Ferro Cordis, Conqueror, Human; Any, Imperii Vitae; Endless Stone Age Fantasy

"So this is , huh?"

I turned slowly in place, examining my surroundings carefully. Not that there was much to examine. Pretty much just an endless plain of neutral grey paired with an endless sky of a slightly different neutral grey. There was even the faintest background noise that could only be described as grey.

Deep breath.

Wow. Somehow this place even smelled grey. How do you do that? I knelt and rubbed my hand along the ground. Felt grey too.

"... fuck it." Curiosity is a cruel mistress. From my kneeling position I leaned down and licked the ground.

"How the hell do you get something to taste grey?"

Pushing back to my feet I turned in another circle. Still nothing. Pretty sure I could already feel my sanity slipping.

"So... this is either some sort of generic Limbo... or some level of Hell specifically designed to drive me to utter madness in the shortest possible amount of time."

I considered that. This definitely wasn't Heaven. Or Elysium, or Valhalla, or whatever afterlife the good little boys and girls get to go to. Whatever.

I'm mostly agnostic and of the opinion that all religions are pretty much the same thing. They all preached about the same stuff.

Never mind, not the point. The point is that whatever the 'good' afterlife is supposed to be, that definitely isn't where I was headed.

I had not been a good person by any stretch of the imagination. I had hurt a lot of people and I had done it without hesitation or remorse. Always in defense of me and mine, sure, but still...

No, not going to Heaven.

Limbo, maybe, but Hell was far more-

My head snapped around as I heard a soft chime behind and to my left.

"Well that's... odd."

Twenty feet away, a curved blue oval hung in midair at an angle, about chest high, faintly glowing.

I walked over, examining it closely. It had a slight shimmer and was partially transparent, although the only way I could tell was because I could see the line of the horizon in the distance through it.

In the center, about a third of the way up, were two handprints shoulder-width apart. When I stood inside the ovals curve where I could reach them I realized that the oval took up most of my field of view. I could see the whole thing without turning my head.

It was perfectly sized so I could reach every part of the oval with minimal effort.

I thought about it.

Honestly, the handprints were a dead giveaway.

Heh. Dead.

"I really wasn't expecting the afterlife to have some sort of advanced computer interface."