Arthur's awareness came to and he found himself floating in a vast expanse filled with stars and planets.
This was a familiar feeling. He felt weightless, disconnected from anything physical. Death felt very similar to his dreams, he thought.
He had expected.. well nothing beyond the darkness. Now here he was floating, a ghost amid stellar bodies.
He wondered if this was it for eternity. Floating endlessly, aimlessly amid the stars. Not a very inviting afterlife. He wondered if he could float his way back to the hero's story. He wound mind watching that story for eternity.
Time was meaningless to him. He didn't know whether he had been here a minute or years. the thing he knew was that eternity was very boring so far.
Suddenly he felt his floating form being pulled. He couldn't really put a direction to it. The stars about him moved faster. Some getting closer, others getting distant.
He found his vision being filled with a large moon. it seemed this is where his ghost? Is that what he was, a ghost? He felt it was being pulled to this moon, until he came so close that his body should have hit it with a splat.
But he had no body. He was just a consciousness. He found himself 'standing' on the moon over looking a Huge planet above it.
He took in his surroundings and froze at what he found. Sitting upon the moon was a Giant like being silhouetted against the vast expanse of space.
It was a titan of darkness as though the darkest night sky had taken on a physical form. Veins of red energy coiled around it's colossal form, their light flickering like dying stars. These veins begun from its chest where a luminous red core lay imprisoned.
It's head was a huge mass of roiling shadows with Twin crimson stars for eyes. They seem to be trained upon Arthur.
The moon seemed too small a space for it to sit as it took most of the top surface. it was terrible and ominous to behold. But Arthur was not afraid. He was already dead after all. He was sure this titan was what pulled him here.
Perhaps this was his God, now come to judge his worth for wherever heaven lay as believers proclaimed. Or this was the God of death waiting to collect his soul.
"I AM NOT YOUR GOD," Suddenly a Loud basal voice boomed across the moon. It seemed to be coming from every corner of the void that surrounded Arthur and the moon trembled with it's passing.
"NOW COME TO JUDGE YOUR WORTH. I AM NOT THE GOD OF DEATH WAITING TO COLLECT YOUR SOUL!"
The Titan was the source of this voice! And more terrifying was it's ability to quote Arthur's thoughts, word for word back to him.
"YOU ARE A SOUL NOW. YOU SPEAK WITH WITH YOUR THOUGHTS!" The Titan promptly informed him, he voice touching everything around them.
Now there was a reminder for Arthur. he had no body now. Proper confirmation that he was dead from the Giant of the afterlife. Though it was scary to know that his thoughts were laid bare to the Entity before him. What if he thought something insulting and his soul was devoured!
"I AM NOT GOING TO DEVOUR YOUR SOUL. TO PROTECT YOUR THOUGHTS FROM ME, IMAGINE THERE WAS A BUBBLE AROUND YOUR BEING THAT SHIELDS YOUR THOUGHTS AND ONLY LETS OUT WHAT YOU WANT ME TO KNOW." The Titan said.
If Arthur still had a body, he was sure his ears would bleed and go deaf from the booming. Everytime the titan spoke, it felt like his voice was trying to burrow into Arthur's existence.
But he immediately did as the titan told him. He imagined a bubble around him, covering his thoughts from the titan, and just for experiment, reducing the volume of the Titan's words as they came to him.
"I cannot hear your thoughts anymore." The Giant said and to Arthur's pleasant surprise it wasn't too loud anymore.
But a sense of curiosity took him then. He wanted to know more about the Giant, about this after life.
"What or who are you? And what is this place?" He asked, focusing his thoughts beyond the bubble.
"I am RA. I am by your own wording a God. or at least a remnant of one. And This place," He said spreading his great arms of darkness. "Is the void between worlds!"
A remnant of a God he had said. That piqued Arthur's interest. The void between worlds! Arthur had no idea what that meant. But Ra had used worlds. plural. were there other worlds then?
"What is the void between worlds?" he asked, finding that to be of more interest than the remnant at the moment. if he had eternity with Ra he would get to that eventually.
"It is the void between worlds." Ra repeated as if that was the most obvious thing in the universe.
"I still do not know what that means Mr. Ra!"
The Titan sighed. "Then i will tell you. Listen well. In the universe there are thousands of worlds, each world it's own realm of existence. And this is the void between them."
"Like an ocean with multiple islands within it. the islands are like worlds and the Empty waters around them are the void?" Arthur replied excitedly as the seed of a possibility took root within him.
"Yes, you get it. Exactly what i was saying." Ra said.
"So is this where we go after we die? To this void between worlds?"
"No." Ra replied. " when beings die, their souls are drawn back into the spirit of their world for a chance at rebirth. But not you Arthur!"
"Your soul was woven with a unique disposition. you have the ability of Astral projection upon your soul. Your ability allows you to move your spirit freely. it's even more interesting than that. it allows you to step beyond the bounds of your world, into the void between worlds. You have even used it to peer into another world while your body lay asleep in your world!"
At that moment Arthur stopped listening to Ra as a wave of fire works went off in his being. The seed of possibility bloomed into a full on tree of reality with the Giant's words.
There were other worlds!
Arthur had peered into one of those worlds while he slumbered!
There was only one world he had been to in his dreams. The world of Terros.
And if Ra was to be believed, then The hero's world was real!
The Hero was real!