“Wakey wakey~”

I was poked in the head by a giant stick as I groaned quietly.

“Come on now. You don’t got all day now do you?”

I was poked again, and I finally opened up my eyes, finding a familiar blue and orange sky filled with many roots that reached down to the ground.

But at the corners of my eyes, I found that there were multiple willow trees standing around, all of them as tall as buildings, looming over me like some kind of ominous ritual.

I sat up, patting the ground and rubbing my head, noticing that the area around me was damp, moist, as if it had rained recently.

“Finally, you’re up; now the fun can really begin!” An excited voice called out beside me as I turned to find an old man with a beard and a head of hair as white as snow and long enough to reach the ground and drag alongside him.

He had two bull-like horns on his head, and by his right hand, he carried a staff made of willow. The only word that came to mind upon seeing him was: Druid.

This was emphasized as my right hand was licked by an adorable brown cub of a bear.

I looked back to where the horned druid was, only to find him completely gone.

“Hey? Where did you go?” I stood up, patting the bear cub on the head.

“Oh? Me? I never left! Hahaha.” The bear cub spoke with the voice of the man, causing my eyes to widen and stumble backwards before being caught by the old man.

“You really need to watch your step around here, don’t want to slip and fall now, do you?”

“W-Wait- what? You were-“ I pointed at the bear cub before turning around, finding that I was caught by a willow tree for some reason?

“H-Huh, what?” I looked around, trying to make more sense of what was going on. But nothing seemed to be different; I was still in some kind of forest clearing surrounded by willow trees. Although I did start to notice that many of the roots above have intersected with the trees.

“Beautiful, aren’t they? Straight line direct to your world and to Prawia.”

The voice seemed to be coming from the tree branches, and when I faced them, I found a serpent crawling upon the tree trunks.

“To… Prawia? That’s like, the domain of the gods, right?” My eyes followed the serpent before… It stopped? No, there was no serpent, only the branches moving and shimmying around.

“Technically.” The voice appeared behind me again, and I turned to find the bearded man sitting on a rock while petting a calf. “All realms are the domains of the gods. We simply do not venture out to the Jawia because the physical realm requires us to be summoned. Of course, every now and then…”

For some reason, there were suddenly flowers right beside him that weren’t there before, and he picked one of them off the ground. “There’s a little accident, and we can arrive in all our glory.” A devilish grin grew across his face as he stood up, raising his right hand to me.

“Greetings Peter Sai. My Name is Veles. But I’m sure you knew that, didn’t you?

A sigh of relief fell on my lips as I smiled, shaking his hand. “Uhm, well, I guess I did? Well, not really, but this whole thing and build-up really began to make me suspect-“

I collected myself before finally getting to the point. “So if you know already what I’m here for, is the answer-“

“Oh, absolutely. No need for any bells and whistles. I’m not going to have you offer me any slaughtered bulls. Consider this on the temple.”  He patted me on the head.

“Oh… Really? Like… That’s that? Do I have to like bow or-“

“You could if you wanted to, but that’s more of Perun’s desire, not mine.”

I blinked for a moment, staring straight at the god right in front of me. I didn’t know what to feel, how to feel. There I was, standing right in front of a god, or at least one self-proclaimed.

There wasn’t any aura to him, no presence, but every word he said, there didn’t seem to be a single lie to it.

He just agreed to train me… To become my master. I was here, right here, talking and starting my entire own journey to become some kind of… God fighter. All I could do was stare, gobsmacked, processing everything I just did in the last few hours of my consciousness.

Veles laughed, patting me on the back. “I would say breathe in and breathe out, but that doesn’t do anything here. You have many questions I presume, be warned, I might not properly answer any of them.” He gently pulled me down on the rock before placing a cub of a wolf on my lap.

That was enough to snap me out. “Is it because I’m unworthy or something like that?”

“Oh no, it’s because I’m going to try and find the stupidest answers to some of them- maybe even all of them, but rephrase it in the most serious of tones so you can’t tell if I’m joking or not.”

“…Would you tell me if you were joking or not?”

He laughed again, patting a bear on the head before leaning and talking to it. “Can you believe he asked that? Oh, I love conversing with mortals.”

Veles then turned back to me, not answering my question, but I’ll take it as a no. Now I didn’t know if I wanted to risk getting faulty answers… But there was a god here, literally right in front of me, regardless of whether he’s bullshitting me or not, I have to take the chance!

“Why do you need to be summoned? Didn’t the stories of the gods say that they came down all the time?”

“Well, of course, that’s because we had followers and could jump in at any moment. We could even jump in them, pilot around your frail bodies for some fun times. Did that to one of my followers, made him marry a cow and run off into a mountain half naked… Ah, those were the glory days.”

There was some truth to that, at least; there were many stories about people being able to jump into the bodies of others and inhabit them, sort of like a possession of sorts. So maybe that was right, and his bullshit was just the latter part.

“If only I had a notebook that really mattered here… Hey, if I grabbed stuff here while I sleep and woke up, would I keep them?”

“Of course, take as much as you want! Do you want some branches? They grow right off the tree!”

He began to walk, ushering me to follow alongside with the rest of the bears, wolves, and deer beside him.

“So what do you do around here? Isn’t Zmey already the guardian? Do you just oversee the dead or…”

He raised his arm out as a wolf jumped onto it. “I oversee it, and whenever somebody wishes to leave and reincarnate, I oversee that process by playing a game with them. If they lose, they stay for another 40 days; if they win, they get to reincarnate.”

Well, that’s one way to gatekeep, but I guess that helps the process of constantly going back and forth over and over again.

“Are you more powerful than Zmey? Is he a god level threat?” I was curious how powerful that Echo was, especially since that was me out there. How powerful was that in the realm of the gods?

I could visibly see Veles trying to hold back his laughter at that. “Well… I guess you could say that he’s certainly on there, but much, much lower. If I were to fight him, well, let’s simply say that I would have a new carpet of dragon to walk on.” He gave an evil smirk, which all but confirmed to me that it was definitely the truth.

“W-Woah, that’s amazing… You guys don’t really disappoint- Well of course you don’t, the gods around the world never disappoint unless they’re like the really minor gods of like this specific rock or that one tree- but those aren’t really gods gods like you-“ I focused and stopped talking, leading Veles to stare at me with a grin plastered on his face.

“Go on~”

I faked a cough and began my other questions. “What are the gods here like? Where are the rest? Are you like the strongest? One of the strongest? What do you think of the gods in other nations? How does the whole creation and myths of origins work with the other nations?”

Veles' grin seemed to almost grow with each question I asked, even at the end, all he did was laugh and ask. “Is that all?”

“U-Uh no not really I have so many questions- Sorry about that, it’s just-“

“Yes, I get it, you’re in the presence of a divine entity, and now it’s all spilling out. Don’t worry, the other mortals who came to me were like that as well, some more than others. I appreciate it, makes me have to think of a new thing every single time.”

“O-Oh yeah, of course, this place is the land of the dead. Duh, other people would ask the same thing…” That both reassured me and as well, made me feel so much smaller and insignificant.

“We’re a fun bunch, well, we used to be fun, not until that little spat a thousand years back ended up with all of us now just coming here and there back to Jawia when one of the few cults that have us can finally summon a form for us to use. The rest of us? All over the place, look to the stars, maybe you’ll see them there.”

We finally made it out of the woods. My eyes widened as I saw that we were in that meadow I kept waking up to in my dreams a while back. There, I even saw the very same hill where I talked to the others…

There was that strange feeling of loneliness in me again, like a pit that never seemed to end. Man, I missed those bastards.

I looked up to the sky, finding no stars up there for me to find them before I asked my next question by accident. “What would make you give me actual answers?”

“If you want actual answers. How about we play a little game?” Veles turned around, a creepy grin plastered on his face.

“U-Uh sure? What game is that- Please don’t tell me if I lose that I die, or I like, somehow get trapped here.”

“Oh? That’s not it at all~ I won’t decide your fate. But… How shall you do the next task I had in mind? Are you up for it?”

“... Sure, I guess, first godly quest and whatnot. It wouldn’t hurt… Right?”

He simply smiled at that. “Do you see that castle made of ice over there in the distance?” Veles pointed to the right as I saw what appeared to be an entire mansion built from blue ice as if it were from a storybook, sitting right beside… Kalimov Bridge. I wondered how I didn’t notice that before.

“Y-Yes? I see it, what about it?”

“There’s a goddess in there, her Name is Morana. She holds dominion over death and winter. She is quite moody and irritable… And I want you to ask her for a rose.”