At the top of a tower made of obsidian in a place light will never reach a tall fair skinned woman in a luxurious black robe turns to face an owl twice her height. She reaches her hand outward and a large scroll appears tying itself to the owl's leg. The majestic creature bows deeply almost putting its beak to the floor.
"They are soon to awaken thou may inform the rest.."
*Who-who-Who*
The owl lifts its head and walks to the edge of the tower and hops high into the darkness beating its wings with great force.
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Mark was surrounded by darkness when suddenly he felt an intense pain and heard screaming all around him. Before he could come to terms with what is going on memories that didn't belong to him started flooding his mind, lives from before he was born, he tried to grasp his head out of reflex only to realize he had no body.
After what felt like an eternity the pain stopped and Mark could take a moment to look around him. what was originally pitch dark was now a view of stars with no ground. When Mark tried looking down he saw no feet or ground beneath him as he spun in place. It took him a moment to stabilize himself but he still couldn't move.
As Mark floated there in the abyss he noticed a slight tug on his.. on him he felt like he was being pulled somewhere and he had no way to resist. As he was ferried along by the invisible force he realized that all the stars where slowly converging in the same direction he was being pulled. With great difficulty he managed to turn around and see that the stars behind him all seem to be following suite.
More time passed and Mark slowly came close enough to barely see that the stars were more like giant marbles surrounded in whitish blue flames. Eventually the marbles grew close enough Mark could make out distinct shapes and patterns on them one such marble had a crown and was closer than the rest. Mark could barely hear a hoarse voice shouting from the marble but the distance was so great he could barely make out the message.
...
Several minutes later Mark heard the hoarse voice again more clearly this time.
"Does anyone know what's going on?!?"
Mark shouted back an honest reply "I think we're dead or I'm high screaming into the night I can't tell right now!".
"..."
After a few moments Mark heard a new voice shout from a marble with what looked like a teardrop etched into its surface "Is everyone else seeing a bunch of giant talking marbles?!?"
"No you're just sitting alone in your rubber room like normal" an even more distant voice shouts back and the two begin to argue.
A marble with a strange swirling pattern made of musical notes and a marble with fish scales were talking to each other about how beautiful the other looked.
Some time later a slightly cheery voice sounded from a marble with a pattern of winding vines covered in hearts "Sooo.. like did everyone here die?".
One by one each of the marbles mentioned how they died with no consistent pattern, drowning, poison, murder, one person even passed away in their sleep. Turns out music and scales both died in a car crash. (Separate of course.)
The hoarse voice eventually responded "..So it didn't have to be a truck?".
A couple of the younger sounding voices suddenly started debating heatedly if the group was getting in line to be reincarnated into some magical world. Some of the older voices expressed acceptance of the situation, while others were speculating that the group was getting sent to their respective 'final destination'.
Mark and the cheery voice held a pleasant conversation, although they couldn't properly introduce themselves. For some strange reason their names where altered to something different every time they tried to say them. After moving past this point they began talking about their lives, as it turns out she was 28 when she died 16 years after him and just started her residency at a renowned hospital in 'The Big City". Locations fell under the same weird rule as names, so to combat this they used common nicknames and that seemed to work.
"Is that why you have vines and hearts on your surface?" Mark asked offhandedly.
"I dunno? Maybe? So what were you then a artist?" She asked skeptically.
"A business man mostly, What do I look like?".
"Well there's a lot going on here.. Some things that could be coins I guess but there's a bunch of plants growing out of them and all the plant leaves look like weird swoopy triangles.. and I think there are skulls on the leaves... What kind of business where you in?"
Mark could somehow feel that some of the nearby marbles turned their attention on him now. Making a split second decision he went with a half truth. "I started a company that sold holistic and traditional medicines online." And instantly everyone lost interest but for some strange reason Mark noticed a bit of hostility from the vine girl she called him a scam artist before she stopped talking to him.
As Mark began to grow listless word travelled from the front that there's a giant purple swirly thing and the marbles are heading straight for it. The earlier panic that was extinguished came back in full force for those who hadn't accepted their fate just yet. Everyone around Mark grew silent once the 'Gate' came into view.
The rate at which they were getting pulled increased and before Mark knew it he was almost face to face with what he assumed was his new life to be, just before he was pulled into the portal Mark remembered the conversation he had with James just before the bastard killed him. "Actually I don't even want to be that rich I just want to do what I love." "Oh and what's that?" Vines asked somewhat cattily.
"Drugs"
Mark was then pulled into the portal.