[b]Milo Thomas[/b]

The first thing Milo felt upon waking up was surprise that he was waking up at all.  The last thing he remembered was lying in bed, coughing and barely able to breathe, with his parents by his side while the doctor announced that there wasn't anything more he could do.  Milo was dying, and nothing could stop that now.  His parents had spent their last few pounds hoping for a miracle, but it wouldn't come.  The doctor showed himself out while the grieving parents knelt at the side of their dying son.  Milo remembered the kind, careworn face of his father, always so strong, now breaking down into tears as he gripped Milo's hand tightly, as if his strength could anchor Milo's soul in his body and keep him alive.  He remembered his mother, her rough, calloused hand stroking his hair gently as she sang him to sleep.  Milo couldn't remember if he ever did fall asleep or if he just kept coughing and hacking until his lungs finally gave up.

But, strangely enough, Milo was alive.  Maybe his parents had received their miracle.  Milo was alive, and his lungs felt as strong as they had ever been, not clogged with soot like they had been when the doctor had seen him.  "Mother," he began as he opened his eyes.

The sentence died in his throat as he realized that this certainly wasn't his home, and his parents certainly weren't with him.  It was at that moment that Milo understood that he most certainly had died.  But then, was this Heaven?  He pulled himself to his feet to see a broad field extending in all directions as far as his eyes could see (which wasn't very far for someone who was barely four feet tall).  It was pretty enough, and it looked cleaner than London.  The air had an odd scent to it, which Milo assumed was what clean smelled like, but he couldn't be sure as he had never before experienced it.  If this was indeed Heaven, it didn't look anything like what the priests at church had talked about with mansions and streets of gold and pearly gates.  But it certainly wasn't Hell with fire and brimstone and tortured souls everywhere.  Purgatory, then?  He couldn't remember any clear descriptions or explanations of what Purgatory was like.  But this didn't match the descriptions of Heaven or Hell, but he was absolutely certain that he was dead, so this must be some sort of Purgatory, or the priests and bishops at the church didn't know what they were talking about.

As his mind tried to process this, he looked down at his body, surprised to find out that it was clean.  He still looked emaciated, which made him immediately feel hungry, but all the filth that had covered his skin was gone, revealing skin that had become nearly transparent so that every vein in his body could clearly be seen.  He ran a hand through the tangled hair on his head, surprised to find that no soot came off on his hand, or any fleas or lice that had once called his scalp home.  Whatever process had brought him to this place, it seems that only his body and clothes had made the journey, and the filth and beasties that he had carried with him back in London had been left behind.  Oddly enough, he did not regret their loss.  In fact, the feeling of being truly and completely clean was so novel to him that he almost jumped for joy because of it.

That emotion was quelled quickly when a second survey of his surroundings informed him that he was not alone.  Six other people (and two puppets?) were in the field with him.  They were all bigger, older, and stronger looking than him, and Milo suddenly felt very afraid.  The other people hadn't seemed to notice him yet, and that was good, but he didn't want to take any chances of that changing, and so he crouched low in the grass, barely keeping his head high enough to observe the others while they hopefully continued to not observe him.

He watched as one of the men approached another and the other began speaking in gibberish, or at least it was gibberish to Milo for all he understood of it until suddenly,
[quote]"Translator Level 1 acquired!"[/quote]

Milo wasn't sure what had happened, but suddenly he could understand what the other person was saying.  Feeling guilty for eavesdropping, Milo shifted his focus away from what the other man was saying to contemplate the more immediate problem: Where is he and what is going on?

[quote]"Welcome to Kairelith. Your new life begins here. Please accept the goddess Kaireth's blessing as a commemoration of your arrival."[/quote]

Well, that answered one of those questions, but it also made a thousand more come to life in his brain.  He also felt a strange, indescribable sensation wash over him for an instant, but when it was past he could tell that somehow, something about him was now different.  He wasn't entirely sure what was different, just that something was no longer the same as it had been before the strange voice began speaking to him.

[quote]"Decide your path. A second chance was given to you by the merciful goddess, use it wisely."[/quote]

[i]"If that voice speaks to me again, I'm going to have to give it a name,"[/i] Milo thought as he looked across the field once more.  There were no paths anywhere that he could see from his still crouched position, and he didn't remember seeing any when he had been at his full, unimpressive four feet either.  In fact, everything had looked basically the same in every direction: green grass and blue sky extending to the horizon.  If the field was truly so vast, there would be no way that he could just strike out in a random direction and have even a prayer of getting anywhere before collapsing from exhaustion and starvation.  Some second chance this was: dropped into the middle of a field with nothing but the clothes on his back.  It seemed more like a death sentence, and he had already died once.  Why had he been brought here if only to die again?

This was as far as Milo's thought process went before things happened to disrupt those thoughts.  Several orbs of light suddenly appeared in the sky and popped, turning into men and women clad in strange armor that reminded Milo of what he had heard about knights in the Middle Ages, though he had never personally seen such knights or the armor they wore.  But Jack, a street urchin who had been a friend of Milo's, claimed to have once sneaked into Buckingham Palace and seen such suits of armor lining the halls.  Milo had never really believed the story, but the suits of armor that Jack described did look similar to the ones he was seeing on these soldiers now.  That, however, was completely irrelevant to the situation at hand.  What was relevant was the fact that these soldiers suddenly surrounded Milo and the other people that had appeared here.  Milo's flight instinct immediately kicked in, and he looked at the soldiers, looking for any gap in the line that he might be able to slip through, hoping that his small size and obviously frail build would cause him to be overlooked, especially as one of the soldiers accused them of being spies.  Milo knew what happened to spies, and he had no desire to be hanged, especially for a crime he hadn't committed.

Just then, one of the women in Milo's group stepped forward to try to diffuse the situation, dropping the name of Kaireth - the same name that voice in Milo's head had mentioned - presumably in an attempt to gain favor with these soldiers.  This didn't have quite the effect that Milo would have liked, but being taken for further questioning was better than being assumed to be spies and hanged, though Milo was still trying to be invisible and looking for gaps that he might be able to slip through and thus avoid either being assumed to be a spy and hanged or being taken for further questioning (which might still end in him being hanged if his answers (of which he had none) proved unsatisfactory).  But even if he did manage to escape from these people, what would he be able to do on his own?  He would be right back at square one being lost in a vast field with no hope of getting anywhere before collapsing from exhaustion and/or starvation, and then he would die.  Again.

These musings were cut short as an explosion struck one flank of the soldiers and pandemonium ensued.  Apparently, they were being ambushed by kobolds, whatever those were, and the leader of the soldiers apparently assumed that Milo and the others were somehow responsible for this.  Then Milo saw the kobolds, and he had a decision to make: did he want to take his chances with the kobolds on his own, or did he want to take his chances with these soldiers, the leader of which seemed to assume that he and these other strangers were the source of all evil in this world.  Milo quickly decided that being hanged unjustly was a better alternative than being torn apart (and likely eaten) by wolf monsters, and so moved a bit closer to the other strangers as the soldiers closed ranks around the group.