Prologue: The Death & Reincarnation Of A Boxer

Dark and mystical forces outside of Jonah’s awareness had long conspired and even acted against the seemingly normal medium weight boxer throughout his first life. On the final day of his first life they sprung another of their plans into action, one that was decidedly more deadly than their past plots and pranks. Jonah’s last day of his first life was connected to his secret heritage which thanks to a painful rule was so secret he had no idea it was his heritage, and it was a very brief day. It was also ended rather painfully but thankfully the pain didn’t last long.

His day had started off pretty simple and by his standards that was pretty good since it was a Friday and he not only had matches on Friday he also went out with friends on Thursday night which meant his mornings were useful for him to go out into the city since he didn’t have to go to the gym and workout unless he wanted to.

He woke up in the one-room apartment he rented and paid just 450 dollars a month for in the city of Dallas and wasn’t hungover nor had he overslept. It was 5:45 in the morning which gave him as much time as he felt he needed to be either be lazy and lounge in bed for a bit longer or to go ahead and get up for real and prepare for the day. A good start to the day which in his experience meant that it was statistically likely that he’d have a pretty good day.

After waking up and laying in bed for 15 minutes he actually started the day off by sleepily turning on the tiny TV located next to the bed that his landlord had loaned him as part of their deal to make him into a famous boxer and someone the landlord could use to hopefully increase the price of rent. He did this most days to study how his rivals were fighting and to begin to come up with counter strategies that’d empower him against his peers and rivals.

The TV was an older model but it was perfect for him to use to watch recordings of the boxing matches of his fellow professional boxers and do research on a number of them because every Friday night he was tasked with fighting one of them and if it were up to him he’d never lose another match again since the last time he lost he went to a doctor and was ordered to not train for a week.

After he configured the TV which he had to do every morning due to the advanced age of the television and had selected the appropriate recording he went and rolled out of bed to go and prepare breakfast. He had background noise in the form of the recording playing the audio of an announcer excitedly reading the bio of a bright up and coming Arabic boxer with the face of someone whose glass jaw was well known in the community of professional boxers in New Detroit but an intimidating winning streak due to the rocket-like speed and warhead-like power of his jabs.

Jonah prepared a simple breakfast consisting of a whole-wheat bagel covered in a liberal amount of peanut butter and a drink made up of a total of six egg whites. By the time his breakfast was ready to go, the boxer he was set to face that night was not only on the television about to launch one of his infamous jabs but the boxing match had been going on for a full minute. It was also nearing its end.

In the recording the boxer’s competition was a tall Australian-American boxer who was young but had a dangerous amount of reach behind even the softest of his punches which he had up until that point used to his advantage since he was taller than his competition and well-versed in using his reach to keep any opponents out of range. The mistake the Australian-American boxer made was underestimating his opponent’s defenses and endurance outside of the infamous glass-jaw.

The Australian-American threw two somewhat slow but difficult to dodge jabs that connected solidly with his opponent but were shrugged off because neither of them were aimed at the opponent’s jaw. The Arabic boxer’s ability to shrug off the blows surprised his opponent enough to allow him to close the distance and launch a single decisive jab to the chest of the Australian-American boxer. Jonah was no doctor but he knew from the way the Australian-American was forced back, that the blow connected and had likely bruised a rib or two.

That was when Jonah shut off the recording and then the TV and proceeded to get ready to go out to town. He knew how the match ended, the Arabic boxer closed in again and threw one of those potent jabs at his opponents face while his opponent was still clutching his ribs and futilely tried to rebuff his advance.

Jonah changed out of the outfit he wore to bed which was a simple white shirt and a pair of teal boxers decorated with a red and black image of Ek Chuaj, the Mayan god of chocolate who was also somehow a Mayan god of warriors and of merchants, because as always the gods refused to work in ways that made sense, into a long-sleeved blue shirt, clean and nondescript black boxers, and khaki pants. Once he was done changing he checked himself out in the mirror and was satisfied by his relative lack of bedhead so he left his hair unstyled and untouched. The last thing he’d ever do in his apartment was double check his pockets to ensure he had his wallet, his key, and his cell-phone.

It was 6:35. A few minutes had passed since Jonah left his apartment he was walking down the quiet sidewalk leading away from his apartment and to a local 24 hour cafe and bookstore minding his own business when he became the target of someone who was not minding her own business. The young professional boxer and the magical hitwoman walked in the same direction for five minutes with the sorcerous hitwoman maintaining a steady and healthy distance from her mark until she saw a definite opportunity to perform the grisly task she had been paid half of her fee in advance to perform.

Her time to strike was when the two of them were nearing a narrow alleyway and coincidentally the already light traffic on the sidewalk had just begun to decrease. She saw an opportunity and sped up significantly, approaching her mark closing the safe distance at an inhuman speed and using her secret weapon to force him off the sidewalk and into the alleyway. Magic. And so Jonah was violently thrown into the alleyway partially by his own speed and lack of attentiveness before he even knew he was being targeted.

The inhuman assassin used force magic on her mark by lightly touching his shoulder and releasing a surge of magical energy from the tattoo on the center of her palm into him to violently blast him into the alleyway she had decided would be where he’d spend his last moments. Normally the laws of this world and of the gods who governed it kept her from using her magic since she was an otherworlder but when she got to interact with folks who either were like her or had ancestry that included individuals from other worlds than she could use some magic on them and little else. Her speciality was spatial magic, and she loved using momentum magic which was what had caused Jonah to be violently thrown into the alleyway instead of just being placed there as if by teleportation especially since the normally wide magic was compressed and compacted into a single focused burst of magical momentum and redirection.

Jonah was already stunned, weakened, and in pain thanks to his sudden and violent displacement. He was also staring at the brick wall of the alleyway he had just been magically thrown at without his approval or awareness. That gave his killer, a mysterious blonde woman he’d never see before his life ended more than enough time to position herself and aim her silenced pistol. Jonah’s last thoughts in his first life were a confusing rush of reactions to the fact that he had been just moments ago walking down a sidewalk and then he was suddenly hurled face first into a brick wall. Then his brains were splattered against that same brick wall by a single hollow point bullet that was perfectly aimed at his brain and had been used efficiently by his killer.

For her part in this whole affair she had been perfectly calm while she positioned herself and to the naked eye wasn’t excited or happy to do what she did. She merely dispassionately pulled out her weapon as she entered the alleyway and fired a single bullet. The silencer kept the sound of the pistol from being heard for hundreds of feet but in the alleyway situated between two apartments the sound was still loud. Instead of doing anything about the body the killer silently leapt backwards and used her inhuman speed to get out of sight, thankful for the relative lack of bystanders who could have seen her.

She magically transformed into someone unrecognizable by anyone who might have seen glimpses of her while she leapt backwards out of the alleyway. The killer had more contracts she was aiming to complete that day so after she was clear of the body and of anyone who could have even remotely seen her she pulled out her phone to check the next on her list of potential targets.

Jonah’s body was left in the alleyway and it’d be discovered just seconds after the mysterious magical assassin left thanks to the restlessness of a local woman in one of the buildings the alleyway was between. She’d call the police but the police would never discover anything about the assassin.

When Jonah regained what passes for consciousness for a recently deceased spiritual entity he sat up and immediately noticed that he was no longer facing a brick wall. The now solely spiritual and not at all physical entity was laying on the ground in an as far as he could sense massive canvas of whiteness. As far as his eyes could make out all that was in front of him was an incredibly dull white space like pasteurized milk but an infinite amount of it. It was in all honesty a bit overwhelming.

He began to turn around and try to get up on his feet just in time for Maquetaurie Guayaba, the Zemi of death, to approach him out of nowhere and offer him a hand. The young boxer grabbed it without hesitation and appreciated the strength of the Zemi as he got up off the also white floor.

The Zemi of death was an imposing figure, and in the eyes of the young human looked like a 7 and a half feet tall ancient warrior. His skin was tan, his eyes filled with confidence and mirth, and he wore the clothes of ancient Taino warriors. His pants were little more than thick robes that surrounded his legs to keep them safe from attacks and he wore no shirt but his headdress was ornate and made up of feathers that alternated between coming from dark-winged beasts and rainbow haired monsters which caused the Zemi to appear surprisingly lively in his fashion sense if nowhere else.

He had the carefree body language of someone accustomed to death, which Jonah figured Guayaba would since Jonah had already accepted his death having heard the gunshot and feeling the incredible pain of having his brain destroyed. He figured that he was currently going to where dead people go, something that wasn’t common for the souls Maquetaurie Guayaba dealt with since many of the souls Guayaba dealt with weren’t initially aware of their physical realities and thus had a hard time preparing themselves for their spiritual realities.

Jonah wasn’t sure who Guayaba was but intuitively knew that Guayaba had something to do with what would happen to Jonah next and that made the young boxer be on his best behavior hoping to gain some answers.

Here in his subdomain Guayaba could read thoughts and instead of informing Jonah about his death decided to do away with informalities and skip straight to what Jonah needed. “I see you’ve already figured out what happened. I commend you on that young human because many people remain partially trapped on Earth since they have a hard time accepting their deaths. That being said I must recommend that you sit down and truly cope with your first death. Mourn it like you mourn the loss of a life of a loved one. It’s important for the sake of your own mental health that you react humanely to situations like this.” Said the Zemi with a loud and calming voice.

“You are in the presence of the Zemi of death and of the home of the death of the Taino people. I am Maquetaurie Guayaba and I am the lord of a realm you are not quite yet ready for: Coaybay.” Said the being who claimed to be the something, possibly lord or god of, of death.

“Oh that’s right, you are not aware of much surrounding Taino culture… Zemi are not gods as Europeans consider them, our species is a lot less amorous than theirs is. Among other differences. We’re much closer to what Europeans and other groups in the West consider spirits.” Said Guayaba, chuckling to himself and the snide remark did make Jonah chuckle as well.

Jonah had questions about the place Guayaba mentioned earlier, Coaybay, but Guayaba ignored them. Instead Guayaba put his hands together and began gathering energy that was needed to tear open a space-time portal and fling his new friend into another world and begin his second life.

“I’m sorry kid, but I’ve got my orders. We the so-called ‘good’ gods have been ordered to give you something though. You’re about to be unpleasantly thrown into a new world, because you aren’t yet ready to come to any of the existing afterlives and this is one of the solutions we’ve come up with to deal with children who aren’t yet ready to handle an afterlife. And if you ask me there’s a reason why someone way up high in the cosmic level wanted you to go to this afterlife specifically” Said the now impishly smiling Zemi. Clearly Guayaba knew more than he was letting on.

The Zemi grinned at Jonah while saying “You’ll be finding our gifts scattered throughout the place, but you’ll know them when you see them. I’d love to chat more but for now I suspect this is all we can do.”

“I’d much appreciate it if you found any of the op’a out there you fight to send them back my way. They might sound fierce and even attack others, but if you just approach them with your seal out they’ll likely coming back to me. That being said: there are forces out there that seem to want you here. One day soon I’ll properly and truly introduce you to myself and other Zemis. I think you might like that.”

The portal that Guayaba was creating was finally beginning to solidify. The air had begun to act odd and this meant that the portal was about to show Jonah its destination. When it showed off the destination, Jonah stopped and stared before Guayaba pushed him into the portal and back into the land of the living. A different land of the living.

Where Guayaba had pushed Jonah into was a place filled with humans, monsters, and shrines to older and sometimes forgotten gods. It was a great place for new adventures and for making connections with rising stars in many areas of combat and production. Guayaba wondered if Jonah would ever find his presents. Most importantly Guayaba was annoyed that one of the eldest of the gods or the zemi, had ordered an assassination on an otherworlder.

Guayaba swore to begin an investigation against the shadowy group of deities that sought to manipulate Jonah but his research would take time to complete.

“Jonah… good luck. I wish we had more time but I’ll connect with you soon my strange friend. Good luck out there, monster-tamer. You can do this” Said the mysteriously friendly Zemi of Death. As always the motives of the Zemi of Death remain inscrutable but for now even though Jonah couldn't hear Guayaba at this point the young spirit hoped that the Zemi of Death was an ally.