First Death

Amari didn't belong here.

Explosions permeated the surroundings, making his heart pound with each set of lives that they claimed. Yells and screams ran amok as people offered their lives as sacrifices for their companions.

So he was sure that he did not belong there.

The last time he had been in a war was when he held an ancient tome, the smell of old and dusty books around him, and in the solace of his being.

There was nothing like that here. Everything was more real than the next, from the large submachine gun he barely could hold in both hands, to the dead body of his close friends and acquaintances scattered about on the streets like trash.

"Hey, Earth to Mari?"

Amari looked towards his elder brother with a dazed expression. They weren't biologically related, couldn't be any more related to each other than a cat was to a dog. But they were brothers.

"Don't worry we'll make it, but you have to promise me one thing?" Edward, or Ed gave a toothy grin.

Amari smiled weakly, "What's that?"

"You have to find a woman! A huge tittied one! You can't live in books your whole life, you know!?"

Amari released his grip on the gun, relieved at this and his weak grin grew wider until it finally settled as a loud laugh.

Even though his joy was overshadowed by the deafening warfare, he still laughed.

"You know I prefer big asses right?"

Ed removed his visor for one brief second to reveal his pale blue eyes. There was some dirt inside. Or blood. One couldn't know or understand at this point.

"Potato, pot-a-to. Just promise me you'll find someone, okay?"

Amari nodded and watched his brother's wide back retreating from the shelter behind a car back to the battlefield.

He sighed.

Edward was always like that. Ever so rambunctious. No matter the situation, always took it upon himself to crack jokes, even if he was the one in trouble.

Amari remembered a time when he, his sister Jasmyn and Edward were almost separated when they were kids in the small orphanage home. Edward took it upon himself to frustrate the people trying to take him till they didn't want him again.

That led to a lot of stupid, ignorant people saying negative things about him. 'The boy who can't sit still'. 'The boy with a sharp mouth'. 'That one rude boy'.

They didn't know that Edward could be the most charming person they could ever meet, only that he chose not to be that person.

Amari sighed again. He gripped the gun and propped himself against the car, getting ready to head back.

'I'm not meant to be here.'

As he tried to move, he felt the familiar cold barrel of a weapon against the exposed patch of skin above his collar.

"Don't move, fucken twat!"

The slang was familiar yet foreign but to him, it was distinct, belonging to the opposing gangs' forces.

'Shit.'

"You will watch me…" he circled to face Amari now, with a familiar person in his grasp.

'No!'

"Both of you."

The man directed him to face a familiar building, a very familiar one in the distance. It was their base of operations, his sanctuary, but most importantly where his sister Jasmyn was staying at the moment.

"Blow it up, fam." It was unclear who the man was talking to, but the next moment, the highrise erupted into a giant cloud of smoke.

Amari collapsed to the ground, uncaring of whether he was shot or not. He managed one last look towards Ed.

"This isn't real, right? Please tell me! Ed?"

But Ed looked as bleak as he did, and the worst of all… he had no joke to crack at that moment. He was silent.

"Bloody pussies. You lot are mad embarrassing. It would be a pity to keep you living."

And that was it. No fancy speech for world domination, no explanation for his actions and no reveal of who it was.

It was all done at that moment, and for the first time in his life, Amari felt like he had read too many novels.

. . .

. . .

. . .

There was nothing.

Then there was everything, but it soon returned to darkness.

"What in the world is this soul? A bizarre one I suppose? It is a creepy amalgamation of beings going on at the same time."

It was the voice of an old man.

He spoke with an animated passion, but Amari felt it hard to reciprocate. After all, his siblings and every other thing he'd ever loved was gone.

"Oh? What an interesting timeline. Very unremarkable individuals, though. There's one of them in every ten humans. Bland archetypes,"

The oblivious passion the old voice had towards the matter was infuriating. Amari tried to struggle, he didn't like the way the voice spoke with blatant disregard for everything else. It brought out a side to him that he never knew existed.

He found himself unable to move though.

He was still in the dark, but this darkness was different. Artificial, so to say.

A pressure that he never knew existed was lifted off of him, and light entered his eyes.

He finally saw the old voice speaking. It belonged to a large, young-looking man with a sea of stars as his coat and the planets as his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. His long dark beard wiggled with life every time he spoke, and his long mane of dark hair reminded Amari of a black hole.

He was overwhelmingly small and inferior in this man- no this being's presence.

"How curious you are. Hmm, your memories are very mundane. So that begs the question. How did your soul end up like that?"

"It seems like that requires further questioning."

The large man's hand picked Amari up quickly and lifted him above multiple portals.

"This world seems appropriate."

'God' finally settled on a blueish portal and was about to let go of Amari, when all of a sudden, the whole 'room' ferociously shook and tilted. The being he had named God didn't expect this and let go of Amari mid-tilt.

Amari in question slipped through an entirely different red-coloured portal.

A minute later, after the world had stabilized and the being realised what happened, he felt frustrated for the first time in a millennium.

"That world is complete, and the original test subject has already begun his growth. A new variable at this time is completely unprecedented?"

"However, since it has started, I can take the chance to experiment. Well, only after adding a few more variables that is…"

And like that, the being returned to his experiments, and Amari unknowingly became the focal point of one of them.