{FATAL DAMAGE IMMINENT}
They say that the moment before you die, life flashes before your eyes.
No one ever told me it would be all of them.
No one told me the memories would crackle like static, either.
Neither had they told me that eldritch error messages would interrupt my thoughts, nor warned me of the increasingly cryptic alerts skittering across my soul like deep-web crawlers.
But here I was.
Laid out on the top floor of the Spire, watching my doom draw close.
It was veiled in neon electricity, and smiled as if it knew me.
Another memory rolled in like an electric storm, forestalling the end.
It buzzed, hissed, and whined like an old TV struggling to connect to the last remaining channel until it burst into clarity with a pop.
It echoed like a bass drum as it stretched time to a crawl.
> Date: 16.4.1982
> Location: Mömbris-Gunzenbach Elementary School, Bavaria, Germany, Earth.
>
> “Samantha Feirer!” my teacher yells, and I really don’t get why.
> “He was being mean to Jenny!”
> “We do not punch the other children in school!”
> “Okay,” I say, even though that’s kind of a dumb rule.
> “Now apologize to Kevin.”
> “Sorry, Kevin. Next time, I will punch you after school.”
Like a portentous outline revealed by a flash of lightning, otherworldly code followed in memory’s wake.
{FATAL DAMAGE IMMINENT}
{PRIORITIZING DEFENSIVE SYSTEMS…}
{ANALYSIS:}
{SYSTEM 1: DISABLED}
{SYSTEM 2: OFFLINE}
{SYST(M 3: ERROR - INSUFFICIENT RESOURCES}
{SYSTEM 4: OFFLINE}
{S%STEM 5: OFF-
You’d think that after three lives and at least one death (that I knew for certain), I’d get used to it.
Not the code, not the memories.
Death.
Smiling like an old friend after stabbing you in the back.
Buzz, whine, hiss; crackle, snap, pop.
Another memory rolled in.
> Date: 28.8.2017
> Location: Alex-Rook Tower, Berlin, Germany, Earth.
>
> “…and that’s everything from our side. Any further questions?”
> The conference room stays quiet, warmed by the smiles and satisfied shaking of heads.
> “Any questions from chat, then?” I ask, my own smile widening as the silence stretches on.
> “Then I think we’re ready for the go-live. Hit us, Robert!”
> When our developer intern slams his hand on the big red button and the user counter goes green, everyone in the room—even the gray-haired men in suits—erupts in cheers.
> After the champagne has been flowing for more than half an hour, my CEO saunters over.
> “Sam—No, Dagger! Hero of the year!” he bellows, and offers me a hug.
> I turn it down with a grin.
> “Are you sure we can’t keep you?” he asks.
> “Sorry Daniel,” I say, putting a strand of loose hair behind my ear. My earrings, little knives, jingle when I brush past them. “But running my own company in Silicon Valley, even just for a sabbatical… That’s not an offer a woman can turn down.”
> Then my grin widens.
> “Besides, I think it’s time I started a new life. You know, go live somewhere where people don’t give me weapon-related nicknames.”
Oh yeah, I remembered that.
That had been a couple of weeks before the plane crash.
//override
Save yourself,
{Welcome, Admin.}
Little Hailsbringer.
I’d been full of hope, brimming with ambition.
I thought I’d been prepared.
Then again, I vividly remembered how I’d died just a couple of days later, so I should know that there is no preparing for death.
It comes and whisks you away, like a dream.
It’s just that if you’re unlucky, you get to wake up again.
Hiss.
Crackle.
Pop.
> Date: 1.1.0 After Arrival (4228 Local Time Calendar) - Arrival Day
> Location: “The Little Forest”, 60 Kilometers north of Peruti, Kingdom of Wexler, Tobes.
>
> For a second before I open my eyes, I dream of traveling by plane and crashing into the ocean.
> I wake with a start; I, can still taste the saltwater on my lips, and feel the weight of the ocean crushing me. I take a deep breath, expecting my lungs to fill with water again.
> Then I remember.
> I died. I really died. I met an angel. Or something that claimed to be an angel. I got a free wish, and…
> I’m still not sure what happened was real. But instead of being trapped in a plane, sinking into the Atlantic, I’m lying in a forest glade, staring up at a foreign night sky. The stars flood the void with their cold light, and the thin fabric of the robes I’m wearing instead of my favorite suit can’t ward off the chill.
> However, it’s not the clothes I’m wearing, the foreign trees surrounding me, or the strange quality of the stars above which drives home the reality of my situation. It’s the enormous, unknowable, thrumming power that fills every fiber of my being, demanding to be used.
Nothing could have prepared me for that day. A couple of minutes later, the wolves had come rushing out of the forest. A minute after that, I spawned my first monster. Seconds after that, I’d advanced my first weapon, and killed it.
Nothing in the world could prepare you for that.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
For what it feels like to wield a sliver of creation itself.
Still, it would have been nice to know what was coming.
I could have made plans, at least.
//auxiliamini
{Initializing the Ouroboros Sequence…}
{Attuning the Koschei Frequencies…}
{Whispering the Ankh Protocols…}
{Done.}
Just as I wished I could have made plans for this.
Because I’d lived three lives, and that’s a fuckton of memories to go through.
I shouldn’t complain, though. They were good lives, mostly, and besides, three is far more than most people get.
Hiss.
Crackle.
Pop.
> Date: 10.10.23 AA (4228 LTC)
> Location: “The Final Fields”, 120 kilometers east of Novus Apex, Holy Republic of Samantha the Torchbearer and her Apostles, Tobes
>
> “Sam, catch!”
> I’m still dizzy from falling on my back, but I twist and snatch the pistol Lorelye has tossed toward me out of the air. I waste no time leveling it at the wyrm charging toward me and release a barrage of superheated plasma straight into its face. The first couple of shots bounce off its hexbreaker shield, but the third breaks through and sinks deep into its skull.
> I toss back the gun and grab my Torch from where I’d dropped it. I ignite it with a mental command and the weapon bursts into blue-white flames, just in time to parry an overhead strike from the wyrm’s rider.
> I grunt at the impact and am nearly blinded by the light bursting from his sword. The hexbreaker runes on his sword try to overpower the firewall in my weapon, but it’s the most advanced piece of tech in the world. He’d have a better chance boiling the ocean with a lighter.
> Undeterred, the Paladin bears down with his entire weight, rune-covered plate and all. The servos in my power armor start screaming under the stress.
> I inhale sharply, then breathe more of my Wish into the armor, and it begins shifting under the caress of divine power. Slowly the weight lessens, and I start pushing back.
> With panic in his eyes, the Hexhunter punches me in the face and black stars dance in the void. I shake my head just in time to see his sword held in a two-handed grip, lancing toward my face.
> “Die, Tyrant!” he screams, spittle flying from his mouth. Then his head explodes to the side, and the sword sinks into the ground a millimeter beside my left ear.
> “No, you!” Lorelye laughs.
> Then, still over 50 meters away and steeped in death, she blows the smoke off the barrel of her pistol.
She’d always been a fighter, Lorelye.
I still remembered that fight in particular, for some reason.
That’d been the last fight before we reached the safety of our capital.
A couple of weeks later, the Mage Lords had brought their Griphons, Dragons, and Siege Trolls to our gates.
A couple of weeks after that, the capital laid in ruins, its safety was gone, and Lorelye was dead.
She’d been one of the last ones to die.
And she only got one life.
Like all my friends.
Unlike me.
{R3ST4RTINX…}
{D9NE.}
I’d tried to bring them back, of course.
But there are some things not even miracle-essence reactors and thaumic memory matrixes can fix.
Hiss. Crackle. Pop.
> Date: 10.3.25 AA (4228 LTC)
> Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress, [REDACTED], Holy Republic of Samantha the Torchbearer and her Apostles, Tobes
>
> “God, I wish Vintas was here,” I groan quietly.
> I’m leaning over the plans for Project Iron Light.
> Our salvation, our one chance for vengeance, our last hope.
> And a fucking nightmare to build.
> It’s like assembling a quantum computer, but all the cables are unlabeled and the instructions written in spoken-word poetry.
> Worst of all, everything you don’t understand has to be made out of magic.
> Magic that can get you killed, or worse.
> “Vintas would be able to make sense of this bullshit,” I say quietly.
> Chris squeezes my arm and says nothing. Fair enough. After all, what is there to say? They’re dead. They’re all dead. I failed them all, even Chris. But that’s a different story.
> “We’ll make the Mages pay, Sam,” Chris says.
> My rage boils so hot it makes me want to scream.
> “You fucking bet we will.”
Cura was long offline, and the fucker had gone for Ardor next.
I could no longer see what was coming.
The memories came faster now, filling the void.
There was barely a second to think between them and the code.
{F4TAL DAhAGE IM*INE#T}
{DE-PRIORITIZING DIAGNOSTICS}
{PRIORITIZING MANEUVERSFFATALDAMAGERECKGASDJFGHGSDFGTHSD}
Perhaps that was a sign.
Hiss. Crackle. Pop.
A sign saying it wouldn’t be long now.
> There’s a man with deep brown eyes, and a city on fire.
{PRI0RIT1ZinG DATA REC(V&RY…}
I wasn’t afraid.
Dying wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be.
I had promises to keep.
But while there was no way I could fit death into my busy schedule, a small, scared part of me begged that this was a sign and it meant something.
A sign that if I died, this time at least, it would stick.
> There’s a young woman with long, brown hair. Her jaw clenches as she empties mag after mag into the tide of robots swarming toward her through the corridor.
{At1emp*ing to f3tch log 1 of ERROR…}
After all, I’d lived three lives and died at least once.
> There’s a girl with a baton. It’s crackling with purple energy, and flashes of blinding light crack through the darkness whenever she finds a weak spot between plates of mass-manufactured steel. Another robot finds an opening, seizes it. Scores a gash on the girl’s abdomen. She screams in fury and pain but does not let up her assault.
{A&tempt1ng to fetch LoG 2 of ERROR…}
So I knew that death is not the worst thing that can happen to you.
> There’s a young b—
{AtteXpting to fetGh LXg 3 of—
{Succe0s.}
It’s being reborn.
{Salve Salvatrix.}