Life goes on and eventually I graduated high school. There was nothing holding me in place so I went. The Marines was a natural fit. Boot Camp was fun. STA platoon in the Fleet afterwards was expected. The single deadliest weapon in the Marine arsenal turns out to be a radio. Anyhow, not too mush time later I found myself on patrol at night in one of the Stans. Some of the guys were using NVGs and doing a half-assed job of keeping an eye-out. I never liked the damned things. My night vision was pretty damned good and I liked it that way. I was tasked with covering our tail by a solid click so found a perch and watched the guys head off towards their next map plot. Ten minutes later was when the fun and games started. I have great night vision – I know, I keep pushing that fact. But there I was looking out over this valley in the middle of BF nowhere and suddenly I see this white glowing buck. 14 points for sure. This guy had to weigh in at over 200 lbs. BIG. And glowing. I had learned in high school that “glowing” was a cute way of saying “giving off some sort of radiation”. And since I was in on of the Stans, that was NOT a good sign. I gave chase. And it was an amazing chase. It wasn’t about just speed. It was about intuiting when to go left and when to go right. There was a large field of boulders and it went in there and I meant to have it. After what felt like a couple of hours but could have been a couple of minutes, I slowly moved through a pair of boulders and found the deer overlooking a large pond. There was no pond on the map, but here it was. I watched the stag without aiming knowing full well I would never harm it. The chase had been too perfect.
“It was perfect, wasn’t it Scout”? The voice in my head was female. The stag before me changed and soon it was a very athletic girl. There was no doubting who it was. Still, it’s not every day that a mortal meets a god. Obviously I had tripped somewhere and was suffering a concussion. “What? I give you this and you call me a mirage? What kind of gratitude is that?” What the hell, who am I to look a good dream in the face and deny it? May as well play along. “Good choice, Scout”. “Soooo, how am I supposed to address you your ladyness, er, godliness, um..” “Just stop. No one has prayed to me in over a thousand years. And you suck at it. You and I are here for a reason. I am done here. I am leaving. And since you are the last one to actually believe in me, I’m taking you with me.” I noticed there was no choice from her, just a simple piece of information – I’m going and you’re coming with me. “Oh you better believe it. Being a god has some perks and taking what’s mine is one of them”
When a god tells you that you are going somewhere that doesn’t have quite the same air as you are used to, you start to pay very close attention. “Oh? So NOW I have your attention?” She was reading me faster than I could form thoughts in my head. “Look, Hunter, there are some changes coming. I am done with that world. And so are you. You may as well get used to the idea. All of that history you learned is useless. When we get there, I suggest you learn the local stuff real fast. Even then you won’t know but a tiny portion of what’s really going on. But here’s the gist of it. I’m tired. I’ve been on that world for thousands of years. Thousands. I am done with it. They can do what they want now. Most of us are gone now and so too am I. I am done with whole god bit. I want nothing to do with it anymore so we are going to Terminus. That’s the name of this world, Terminus. It’s where gods go to die.”
All the way to town I found myself wondering if having goat-feet would be a bad thing here or at least wondering if it might be worth the risk…