BES: Prologue

A bar fight had broken out at a bar I had been drinking in on my way back home from Indianapolis. I had been drinking at a dive bar just off Interstate Sixty-Five just north of Lafayette, Indiana when a group of rowdy bikers had come in and proceeded to annoy the everloving shit out of all the patrons. It had only taken one local farmer to get fed up and throw a punch for all Hell to break loose and a massive melee to ensue. Fortunately, nobody had pulled a gun yet or anything, but it was still a bit of a massive scrap even so, as chairs and fists began to fly. One of the Bikers moved to punch me, and I ducked, sweeping his legs out from under him and stomping on his temple to knock him out after he'd hit the sawdust-covered floor. I should have run outside, but I felt that with my Martial Arts skills, I could handle it. A second biker came after me shortly afterward anyway, and the moment had passed. It seemed I was now on the side of the locals by default.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of breaking the arm of the third Biker who came at me, swinging for my head with a pair of brass knuckles. I slapped on a standing armbar as I grabbed his punching arm and pulled him into the lock with a snapping noise. That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back, and that Biker's Friend pulled a frankly absurdly large knife from somewhere and swung at me. I had just managed to kick the knife out of his hand and slam an elbow into his nose, breaking it, when I felt it. A line of pain across my back, and I staggered forward, turning around, I saw that the man whose arm I had broken now had the absurdly large knife in his other hand, and it was bloody. A third man rushed my position, and I sidestepped and tripped him to the ground with a kick to the side of the knee."Asshole!" Spat the first man with the knife, as he rushed forward, thrusting his blade at my chest as he surged forward.

I made to kick at his knife hand only for the man whose nose I had broken to grab me around the neck from behind, ruining my aim. My kick missed the man's knife hand, and I felt a white-hot pain explode in my chest as he shoved his knife into my chest cavity. The man grabbing me tossed me to the ground as I felt a hot wetness spill out around me. As my blood gushed out, into a puddle on the floor and I sank to my knees, all while the various Bikers jeered around me, I reflected that maybe my martial arts training from my teens and early twenties wasn't exactly the best thing to bank on against three guys who clearly didn't care if they killed you or not.

As my sight grew dim and I began to feel cold, I caught a brief glance at the back of one of their jackets. Mongols MC, figures I'd be killed by a member of a Biker Gang that usually operates out of Southern California. That was damned unlucky. I was lying on the floor now, the puddle of blood issuing forth from my body beginning to spread into a legitimate pool. It was damned cold, and my breath was coming in halting, ragged, gasps now. My vision began to go gray and then dim before blacking out entirely. My last thought was that if only I had decided to fuck off outside as the bar fight started, maybe I wouldn't be dying right now. My damned pride had fucked that, though. Then, my breath rattled in and out of me one last time, and I knew no more, for a few brief moments anyway. . . .

XXXX

I awoke with a shuddering gasp, bolting upright into a sitting position. I was naked, and reached down to try and get a sense of where I was. I remembered dying, so figuring out the afterlife I had ended up in was paramount. Running my hand across the ground, I felt grass under me, looking above, I saw a vast sky, with stars that were scattered across the deep blue vastness like thousands of tiny diamonds spread across a blanket. I levered myself to my feet and saw I was in a vast, empty grassland. No sign of any water features, forests, or mountains, and with no clouds, flames, or even any other denizens, battling or otherwise.

It was completely unlike the traditional Christian Hell or Heaven, not that I was expecting either of those, given how I was at least nominally a pagan. Unfortunately, it didn't look like Valhalla, either. Nor was it Olympus, as you might expect from my Sicilian Roots, as there were no mountains. It could be Nawia, from my Polish Roots, as Veles' Domain was sometimes described as a giant pasture, but that was also described as encircled by a river as wide as the sea, which wasn't at all in evidence. I was extremely confused about this place. It didn't seem like much of an afterlife to me, after all.

As I debated whether or not to pick a direction and just start walking, a wolf seemingly materialized from nowhere. It was large, almost the size of a horse, and gray, with a shaggy coat of fur. Its eyes glowed with inner light as it stared into my soul, and I realized with a start that it was clearly intelligent. Maybe I'd spoken too soon about denizens of whatever realm this was, since this Wolf was clearly a local spirit of some description. As it regarded me, I cocked my head to one side and cocked an eyebrow at it in confusion and exhapseration. It had been a long day, after all, and I'd already died. Whatever this Spirit Wolf was contemplating, I sincerely doubted it could be as bad as getting killed by a random Mongol MC Member.

"What? Are you going to eat me? I'm already dead! I probably taste horrible!" I questioned, snapping. I was clearly done with this shit. However, when the wolf opened its mouth, it replied with a rumbling, thunderous voice, but still the voice of a man, not a beast.

"Do you wish to live?" It asked. That gave me pause. Was this some sort of trick, like something a demon might play? A pledge your soul to me and I'll return you to life sort of deal, maybe? Either way, it paid to be cautious here.

"Why?" I queried.

"Your willingness to fight even unto death is a rare thing in this age. Most would have fled the brawl against those odds. This has pleased Tengri, Lord of the Eternal Sky." Boomed the Wolf.

"Tengri? The Mongol God? Why would he pick me? There's got to be at least some Mongolians who would do the same?" I asked with a scoff.

"You are of his blood, barely. Diluted as it is by Thirty generations." Responded the Wolf.

"The whole one in every two hundred men are descended from Genghis Khan thing? I always thought that was an urban legend?" I questioned.

"It is not. Do you wish to live or not?" Queried the Wolf, hotly."

Of course, I want to live! I just want to know what the catch is." I retorted.

"The catch is simply to bring glory and honor to Tengri and the line of Chinggis." Answered the Wolf.

"So I won't be going back as me then? Or I won't be going back to my own time?" I asked.

"No. You will not." Stated the Wolf.

Before I could ask another question, the Wolf's eyes flashed blue, thunder pealed across the vast sky, and the stars seemed to swirl about in the blueness. I felt myself lose balance and fall to the ground before unconsciousness took me again. . .

XXXX

When I awoke, it was to squalling noise and wetness. I felt a grip seize me in gigantic hands and reflected that I was naked and also a baby. I tried to say something, but found that I could only make unintelligible baby noises. I tried to move my limbs as I was cleaned off with a cloth, but could only flail uselessly with my stubby baby legs. Soon, I found myself wrapped up in silk cloth and growing weary from trying to move and speak. Looking around as I was passed from woman to woman, I found myself in some sort of stone chamber that was filled with silk wall hangings in writings that were a mixture of some forms of Chinese, Arabic, and Mongolian that I didn't have any clue how to read, partly because of their age. Various vases and jewels stood on lacquered tables, alongside furniture of varying types. I was clearly in the medieval period, and clearly someplace in the far east, which figured given what the Spirit Wolf had told me.

"Someone tell the Khan, Chabi Khatun has borne him twins!" Ordered a Woman in silks, grabbing me out of the hands of someone who was clearly a servant rather than anyone of real importance before passing me off to another Woman clad in silks.

"His eyes! They're the color of the sea! That has to be an omen!" Exclaimed the Woman who was currently holding me.

"Dalai, his name will be Dalai, give him to me." Came a tired Woman's voice.

I was brought to a bed where an exhausted woman was holding another baby close to her chest. The woman holding me handed me to what I assumed was my mother, a woman in bloodstained silks, with her braided hair done up in beads even in the middle of labor. I put two and two together swiftly. My mother was Chabi, Empress-Consort of Khublai Khan. That was interesting. Of course, my new mother accepted my swaddled-up baby body with a tired smile on her round, slightly chubby face.

"Come and meet your brother, Dorji. Dorji, this is Dalai, your younger brother." Smiled the Woman.

I looked over and saw another baby swaddled up in silks. My twin brother, it seemed. He looked a bit pale, and he was squalling and fussy. The name rang a bell, though. Dorji was the sickly firstborn of Khubilai Khan, and one who would die young to his mysterious illness, according to history. I now realized what the Wolf had meant when he told me I wouldn't be going back as myself or in my own time. Tengri had just turned me into a potential heir to the Yuan Dynasty! That was some kind of favor! Before I could think too much about it, though, I felt a wave of exhaustion overtake me and I drifted to sleep.

My second life had just begun. . .

XXXX

AN: This is a rework and a continuation of a story I put on the shelf over on AH.com. It will be cross-posted over there as well. A combination of SI and what-if regarding the Mongol Empire in general and the Yuan Dynasty in particular. China, really most of Asia, doesn't exactly get a whole lot of exploration for SI stories. I'm hoping to change that.

IOTL Dorji was born with no twin brother, sickly and weak, and he would die young at only twenty years of age when his lifelong illness finally caught up with him. Here, the SI gets slotted into life as Dorji's healthy twin brother, Dalai. Dalai is younger than Dorji by only a couple of minutes, which means there is potential for the SI to succeed Khubilai if Dorji dies on schedule. In Mongolian, Dalai means Sea or Ocean and is a reference to his unusually rare eye color, blue like the sea. It's also a sneaky foreshadowing of certain future actions of his.

At any rate, the next proper chapter will be up shortly. It will involve some actual character interaction between Dorji and Dalai and set up a bit of the brothers' dynamic moving forward. Suffice it to say, Dalai is going to be the more athletic one, given Dorji's historical sickliness, while Dorji is going to be a lot more into Confucianism than the more Tengrist Dalai, as well as more willing to adopt Chinese Customs in general.

Stay tuned. . .