to land you a low-level job at P&H Publishing. Spent four years working as the lowest level member of the editorial department before dying in a traffic related explosion. All-in-all, a boring, pointless life."
The woman looked up at Mike with rage and asked him in a low, barely controlled voice, "So why is it that your soul is so heavy?"
Mike found himself vaguely offended. "Did you just call my soul fat?"
The woman's eye twitched, and the soft, golden glow that seemed to constantly surround her took on a red hue.
"No, you blithering idiot. Your soul has too much content. It's part of what's trapped you here, when you should have long ago entered the cycle of reincarnation. And as I mentioned previously, there is nothing in your personal history to warrant you being this heavy."
Mike felt a sudden burst of anger at her rant. "OK, first of all, I didn't ask for any of this. So don't blame me for having a fat soul. Secondly, you left me alone in this hellhole for years..."
"Two and a half days." The woman interrupted.
"Whatever, you overgrown firefly! The point is, the first thing you do after finally showing up, is get angry at me and call me spiritually overweight."
"FIREFLY! Listen, you pathetic excuse for a mortal! You cannot even begin to imagine the scope of the trouble you are causing me! I'll have you know that…."
The woman was interrupted by a massive blast of sound resembling a mix between whale song and an industrial grinder, which seemed to resonate with the very fabric of existence. It was accompanied a vast, overwhelming presence that made Mike feel like he was an insignificant speck of dust in comparison.
Now speechless, Mike could only stare open-mouthed at the unchanged, but somehow "filled" sky. The woman flinched at the sound, turned a bit pale, and said in a hesitant voice, "Yes, sorry. I'm getting to it. I'll explain it to him."
"W-W-What is that! Some kind of robot whale ghost!?"
"Silence! You stand in the presence of one of the Ancient Ones, show some respect!" The woman screeched at Mike with another flare of red from her aura.
"And what does that mean exactly?"
"The Ancient Ones are the oldest and most powerful beings in the multiverse! They have existed since before time itself and can shape whole universes with little effort."
"So it's an important robot whale ghost?"
She replied with an inarticulate scream of rage. Her face flushed red to match her now crimson aura.
Mike found himself unable to stop teasing this woman. Her easily elicited and honest responses satisfied a small, sadistic part of him that he hadn't known he had. Although another part of him wondered if it was wise to continue antagonizing the first person he'd seen in yea...two and a half days.
The universe vibrated with another burst of sound, and Mike could swear it sounded a bit amused.
The woman sighed, visibly trying to calm herself. After a few moments she glared at Mike with an undisguised look of anger before her face relaxed into something resembling resignation.
"Look, this is all very unusual, but fundamentally it's not your fault. I should not be taking it out on you. I'm Selenica, the minor goddess governing the reincarnation system in this region of the multiverse."
Figuring that discretion was probably the better part of valor in this case, Mike decided let bygones be bygones. "Nice to meet you Selenica, you can call me Mike." Anticipation coursing through him, he asked. "Does this mean I will be reincarnating into another world or something?"
"Ordinarily, I wouldn't even get involved. The system would have simple cycled your soul into a new body after suppressing the memories of your past life, but two factors have come into play which makes that impossible. First, your soul is ridiculously dense. Normally, it would take several lifetimes of refinement to achieve your level of soul density, which when combined with great mental fortitude would allow one to break out of the cycle of reincarnation and possibly ascend."
"So, does that mean I'm some kind of god now?"
"Absolutely not!"
[There goes that red hue again,] Mike noticed. [Who knew teasing a goddess could be this entertaining.]
Unaware of his very impious thoughts, the goddess continued, "You don't have anywhere near the mental fortitude, experience, and raw power required to achieve that, otherwise you wouldn't have gone crazy after a few days of solitude."
"Hey! It was a very stressful time for me. I literally died right before that and was left alone in the dark without any explanation. If it wasn't for lefty I don't think I would have made it."
Selenica sighed and calmed herself down again, "I know, I suppose it's a good thing you're even conversant to begin with...... Wait, what's this about lefty?"
"Its not important!" Mike hurriedly answered her.
"Anyway, even though people from your world have unusually dense souls, I can't think of any reason yours is like this. Normally, someone's soul can only accumulate density by retaining their memories through multiple reincarnations. You don't happen to have any memories of a past life do you?"
"Not that I know of." Mike pondered while stroking his chin. "Wait…... you said people from my world are unusually heavy, right?"
"Correct."
"And one's soul density is determined by the culmination of experience, right?"
"...Yes. What are you getting at?"
"Do stories count? About the only thing special about me is probably the amount of books I've read."
Selenica opened her mouth to speak, but stopped, her brow crinkling in sudden concentration. Her aura took on a sickly yellow-green color as she pulled out her clipboard and began to frantically flip through the pages attached to it.
[I wish every woman had an aura like that. It would have definitely saved me some trouble in the past.] Mike mused while watching the panicked goddess.
"Come on, it should be in here somewhere….. here." After quickly scanning the page she stop, froze for a moment before collapsing to her knees.
"2,372,452"
"Hm?"
"You've managed to consume 2,372,452 stories over the course of your life."
Mike thought back to his life. "A bit lower than I would have guessed, but that sounds about right."
"Even factoring in difference in potency between actual and imagined experience, the sheer number still means you've accumulated the soul density of hundreds, if not thousands of lifetimes." In a swift motion Selenica stood, grabbed Mike's shoulders, and began to shake him violently. "How….How are you able to cheat the system like this?!"
"I….don't....know...I...wasn't….trying...to." Mike managed to squeeze out while his head was being whipped about.
She let him go and walked a few paces away. "Gah! You and your world have to make my job so difficult!"
Mike sudden realized something. "You said that there was two reasons I didn't reincarnate. What was the second one?"
The goddess looked down, her golden glow tinging a little with blue as her features clouded with apprehension, "Look, there is no easy way to say this, but you've been touched by Fate."