I didn’t understand what was happening in my brain. I was having trouble connecting thoughts to memories. I wasn’t even sure who I was, and the more I tried to grab at memories to fill in the giant blanks, the further everything slipped through my fingers. Why was it all so slippery? What was going on? Why was everything so dark?

“Can you hear me?” While I could hear the voice, it seemed so far away. I was sure I’d heard the voice before, but who exactly it belonged to was another piece of information I wasn’t able to dredge out of the sludge that was my mind.

“Yes, who are you?” I asked, after a lengthy internal debate on whether I should trust the voice or not, but as my current situation seemed pretty terrible, I wasn’t sure how much worse it could really get.

“I don’t understand what’s happening exactly, but your mind somehow is being drawn back to me, and that isn’t something you can survive. You need to focus on your memories, the things that make you you. Use those to hold yourself together. Who I am won’t help until you can remember. Do not let your spirit collapse. It’s all that you have left at the moment,” the voice answered back in what I considered a rather cryptic way. It did have a point though, if I couldn’t connect the voice with a memory anyway, so what use was a name?

Now, what was my name? How did I figure that out? Is there a trick to grabbing a memory and forcing it to present itself? As I searched through the haziness of the images, I spotted something that looked like an anchor attached to a long chain. I grabbed it and yanked, hand over hand, until a memory came within reach. I watched it struggle and try to flee from me, but the chain held firm, and I was able to grasp it.

I was suddenly seeing out of the eyes of someone, and based on the size of the other people I could make out the body I was in wasn’t very big. Was this me as a child? Were these my parents? That thought triggered something else: a deep sensation of loss.

“What are you doing there, David?” The man, possibly my father, asked.

“Building a tower!” The words left my mouth of their own will.

“Isn’t he such a good builder, Tom?” My mother said, and yes, I was sure of it now: these were my parents. My mother’s name was Barb, and my name was David. No, that wasn’t quite right either. Something was off with that name. This time, a memory flew at me unprompted; no struggling was needed to draw it in.

“Really, your name is David? I’m calling you Dave. Someone who walks straight into a fountain needs to take themselves a bit less seriously,” another woman’s voice this time. I was much larger now, likely full-grown. Had she said a fountain? This was Laura, my first and really only love. She had given me the name Dave, and I had been sticking by it ever since, some small way of clinging to the remnants of our relationship.

The memories were coming back to me at a rapid speed now. The last one had unlocked the floodgates. I saw the birth of Alex, my daughter, the oldest. The blizzard and resulting car crash that was tied to the earlier sense of loss. The birth of my son, Tom, named for the grandfather he’d never get to meet. The end of my marriage and the beginning of isolation came next in two rapid bursts as the memories sped up even more.

“I texted Dad. I doubt he’ll get it, but I had to try,” Alex said.

“Same, what do we do now? So much has been ruined, and despite what they claim, it doesn’t look like the military is going to win this,” her brother replied.

“First up, we try to find Mom, and then I don’t know, but we can figure something out,” Alex responded.

Their conversation stopped as the world also stopped, completely frozen. The few missing memories finally caught up to me. These couldn’t be my memories. How was I seeing this? They were almost a continent away while losing the fight against several orcs.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Sanquar, what the hell is going on?” I knew who the first voice had belonged to now.

“Dave, I’m glad you pulled yourself together to remember my voice. And while it’s Interesting that you’ve also learned my real name, I do not believe we have time for those stories at the moment. As I said, I don’t know what is going on. What’s the last thing you can remember?” Sanquar asked.

“I had just finished running a dungeon simulation with enough modifiers to shoot me up thirty-six levels in a single go. I’m guessing I also answered the question of whether the mana backlash was from how strong the use was or if it was repeated use” I answered. How had I returned home, assuming I was even home? Everything was still black, as far as I could see.

“Well then, I believe I know what happened. You managed to so deeply deplete your core in a single burst that it drained your soul in an attempt to keep itself going. It’s nothing short of amazing that your mind and soul found their way here instead of just dying,” Sanquar responded.

“And where is here? Am I back on Earth?” I asked. I had almost killed myself apparently, and still may succeed; I had no idea how to get out of this blackness.

“No, your soul tried to save you, and I’m guessing your mind played back all your memories as it thought you were dying; somehow, your soul forced itself and your consciousness to this nowhere place between wherever you are and Earth. Likely, it attempted to get to Earth itself, but with my active effect, that didn’t work, and as I’m the only one actively conscious on the planet at the moment, you were stuck linked to me. Now we need to get you back before this link breaks and you’re stranded here,” Sanquar explained. I had no idea how much of that was just guesswork or logical deduction. I was guilty of doing the first and pretending it was the second, often enough to see the signs.

“How do I get back then?” I asked. I did not want to be stranded here in this nothingness, alone for eternity.

“Focus as hard as you can on everything about the place you were in before this. There has to be a tether between your soul and your core still. Use that to pull yourself back to your body and do it quickly; once it fades, I won’t be able to help,” he ordered.

I pictured everything about my room at the archives and where my body would have to be within. In the center of blackness, I spotted a threadlike line, giving off just the tiniest bit of shimmer. I was sure it hadn’t been there before. I ran towards it and grabbed it. A jolt of energy ran through me, and I felt myself pulled hard along the thread.

My eyes opened. I was in my room. Had that experience just actually happened, or did my brain make up some insane dream while I was unconscious? I had no real way to know until the next I saw Sanquar. A message box appeared in my view.

New Attribute Unlocked

Mana Backlash Resistance (Luck)

That almost felt worth the sheer amount of pain that I felt across my entire body. My head pounded from what I’d just done to myself, and I had managed to bang up both of my knees as I fell from the chair. I was pretty sure my left wrist was broken, too. I pulled up Inner Vitality to see just how bad off I was. After checking myself over, I was glad to be wrong, my left wrist was in fact just bruised, but beyond that, nothing serious had happened.

My headache got worse and I realized the mistake I had made in using the skill. I didn’t have the mana to spare in doing anything. I needed to drag myself to the dining hall and get something to eat in me, or I was liable to make matters even worse. I needed to get regeneration and sling turned on, but that required mana, and that required food. It was a vicious chain of requirements, considering how bad my knees hurt.

Using my right hand, I braced my body and slowly got my legs underneath me enough to stand back up. My head swam with the movement, and I almost collapsed again. I took a deep breath and began the walk to my door, each step causing enough movement in my head to feel like someone had stabbed me in the repeated until I was through the door.

I stepped out of the elevator and collapsed forward into the room. Most of my strength was gone, and worse yet, I saw no one to help me. I had hoped the brothers might be around, but no, the room was entirely empty. The pounding in my head had reached a level I didn’t know was possible. I was sure it would just explode at any moment.

“Dave, you look like death, man. What the hell?” I had trouble making out the voice.

Instead, I pushed every bit of will I had left into two words; “need food.”