Two friends atop a blood-soaked hill, amidst a rain of burning arrows, lie hidden behind a sizable wall of corpses signalling a retreat to those in clothes similar to them closer to the base of the hill. As one was about to make the descent the other grabs his wrist and looks up at him.
With his other hand firmly pressed against his hip, he simply smiled and told him,
“Tell my wife, I hid it under the oak tree where we shared our 3rd kiss.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you tell her yourself when we get back.”
“No, really I think I might actually die this time.”
“Seriously this is the 19th time you’ve done this; we have to go now.”
“Alright, you called my bluff.”
As they began descending an arrow flew through one of his temples and out the other, it stuck comically in his head as he tumbled down the grassy hill bleeding. The other man stood shocked for a moment before an arrow deflected off his helmet brought him back to reality.
He ran over to his friend and lifted him from the slowly forming pool of blood around his face and began violently shaking him.
“No(x3) you can’t die. You’re the hero of our age. You have to be the one to live.”
The man on the floor bleeding confused and slightly lobotomized uttered his last words.
“Tell… her…”
With one final heaving breath, the man collapsed on the ground and his friend screamed out dragging the corpse back to his main camp desperate to treat him before he’s died but unfortunately for them the mages could not save him.
The man lay crying over the chest of his friend, wheezing, uneasy heaves filled the air as his stifled cries rang out. Everyone else had grim expressions as though their war is now all but lost. The man reached down to his friend’s side and took the long cylindrical device from his friend’s back and told him
“I will tell her.”
Pulling back the bolt and letting fly a spent chamber he sat the cold steel barrel over his shoulder and turned around.
“But first I have some unfinished business to take care of.”
No one in the room said a word. The silence was deafening the man let out the last of his heaving uneasy breaths and calmed his breathing down to the best of his ability before letting out one final sentence, “those disgusting creatures will pay for what they’ve done to you.”
Far off on a distant mountain in a hidden cave past a secret door in a cold dark room filled with countless colossal tubes filled with ominous lifeless silhouettes. Past various dimly lit panels of strange forgotten symbols in a vat of an almost ethereal blue liquid jolted to life one old, withered corpse of a man.
Heaving deep unsteady breaths soon began to calm down as the man began to smile,
“Tell her I lived bitch!”
He shouted into the darkness to no one in particular. He rose from the vat completely naked and immediately began walking around laughing to himself. And cackling out his intense mirth. He walked around in the empty space down a hall with purpose and conviction.
He began organizing the clutter on the floor onto shelves,
“Bah! This age offers me nought but trinkets and trash. I’ve no use for baubles. At the very least I can melt these useless hunks of Iron into something halfway decent.”
The man walked around unsheathing intricate swords and tossing them over his shoulder into a bin.
“I’m keeping this though; it could prove useful in the future.”
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He picked out from the pile one fairly plain buster sword. The comically large blade held by the gaunt pale man casts an eerie shadow down the long hallway. A small insignia inscribed on the pommel, the sword wasn’t as fancy or intricate as the others but the mark of the royal family that offered it was seen as favourable in the old man’s eyes.
He dug through the trash for an hour longer but in frustration left it at knee height and moved on. He stalked off into a room filled with test tubes large enough to and are housing people’s lifeless bodies.
He walked around looking at them inspecting them as though with hungry eyes. Men and women’s faces lined up for him to see. He stopped at one particularly beautiful woman’s tube and grinned from ear to ear.
“You shall be my next vessel.”
The man began cackling giddily while dancing about not bothering to hide the thick line of drool falling from his mouth as he savoured what tale he’d weave for his life in his next body. Then with scorn, he moved as though angry with practised steps and slammed a hand down on a display before one particularly ugly woman.
A loud blaring alarm began sounding as the test tube was lifted letting the fat acne-ridden woman fall to the floor with an unappealing squelch. She began wearily flitting open her tired eyelids and a look of confusion crossed her countenance. She looked up at the naked man in confusion, his mouth opened, stretching literally from ear to ear revealing countless needle-like teeth, and in anger, he leapt at her and ripped out her windpipe with those teeth.
The woman began writhing in pain a look of absolute terror covering her face as her blood fell and her body quaked. Within seconds she was dead, and he stood hunched over her corpse drinking his fill of the fat lady’s blood.
For hours he crouched over her corpse drinking until he was satisfied. And when he rose again the gaunt pale hairless head he had was no more. Now, stood a handsome gentleman with a perfectly trimmed beard. His hair reached down to the backs of his knees, and he began stretching his revived muscles for a minute.
“Thank you, daughter, though you may have grown to be a failure your death was not in vain.”
With a satisfied grin, he snapped his fingers and began walking off, a drain opened up on the floor beneath the mess of blood fat and broken bones as all the liquids drained away and a small metallic tube lowered down from the ceiling to roast the corpse until only ash remained.
At the far wall of the room, he grabbed a robe and threw it over his shoulders lazily. He navigated the maze of identical metallic passageways as though he was searching for an apple in an orchard.
“Not very many good candidates this generation. Three champions to save for later and one life to enjoy while the war dies down.”
He mumbled to himself in the silence as he walked on to the room he needed to go. When he arrived, he was met with a large empty room big enough to contain a billion of himself in any direction. He clapped his hands and walked to the centre like a schoolgirl that just found out her favourite singer would be coming to her fifteenth birthday party and writing a song exclusively for her.
“Archive!”
[Welcome home master, it has been 73 years 4 months 2 weeks 1 day 4 hours 3 minutes and 2 seconds since your last visit. What will we be doing today?]
“Begin the trial.”
[You have not had a trial in over 7 decades, would you like to run a tutorial?]
“NO!”
[Then may I suggest a memory or two to remind you how this works]
“I know how trials work just run it!”
[… Very well then master… don’t blame me when you fail again.]
“Piece of shit AI.”
All the lights in the blank white room began to dim and he let his robe fall to the ground behind him, in the darkness two robotic arms reached up, caught and folded his robe before it hit the ground. He shut his eyes and the room was flooded with blue light. When he opened his eyes again he was dressed in the garb he’d recently died in, a knight’s plate mail modified for better mobility. He squatted down and began testing his full range of motion.
Once he was sufficiently satisfied, he spoke up again.
“Archive, bring up the trail menu”
From the artificial grassy plain in which he stood part of the green faded to reveal the metal underneath from which a pane of glass attached to a metallic arm reached up to greet him, a list of words was written in alphabetical order. He began scanning through them and scrolling around looking to decide which he’d want to choose first.
[Here is a list of skills inscribed on your heart that have not yet been grasped by the body, please select the skill you most want and work your way backwards from there.]
“You and I both know that’s not how this works.”
[Right, right just testing you, you ungrateful old man.]
“Don’t think I’m too lazy to spend a century programming a new AI, I’ll do it.”
[Just pick a skill we both know I’m the best you’ve ever done.]
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll go with animal husbandry.”
[Ugh, such a useless and boring skill, why not a fun one like knife balancing or fire breathing?]
“Just run the trial.”
[fine]
The scenery flickered and the glass pain sank back into the ground as a simulation of a barn appeared and he walked in.