1 A Mother's Love

It was exactly 9:22 am when Anna opened the door to her client and husband's room. Jace Wellington was finally making it in the entertainment industry. They'd spent almost twenty years working to get to this point but this morning she'd finally landed him a multi-million dollar commercial contract.

Her face was completely blank, but the smile in her heart made it so she didn't notice the odd smell of a strange perfume in the air, or the trail of clothing on the floor as she made her way into the hotel suite.

"Jace, you won't believe what I got you…" Anna's words died on her lips as she opened the bedroom door. Her head cocked to the side ever so slightly and she adjusted her glasses. "What is this?" Her voice slid from a happy sing-song tone to a clipped and detached voice.

Her husband, Jace, looked surprised and mildly ashamed, whereas the woman whom Anna assumed had been riding him was desperately trying to cover her body as her face was bright red.

"Miss Brown from Gold Leaf Entertainment, correct?" She looked between the two and nodded her head slowly.

"Anna—" Jace started to speak but she held up a hand and interrupted him.

"You promised. And you broke your word. Nothing you have to say matters at this point. Please continue, don't mind me." she said, as though her first and only love hadn't just thrown away their almost twenty years of marriage with a barely legal starlet. Both of them looked flummoxed as she reached into her bag to pull out her phone and quickly started responding to some messages.

"Alright, Jace, I cleared your schedule for the day." She said, not bothering to mention that she also snapped a picture and sent it off to several major tabloids while also canceling all his future projects with the reasoning of 'currently dealing with familial issues and management reshuffling'. Jace sighed and stood up after dumping Miss Brown off him.

"I'm sorry. I slipped up." He walked towards Anna with a sincere look on his face. His large brown eyes looked at her as his boyish mouth quirked in an apologetic grimace. It would have been much, much more convincing if his dick wasn't still wet. And hard…? Was he hoping this was going to turn into some weird threesome… Anna wrinkled her nose.

"I'm sorry as well. I'd like you to stop walking towards me, however. Would you like a female or male?" Jace did stop moving at her words, though mostly from confusion as most of his blood was still located south of his belly button.

"I'm straight, I only like women. What are you talking about…?" He said as Anna started fiddling with her phone again though she did raise her eyebrow and look at the girl on the bed expressionlessly which caused him to flush slightly in embarrassment and mumble, "You know what I meant."

"Quite. Sarah or Elizabeth?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You need a new manager." She stated, staring straight into his eyes unwaveringly. Jace finally started to look panicked so she promptly turned and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

She spent the rest of the day declining all calls while putting her affairs in order, she'd checked into a different room in the same hotel, because honestly, that's the last place that idiot husband would look for her. She gazed at the skyline as she drank wine straight from the bottle. A series of soft chimes from her phone got her attention and she glanced at it.

From Jace: It was a mistake. Please, you're killing me.

From Jace: You've ruined our lives.

From Jace: How could you send the tabloids that picture! Don't you have any respect, you shameless woman?!

From Jace: I want a divorce

Anna's eyebrow only barely raised at the last message before she forwarded the divorce papers she'd settled on with her lawyer earlier in the day. He'd certainly regret that in a few hours when he realized that he had spent all of his money months ago and that they'd been living off her wages.

"Oh well…" she murmured to herself, ignoring the rest of whatever Jace was trying to say after that and instead flicked over to check the search engine trends.

It was only after finishing Chinese takeout and two bottles of wine that she was completely sure that she'd 'won' that she relaxed her mask allowing tears to run down her face, all the hurt, anger, and disbelief caused her to choke up as she put the finishing touches on her blog post, titling it, 'To my ex-husband Jace, family, and friends'.

"Jace, I won't reminisce over how we met, fell in love, or the many promises we made to one another and broke. We've covered a lot of those in interviews and your brief stint in reality television.

Instead, I want to apologize, for breaking us. Today is the fifth year anniversary of the day our son died. And not a second has passed since that day that I haven't felt like a failure as a mother, wife, or woman. Only we knew how excited we were, anticipating what his first words would be, arguing over who he'd look like the most. We hadn't told anyone, we wanted it to be a surprise.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for losing him. I'm sorry that I can no longer have children. And I'm sorry for not being able to talk about it before now even with all the therapy.

Despite everything I've done until this moment, I love all of you. I've liquidated all my assets and donated them all to prenatal care research, and left a little bit to pay for my burial. Please bury me next to my son.

His name was going to be Jason.

My son's name is Jason."

She added a picture of herself tearfully holding a stuffed bear with the name Jason embroidered onto it and clicked publish. She watched it upload as she finished the bottle of wine.

Anna drunkenly swayed as she climbed onto the railing, tears floated into the air as she fell 80 floors, she was going to be free. She was going to be with Jason.

Or at least that's what she thought, the world suddenly stopped; the sounds, smells, even her heartbeat.

"Such a waste…" a deep voice said in a low grumble and faint sniffle. A rotund balding man poofed into existence, Anna's eyes widened, or they would have if she wasn't frozen in time! He reached out grasped her hand and she found that she was now able to move and float.

"Am I dead?" She whispered softly, completely bewildered by the situation she found herself in.

"No, of course not, that's what the whole time stop thing was for…" the old man grumbled, "I don't normally pay attention to the matters of this world, as it operates pretty autonomously as it's just a soul creation station… a processing plant if you will." Anna just looked at him blankly.

'Can he read my mind…?' she thought to herself, eyebrows drawing together.

"Yes, yes I can. Right, that's beside the point, I know where your son is!" Her eyes narrowed at his words.

"Yes, he's dead," Anna said, her gaze growing cold despite the warm tears threatening to spill from her eyes. She rarely cried, but when she started it took near forever to stop…

"Well yes, but his soul is still intact! He had stronger than usual spiritual fortitude so he will naturally be reincarnated. He's presently in the queue to reincarnate within the…" he whips out a scroll and begins to scan it. "Ah… Fantasy World 523991… oh dear, that's a red zone. He's probably not going to like that."

"What?! What does that mean?!" Anna quickly moved over to his side to look at the scroll, she couldn't recognize any of the symbols though so her eyes then snapped up to his face with worry.

"Ah, well, it means that there are a lot of potential ways that his soul could be corrupted and destroyed. In fact… there is only a 3% chance of him dying with his soul still alright… what with all the magic and impending demon apocalypse there. Tragic."

Anna's mouth fell open in the shape of a silent scream.

"Ack! Loud! But!" He quickly added while helplessly covering his ears, "There is a way you can help him! All you need to do is give your soul to me for 9,999 years."

"Okay," Anna said with zero hesitation, her face was full of determination causing him to look at her with worry.

"You're not going to ask what you have to do?" He asked, crossing his arms with an expression of incredulity.

"No? It doesn't matter what it is, I need to save him!"

"Have you ever read those stories about people who end up with voices in their heads to help them level up and save the world?" He inquired, completely ignoring her previous statement.

"Ah… no... What does that have to do with anything?"

"It's a very popular genre and your new task! You're going to 'manage' heroes and help them stop the Demon Apocalypse. In fact, I'll be nice and throw in a free body for you, so you don't feel uncomfortable being stuck in the heads of young boys all the time! And als—" he shouted.

"Okay, let's go…" Anna cut in abruptly, "..how do I start, and is there a manual?"

With a snap of his fingers and an odd tug within her veins. The next thing she knew she was in a white space, nothing to see in any direction. He promptly begins snapping a small beat and with each snap objects begin popping into existence. "Alright, this is a clock that shows you how much time you have until your son is spawning… here is a bookcase with lots of shit— I mean stuff, that you can read about whatever you want… This book on the pedestal is the manual… umm, oh and this crystal ball thing lets you go over all the upgrades available for the heroes and yourself!"

"I see," Anna said in a deadpan voice, while he made it seem very simple above the bookcase was a number that was well over a trillion. And the clock was showing a time that was well over a year. "So… can I have the clock show a more—" As she thought about it the clock switched to a digital format that showed years, months, days, and hours. "Oh, perfect. Did I do that or did you?"

"You."

"And your name is?"

"Ah, finally remembered your manners, eh? You may call me, Daddy! As I'm the Head God of the System!" he said in a booming voice, one of her eyebrows popped up and he quickly amended with a shrug, "You can call me One."

"Alright, One. I'll get to work on this… and I'd like some peace and quiet to do that. Thank you."

"Are you sure you don't want any com—" Poof. She had merely thought of him poofing out of existence. That was going to come in handy.

She cracked her knuckles and walked over to the book on the pedestal, the book was a dark blue with silver lettering and gilded pages, 'How to be a System Goddess'. Anna turned to the first page and ink swirled before settling into a readable form, "Please choose your Goddess name."

"Ah fuck…" she cursed under her breath, she was terrible at naming things.

"Ah Fuck has been selected as your Goddess name."

"… well shit…"