Prologue: Reward

A whiff of rancid fish mixed with the smell of the sea tickled Noah's nostrils.

He opened his eyes: The frayed sails of a sailing ship swayed in the wind, attached to three masts that plunged the sky covered with dense black clouds.

Noah took a deep breath and brought his hand to his chest. There was no sign of injury.

He sat up and looked around: he was on the deck of a sailing ship, of that he was certain.

Leaning against the ship's rail, there was a black sliver of night. Cold and starless it burned, a hole into nothingness. Its outline flapped noiselessly, as if in a hallucination. What might have been its head turned toward Noah. Crescent moons swam up out of nowhere to form a jagged, toothy, a starry sky formed what must have been eyes..

Noah stood up. After all, he was dead and had seen too many strange things in life to be surprised by anything.

"Who are you?"

The being smiled. Noah felt pervaded by cheerfulness, the air filled with the scent of cotton candy, and for a moment the lights of fireworks illuminated the night flake. "Just someone who paid Charon to have this private conversation with you."

"What are you?"

The being accomplished a bow. "I was a god, and a servant. In the past, I played a minor role in the creation of the universe. What an exciting day! You cannot understand the gratification in separating light and darkness, sky and earth, creating hydrogen to ignite the first stars and generating the first heavy elements. Or the day we saw the first living beings and taught them to sing!" The god stared into Noah's eyes, the crescent moons that formed the deity's smile faded away one by one. "And I helped set up the system."

Her words did not surprise him that much. Noah was well aware that the system had been created by countless deities from other dimensions; he himself had received the blessings of some of them.

But this was the first time he had encountered one of them.

"None of this helps me..." Noah crinkled his eyes. "Tell me then why you are here."

"Nothing of any particular importance. I am here to perform a function: to deliver your reward."

Noah did not understand why he was so insistent. The gods had not only helped humanity out of compassion, but to exact their revenge on the Titans who had conquered their worlds.

Now that the threat had disappeared, most of them had returned to their own worlds, and those that had not had been eliminated when their former companions had decided to forgo the ultimate reward.

Noah shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think I need it anymore."

"I just carry out my task. What you do is none of my business."

"When the ship docks you will find before you will lie a path, which you will have no choice but to follow. You will arrive before Tower of Babel. There, the path branches. The left-hand way is well-trodden, for that is how most go. But if you look closely, you will see that there is a faint pathway to the right. You're of the second blood, so you can go either way. If you go to the left, you will be reborn again. But if you pass to the right…" He drew away from her.

"Yes?" Noah said. "What happens then?"

No longer whispering, the god said, "No one knows."

"That's it? That's all?"

"It is more than enough."

Noah increased his pace and leapt forward. The mist enveloped him, slipping over his skin like a silken drape. It hovered just a moment and blew him back out into a sunny valley, as fresh as after a bath. The light stabbed his eyes. He covered them with one hand and slowly opened his fingers. Blue specters crossed a meadow of tall grass that seemed to go on forever, dotted with white lilies. There are humans, giants, beast-men, dwarves and other creatures I do not recognize. Still others are young or old.... The flames just now were these souls.

Arriving at the foot of the tower Noah stopped where the path forked.

That was the best time to take stock of his life, and at that moment everything became clear to him.

He had dedicated his life to becoming a hero; that had always been his goal. Ready to sacrifice himself for his comrades, for the mission. A constellation of bad choices. In the end he had been betrayed and died because he had made the wrong choices.

Now, however, he could stop. This was the choice he had been given. In the end what would happen to the land, to people, no longer concerned him. All his family members had been dead for decades and his only companions had killed him.

The only wise choice was to let go. It was the right choice, the first in his life.

Noah laughed. "One wrong choice more or less what difference does it make?"