The vast scientific and monastic complex of the Mausoleum of Souls fills your sight and mind.  Massive beyond reckoning, it fits in perfectly with its natural and constructed surroundings.  When your eyes scan the neighboring landscape, the Mausoleum seems to have grown naturally with the neighboring rock and the construction blends into the nearby buildings as if they were all an extension of this one structure.  When you take in the Mausoleum alone, its size and grandeur threatens to overwhelm you.

As you approach the long staircase that leads to the Mausoleum, you are overcome by a sense of serenity and honor.  Pausing for a moment to soak in the aura, you adjust your attire to ensure that you are properly presentable for such a revered place.  You cannot explain from where these deep rooted feelings come, but as you climb the many stairs, the simple intricacy of the decor overtakes your senses.

Along either side, spaced at intervals of ten steps, tower the statues of men, women, and beasts of differing origins.  Each one carries a weapon from various places in time and space; their outstretched arms salute your climb as an honor guard.  Passing by, each one of the stone effigies honors your climb.  Even though you are only entering as an observer pride swells within you, filling you to bursting.

Approaching the large arched double doors, you are surprised to find that they are simple and wooden like you might find on a Gothic church or ancient monastery.  They swing open on their own as you draw closer, revealing the soft yellow light of distant torches.  Between the light and the doorway stands a single person dressed in a simple, brown robe with a hempen rope about his waist.

Turning, the monk walks deeper into the structure, compelling you to follow him.  The walk is long and quiet - serene.  You follow him up a circular stone staircase through hallways and rooms more reminiscent of a museum than a mausoleum.  Rows of shelves and dioramas display various artifacts from antiquity. These artifacts are not housed within shielded glass cases, instead they sit out in the open air, undisturbed in their rightful times and places.

Before you are overwhelmed by the history presented here you step into a rickety wooden and wire mesh elevator.  It creaks and wobbles to the next level where all manner of scrolls, tablets, papers, and books are strewn about in a haphazard mess.  Several cloaked monks hover around the piles of documents, sorting, studying and classifying.

You continue on, taking an escalator upwards.

The walls and ceilings are covered by murals - some ancient frescoes, other futuristic holograms - depicting all manner of creatures and events: a war against sentient insects, a woman giving birth, and an elderly gentleman scribing some notes among countless others. Some of the decorations are filled with heart wrenching beauty, while others cruelty, pain, and joy - all the modes of life.

A ride in an anti-gravity lift brings you to the upper level of the interior of the Mausoleum of Souls.

From the moment you entered the Mausoleum to this point you have been moving slowly through increasing levels of technology and magic.  From the items on display to the devices that move you from place to place, you started in antiquity and have arrived in the far future.  The lights, once torches of wood soaked in pitch, are now miniature fusion reactors contained inside small glass plasma traps.  The trap keeps the extreme heat insulated from your skin as you hold it.

You step out of the anti-gravity tube, once again following the monk - this time down a dimly lit, unadorned stone corridor.  The robed man stops you with a raised hand at a large wooden door mimicking the style of the main entrance to the Mausoleum.  He turns to you and doffs his hood and uncovers his nondescript face – average and easily forgettable.  Perhaps in comparison to the surroundings all living beings look drab. Maybe you were expecting more. It is of no concern to you now.  He speaks a few solemn words in a language that you do not understand – his first words since the beginning. You feel as though you are about to experience something … otherworldly.

When the monk finishes speaking you hear a click and a clack. The door unlocks and swings open.  He steps forward onto an opera house-style balcony and motions for you to join him.  You take your position at his side and gasp at what you see below.  As far as the dim light will let you see there are people in open coffins, each one displayed in individual alcoves and lined up in perfect columns and rows.  Each coffin rests on a raised platform, more like a macabre catalog than any crypt or sarcophagus you’ve seen before.  The room feels comfortable and warm - as if everyone below is simply in a slumber at home.

“Welcome, Seeker, to the home of the Legion of Myth,” the soft spoken man receives you.  His words are almost lost on you as you try to decipher what is going on.

You attempt to take in everything before you.  A robed monk mingles between the corpses like a nurse or caretaker checking up on the residents. Another monk leans from a ladder, wiping dust from one of the coffins. Yet another monk sits hunched over a ream of paper, dutifully recording … something.  After seeing to the comfort of the bodies and ensuring the cleanliness of the alcove, the monk speaks a short prayer and moves on to the next room.

The man standing next to you looks at you perplexed, then smiles knowingly and puts a reassuring hand on your shoulder.  When he speaks this time you understand him completely.  “Do not be frightened by what your eyes perceive here.  This mausoleum is not the domain of the dead.  Rather, this is the home of those who would be heroes, villains, or whatever else they desire be - in realms where their contributions can be meaningful.

“Please sit and I will share with you the history of what it is we do here.”  A cushioned chair, which you don’t remember being there previously, supports you as you sit down.

Your guide sits down next to you, and like a storyteller recounting a familiar tale he begins, “I have heard it said that it is impossible to beat life.  It is said that there are always new challenges and new adventures for the body, spirit and mind; new doors to open, new lines to cross, new discoveries to make, until one day you simply die.

“Regrettably, I wish this were true.”  An intense sadness and loneliness pervades as the monk speaks.

“Imagine a life where everything that could be done has been done; where every concept, every idea, and every dream has either been proven or completed.  Imagine generations of people knowing that the greatest discovery one could hope for would be any discovery whatsoever; an entire civilization searching day and night for some new foe or some new problem to vex them - and failing.

“Truth be told, our magic had discovered, categorized and conquered every imaginable realm of possibility.  Our science had produced every machine and technological wonder worth creating. Perpetual motion, chaos mathematics, quantum physics - name it.  The infinite universe had not only been conquered, but had proven boring and mundane.

“Our heroes, explorers, and adventurers had put their mark on every place within our universe, killed or tamed every beast, rescued every maiden, and thwarted every evil plot.  In short, as a people, we worked ourselves out of a job and into perpetual boredom.

“Millennia went by.  Ever so slowly we were dying as a people - dying from the inside.  Even our immortality poultices and our genetic memory enhancers could not help us.  There was nothing to do in life; it was all done for us and capable of doing it ad infinitum.

“We looked for anything that would awaken us from this decadent slumber. As luck would have it, using a formula we solved eons ago, Garrilous Clintok discovered something entirely new.  He was able to confirm the reality of the Monadic Model of the universe, thus discovering infinite universes of possibility.  There before us were new and virgin realms to be visited, studied, explored, and conquered!

“A few years later, Garrilous' son, Finnley, working with our best practitioners and minds, discovered the key to unlocking trans-universal travel through the Monadic Model. The key he found was in the creation of life itself.

“When any new creature is conceived, what we call the Spark of Life - what some other beings call a soul, consciousness, or ego - is given to that creature. This Spark comes from a single primordial trans-multiversal constant source and contains only the primal subconscious memory of its past ancestors.  Finnely discovered that all one had to do was replace the Spark of the newly conceived creature with the already living Spark of someone in his own universe.  To put it in simple terms, a soul transplant.

“As easy as this no doubt sounds to you, there are two inherent problems with a procedure of such magnitude.  First off is the immediate moral dilemma of, in effect, killing another being.

“The second and more mundane problem with this procedure is the only time the Spark of Life can be switched is at the exact moment of conception.  This means that whoever decides to use the trans-universal travel has to grow and develop as whatever creature he takes over with only the base, subconscious, primal memories guiding him through this new life.

“I can see in your eyes your thoughts. Before you become too alarmed, we have long since discovered that the Spark cannot be killed, per se.  During the transplant, the original Spark is simply and painlessly put back into the universal Unmanifest, or Potentiality.  Therefore the Spark, and thus the being, is not truly killed.  Instead, think of it as simply being delayed.

“Strangely enough, the only side effect of the procedure that we have found is that those who go through the Spark transplant tend to band together; their primal memories giving them the smallest thread of that one bond that ties them all together.  We have labeled these people the Legion of Myth as they are once again discovering and facing new challenges ... something for millennia we thought to be only a myth.

“In multiple universes Legion of Myth groups have formed.  Among seas of commoners they are quickly rising to power, casting their influence over the masses.  Today they are living testaments to our perseverance and will to live, explore, and conquer.”

Happiness, perhaps touched by a tinge of jealously or longing, openly marks the monk’s features as he mentions those who have been transplanted.  He halts his commentary for a short moment before continuing on.

“Those bodies down there, well, they are nothing more than simple husks.  They are the discarded shells of the consciousness they once contained, while the souls - the real essence - of these travelers are somewhere far off fighting, winning, and most importantly truly living life again in whatever Universe they happen to be.”

With a knowing and comforting smile, the monk raises his hood and speaks another solemnly intoned mantra or prayer, this time in words you understand, “We are given one life to live, but if the possibility of a new life presented itself before you who would you become?”

He leans forward as you whisper in his ear.

With a nod from the monk, work begins on your personal alcove in the Mausoleum of Souls.