Strange, how the words of my instructor Zart the Iron-Blooded seemed to echo in my ears, when I no longer had ears. Well, none of flesh and blood, anyhow.

Rule Number One, Master Zart had intoned, catching every student's eye in turn, is to keep yourself and your comrades alive. Live adventurers can make up for lost chances only seldom - but dead adventurers never can.

Well. Now that I'd broken Rule Number One, what was I supposed to do?

My body was dead. I wasn't sure of much just then, but that one I was certain of. I still had awareness, and (this struck me as odd, even at the time) that awareness was connected to some form of existence. Something that was like a body, in other words, and yet not. One usually resided in a body, after all.

I puzzled over that. What could awareness connect to, that was like a body, and yet not a body? Eventually I decided to start by calling it an "ydob". As good a name as any, it seemed to me. If someone wanted to tell me different, they'd... have to start telling me something. That was something I could really use, someone to talk to me and explain what was going on.

Time passed. How much time? Well, that's the funny thing about time. You can't really measure it unless you have something to measure it against. In my case, I only had the endless loop of my own thoughts as a measuring device, and it wasn't telling me much.

So if you ask how long before I could "see" that my ydob was, essentially, a hazy replica of my own body, I can only tell you "a lot of time". A big buildup, it seemed, to end in such a disappointment. Somehow I'd thought that post-mortem I'd look more dignified, or at least poignant. Perhaps if my mouth hadn't been hanging open like that of a landed fish, I would have looked better.

I was able to examine at least one feature of my replica with interest rather than mortification, and that was my right leg. On my second dungeon crawl, I had failed to recognize the signs of a Shadow Rat nest until my foot was already descending into its midst. A vivid learning experience ensued. Yet the right leg of this body - of my ydob, that is - lacked the distinctive scars I'd acquired in that encounter.

So was the ydob my past, or my future? Dared I to hope that it would play some role in my reincarnation?

We knew the beneficent gods existed, as they were the source of the miracles cast by clerics and paladins. Pretty much every time you were healed by someone from the Church, you were also treated to a combination of pep talk and lecture, about how the beneficent gods wanted you to be brave, strong and kind, and if you did your best at that and at life in general, they would look out for you after you died, just as they looked out for you in life by healing your wounds.

And past that, we simply didn't know much about the gods, in accordance with Their wishes. I'd asked Colma the Calm about it, when he'd healed my leg from the worst of the rat wounds. At first I thought he was being evasive by choice, to both our frustrations. Eventually he fished into his robes and brought out an ivory plaque on a silver chain around his neck. The finely engraved lines, depicting a lovely young woman with a gentle smile, were filled in with gold. "This is the goddess to whom I have devoted my life," he said. "I have served her for two years so far, and if all goes well, next year, I will be allowed to learn Her name." He sighed. "The most senior members of the Church assure us there are good reasons why the Gods give us almost nothing in the way of direct guidance. I truly, truly hope I get to learn the reasons someday, and I truly hope they are indeed good."

In so many of the stories, it was that gently smiling goddess, or one described identically to Her, who greeted brave adventurers in the afterlife and rewarded their service with reincarnation in a fantasy world. Was the ydob something like the prototype of my new body? Would I gain fantastic new skills to ease my journey, as happened in all the stories? S-rank, or SS-rank, or even - dared I hope? - the fabled "OP MC-rank"?

I looked more closely at the ydob, vessel for these hopes - and then stopped in shock. I had thought Did my ears really look like that?

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And immediately, the ears disappeared. I tried to imagine them back into place, but I couldn't remember what they had looked like, what they were supposed to look like -

"Hello! Hello, please! Pretty beneficent God lady! Or, or, any beneficent god?!" Whatever was serving as my voice in this void was betraying my panic. "My ydob is falling apart! My, um, my simulated me! It's losing parts!" I waited for response as long as I could, which was not long. "Is this normal can you help please!!"

The response, when it came, thundered the void around me, shaking me and filling me with terror. It was just two words, delivered in a slow, rage-filled growl.

"WAIT, DAMMIT."

That really didn't sound like a gentle goddess.

I silenced myself with effort. I kept my attention on my ydob. I knew that in some way, the hazy blob sustained me. And in turn, it seemed that my attention was what sustained it.

Or was it something else? Just as I had become aware of the ydob very gradually, I slowly became aware that the ydob was connected to something else. And that something else, as it came into focus, was fascinating.

Unlike the ydob, that I'd named myself, the true and proper name of it popped into my mind, unbidden. This was called the animation. This was, in fact, my animation. In whatever senses I was using to perceive it, it was brilliant, like the brilliant green of sea waves or the feathers of a bird I had seen once in a menagerie. And it was in constant motion. The substance of the thing, within its protective envelope, swirled around and around, curling and eddying, just like a... that is, very much like a...

Oh hells. There's just no way to ignore the roc in the room. What it looked like was a slime: a big mass of protoplasm, jiggling and squirming within a thin but tough membrane. I mean, you'd never mistake one for the other; what was inside this was smooth and glowing and beautiful, while what was inside a slime was sludgey and dull and just looking at it made you want to wash.

But the similarity was inescapable, especially as my perceptions expanded beyond the one animation to which I was connected to others. First a handful of others, then dozens, then hundreds; white and green and red and blue and brown and purple and each one brilliant and beautiful. The beauty nearly hurt, it was so powerful.

One red animation captured my attention, by being not only lovely but incredibly active even compared to the others. For some reason it reminded me of Zindee. The energy driving its internal motion certainly seemed boundless, and compared to the other animations, including mine, the substance inside spent less energy swirling around in the same location and more in pressing against its enclosing envelope.

And as I watched, that enclosing envelope opened under pressure. Jetting out from the interior, that crimson fountain made my heart or its equivalent leap at the elegant loveliness. At the same time, it brought me fear: would the breaking of the animation's membrane mean death for it, the way it would for the slime it resembled?

I needn't have worried. In about the same amount of time it took for the original globe to seal up the rent in its side, the substance that had escaped under internal pressure had formed a new rounded mass, and developed a membrane to cover itself. Rather than bounding away from each other as newly divided slimes would have, the two masses stayed close to each other, and seemed to move with some invisible coordination...

If I had a jaw just then, it would have dropped open. I suddenly understood what the animations were, and why our skills developed the way they did. It wasn't the choice of the gods, it was our choice, by the way we pressed our boundaries, how we let ourselves flow into new endeavors - or not - oh, if I could get another chance at life, I could apply that knowledge, do so much better than I had -

- and when that caravan of thought pulled my attention back to my ydob, I was seized with terror. I didn't have a jaw anymore. Or a chest. Or limbs, beyond vague suggestions. Only my ydob's eyes and a scalp - and that lacking any hair - still bore any resemblance to a human, let alone the human I had been.

"Help! Please!" I screeched desperately into the void. "I don't know what's going on, but it really seems bad! Help! I don't want to die here alone!"

And then I was definitely not alone.

The presence whose growl had filled my universe before returned. Once again, its rage was palpable and terrifying. "ALL RIGHT, ASSMUNCH -" it thundered -

- and then I was dragged, consciousness and disintegrating ybod and animation all together, through planes and states of existence I couldn't perceive except in flashes -

- and then I was deposited, not gently, into a physical plane of existence. I was jarred, and naturally anxious about what came next, but at least the decaying of my ydob had halted for the moment -

- and finally, the Presence I had detected manifested before me. "- you wanted my attention, Mr. Impatient? You got it."

I wish I could have fainted. I guess that needs a physical body for some reason. But it really would have been the only right response.

The being before me was the Demon Lord.