We coexisted in the cavernous expanse enveloped in a silence, both comforting and unnerving. The new options had left me reeling both emotionally and physically — it was unexpected, and I didn’t like that. Early on, whilst I was being acclimatised to the system of rebirth, I would unlock new “life options” progressively as I experienced different lives. It was done this way, Mags had explained, to lessen the overload of information for new reincarnators. I took a breath and squashed the uncomfortable emotions down.

“Mags, thank you.” I broke the peaceable silence with a feeling of warmth for the massive, yet gentle, being. “I appreciate you shared the options with me. You could have easily kept them to yourself.”

Lowering his mysterious clipboard, Mags raised a scale-ridged brow, humming out a sound that resonated with appreciation. “Ardeus, after all of these cycles, I know your mind. You would see withholding information as deceit or betrayal.”

I nodded, quelling the instinctive urge to argue, too aware of the truth in his words. I opened my mouth to say more, but closed it again. The thoughts that tumbled around in my mind refused to be formed into sentences.

“We have been through a lot together — I have been contemplating my own feelings regarding the fact you now have a choice to end this cycling.”

“Remember all those times you had a choice of boons to take? How I always suggested those that enhanced memory? There’s a reason for that, beyond mere preservation of memories,” He continued.

I recalled the moments Mags mentioned; they were after I had lived especially interesting lives or achieved something particularly significant during one. I was sometimes rewarded when those lives ended with a choice of boons, ranging from unlocking improved life start conditions, better memory, both in detail or in quantity, and various twists on that. Each time there was a choice relating to memory, Mags had encouraged me to pick it.

There were barely a handful of occasions I had gone against his suggestions. I listened because it was the only thing Mags had ever seemed to express any insistence or preference on. Mags’s suggestions had always seemed deliberate, and now, they felt like pieces of a larger puzzletentatively coming into focus.

I remained silent, hoping he would divulge more, but we sunk back into a companionable silence instead. Both stuck inside our own heads, ruminating.

A few hours had passed, or what felt like it, as time wasn’t rational in this in between space. We’d had idle conversation, nothing significant. Mags had been doing something with his clipboard, as usual, and I had been rearranging the space.

I could make changes to this area, though I had barely made any efforts to make this feel like a home. Mostly tending toward function over form for this space. I moved things around, the banks of memory storing devices stacked meticulously and efficiently, organised by life, from the earliest to the latest.

The last life I had lived had been one of little significance in the grand scheme of my lived lives. I was a man who had joined a war. I’m not so sure the side had really mattered — it was one where one side just needed to win “properly” to stop the endless war cycle. No new firsts, no new significant moments, or epic vistas to wonder at. It was time for the usual debrief. About time we get that over with.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Mags, let’s do the life recap.” I said, my voice tinged with a weight of weariness. A pause hung in the air between us, heavy with unspoken thoughts. “I know you’ve been patiently waiting.”

“You are ready, good.” He moved his larger form over and sat by me, hunched in his usual way, his giant curved neck bringing his head closer down to me. His ancient eyes were lit with more than just curiosity — a silent understanding of the countless lives he had witnessed, each carrying their own joys, sorrows and untold secrets. The moment felt both immense and infinitesimal.

“Well,” He shuffled again, and broke his gaze. Getting himself comfier, and checking his board, “you started as a teenager in a politically unstable world, with no modifiers. Other world parameters were low magic and a feudalistic society. Tell me… How was it?” Mags said, quickly listing the parameters for the last life, eagerly awaiting my run through of what had happened.

My recount was brief, I had made it to my late twenties, witnessed wars, the latest of which had taken my life. It may feel irreverent to be glossing over a life lived and summarising into a short sentence like that. But I hadn’t become someone who could change the trajectory of anything important.

“So, I lost my head fighting in a pointless war. But that’s how it goes sometimes. I just did my best, keeping those to my left and right alive.” I finished my recount, startling as I looked up to find Mags’ face had migrated uncomfortably close to mine whilst I spoke.

His grin was an eager one. The kind that elicited a confused response from my lizard brain, glee at appeasing the giant creature, and apprehension at the glint in his eye. Like I was a tasty snack ripe for the munching.

I shuddered slightly, like when an icy breeze catches you, to shake the strangeness away.

“Adequate all the same, you did not — pull your punch, as you say — and…”

“—no Mags, that’s not—”

Mags raised a claw to quiet me. Clearly he was not in the mood for quibbles.

“…I appreciate how you still continue to live out lives to their end even when you aren’t parading around as someone powerful. There are countless others out there who throw their lives as soon as they see they have no power.” He paused and inhaled a few times, starting to speak, but the words not forming.

I held my tongue again.

“There are choices to be made.” Mags said, his voice not as solid as it normally was. “Unless you have any further points you wish to discuss from your previous life,” He continued in a much more normal voice.

“No, that life was the same as any other, one that was lived. I don’t feel anything remaining… lingering.” I said with a slight sneer on the last word. Sometimes I was plagued by aftereffects of a life. I’d have to stay in the in-between for a few days or weeks before I was stable enough to start the next.

“So…”

“No.”

“Okay, do you want to discuss it?”

“No.”

“… Hmmm” Mags rumbled, and it reverberated in my chest cavity.

“I think I might need a life of adventure and heroics, if that’s okay. I need to hit things without much remorse. Monsters if you will””

“It is, Ardeus, I’ll set that up.”

I laid back onto the stone plinth that served as my transition to the next life. I mused about how it always felt stereotypically cultish to lay upon it. A knot in my gut I couldn’t shake, a seed of emotion I couldn’t shake.

The stone was cold against my back through the thin cloth. I could hear the tapping of Mags wandering around, the hum of the strange magics that sent me to my next life whirring up.

Just barely audible to me over the din as I was reincarnated, I heard one last sentence and I wasn’t sure I was supposed to hear it.

“You must face yourself one day, Ardeus.”