Death was a real prick. And unlike all the other ninnies out there, I wasn’t afraid to say it… or at least think it out loud in the safe confines of my thoughts. 

    I sucked in a slow terrible breath and with the utmost care exhaled. Despite my delicate caution, a piercing pain in my chest caused me to choke and then cough. It took all my power to endure the torment.

    Tears filled my vision, smoke taunted my face, and a loose strand of black hair irritated my face. I fought back a second round of coughing. It was a close battle. 

    The burning bloodwoods created a dense cloud of smoke. Their glorious end prolonged my misery and preserved me from the cold hands of death. As fire rained from the bloodwoods’ outstretched limbs, the soaked ground steamed and hissed. It smelled of burning pine, blood, and stress.

    My vision blurred as towering trees came to life. The red golems hurled boulders at cultivators and foreign beings with otherworldly faces. 

    The fools fought back in vain. Death was a cruel, careless crisis that no one avoided. The cultivators wasted their efforts fighting for more—an illusive dream of immortality. There was no escaping the callous hand. 

    My fight was finished. Selene’s abyss. I could barely hold my head up. 

    The haze of war cloaked the field. Light battled dark, ripping the power from the controlling hand and dispelling the silent energy. Mana flooded out. The Bloodwood Forest was torn apart. As ten lifeless beings walked away, death soaked the barren grounds once lush with life. 

    Death won in the end. It always did. I’ve lived through this battle a hundred times now. The ending was still the same. Death was power and devoured all… 

    But what did I know? I was just victim number one in this cruel fight. Or was I number two? Some details were a bit lost. I was the remaining survivor of the callous battle. The first to fall and the last to die. Too weak to be given the mercy of a fast death. Too weak to be noticed as alive. Embraced by death only to be pushed away. Calloused. Cold. Cruel.

    Was it a fool's hope to want more?

    Although I was on my last breaths, dying would be different this time. One hundred-one was my new lucky number. Unlike my previous deaths, where I struggled and flailed on my bloodwood pike, this time, I was slightly more content with my post. Sure, the excruciating pain was still there; that hadn’t changed. This time, however, I struggled less. My current theory was that being staked was like one of those mysterious quicksand scenarios. The more one struggled, the quicker one sank. 

    I breathed in slowly and exhaled. No coughing this time. Good.

    The damned optimist in me swore the pain hurt less than what had become so uncomfortably familiar. So, maybe I was on the right path. Slowly in. Softly out. I pushed past the point of dying. Every breath set a new record of longevity. Five. Ten. Fifteen. Thirty. I was confident now I had perfected my breathing technique. It was quite a terrible feat. 

    As I pushed the boundaries of my extended miserable life, I witnessed a new terror. A squid man’s face reached for me. 

    I trembled. 

    The strange bipedal octopus wore a turquoise battle robe, shell pauldrons, and an inverted crown helm. He laid five feet in front of me where he’d died in battle. Never had my grave neighbor moved before. Now his bluish hands gripped into the mud. As Squids inched himself forward, his arm shook with great intensity. Inch by inch, the strange creature crawled his limp body closer. Each pull of his arm his face tentacles flayed violently toward me. 

    My palms were sweaty and I’d be running if I wasn’t so staked to my property. 

    Acting on gut instincts, I swatted his face tentacles away—just as any normal person would. I wasn’t in the mood for this weird stuff. Despite my natural strength and high dexterity, I swatted unsuccessfully. 

    Tentacles wrapped his unnatural beard around my arm. The man-fish used my arm as leverage, pulling his dead body closer. More tentacles latched on, covering my face in unholiness. Time stopped as he held me in an all-encompassing embrace. 

    I hated it. I wanted to scream. Proudly, I held back—ignoring the fact that I couldn’t. 

    As if experiencing life on a pole several times wasn’t enough, my face was getting sucked or eaten by a human squid. It was teeth-grindingly painful. Bright lights flashed in my mind. I gasped for air, only to choke on a mouth full of vile thick liquids.

    Damn my perfect breathing technique.

    My limp hands reached for the nightmare violating my last breaths of life. At first, I tried to pull the tentacles off. Then I threw punches that bounced off the rubbery squid man. When that didn’t work, I clawed my nails into his flesh. Tickling his back would’ve been more effective. 

    I tried channeling my mana so I could ice-spike my way out of this madness. My plight was hopeless. Not even my deep bag of curses could dislodge the monster.

    Light pulsed in rapid flashes, growing brighter each time. I squeezed the squid as scorching pain raced through my body from thrashing on my pike. 

    Then darkness. A black abyss surrounded me. I no longer felt any pain. In fact, there was almost a peaceful tint in the air. I’d been doing a lot of dying lately. This wasn’t dying. This was different. My body was in an ethereal state of being. I existed and didn’t exist, present by not all there. 

    What was the squid doing to me? His actions couldn’t be moral.

    “You humans…” A voice cracked the silence, booming in my ear. It was old, hollow, and had a strange accent that was not Helmish. “... are such an inferior species.”

    “What?” I asked into the void, with an accidental snap in my tone. I searched the darkness for the source and found only emptiness. I tried to reach out with my mana to catch a hint of energy. My attempt bore no fruit. 

    “No flayen ever struggled to grasp the concept of recursion as much as you.” The flayen’s startling, loud voice behind me caused me to repeat myself.

    “What?” I turned to catch this so-called flayen. I looked up and down, finding nothing. 

    A tingle ran down my back—another false alarm. No matter how fast I turned, I met emptiness, and yet all my senses tinged, warning me of the flayen’s presence. 

    Squids were so gross. Hardly even tasted good, and that was only if you had the right combination of sauces and a strong drink to chase it.

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    “Inferior and insufferable,” the mysterious calamari said, his voice haunting me once more. 

    I didn’t like this ghost and fought back the only way I could. “Technically, I’m an orc.” 

    “That does not matter.” Calamari said, dodging my verbal riposte.   

    “It doesn’t.” I said, cutting away the space he tried to create from the subject. Conversations were always an intense battle. In my earlier years, I fought hard to avoid them. I couldn’t afford to do so now that I was locked in a battle of wits with a formidable foe. “Figured you’d want your facts right if you’re gonna profane an entire species.” 

    Judging by the flayen’s stupor, my crushing words won me an insignificant victory. Now that I had the high ground, I could go on the offense. I carefully calculated my question. “What did you do to me?”

    “I possessed you… At least, I tried to.” Calamari’s response was quick, poignant and had a hint of waning pride. It held just enough truth to shake my confidence. The aura of a smug octopus smirk clouded my senses. It was like my body was covered in thick black filth.

    What a bastard smile.

    “Oh, that’s what we’re calling it? Gross. What happened? Tentacles lacked proper grip? Got cold feet? Didn’t like what you see? Performance issues…?” I threw out questions like jabs. No way was I letting this monster possess me. It didn’t matter that I was dying. This body was mine. My own.

    Calamari clicked his tongue as if he were sighing. I might’ve hit a nerve. 

    “Where are you, anyway?” I asked. “Why can’t I see you? I need to punch something.”

    “I am dead, and so are you,” the squid said. “At least you will be. We are in your mindscape—something your small orc brain knows nothing about.” 

    I caught a hint of another bastardly smile. Words weren’t enough. I pictured the image of the flayens face. It was soft, blue, and perfect for punching. All my willpower went into the through and I pulled it into existence.

    “H-he-hey… wa-wait,” the tentacle face said, panic lacing his words. Shock evident in his opened beak-mouth and wide eyes.

    My hands formed out of the ether. I held the flayen and started punching. It was every bit as satisfying as I thought it would be. 

    “Listen, slimy sucker...” Not my best shot, sure. I was so far outside my realm of comfort that I had to rely on base impulses. “It sounds like you can only belittle me because my inferior mind allows you to… since you’re dead.” My last punch landed so hard the flayen fell to the ground, tentacles flailing like hands.

    “You are on the last legs of life yourself.” Tentacles propped himself, trying his hardest to look unfazed. 

    “Dying isn’t dead, and I outlived you,” I said, feeling confidence and power backing my words. “Stop your self-aggrandizement, or be gone. As you noticed, I’m busy dying here.” 

    Tentacles eyed me with an astonished expression. Maybe I had gained his respect. That or he feared me, if only just a little.  “You are not the quiet, reserved lad you used to be,” he said. 

    Did Squids know me? How? My mind raced. I guess we were kinda coffin brothers if we discounted the fact that neither of us were in a coffin—as well as only one of us was dead. So maybe half-coffin brothers. Might be a stretch, but it was like what the blood-hungry zealots of Ao were always saying, ‘Dying was uniting.’ Was Squids a believer?

    “Well, a hundred lives would change a man.” I wasn’t a believer and responded with snark. 

    Oh, have I changed—more snark and more vocal. Dying birthed my inner cynic. No longer content with being a side character, a brilliant voice rose to triumph in an era of unreserved criticism—as if it were the dying caterpillar’s one last attempt at life not prone to crawl around—

    “Two hundred.” Calamari cut my revelation short. “It took a hundred deaths before you stopped passing out immediately. And calling it ‘lives’ is generous. You barely breathed on the stake with how much you squirmed.”

    The flayen had knowledge of my loops. Had Squids been involved the whole time, and I didn’t notice before? I did last longer in this life than I ever had. Was squids the cause of the loops? I needed more time to think through the implications. 

    “I was merely trying to break free of my cocoon,” I said, trying to square my thoughts away.

    “What?” Squids asked. “No, do not answer that. We are running out of time, and I have yet to make my offer.”

    “What offer?” I asked.

    “To live.” 

    “I refuse.” 

    “Too late,” Squids said.

    Ao’s bloody pits. “That doesn’t count as an offer.” I balled my fists and walked towards the propped up flayen.

    “I have already given you full authority over this recursion. I am sending you what memories that I can. Sir Kainoa—” 

    My steps halted. Squids didn’t just know about my loops. Somehow, he knew who I was. Hearing my former name was almost the oddest part of this cycle. I buried that name five years ago in the same pit of betrayal where my old squad died. The name Kainoa died with them and I hadn’t heard it since. It was a different life, a different time. 

    Memories forgotten threatened to resurface and haunt the peace I’d fought to establish. I pushed the intrusive thoughts away, returning to the battle with my new tormenter. 

    “—I am giving you an incredible opportunity.” The flayen dragged his body away from me in a hurried motion. He spoke fast, without pause. “Do not squander it. Please, be nice to my people. They are coming, and you will need their help.” The flayen landed his final blow, layering it with mystery and subterfuge. 

    Squid's uncomfortable presence vanished from my mind. Not even a goodbye or anything. All the flayen left me was a massive headache, blurry vision, and sharp painful tearing in my heart. 

    Comforting. Familiar. I exhaled softly. Selene’s sweet abyss… I was finally dying. 

    Life was back to normal.

    Silly me. Everyone knew prime numbers couldn’t be lucky. One hundred-two—now that was a lucky number—sexy, even. Or was it two hundred-two? That felt pretty lucky as well. Life faded. I breathed my last breath. 

    “Hello, death.” I welcomed the prickly end to all things and clenched my body to prepare for another terrible life on my stake.