CHAPTER 13

“Are you done puking yet?”

“Screw you, man. That was fuckin’ gross.”

“We’ve seen him die multiple times, but a little cut on his side makes you throw up your microwave peanut butter and bean burrito?”

“Yeah, we’ve seen him die, but we didn’t actually have to SEE anything!”

“What about when the dire bear almost tore his arm off?”

“Well, I…”

*unintelligible*

“What?”

“I said ‘I closed my eyes,’ ok? I don’t do blood, man!”

“It’s just a video game. You signed on to monitor someone who’s had his brain stabbed with multiple 6-inch electrodes, his all-but-corpse body packed into a vat of nutrient-rich fluids, and his vitals tracked via half a dozen 65” monitors, but you throw up when a little blood appears on the screen?”

“Uh, no, huh-uh, no, they hired YOU to do the wet work, they hired ME to watch someone play a video game, track his progress, and watch what kind of game he comes up with! You’re the doctor, I’m the gamer!”

“Ah yes, you and your ‘Professional Entertainment and Neuronet Inspection Specialist’ certification. Even saying it sounds ridiculous. Isn’t there an acron…. Oh good Lord. Really?”

“Sorry, there was just no way to shorten it!”

*explosive laughter*

“How the hell did you get past the psych eval?”

The mage’s thin, snide voice drifts to me once more over the rocks. “How many can you break before they break you?” There’s a high-pitched tittering sound, and I realize the little freak is laughing. “I’m standing in the middle of a graveyard, with dozens, possibly even a hundred more soldiers just waiting patiently at my beck and call.” The voice lowers, and I have to strain to hear his last words. “How long do you think you can last?”

A chill runs through my body as I understand his play. I glance at my health globe, and it’s barely ticked back up to half. The longer I take, the more undead he can raise. He is obviously a higher level than I was since he can raise four at a time, and I bet his cooldown is reduced as well. And mana won’t be an issue for him either, as I’m sure he’s already regenerated almost to full. He could very well be ready to raise four more as soon as I finish these off.

A sidelong glance at the blood running down my leg has me shaking my head. My health globe is still slowly filling up, but there is too much emphasis on the word “slowly” for my liking.

*If* I can finish these guys off, I silently amend.

My brain works in overdrive as the four red dots come at me from the other side of the rock, splitting up into pairs again. Because I had to come halfway and meet the second group last time, I’m back to leaning against the middle of the rock formation with about 5 feet of protection on either side. Can’t go right, can’t go left. I give my right arm an experimental shoulder roll, testing the flexibility and pain level on my ribcage, and decide I can ignore it. It’s either that or die.

Right as the pairs of skeletons round each side of my trusty boulder friend, I push off from the rocks for three or four steps, then turn and take a running leap at the rock formation. My left hand lets go of the strap on the shield and grabs a quick handhold on the rock face. I grunt in pain as I pull myself up to a small foothold, then I scramble up the rest of the way.

Fuck it, I’m going full on Sylvester Stallone.

I go over the top.

I hear the clang of iron on rocks behind me as I clear the crest of the boulder, and the necromancer’s eyes widen with shock. In a move that would make Captain America proud, I leap off the top and sling my loosened shield at the necromancer’s surprised face. With a result that would make him facepalm, however, the forearm strap gets tangled up on my scaled gauntlet and falls harmlessly to the side. I drop the remaining 10 feet to the ground with a thud.

It’s not a complete fumble, but it sure as hell ain’t no superhero landing, either.

I’m sure that ruptured something, I wince as pain blazes again in my side, but I ignore it. At least I stayed on my feet, I think as I stagger up into a run at the caster.

Even though it never even left the launching pad, the shield “attack” still had the desired effect. His eyes squint shut involuntarily, and he throws his hands up to defend against the makeshift missile. Whatever nasty-ass spell he had been readying to dissolve me with fizzles out in a rather spectacular fashion. An invisible, rippling shockwave centered around him pulses outward, and he grabs both sides of his head in pain. A strangled gasp escapes his lungs as his back arches and he falls to one knee.

What the hell was that? I wonder. Spell backlash?

Whatever the cause for his agony, I take the intervening four or five steps to evaluate my situation. I have no shield to bull rush him with, my ribs are screaming at me, and I know any attack I try with my borrowed mace at the moment would probably just tickle him, so I do the only thing I can think of. Using my forward momentum to my advantage, I run right at him. At the last second I stutter my steps to line it up just right, and my iron-plated knee pad comes up right under his chin.

There is a crunching sound, like stepping on dried twigs, and I see fragments of teeth and blood spray as his jaw slams shut.

My headlong rush carries me past his flopping figure, and I hear a muffled scream behind me. My shoulder slams into one of the teetering stone posts on the edge of the graveyard, and I wheel back on him. Judging from the horrible, wet sounds coming from beneath his hands, whatever backlash he had from that disrupted spell must feel like a papercut compared to this. He thrashes around on the ground with his hands clamped over his face, sobbing and choking on blood. As I approach him, I see the four skeletons come charging back around the rock formation, teeth clacking together as they run almost in mockery of their master’s injury.

If I cut off the head, the body dies, I coldly tell myself. I stagger over to his agonized form and bring the mace down heavily across the back of the hands covering his destroyed mouth. There is another sickening crunch, and then another as I swing again, ignoring my own pain. I glance up from the twitching form below me just as I am violently knocked off my feet by nearly a hundred pounds of enchanted, pissed-off skeleton bones. My head strikes something hard and unmoving, and my world goes dark.

My eyes snap open in panic, my breath catches in my throat, and the sounds of nature reverberate all around me.

For about one one-hundredth of a second.

I lunge up from the ground, fury driving me nearly to my feet, but instead I get tangled up in what feels like dozens of sticks covering me. I fall back with a clatter, momentarily stunned.

I look around in confusion, not sure why I’m in a graveyard as opposed to the character generation camp. The now-familiar weight of my armor is still present, however. Ok, so apparently I didn’t die.

After gathering my bearings, I look around at the surrounding headstones and scattered bones I was piled up under. The full memory of the battle hits me, and I gently lift my right arm and sneak a peek at my ribcage, amazed to see that the pain is...gone. Blood still covers the lower half of my hip, but it’s mostly dried into a sticky paste. The armor itself is rent in a foot-long gash, exposing a mass of blood-covered skin. I gingerly spread the ruined armor apart to check on the wound, but all I find under more dried, sticky blood is a faint pink scar where before was a gruesome gash.

A quick inventory of my health, mana, and stamina indicators show me I have been out for quite some time. My stamina was only moderately low from what I remember after my frantic climb and charge off the rock, but my health globe was just barely at half. It’s now full, which means I’ve been out for at least 8-10 minutes if my regeneration rate is about 9 points per minute. Longer, if my armor is any indication. There are other rents and dents in my armor, ones I don’t remember having before, but no wounds. The bony bastards must have gotten a few hits in before their master finally died. I look over at the corpse, and quickly wish I hadn’t. I’m amazed he lasted that long, considering I turned his head into a Gallegher routine.

Taking care to not slip on the hundreds of bones laying around me, I stand up. I imagine that must have been odd to watch, four skeletons wailing away on my prone form, then *poof*, pile-o-bones. I grab what loot I can from the skeletons, which amounts to just a few copper coins. I leave the worn weapons seeing as they aren’t much better than my own, but I keep the trusty mace I pummeled the skeletons with in my inventory. That’ll come in handy if I run to any more of them.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

After stalling as much as I can, I sigh heavily and turn towards the crumpled, black-robed form on the ground. I pointedly stare at his feet so I can avoid looking at the ruin of a face that I created.

“So,” I address myself bluntly, “That’s two I’ve killed.” An unpleasant silence hangs over me before my inner self-defense mechanism kicks in. “This guy was trying to kill me, though. He sent his little bony minions after me, and he wouldn’t have stopped!” I begin to pace, a familiar anger flaring up in me. I look over at the rumpled body again before pausing. “Why am I so angry? I’m alive, he’s dead. Why do I have to justify to myself that I survived and he didn’t?” I chuckle and shake my head. “I should be happy, I’m lucky to be alive!” I throw my arms out in exaltation, but it’s an empty gesture and I know it. I’m still furious, and now I feel foolish on top of that.

Levering my bulk onto a particularly solid headstone, my brain starts to work in overdrive. “What the hell is wrong with me? It’s only a video game, I’ve probably killed a million people like him before.”

I dismiss the thought as immediately as it is finished. “No, a video game is something you can get up from and go take a piss while you place the world on hold. A video game is not something where you feel the blade enter your body, where you feel each bite from….” I have to pause and shudder at the memories of my previous lives. “No, this isn’t a video game. Not any more.”

“Ok,” I sigh, trying to sort out my thoughts, “yes, I killed another person, but it was self-defense.”

Another thought hits me and I reach up to rub my temples with both hands. “Or is it because I’m a fighter class, and that’s what I do? I’m a killer, right?” Frustration flares back up, and I exhale angrily, trying to dismiss the persistent emotion from my mind.

An exercise my old school guidance counselor used to try to get me to do surfaces from the depths of my past. “When you can’t find the answer out in the world, you have to look inside. Ask yourself ‘why?’” she would tell me in her syrupy-sweet voice.

I used to think she was nuts. I remember one time, on a particularly bad day, I shot back, “How the hell am I going to get an answer from talking to myself? I’m not crazy, if I had the answer, I wouldn’t need to ask myself the question!”

She just smiled her annoyingly serene smile and replied, “It’s ok to talk to yourself. It’s even ok to answer yourself. It’s when you don’t listen to yourself that you will find yourself in the biggest trouble.”

A sigh escapes my lips, and I look up into the dappled sky above. “Ok, I’ll bite. Why?” My arms flop up halfway, then land with a meaty thunk on my thighs. “I won the battle, why am I not happy?”

I send an emotional probe into my mind, and the first thing I find is anger. “No surprise there,” I wryly concede. Anger at my parents, anger at this necromancer, anger at the world for pushing me down the path of self-destruction that led me to my current predicament.

Might as well address the first question first.

“Why am I angry at my parents?”

Because they abandoned you, shithead.

“No, that’s too easy,” I blurt out. “My mom left my dad because he was a drunk, she didn’t leave me.”

She could have taken you. What kind of mother leaves a child with a drunk?

“Yes, she could have taken me.” I snort loudly, “She probably should have taken me.” I stand up and begin pacing again. “Why didn’t she take me?”

Having given over to the insane fact that I’m having a conversation with myself in the middle of a graveyard over the dead body of a man I just killed with a mace, I commit myself fully.

I wrack my brain for memories of her, and I realize, possibly for the first time, that I can’t remember her face. I have faint, generic memories, a couple pictures my old man hid in his dresser, and faded images of a life dreamt of in the innocence of my youth. But no recollections of her smile, the smell of her hair, her tucking me in at night. All I remember is the yelling, the arguments. “Maybe I would have reminded her of him. Maybe she had her own demons. Hell, maybe she just wasn’t a nice person!”

Maybe she didn’t love you.

I pause in my pacing, my stomach churning with the realization. Something hardens within me, and I say, “Well then that’s her fault, not mine. I was just a kid, I never did anything to deserve that.” I shrug as I walk back and forth, throwing my arms out to the side. “I can be sad, but there’s no point in hating a person that never loved me.” I pick up my pace again, not caring if I’m right or wrong, just satisfied with the closure in whatever form it may take.

“Why am I mad at my dad?”

Your dad was an asshole.

Once again, something doesn’t fit there. I want to agree, to shuffle off the blame again, but.... “No, that’s too easy, too. As much as I resented him, as much as I hated my life, as much as I just wanted him to take me to the park and throw a football, he was never an asshole. He was a drunk, but he never laid hands on me.” Images flashed through my head at the speed of light. All those trips to birthday parties where I wasn’t wanted, all the apologies as I carried his sloppy ass to bed, him wondering if I’d eaten dinner yet. “Hell, even the trip to the park that day, he was trying.”

As I say that out loud, something dawns on me. “He didn’t know how to be a dad.” I put my hands on my hips, and my head drops. “He had no idea what to do. He was just a guy abandoned by his wife with no idea how to handle a kid. Maybe he thought I wanted to go to those parties, he could have easily ignored the invitations. He could have told me to go to my room instead of taking me to the park, he didn’t have to ask me if I’d had dinner when I carried him to bed.”

Then why did he turn to alcohol? Why was he always drunk?

“I thought I was supposed to be asking the questions here.”

Answer the damn question. Why was he always drunk?

“Because he drank?”

That’s a copout answer and you know it, you pussy.

“You’re kind of a dick, you know that?”

Takes one to know one.

I raise one eyebrow and smirk humorlessly in defeat. “What kind of man loses an argument with himself?” I sigh heavily again and answer, “He was drunk all the time because he was sad. His wife left him, his kid hated him, he was a failure at everything.”

Why. Was. He. Always. Drunk? I feel my heart begin beating heavily in my ears, like knocking on a door.

“I don’t know, because his life was shit!” I shout out in frustration. “He was a coward who couldn’t handle his mistakes!”

WHY WAS HE ALWAYS DRUNK? My inner voice cracks out at me like a whip.

The pounding in my head increases, someone desperately, frantically pounding on that door. “Because he screwed up so much! Because he was weak!”

WHY WAS HE ALWAYS DRUNK? This time, my inner voice roars at me so loudly I pause in my now-frantic pacing.

“BECAUSE HE HATED HIS LIFE AND WANTED OUT!” I scream out finally. “But he was too much of a coward to eat a bullet, so he gave up! On life, on me, on anyone and anything that reminded him of what a complete failure he was at everything! ”

I stand in the middle of the graveyard now, hands clenched into fists, eyes clamped so tight I see stars, and I wait for my inner voice to scream at me again.

Instead, I hear the sound of a door being opened.

The image comes unbidden to my mind, like I’m watching a movie. I’m an unwilling observer in one of the worst days of my life, and I can’t change the channel.

I’m standing by the front door of our dilapidated house, looking back at my old man. I can see the raggedy leather chair from behind, an age-old rerun of Cheers playing in the background. Words come out of my mouth, something about how I’m leaving, and his bleary eyes come around the edge of the headrest to look at me.

But instead of my father’s swollen, red-nosed face and watery, vacant eyes, I see my own face staring back at me.

Panic rises in my throat as I stare, not into my new and improved visage, but my former face, chubby, lumpy, bespectacled, pathetic.

I stagger backwards out of the imaginary doorway and back into Pentamria, only to trip over the shovel the necromancer had been using. Instead of hitting the ground flat, I slam into the edge of the open grave he was digging. I tumble over and down the sloped edge of his hole, finally coming to a bone-jarring halt at the bottom. My shoulder hits something semi-hard, I can only assume the lid to a coffin. There’s a slight give to it, and a musty smell pours from the small crack right by my face. I gag when I realize it’s from the corpse stored within, but I’m too dazed to move, both from the fall and the memories assaulting me from every direction.

Why are you so angry?

The words come gently to my mind, nothing like the raving, lunatic voice that was just screaming inside my head. So gentle, in fact, they almost don’t register. Why are you so angry? it asks again.

“Because...because I hate everyone.” I swallow hard, my voice dry and cracked. “They all abandoned me. They were all...so...”

Why are you so angry? The voice was firmer now, but not unkind.

Now my own voice takes over inside my ravaged psyche. How did I get here? At the bottom of a grave. Had everything become such a cesspool that-

“Huh.” The single syllable huffs out of me like I've been punched in the solar plexus. I see now, far too late, just how desperate I was to escape, to not be...me.

Again my inner voice asks me, One last time. Why are you so angry? Why do you hate your father so much?

“Because I’m him,” I whisper. “I hate my old man because I am him.”

No, you’re not him.

“You’re right,” I mutter into the dirt caked against my face, “I’m not. I’m worse.”

Again that horrible question echoes back to me from my own mind. Why?

“Because at least he tried.” I sigh heavily into the soil, coughing slightly as I inhale more of the musty spores of the corpse mere inches from my face. “He was clueless, but he tried. I was too filled with my own hate to notice. All I saw was what I didn’t have, and I blamed him.” I sluggishly push off from the spongy wooden lid of the coffin below me into a sitting position. I lean wearily against the dirt wall behind me, too weak to even brush the dirt off my sweaty cheeks.

“Weak.” I swallow again, nodding in surrender. “That’s why I hate everyone. Because I’m weak and I give up and run and I hide.” I raise one knee up and prop my elbow on it, closing my eyes in shame. “I’m a coward.”

Why?

“Oh, fuck off!” I yell at myself. Then I chuckle morbidly. “This probably isn’t what my guidance counselor had in mind when she said, ‘It’s ok to talk to yourself.’” I wait a moment before answering. “Fine. I’m a coward because I plugged my fucking brain into a computer game to escape the real world, just like my drunk of a father did with the bottle. I’m a coward because I’ve never stood up for myself. I’m a cowa-”

Then stand up now.

The voice interrupts my train of thought, and I stop. Is that even possible? I think to myself. I open one eye and look around in my little hole, my own personal grave. My eyes come to rest on the exposed section of rotten wood I sit upon.

Do you want to stay in here and die?

“Why not?” I ask with venom, mocking the incessant voice with its own annoying question.

Because all that will happen is you will be reborn in the clearing, and you will start this whole process all over again.

It starts as a snort, then turns into a chuckle, then a laugh. Thankfully it doesn’t last too long, because any more time sitting in a grave laughing will cause one to question one’s own sanity, but it does become uncomfortable. Emotionally and physically.

My mirthless humor trails off into a falsetto “hoo,” and I shift my weight to stand. “Fine. I’m up," I say simply. "Now what?”

Climb out.

Mechanically, I begin to claw my way out from the open grave until my entire body clears the hole. Unsurprisingly, the air is much cleaner, much sweeter up here.

“Ok,” I call out a little louder than I need to, “what now?” I look around, throwing my hands up again before letting them drop back to my sides.

That’s up to you.