I was totally fucked. Completely and utterly fucked. The amount of fucked I was could write novels. God was a tree hugger, and not only a tree hugger, but god was real. Why in the fuck was this my reality. Shit shit shit. I tried to listen to him talk but for a few moments all I could hear was the blood rushing through my ears, as the internal screaming died down. "….Two hundred and Fifty seven dead in one day, wow that is quite the record" he said nodding as he spoke. "Quite the record indeed, a feat few mortals could manage I dare say." I coughed and tried not to look uncomfortable as I raised my good hand. "Sorry but could I please have aname?" . The old man looked slightly annoyed and stated flatly. "Tyr" I tried to hold in a groan and addressed him as evenly as I could, masking my exasperation. "Tyr, I am sorry if I don't follow. You said I had killed some 250,000 in a war, but uhhhh. Well to put it quite bluntly, I wasn't at war. I was a tree cutter, my job was to clear out brush from around houses and to overturn earth to prevent forest fires." The elder simply shook his head. "250,000 civilians Jax. Unarmed, unthinking dryads who's only crime was being in a place you didn't want them." I sat there with my mouth agape, and then said. "What's…. What's a dryad." He looked at me evenly, and then said "nymph" I honestly shook my head at him, as the man was speaking a foreign Language. He frowned again, and then said "spirit? Gods man you should know you are one yourself." Then he took a moment, and with a sigh started explaining. "Well since I know you're being honest, I supposed you are indeed that dumb. I've known some worlds to be unlearned enough to not know these things, but it's still grating. What do you think happens when you die Jax?" I gestured around myself and said"uhhh you speak to god and he calls you a mass murder I suppose?" I'll be fucked if the old man actually smiled at that, then he said, "No, well to you maybe. But no, in general once a souls form expires it simply continues on on the plane until it laches onto a new form. What I mean to say is, once you die you generally inhabit a tree, or a river; or some other form of life on your world. If the vessel has space that is. You experience that existence until it expires, and then it happens again. This happens until your soul is to tattered to exist, or you cannot find a new vessel, and then you". At this point he flits his fingers as if to pantomime a cloud disappearing into nothing. "All low grade souls live as long as they live, and then when they cease to exist, they simply rejoin the universe. But that first life is the only true life. The ones after are more like a shadow clinging onto a candle trying to not get swept away. You get one life, and then your remaining being fuels the growth of others. That my boy is your crime. You willingly, and gleefully destroyed souls. I take it you didn't know, or mean to do so, but you destroyed enough life essence to grow a city." He frowned at me again as I sorted this new information. "The surprising part is though, you're here." "About that" I replied, catching a thread I could follow. " if a soul generally stays behind when its body dies then why am I here? And where is here?" He nodded. "You are here at my well of power because the universe sees you as a being deserving if judgement. It also wishes you to have a second chance. It is up to me to determine the validity of that." I smiled, finally some good fuckimg news. Surely this guy would see I hadn't meant to do any hard, and that I wasn't a bad—-. He cut my train of thought off again. "Too bad, I was hoping you were going to be special, but I honestly can't find a redeeming quality here." "Wait" I shouted. "What do you mean, I didn't murder them in cold blood, I didn't do it on purpose at least. I was trying to protect people, I was doing my duty, it's not my fault I didn't know random innocent spirits inhabited the trees!" "Kid, I don't care about any of that." The man said flatly. "The universe is a violent place. Each galaxy is filled with death. Each world sees atrocities. I care about potential. I am he who knows warriors. I know tens of worlds, and I see many things. You were sent here to see if you could be of value to me and mine. Simple as that. And I see no value. Honestly I was surprised at your arrival. Most beings who seek me out are either to weak to make the trip, or do so knowingly and with intent. They possess the skills to fight off the will of those who they slaughtered to arrive at my doors yet you are weak. I honestly have no idea how your soul survived the passage, nor how it continues to exist on my plane." With this the old man took a deep drag of his cigar and blew its smoke on me. With a volume that it should not have possessed the smoke encapsulated me, and a hard burning sensation pressed into my fac. It felt as if my skin should flake away. Yet to my amazement it did not. A green glow pressed the smoke back, and the intense cloud dissipated, leaving only a thin shield of green between me and the man, who I saw had changed. No longer was this Tyr an orderly man smoking a cigar by a fire, now I saw a warrior in his prime, golden armor on his form, and a silvery glow emanating from him. The image lasted for a moment, and then it diminished as my own green glow went away. Once again it was the elder man in front of me, and he seemed to fall in on himself as he sat in a huff. "Ahhhhh" he said by the light of the flames. "Ahhh I see, not all is as it seems. That is how you arrived at my doorstep. You truly did not kill them in haste, and they knew it. Well Jax, you may not be a warrior to rival all others, but you are indeed a lucky man." I was of course very confused, and a bit unsettled at the current happenings. At some point I'd shot to my feet; and I could see my arm had regrown to my body. It was unlike the rest of me, and had a faintly green glow around the edges. It pulsed warmly as I looked at it, and then at Tyr. "So" I asked. "What does that mean." He looked at me in silence for about five minutes, smiling as he did. "It means you are worthy of my thought, now onto judgement." He pulled out my book and began thumbing through it. "I see little in the way of skill, yet a decent aptitude. Your form is decent, nice height. You're quite well built, if a bit round, though most old warriors are. 28 years of age, far younger than most as well. Still time to push your potential." Tyr droned on about my notable features, until he got to a point I didn't quite understand. And I had to interject. "What do you mean system aptitude?" "Well" he replied. "That's precisely my point. Your world isn't interested. It would explain how you lack the basic knowledge of how to protect spirits when killing a being. Most higher beings such as us humans possess a basic universal interface which we use to interact with the world. It's different for all of us, and its use scales in complexity with how much mana one possesses." He gave me a look over once again, his eyes lingering on my arm. "The fact is you lack a system integration, and that hampers my judgement quite a bit. So all in all I'd have to rate you quite low." "Rate?" I asked. "What do you mean rate? I thought you were judging my sins or some such." Tyrs' laughter shook my form. "No no no, nothing so melodramatic as that, no I'm judging your aptitude for replacement." "Replacement?" I asked sheepishly. "Yes" the man declared rising on shaking limbs. "You see the universe has determined that you need judgement, as your world simply wasn't made to handle you. I was open to pass it, and we both had similar, let's say tendencies in life being both retired warriors. You could say you fall under my powers purview, so it was up to me to judge you. For doing so I will receive rewards, and you will receive a new body on a world more fitting of your particularities." I stood stock still while I processed this all. "What exactly are you?" I asked. Tyr smiled and spoke as he drew a rune symbol in the air."You called me a god, and I supposed that might be true from your perspective. But there are truly no gods in this universe. I am simply a man, like you who outgrew his world. I attained power, and now I judge others. Now Jax, a bit of advice for you going forward." I nodded and tried to keep my face straight, even though I felt a foreboding sense of pressure building on my chest, quite like the movement I had sensed as I came here before. He smiled at me as he wrote the last rune into the sigil floating between us. Then he drew a dagger and sliced out some blood as he spoke. "When it speaks, listen. And when it challenges you, do not fail. Failure is a path to death, and your next death won't be as pleasant as this one" The blood dripped onto the sigil, and with a monstrous pull I was once again flying through the darkness. As my consciousness faded I thought on what had happened, and wondered what would come next.