The Ascendant in the Celestial Express

"MAY I SEE YOUR TICKET?"

Jax stirred awake in the void.

There was a dark emptiness around him. The lack of sound, sight, and sensation pressed on him like a weight. He floated there listlessly for a long time before he gained enough wits to realize he shouldn't be there. The darkness around him was an anomaly that he only now came to understand.

However, even though he wanted to get up, his body didn't listen to him. He couldn't move. As he hopelessly tried again, Jax realized that, in fact, he had no physical body at all. He was only a consciousness hovering within this void.

Where am I? he wondered, trying to recall the last thing he had been doing. And yet, he knew nothing. His mind was as much a void as the one before him. The only things he had within him were his name and a burning desire to save someone.

"MAY I SEE YOUR TICKET?"

The words returned with a boom, shaking Jax's consciousness to its very core. He was frightened by this strange voice that seemed to come from all around him and within him. Within this darkness, it was a harrowing experience.

"Hello?" Jax called out, surprised by how quiet his voice sounded against the darkness and the one who spoke before. "Who is out there? Where am I?"

"I AM THE NAVIGATOR OF THE CELESTIAL EXPRESS. YOU ARE IN THE CELESTIAL EXPRESS. MAY I SEE YOUR TICKET?"

Navigator… Jax thought for a moment. The word held meaning to him, even though he had never heard of it before. Or had he heard of it and just forgotten? The voice was so strong that he didn't dare ignore it, and yet, what was the voice really asking for?

What the hell was this ticket?

"I'm sorry. I don't know what the Celestial Express is, or what this ticket you are asking of me is. I don't know how I even arrived here," Jax replied. Just as he did, light finally appeared within the darkness.

The light came from him. A soft golden light lifted from where his chest should've been and floated before him for a moment. Jax looked at this strange light, confused. Was this the ticket? Something about his understanding of what a ticket was told him it had to look different.

The light before him began floating away, moving further and further away from him. It grew smaller and smaller as it moved, making its way to the edge of infinity. There, Jax saw it—a silhouette more frightening than the darkness itself.

A being stood at the edge of everything, outlined by soft golden light, its body so massive that it filled more than just his vision, and yet clearly so far from him that he couldn't fathom how it could still appear that big to him.

It was difficult to tell what the silhouette belonged to. Even as Jax looked, it changed shape from a human to… another human? It didn't make sense to Jax, and yet he could instinctively tell the shape was changing to any and all humanoid forms possible.

"YOUR TICKET HAS BEEN VERIFIED, ASCENDANT. WELCOME TO THE CELESTIAL EXPRESS."

Jax now knew the voice belonged to this very silhouette. And as those final words faded away, the silhouette vanished from before him, pushing him back into pure darkness.

Then, a pinprick of light appeared far in the distance. Then another. Then another.

Soon, there were dozens, and before Jax knew it, there were thousands upon thousands of tiny pinpricks of light surrounding him all around, glittering like…

"Stars!" Jax inherently knew what he was looking at.

The stars weren't the end of it; he saw more.

Colorful nebulae. Burning red giants. Pulsars spinning faster than his eyes could ever hope to follow. Exploding supernovas. The bright accretion disks surrounding a supermassive black hole.

Jax saw a galaxy.

And as he watched, it moved away from him, as he moved into the void between galaxies—the empty space that spanned for millions and millions of light-years.

[We are departing from Galaxy 20JC9LX, locally known as the Gormasis Galaxy]

[Next Stop: Galaxy 20JC9LY]

[Estimated Time of Arrival: 90 Minutes]

Jax looked around in surprise. This was a different voice, in that this was no voice at all. It was as if he suddenly knew all of this at once, and yet it also felt like someone clearly read this information to him.

And then he returned to darkness once again.

Jax wondered what he was to do next. Was he going to have to live out the rest of his life in this darkness?

90 minutes, he thought. Maybe he could see the next galaxy in that amount of time. But then, how long was 90 minutes? He had no sense of time, only that time existed.

"Hello!" a chirpy voice called to Jax suddenly, appearing before him in a blue wisp of light.

Jax was taken aback by the sudden light and sound for a moment, but he focused back on it. The wisp zipped around him, even though there was no him at the moment.

"Hello. Who are you?" Jax asked.

"Greetings. I am T-1388C, one of the many helpers in the Celestial Express. I will be your personal helper during your time within the locomotive," the wisp said.

Jax paused for a moment. "My helper? Can you tell me what's going on?"

"Of course," the wisp answered in a bright voice, one that sounded feminine to Jax. "Shall we get going?"

"Where are we going?" Jax asked. "Or rather, where are we even?"

The wisp stopped flying, and Jax could almost tell it was facing him at the moment. "Do you have no memories?"

Jax shook his head at first, before realizing he had no head. "No," he quickly answered. "I only remember a few things."

"Then you chose to have your memories erased before coming here. That's perfectly fine. Many who come here want to change their life, so they leave behind memories of the place they came from."

Jax frowned. Had he really chosen to erase his memories of where he came from? Why did he? And why did this strong desire to save someone persist within him?

"So, if I left my previous world, where did I come?"

The wisp glowed slightly brighter all of a sudden as its voice gained an extra bit of chirpiness. "You are in the Celestial Express, the only locomotive in the universe to change the futures of the lucky few, one galaxy at a time."

The speech sounded very much rehearsed.

"Locomotive? So, like a train?" Jax asked.

"Yes. You are currently in the place we call the Station. From here, we determine whether you are a Passenger or a Settler."

"A what?" Jax asked.

"Passenger or Settler. Basically, figuring out whether you are going somewhere else or if you will be staying within the Celestial Express for the rest of time. May I see your ticket, please?"

"I don't have one," Jax answered.

He felt something pulse through him, but nothing happened. The pulse appeared again, and yet nothing came out.

"Huh?" The wisp exclaimed in surprise. "That's weird. You really don't have a ticket. How did you get to the Station without a ticket?"

"I think I had a ticket before," Jax said. "But that thing already took it."

"That thing? Did you have a helper before me? I should be the first to get here."

"I don't know if he was a helper. He looked different from you. And he called himself something else. He called himself… what was it… A Navigator."

The wisp froze in the void, the light within it not fluctuating at all. Even as Jax waited for it to say something, it didn't.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Did you just say Navigator?" the wisp asked again, its light seemingly dimming.

"Yes, that large silhouette thing. Is that the Navigator?" Jax asked.

The voice delayed once again.

"You… You spoke to the Navigator?"

"Yes. Why? Is that unusual?"

"Unusual? It's downright impossible."

The wisp fluttered around for a while before saying, "One moment!" Then it completely vanished.

With even that light gone, Jax was thrown back into the void. Only this time, he didn't feel that scared. Jax didn't know how long a moment was, but the wisp did return.

"Jax, if you were really greeted by the Navigator, he should have called you something specific—not a Passenger or Settler. Do you remember what it was?" The wisp sounded so much more serious this time around.

"Is everything alright?" he asked.

"Please, answer me."

Jax thought for a bit, trying to remember back to the Navigator. "Yes, I do remember. It was something like… Ascended? No, Ascendant. That's it. He called me an Ascendant."

The wisp gasped, its light fluctuating heavily for a brief period before calming down.

"What's an Ascendant?" Jax asked, curious.

"Someone who made a wish," the wisp quickly answered. "Someone who doesn't want to live here or go somewhere else. You are someone who came to the Celestial Express for a single reason—a single wish. Should you meet the Navigator again, he will fulfill your wish."

Jax felt a stir within him at this time. A wish… he thought. He had a wish, a great desire. Could this desire of his really be fulfilled?

"How do I meet the Navigator again?" Jax asked.

"You cannot. Not so easily," the wisp answered. "There are ten Carriages on the Celestial Express. Once you leave the Station, you will arrive on the tenth Carriage. The Navigator lies beyond the first Carriage. To meet the Navigator, you will have to ascend from the last Carriage all the way to the first, and then beyond. Once you do, finally, your wish can come true."

The surprise was strong within Jax, but there was also a hint of doubt.

"Can the Navigator really fulfill my wish? Is he that strong?" he asked.

The wisp let the silence linger for just a tad too long before answering.

"The Navigator is just what he likes to call himself and what we all call him for just that reason. If not for that, we would be referring to him by another certain name."

"God."

"God?!" Jax exclaimed. "Gods are real?"

"They are very real. Some call them Gods, some call them Wills. Some call them Divinities. Most of them are the manifestations of planets, constellations, or even galaxies. The larger the celestial body, the stronger the God."

Jax took in that information with great surprise. He found it difficult to believe that Gods were real for some reason. Did he not believe in Gods before this?

"And the Navigator is a God too? What is he the manifestation of? This train?" he asked.

"No, he is a manifestation of something way bigger than just this small locomotive," the wisp answered.

Jax was curious now. "What then? A constellation? A nebula? A galaxy?"

"No, he is the manifestation of the entire universe. He is what they call a Universal Will."

"The God of the Universe…" Jax muttered silently.

It took Jax a long time to take it all in. He could not believe that he had come to this place in order to meet a God. He was even more surprised at what the wisp had said. His wish—his strong desire to save someone—could be fulfilled. All he had to do was meet that enormous figure from before once again.

"Alright," Jax said slowly. "Let's go meet God."