A Roll of the Die: Prologue

I died in the most embarrassing way possible. I was taking a walk, tripped over a rock, fell off a bridge, and drowned. That is truly the most stupidest, bizarre, and painful way to go. Too make matters worse, the only reason I tripped over the rock was because I got distracted by a freaking squirrel running in front of me!

Curse my short attention span…anyway, the point is I died. The weird part about that is I didn’t end up in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Valhalla, Hades, or any of the other after death places that I had read about. Instead when I came back into awareness, I found myself standing in front of two figures seated across from each other at a round table.

The one on the left was wearing a tie-dyed shirt and blue jeans. He had an air of mischief about him as he expertly rolled a set of dice in his hands. The being to the right was dressed in a solid black robe with a scythe in one skeletal hand. Its sightless eye sockets stared down at the table as if it could tell it the secret to life.

I wasn’t sure if I should have been frightened more by the smirking teen or the morose skeleton. All I know is that I was much too calm to even think of being scared. I believe normal people would have labeled it as shock.

“Welcome, Tyler Phillips! You are about to get the chance of a lifetime,” The dice roller told me as his purple eyes sparkled with laughter. I was suddenly overcome with the feeling that I should really be backing away slowly away from him. Before I could so much as open my mouth to refuse the offer, Dicer (as I decided to call him), put a finger to his lips.

“Now now, don’t be so hasty to refuse. I haven’t even told you what it is yet,” Dicer said shaking his head in disappointment at me as his companion looked up to give me a quick apologetic glance before staring back at the table. I spent a minute pondering how a skeleton could look apologetic before shaking my head and addressing the issue at hand.

“Well maybe you should start by introducing yourselves. After all, you already seem to know my name. And it’s really unreasonable to accept an offer from someone I don’t know,” I said as I shifted my weight so I was standing much more comfortably and raised an eyebrow at them.

Dicer rolled his eyes and muttered something about how much of a stick in the mud I was. Then he sighed and relented to my request. “I am Chance and this is Death,” He told me a bit impatiently. I blinked as I took that in before nodding in acceptance.

“Now that we have that out of the way…Death discovered an anomaly with your death. Basically it isn’t your time to die,” Dicer told me cheerfully as Death used a bony finger to draw invisible patterns on the table’s surface.

“Now you have three options that you can pick from,” The dice in Dicer’s hand stilled as he turned serious and held up a finger. “You can be brought back to life in your world and resume to living as a normal, 27 year old human,” A second finger joined the first. “Death can take you to the afterlife,” A wicked smile spread across his face as he held up a third finger. “Or you can join a new world with a special talent gifted by yours truly,” He told me as the dice began to roll again.

I frowned as I took that in. “Are we talking reincarnation or…?” I asked unsure what Dicer meant by join a new world.

“Not quite. What would happen is I will insert your soul into someone who died around the same time you did,” Death finally spoke up as it glanced at me. “Except they would have died at the proper time,” It muttered obviously upset that I hadn’t done that.

I sighed as I ran a hand through my hair and thought this all over. There really wasn’t any point going back to my world. I didn’t have any family or friends left there. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t lonely by any means. I had books, movies, video games, and a few internet acquaintances to fill my spare time. But it wasn’t something I really wanted to go back to.

“Alright. I guess I’ll take the third option. I don’t really feel like going to the afterlife yet if I don’t have to.” I told them with a quiet sigh as I let my hand drop to my side.

Dicer beamed at me before beckoning for me to step closer. “Now this is going to be completely randomized. I’ll roll my dice and they will tell us what world you go to, how old you’ll be, and what your new ability is,” he told me before casting the dice onto the table.

I looked closer at the table and blinked when I realized there were three categories. The first contained different symbols which I assumed represented worlds. I recognized the Konoha symbol from Naruto, a Keyblade which stood for Kingdom Hearts, the Tardis from Dr. Who, and a few other fandom symbols.

The second category contained numbers which I took to represent age. The third category was just as odd as the first. The symbols were a lot different though. At a glance I noticed a set of vampire teeth, dice, a black notebook, and storm clouds before I turned my attention to where the dice had landed.

The first die had landed on an odd symbol in the first category. It was a pair of round, broken glasses and a lightning bolt. I frowned as I searched my memory for anything to do with either of those, but nothing jumped out at me. “Interesting…” Dicer murmured tracing the symbol causing it to glow a sickly green before turning his attention to my new age.

I groaned when I saw where the second die had landed. “Great…I have to go through puberty yet again…” I grumbled as I glared at the number seven. Dicer chuckled and patted me on the head before tapping the number which glowed gold.

Then we both turned to the third die which had landed on... “A player’s handbook?” I asked confused before glancing at Dicer. He was staring at the board like Christmas had come early. “Um…what exactly did I just get?” I asked feeling a bit of nervousness starting to creep up on me.

“Hmm…I think I’ll leave it as a surprise. I will say this: you know a lot about it since you have often read and reread the story it comes from. I think I’ll include the tutorial stuff just in case…” he muttered the last part to himself before glancing at Death.

“Is there a suitable candidate? I’d hate to have to reroll the fate dice.” He told his companion with a frown. The skeleton sat still for a moment before nodding and clicking his fingers. A scroll appeared which it handed off to me.

“So my new identity will be a seven year old orphan named Robert Balvin. He was taken to the orphanage by his dying mother when he was two. Then he was adopted by a woman named Maria Carson when he was around three.” I read thoughtfully.

“I will give you copies of all of his memories. They can tell you more than that.” Death told me quietly as a bony hand snatched the scroll and tore it up.

“Well now that that’s all settled…it’s time you left. Your body is in a coma right now. I’ll put a sort of sleeping spell on you so you won’t wake up until you’ve viewed and sorted all of Robert’s memories. This way you won’t be overwhelmed when you wake up. In exchange for being allowed to take on his identity, I must keep his mom and any friends I make safe.” Dicer told me as Death stood up and let out a groan as it stretched.

Death grabbed my hand and impatiently waited for Dicer to say goodbye. I barely got a reply out before the skeleton dragged me off into the darkness. When we came out of it, the being tugged me towards a boy lying on a hospital bed.

I stopped just above the kid to look him over causing Death to let out a huff of impatience. The skeleton gave me a minute before abruptly pushing me towards him. I was taken by surprised as I was shoved down into the boy’s body. I felt it latch onto my spirit before I blacked out for the second time that day.