Summoned... to Die?

The cool spring morning made me shiver. But I still tried to smile, waving to the kids and, of course, the teacher.

I couldn’t say for sure how many years had passed since I left this orphanage. I couldn’t say these were the best years of my life, but I think it was some pleasant memories that made me come back here now when I was twenty-seven. I hope the money I donated would allow these kids to become more successful than me and not just settle in someone's pockets. Although, I’d hardly be able to check it; my doctor gave me no more than two months, or even less. And judging by how much worse I was getting every day, there’s still a couple of weeks left, I guess.

But I wasn’t afraid of it. I felt guilty, perhaps, for there wouldn’t be anything left after me. Anything or anyone, because in trying to build a career I didn’t think about family.

Hah, but still it wasn’t the time to lose heart. I pulled out my headphones to turn on music, and winced. With a sigh, swallowing another pill, I again tried to smile like I had done before and went to the bus stop.

“Death greets me warm, now I will just say goodbye,” shouted the soloist from the headphones. Nah, sorry, a bit later. Despite the rather sad words, I completely lost myself to music. This song rather brought back memories of happy student days when everything had seemed achievable and all the world had laid at your feet—go wherever you want!

I got on the bus, backed into a corner and stared out the window. The sun finally peeked out, gleefully shining in the blue sky among small flocks of clouds. The bus drove to a bridge, and I began to watch the ripple of the river beneath. Eh, maybe I should finally go abroad? The sun, the sea, beautiful girls in bathing suits! Sounds like a good idea.

The rising hum of voices around made me take the headphones off.

“Hey, where's he driving? Nut-case!”

“Mum, look, a car!”

Some people took out the phones and started to pick shots. From my seat I couldn’t see what was happening, but before I managed to ask somebody a truck crashed into the side of our bus at full speed.

The power of impact sent both vehicles into the guardrail of the bridge. They plunged into the river.

Water rapidly filled the old bus, hiding the bodies of those passengers who didn’t survive the collision. Everybody who was more or less uninjured jumped up from their seats, panicking and crowding.

“Get the hell out! Through the windows, quickly!” I yelled.

Some people startled from my scream and stopped to shake. Some even followed my order. The bus started sinking and I hurried to break the window. It worked! Now they could get out safely enough, even in spite the fact that the bus began to sink even faster.

I dove and swam into the middle, picking up a crazed man with a damaged leg and his small child. Warning them to hold their breath, I dragged them to the broken window and helped them to float out.

Diving again, I made sure that all the survived passengers got out. But… the window in the driver’s cab was still intact. Was he dead?

I dove closer and found an unconscious girl in the front seat beside the driver, who unsuccessfully tried to get rid of the seat belt. The vehicle had only a tiny air plug left under the ceiling. He gestured me to the glove compartment, the contents of which spilt on the floor. Noticing a shiny knife underwater, I grabbed it and cut the belt. He gestured OK and swam to the exit. But what about the girl? Even if she choked, there was still a chance to resuscitate her. I picked her up and followed to the exit, barely sculling with one hand.

Pain, again! I twisted and reflexively sighed, swallowing water. Started choking. No more strength. Sorry, girl, I hope the others would be able to live for us.

Aliis inserviendo consumor. Giving light to others I burn myself. That was my last thought.

There was a sweet voice. “Trying to understand a stranger... Success. Reconstructing for intuitive understanding. Generating the interface. Interface downloaded. The analysis of the brain is completed.”

What? What the...?

I saw nothing but pitch black. I didn’t feel myself. Suddenly, something like a touch screen appeared in front of my eyes.

Volunteer

Name: Nicolás Grape

Age: 27

Planet: unknown, Segmentum Solar

Species: ???

Then, a window appeared.

Running an automatic scanning of species. Do you want to enter the data manually in order to speed up the process? Y/N.

Hmm. Yes? And why did I feel so unsurprised about where I was?

The parameters of species

Name*: ???

Average height: ???

Average weight: ???

Life expectancy*: ???

And so on. There were hundreds of them! But only two with an asterisk. I typed ‘Human’. As for the age… Why not try ‘1000’?

“Changes saved. Sending the data,” said the same sweet voice.

I felt like I was falling asleep and passed out.

“It hath worked, my friends! Hooray!” someone screamed right before me.

I opened my eyes as wide as I could, barely able to focus on what was happening. Like after a long, deep sleep.

In front of me stood… a bizarre horse-looking creature in a vibrant mantle embroidered with various colourful patterns. Some of the threads even shimmered on sunlight. Impressive look. The creature looked elderly and somewhat manly, and held a staff with graceful curls at the top, framing a large blue crystal.

He shook his long grey beard (was it really a bearded horse?) and, smiling from ear to ear, outreached his hands to me with the clear intention of hugging.

And only now I realized that I was standing stark-naked. With the consideration that jiggling my private parts in front of a stranger wasn’t of decent things, I turned away only to meet hundreds of eyes staring back at me in awe.

One of the creatures—who mostly looked like the old stallion, only younger—raised his hand and shouted in a fit of joy, others followed his example, and here I was, naked, standing in front of the weird crowd screaming with delight, and with a grey-haired horse eager to hug me from behind. Absolutely nothing to panic about.

Despite the fact that almost all the creatures were pastel-coloured anthropoids with horse-like legs and heads and mains and tails, on closer examination they turned out to differ in species. They were clad in leather jackets, greaves, shin boots, bracers and helmets, but at the same time they looked sort of familiar. Well, I was always fond of history and mythology, so I started to guess who was who without problems.

Slim boys and girls with delicate facial features and a long pointed horn clearly resembled unicorns. The others, bulky and rough giants, had the appearance of a destrier, the horse of knights from Middle Ages. Cute skinny girls with large wings behind their shoulder blades and the same, but less cute, guys (or should I call them mares and studs?) looked like pegasi.

There were normal horses as well. Apart from the pastel fur, there weren’t any other strange features. Everybody was armed with simple swords and shields, though it might as well seem to me. Behind them all, I could see structures built in the style similar to medieval Europe.

A small town or village—it was difficult to say from this distance—lay in a small recess between the hills. Yeah, picturesque area to live in. The incredibly blue sky without a cloud, two suns, green grass under hooves... Wait. What the fuck?

I just realized that I looked like one of them.

Sure, I knew stories about travellers through space and time, reincarnation and stuff, but that...

At first thought, I felt normal; not like usual, rather like the earlier version of me which I had been before the disease. My body, quite far from the concept of athletic, was thin and sinewy. A shame I didn’t have time to examine my face.

There had been a change in the crowd’s mood. They quieted down, staring away.

Two pretty half-dressed mares were approaching me, carrying something on a tray.

I tried not to look at their direction. Shaking my body parts in front of such a crowd wouldn’t help me a bit.

The mares came up and knelt down in front of me. Their muzzles were too close to my, uh, pelvis. What was I thinking about...

They took from the tray something like a loincloth made of leather and put it on me. Then they rose and stood on either side of me.

Phew, that's better. Thank you, beautiful creatures!

The old stallion walked around and turned to face me, stroking his beard. I noticed he was a unicorn. “Call your name, o ye hero!”

“Nico—”

At this moment, one of the mares broke down and hugged me, causing a cry of surprise and approval.

“So be it. Nico!” the old stallion repeated loudly as he turned to the others. “The Moriturus hath named himself!”

The crowd roared, clapped and whistled. The brave mare, who had already released me, blushed and pressed her hands to her face, saying to herself, “I-I did touch the Moriturus before his death. I did it! Yay!”

Wait, wait.

In Latin, morituri meant ‘those who are about to die’, so then… Hey, was I reborn after death just in order to die? Some kind of poor postponement, I’d say.

Meanwhile, the crowd quieted down again, and now two studs approached me. They handed me a sword and a shield, just the same as the others had.

The old stallion muttered something, his horn glowed and lifted me into the air. A levitation spell or something? It seemed they churned out these so-called Morituri. Yeah. Obviously, there’d be very few locals ready to bear such a proud title.

Having decided that yelling all sorts of lasciviousness and saying everything I thought about this fucking Merlin was meaningless, I just watched what would happen next. I was dragged through the air away from the town, the wizard himself trudged a little behind, and the crowd marched at a distance of about half a kilometre from us.

I soon realized where I was being dragged. Ahead there was a small rocky plain with a couple of stunted trees, in the middle of which a bright dirty-yellow oval hung in the air, shimmering with swirls of light in its centre. Portal, I guess.

The soldiers stopped behind us at the same distance; the wizard stared intensely into the oval. The pause was long. Suddenly there was a sound too familiar and too inappropriate for this environment: a loud shot.

The old stallion's head exploded, spraying his brains and blood all over the place. No longer supported by the spell, I crashed to the ground.

Two roaring buggies with mortars attached to them jumped out from the portal and, with a booming sound, shot at the crowd.