Chereads / Wayfaring Stranger / Chapter 2 - Past Lives

Chapter 2 - Past Lives

Contrary to popular belief, there is such a thing as reincarnation. I should know, I've been reincarnated several times now at this point. My case, however, was different since I seemed to remember each life very clearly. 

Not only that but each life was special since instead of a boring everyday existence. I was living through the lives of different characters in fiction. Though I guess I should start my story at the beginning. 

Before the craziness that is my life now came to be, I was just your everyday wage slave working a dead end nine to five. My sister lived with me since she was attending the community college a few blocks from my apartment. Life was alright, at least until a gang decided that they wanted to shit all over my life. 

I came home after work one day and found my sister laying in a pool of her own blood, there were signs that she was assaulted among other things. Things that made my blood boil. I swore vengeance that day, as I sat there clutching my sister's lifeless body I felt a presence and before I could even utter a word I was yanked away and plopped onto a different world. 

This world had heroes, mad titans, aliens, and some pretty advanced technology. Of course I recognized it as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that being said I immediately seized the opportunity and traveled to Kamar-Taj. 

At first the Ancient One denied my request to train, she said something about Vengeance being a dangerous path. I managed to convince her in the end though. There I spent years honing my skills with sorcery and martial arts. I bid my time, continuing to learn new skills. Eventually I became one of the masters in the sanctum and took part in the 'war' against Thanos. 

This time around the mad titan was soundly defeated thanks to my knowledge of how the story would go. Dr. Strange was a bit angry that I didn't let his game plan with Tony Stark dying play out. Once the dust settled I took the Infinity Stones on the premise of hiding them away so that no one would ever use them again. 

This was only a partial truth however. I had never forgotten my quest for revenge. Upon wearing the gauntlet, it had transformed itself into a bracelet with the six stones displayed around the band. Power and knowledge of how to use the stones flooded me and I immediately used the space stone to travel back to my world. There I laid waste to the bastards that had taken my sister from me. To be quite honest it was all very anticlimactic. With my arcane powers along with the infinity stones it was like stomping on ants. The bracelet disintegrated and the stones vanished in flashes of light. Figuring that the stones had disappeared I returned to my home which was still untouched. With my vengeance realized I could finally move on, and several years later I did. 

Of course I never expected to wake up naked in the middle of the forest surrounded by burning bodies. I also didn't expect to still have all the skills, memories, and powers I had developed in my past life. 

Once I figured out that I was in the world of the Witcher I found a renewed sense of wonder as I explored the world. I trained with the last of the Witcher schools teaching and learning new skills with the sword. Eventually I met Geralt and the rest of the characters I was familiar with. 

I even found myself in a relationship with Ciri and helped defeat the Wild Hunt. With my presence Geralt and Yennifer were able to retire into the Toussaint countryside. 

Years passed and Ciri and I had started a family. Two boys and a daughter who I spoiled rotten. They had inherited their mothers gift of world jumping. Something I learned was that the Stones didn't simply vanish. Rather I had absorbed them into my very being. With my absorption of the Infinity Stones I had somehow gained some pretty broken powers. Given my mortality, I didn't get to explore these powers fully. At least until I passed on into the next life. 

I wasn't quite sure how reincarnation worked just yet. After all, in my last life I woke up in a body not my own, and now I was starting out as a baby. Remembering your own birth is as traumatic as it sounds. The sliminess, smell, and overall experience of being birthed. Not to mention the fact that I immediately recognized the woman who was my new mother, Sally Jackson.

This time around I had been born into a fantastical but mad world filled with gods and monsters. I would have been content at staying in the background, I had broken powers after all. That is, if I hadn't been born as the main character's older brother. 

I made sure that my new family was protected, even got a visit from Poseidon once or twice so that he could appraise my growing power. I had to make a conscious effort to not draw attention to myself. Zeus was a jealous prick, but he was powerful. Despite having had the power of the Infinity Stones along with sorcery I was still mortal. That meant that no matter how powerful I was, I could still die should a prickly god decide to smite me while I wasn't paying attention.

All that aside, Percy and Sally never had to deal with Gabe. Using my arcane knowledge I had put up wards around the Jackson home. Any monsters that did somehow manage to get through were immediately dusted by the violent security system I set up. Surprisingly the gods hadn't noticed me up until Zues' lightning bolt was stolen. 

The whole Lightning Thief debacle was a huge test of my patience. One that I failed completely as the one thing that I hated more than liars was being disrespected and hypocrisy. A role the Olympian council  fit into perfectly. Unfortunately for my poor sanity that's exactly what Ares did. The moment I met the roided up idiot he did nothing but make snide comments about my little brother and I. He even made some rather crude remarks about what he would do to my mother should we fail our 'quest'.

I eventually ran out of patience and blasted Ares and Kronos. This revealed my powers to the gods who immediately called for my death. Poseidon, Percy, and Sally all protested along with the neutral gods like Hestia, and Hades. 

Reading about their conceited nature was one thing, but actually experiencing it was another. The smarmy bastards demanded that I swore my services to them despite having called for my blood moments earlier. My answer to that was reducing Olympus to rubble and slaughtering a lot of the disrespectful bastards only sparing Hades, Persephone, Demeter, Hestia, Athena, Hephaestus, Poseidon, Athena, and a handful of other gods. I admit, it wasn't the smartest of decisions. But I wasn't thinking clearly at the time. Something I inherited from Poseidon other than the nifty water based powers was a ridiculously short temper. 

My actions drew the attention of the primordials who, I discovered, were powerful enough to negate my own broken powers. Though they did have to gang up on me to trap me. They eventually did some sort of ritual that banished me from their world. I felt shitty for having more or less abandoned my new family. Though I knew that with me gone that they would be much safer. I had anchored the protective wards to the Jackson family bloodline. It was a calculated move that I made when I knew things would go south.

I discovered that I had ascended to godhood when I found myself drifting through the vast expanse of space once I finally broke the restraints the primordials put on me. I didn't know if it was because I had spent the better part of three days covered in ichor while covered in cuts or if it was some unforeseen side effect of the ritual used to banish me. With the power of the stones and my new found divinity, I figured that my domains would probably be the attributes of the six Infinity Stones I had absorbed. 

With the divinity came immortality and immeasurable power. Power that I took my time to explore now that I was ageless. The first thing I discovered was my ability to create pocket dimensions. Seemingly unimpressive until you realize that I could make these dimensions endless. A more impressive power was my ability to create entire universes with a mere thought. I discovered this while experimenting with the pocket dimension that I made. 

My powers over reality also let me make all sorts of life forms. From plants to various sentient creatures, humans included. Seeing that everything was pretty much autonomous I left these new creations alone. 

Further exploration of my powers led me to discover the ability to manipulate time itself. I had quite a bit of fun playing with that, pausing and fastwarding time on planets that I filled with life. It was like having the remote control from the movie 'Click' only I didn't have any drawbacks. Eventually I grew bored and sought out ways to travel worlds without having to figuratively 'die' first. I figured that the Infinity Stones were what gave me my 'domains', and the space stone should let me travel worlds. It already did bring me back to my original world years ago. 

Unlike Ciri I had complete and total control over which world I jumped to. It was through this that I discovered that while I was away from a world I had been a part of, that the time did not stop. I went back and visited my old original world only to discover that hundreds of years had passed. I also discovered that time worked differently on the other worlds. In the MCU world only a few months had passed since I 'left'. Back on the Witcher world decades had passed since I 'died' and my family had grown and spread throughout the land.

Even as a god I could not quell my thirst for adventure. This is the reason that I chose to let my power take me to random worlds instead of choosing myself. I also put a bind on my power so that I didn't just go and smite everyone that annoyed me. With that in mind I made the first random world jump.

Somehow I had found my way into Tamriel. Complete with incompetent bandits, cat people, and dank dungeons. I spent the most time in Tamriel exploring the wondrous sights and rich history. Even got involved in the petty civil war in Skyrim. Several hundred years later I decided to finally move on to the next adventure. 

On my travels I explored my powers even more. Eventually discovering that I did in fact have a 'divine form' that was just my normal form but twenty feet tall and made up of pure energy. People got a little crispy if they saw me in that form. After dumping as much random junk, tons of precious gems, and several thousand bricks of gold into a pocket dimension I flew out of the planet before jumping to a new world. 

'Onward to the next adventure.'