As is known, the stories of many heroes and villains begin with death. It might be the death of a loved one that pushed the hero onto the path of revenge, or the tragic death of relatives that turned a good person into a villain.
However, in this story, death came directly to the hero himself. The only one out of eight billion people who lived on the planet with the telling name, Earth, at that moment.
Death crept up on him secretly, in his sleep, which, it must be admitted, can be considered a mercy, for no one would wish to burn in a fire.
Lev Dumov, for that was his name, slept so soundly in his apartment, honestly earned through back-breaking work, that he didn't sense the treacherous smell of smoke that enveloped him like a dark shroud. When the flames finally reached his apartment, Lev could no longer wake up, perishing in the fiery abyss.
Lev's soul soared and, leaving the confines of the planet too cramped for it and, in general, the material world, rushed to where souls usually go.
But this is where the first oddities begin, which made us pay attention to this story in the first place.
Let's not delve deeply into all the unimaginable complexity of posthumous forces and soul distribution, and therefore we'll stop at just two postulates.
First — those mortals who believe in gods go to exactly the paradise or hell that god created for them. For convenience, we can consider such a system as a pension contribution, where each of your good deeds by god's standards is a payment to your future posthumous pension.
But as you understand, among mortals there are many who, for one reason or another, never settled on choosing their personal god.
It seems, oh horror, what will they do in such a case? But the universe is infinite for a reason, as it has devised a solution for such a case too.
Those souls that never made it to the paradise or hell of gods chosen during life are sent to the great and incomprehensible Wheel of Rebirth.
The two capital letters in the name were not used by accident. As it is also called, the Wheel of Samsara — it is such a powerful and incomprehensible entity that even the mightiest gods, archdemons, devils, archfey, and genies try not to approach it, lest they suddenly end their existence.
To this day, among countless worlds, debates continue about how exactly the Wheel distributes the souls that fall into it to other worlds. Does it follow morality or does it have some other standards?
But one thing is known for certain — any souls falling into it end up in, sort of, an abrasive that erases all memories and characteristics from the soul, leaving only a clean and indestructible spark of primordial creation at the exit.
As a result, this spark is placed in a newly born being, giving it new life.
However, existence is arranged so that any, even the most solid and reliable thing has a small, insignificant chance of error. And the more complex the supposed machine, the higher this chance.
The Wheel of Samsara was an unthinkably complex but at the same time unbreakable concept, which, however, sometimes did malfunction. Though in the scale of an infinite flow of souls, does this error matter?
Lev Dumov's soul, like the souls of all others present at that moment, instead of getting stuck as it should have, rushed through the "abrasive" almost without slowing down, which meant the outer layers of the soul were practically unharmed.
Lev himself during this process perceived nothing and couldn't do so, for he was just a soul without a body, rushing through chaos towards his future rebirth.
And here it's worth noting one interesting feature — having died in a fire, Lev's soul carried within itself a more than active imprint of the flame that killed him. After cleansing, the trace would have greatly diminished, but for obvious reasons, nothing happened.
Such a strong connection of the soul to fire immediately directed the continuing work of the Wheel to several proposed places for rebirth. And one of the first places where Lev had the highest chances of being reborn were the elemental worlds of fire.
Such worlds have been ruled since ancient times by genies — cruel embodiments of various elements, tyrannically ruling over all other elemental beings and slaves from material worlds.
Thanks to his proximity to fire, Lev had a very high chance of being reborn not as an ordinary elemental spirit, but as a full-fledged, powerful genie, like those ifrits who mercilessly rob and enslave mortals from many, many worlds.
But as if in mockery, Lev's soul flew unhindered past the fiery wastelands of the fire world. Only the Great Sultan Suleiman, whose mere listing of titles would take an hour, noticed the unusual soul from the corner of his eye. But the powerful ruler of the ifrits wasn't long concerned with such a trifle and he returned again to his thousand and first concubine, captured in his last campaign on the elemental world of water.
Her defiance and willfulness amused him. Of course, sooner or later she would break, as all the others had broken, but for now she would make excellent entertainment.
Let's return to Lev, continuing his journey.
For a moment, the soul almost flew straight into the worlds of devils, where one of the personal slaves had managed to become pregnant by a high-ranking devil.
Had this happened, Lev would not have been envied. At best, he would have spent his whole life serving the hell lords, at worst he would have been sent to the world of great wars, where hell legions wage endless battles with their "brothers" from the abyss and the angelic legions of the gods.
The armies of all sides required an endless amount of cannon fodder, so the flow of mercenaries and battle slaves from all worlds never stopped for a second.
But no, Lev's soul made a deft pirouette and clearly set its target, approaching one of the ancient and powerful magical worlds, whose history was measured in many eons.
Into whom will it decide to incarnate, considering all the conditions?
==
The return to the world of the living was difficult. Any attempt to move made him immediately bump into some solid barrier that was literally on all sides.
Dumov felt nauseous, and in some way he was even grateful that his eyes couldn't see anything in the absolute darkness that surrounded him.
But gradually Lev came more and more to his senses. Of course, his well-being still wasn't ideal, and his head was spinning, but he began to think clearly.
And the first question he asked himself was: "What the hell was he locked in a barrel for?"
However, further feeling of the walls revealed immediately two extremely curious details.
As you've already guessed, barrels don't come in spherical shape, and the second point was his abnormally huge nails!
Lev tried to feel them in disbelief and realized with astonishment that even in complete darkness, his current hands were difficult to call, properly, hands. Something like clawed paws would be more fitting!
Need it be said that at this point Dumov immediately suspected something was amiss?
It was incredibly cramped in the confined space, but the man still managed to twist enough to touch his back with the tips of his claws and run his tongue over incredibly sharp and long fangs.
Perhaps for someone it would be difficult to come to terms with reality, but Lev was not in the mood to waste time on such nonsense.
Deep in his essence, irritation began to raise its head, which more and more brightly transformed into anger.
"I have a long, elongated muzzle full of the sharpest fangs, wings on my back, a tail curled around my torso, and my paws are equipped with dangerous claws. If I'm not a damn dragon in an egg, then I have no more options!"
A sudden flash of rage made Lev sharply punch the wall of the presumed egg, from which Dumov clearly felt his prison shake a little.
"Though I don't feel feathers, it would be funny if I'm some kind of scaled chick," Lev thought darkly, setting about crushing the wall of his prison with persistence: "After all, maybe I'm some particularly rare species of winged lizard somewhere in Madagascar."
Dumov alternated punches with cutting effects of his claws, trying to understand which was more effective. He thought about hitting with his muzzle, like bird chicks do, but after feeling his own, rather soft nose, Lev abandoned this idea.
A sudden thought made the man shrug: "The main thing is that I'm not in Australia. I don't want to spend the rest of my life fighting giant spiders, centipedes, and other predatory creatures! And some Cretaceous period with dinosaurs was also not such a great place."
Perhaps from the outside it might seem strange that Lev stubbornly ignored the very fact of his being in the body of a completely different species, but Dumov simply set priorities. Right now he needed to get out, and only then could he think about such worldview-shattering things.
Most of all, Lev was worried about running out of the available oxygen supply. Of course, Dumov had heard that even chicks can pick at the shell for quite a while before they get out. But damn it, he didn't want to risk if he remembered something wrong!
However, Lev didn't deny himself the pleasure of putting his claw tips to the shell and briefly striking with a clenched fist, repeating Beatrix's legendary punch from "Kill Bill." This didn't accomplish anything, but it added to the man's spiritual strength. Not every day do you find yourself in similar circumstances.