Give me liberty or give me death
- Patrick Henry -
Darkness is all I can see. It’s strange, there are no sensations, no breeze rustling my hair, no pain besides my anguish. Empty of reason to exist, yet I persist. Why? I try to look around but there is nothing, until some kind of screen forms into existence. I recognize it immediately as one of the System’s Interface screens. Its text box has an obvious message typed across it.
[ You have died. ]
No shit. Can’t believe it keeps fucking with us after we die though, that’s just next level fucked up. What happens next though? Do I get to see everyone again? Cortez, Tran, Barlow, Mwangi… the memory burns a heart that is not there. Trying to distract my grief, I start filling my thoughts with questions. Where does it send us? Do we just blip out of existence… is there anything beyond life? A new box appears.
[ Goodbye. ]
If I could put up my middle fingers I would. Fuck the system. Fuck all of its rules. The screen flickers. Something strange is moving on the edge of it. Something familiar. Black and red envelop the glowing text box. Just like when the quest changed, when we first entered the Gate.
[ System Offline… Error… ]
The text box shifts back to white and blue. Strange. New letters forming words roll across it rapidly.
[ System initializing… Success ]
[ Verifying User… Success ]
[ Verifying Death Certificate… Error… Error… ]
What the fuck… the text flashes red and a swell of heat fills me.
[ Unknown entity detected… Error… ]
[ Override... Accepted ]
[ System compromise detected… Error ]
The heat becomes more and more, the sensation the only thing telling me it’s real. The screen turns blue again. The heat dissipates. Nothingness again. Until the screen flickers with golden letters.
[ New System Commands… Accepted ]
[ Booting Aegis Protocol… Success ]
[ Corrupted Entity Detected… Error ]
Red again, flashing red text, thousands upon thousands of lines of freaky ass numbers and letters scrolling across the screen. There are strange noises, like words being compressed over a thousand times and spoken in single syllables… gold lettering, and then it shifts to blue again. Everything returns to placid. Empty of feeling.
[ Parameters Adjusting… Success ]
[ Identifying New User… Novak, Jimmy ]
[ SoulAnchor… Compromised ]
[ Status… Unknown ]
[ Classification… Unbound ]
[ New Skill Detected… Respec on Death ]
[ Skill Level… One ]
[ Alerting Pantheons… Error… Error…]
[ System Critical Failure… Error… Error… Error… ]
What the fuck is Respec on Death? The red lines of code begin flickering and expanding outside of my field of vision. Heat… ripping, tearing, searing fucking pain all over me. Cracks form in the periphery of my vision, thousands upon thousands of lines of code shuffling every direction, fracturing and splitting. Then suddenly a pulse… something not like a machine… something that drips with authority.
Slowly the cracks seal and again as the golden letters scrawl, then it goes blue… what the fuck is going on?
[ Command Override… Accepted ]
[ Redacting… Success ]
[ Command Sequences… Accepted ]
[ System initializing… Success ]
[ Welcome New User… Novak, Jimmy ]
[ Lifesigns… None ]
[ Reboot Protocol… Success ]
[ Respec on Death…Error…Error… ]
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
[ Command override… Accepted ]
[ Respec on Death… Success ]
[ Activation Sequence… Beginning… ]
The text box disappears. Darkness.
***
Light blossoms after what felt like an eternity. A single text box. It takes me a moment, but I realize that I have a body now, not my normal one, but some kind of ethereal one.
[ Respec on Death ]
Another box appears below it, then another.
[ Activate? ]
[ Yes ]
My hand moves toward the screen. But it falls back to my side, what’s the point? Why ask if there is no choice? What does it even do? It won’t bring back… my head slumps, even without a real heart, I feel the pain. Echoing across time. I wish I could go back. Just one more chance to see them.
No. Fuck activating anything. Turning from the text box, I move, stepping upon endless seas of black stone, polished so smooth that I can see the ethereal shadow of my former self. Starlight shifts above me endlessly in a cacophony of colors and patterns.
***
The box appears again after a time. I don’t know how far I’ve walked, and I don’t care. Something is different about the box this time though.
[ Respec on Death ]
[ Activate? ]
[ Yes / No ]
[ Note: Not activating will result in immediate termination. ]
Fuck the system.
Continuing my walk, the scenery begins to change, the black stone has a slight glow, smoke or mist surrounds me, I’m not sure which. Every step I take, feels deliberate, like I’m carving a new path. Perhaps at the edge of existence I will find solace. My legs continue. There are no muscles in them, no weariness, no need to stop. Keep walking. It’s the only thing that keeps my mind from shattering.
***
Time passes, I don’t know how much. The box appears again.
[ Respec on Death ]
[ Activate? ]
[ Yes / No / Error ]
[ Note: Error… Error… Error… ]
A third choice? Something tells me I should pick it, besides the golden letters around the error choice. Something deep within the etherealness of whatever the fuck I am now. How much longer can the steps toward oblivion quell the tide of grief in me? Would it not be better to move forward? Maybe I’ll see them on the other side of whatever the system has planned. The thoughts of those I have lost are suffocating. My finger raises up towards the error. The unknown path. As soon as I click it, light explodes all around me. Multiple new text boxes appear with scrolling codes that snap back and forth, red and black crawling across them until it becomes golden letters again.
[ Welcome to the Custom Respec on Death System ]
[ Begin? ]
It doesn’t wait for me to say yes, it just starts.
[ Rolling death penalty… Success ]
A strange positive tone plays, like some kind of trumpet fanfare, as though I’ve gotten a prize or something.
[ Congratulations… No penalty applied ]
[ Rerolling attribute points… Success ]
[ Rerolling class based on attributes… Success ]
[ Rolling for skills… One skill retained from previous class ]
What does it mean one skill retained? What skill? What is all of this?
[ Rolling for Legacy Skill Evolutions… Failure ]
[ Rolling for… Error… Locked… ]
[ Rolling for… Error… Locked… ]
Another tone plays, like those you lost tones.
[ Respec on Death… Successful rerolls… ]
[ New status board ready ]
A large text box pulls up my stat sheet.
Name: Jimmy Novak
Race: Human
Class: Witherbrand
Subclass: None
Level: 7
Titles: Pending
Strength: 14
Dexterity: 16
Constitution: 12
Intelligence: 14
Wisdom: 10
Charisma: 10
Luck: 21
What’s a Witherbrand? What happened to my stats? Those don’t even add up to how many I had before. Luck 21? Titles pending?
[ Respec on Death sequencing complete… Returning User… ]
[ Time and Space… Error ]
[ Recalibrating… Success ]
[ Good Luck… ]
Darkness again, then suddenly everything changes. Rupturing the nothingness. Like a storm, reality smashes back into me. I’m in my real body again, Cortez is in my arms… dead. The despair creeps across me. Something pulls my attention forcefully from my grief, the woman depicted in the statue, she stands before me, but something is off. She is still, but everything else is moving slow at first, then faster and faster. Her eyes follow me as the world reshapes.
Time is… reversing, I can’t move against it. Dust plumes back into shape, forming the Lich upon his knees. Time moves quicker again, peeling back so fast that everything becomes a blur. Blood rolling back into people’s bodies, heads and limbs reattaching. Cortez… alive again… standing now.
Time ebbs, slowing then racing, like a heartbeat. Barlow moving backwards before he found Gaspers, Tran… his body uncleaving. Time’s tempo rocks faster. Until it slows, through my eyes, I see the strange golden coin that was in the pool of water beneath the statue. The woman, she walks through time, looking at the coin, then looking at me, time pulling the coin back into the waters, and having me on my knees praying to her.
Time freezes, the woman, she stands over me. Tracing her hand across my shoulders, rippling reality. Then suddenly, yet again, time resumes moving backwards, at a breakneck pace until we are back at the castle. I see Lieutenant Tenny, times reversal replaying all of her suffering. Why is this happening, is the system torturing me? Wishing to show me the despair from the beginning again? So I can watch everyone die again and again in repeat?
The woman turns to me, as though she can feel my animosity, she tilts her head at me, but says nothing, time speeds up again. Bringing me back to Brussels, sealing his wound, it blurs further next. Almost to when we first arrived, when Sergeant First Class Romero was skewered by the undead. It moves past that, right up to the moment I arrived through the gate. Time stops. The woman traces around me, each step somehow more graceful than the last, she stops when she is in front of me. A warm smile upon her face, a single finger from her hand moves to my lips, one that spells silence. Her lips do not move, but I hear her inside my head somehow.
What has been seen cannot be spoken
A warm breeze strikes my face suddenly, time… it’s moving forward, my body is no longer trapped. Looking around, the woman is gone. I stagger forward, but my legs fail, sending me to my knees in the tall wheat field, overcome with what I have seen. I can scarcely breathe. My eyes look around for them, for Tran and Barlow.
“Jimmy?” Barlow says, coming to my side.
His voice makes the pain flash more, until it becomes relief. Fuck it’s good to hear his voice.
“Yo, what the fuck?” Tran asks, kneeling next to me, pulling Barlow so other people can’t see me crying.
“You okay Jimmy?” Barlow asks, grasping my shoulder firmly.
“I… we…” the rest of the words don’t come, only the tears.
“Relax brother,” Barlow says, rubbing my shoulder, “Take your time.”
Tran puts his hand on my other shoulder in support.
I hear a familiar conversation around us through the tall stalks of wheat… people talking about the Gate Quest. My heart plummets as I get the notification.
[ Quest: Herb Gathering ]
Please… not again.
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