Dreams usually have one obvious thing that is out of place and yet you can’t quite put your finger on it. It’s almost a luxury. I was weightless floating free in empty space, and then I was violently yanked to the side, and put on tumble dry. In a daze as my spinning stopped and I came to a rest, the thought, ‘something is off’, flashed through my mind. Lightning fast and with a  clarity that felt distinctly disjointed for the situation, but then I was too distracted by the cream cheese at the corner of a strange mustache. Then the mustache was moving and distraction became disorientation as I had the bizarre desire to laugh at the quivering lip caterpillar dotted with cream cheese. Perhaps it had something to do with crawling static all over my body, it did tickle at the thought of the static that disjointed feeling came back. I tried to puzzle out the sensation this time, unsure as to why reality suddenly felt so bizarre.

As though a hand grabbed my brain and physically shifted my focus I felt the room around me grow sharper, and static died down. I realized the mustache had spoken to me. Hmm, no that wasn’t right  no words had come out. Then as though the word had been dropped in my brain I heard, for lack of a better term, a question shaking my mind.

Where are we right now?

The question threw me through a loop, more than it should have. Clearly we were in an endless void of some… No that isn’t right? The Tower? The 13 Rings?  The void became scenes of pain, slaughter, and battle, endless battles. Centuries worth of struggle and death flashing in an incoherent mess that at times felt familiar. Then images flashed in my own head. Memories, the last thing I remember is fighting in the tower, with my… with my guild? Oh my, it was massive and wherever we went we conquered. I… Oh I was an administrative leader, not the best fighter, but important. We traveled the Rings and thought we reached the ultimate goal, the Tower. We were wrong, the 13 rings may have been nightmares each and every one of them, but the Tower is its own hell. Everyone was slaughtered. Like a hot knife I felt the memory of my own death slid back into place.

Good, good. Do you remember where you were before the Rings?

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The words once again appeared in my mind all at once.

A flash of lights, a car horn and then nothing. It was an uneventful end to an uneventful life. Then more memories slid into place, that is why I was in the 13 Rings? The mortal plane, where I died, was producing too many unremarkable souls, people that lived and died without ever living. So many souls that the holding planes, like purgatory or limbo, were near bursting. However, that wasn’t the only problem. See the mortal plane has an almost as above so below relationship with many of the other planes. And so an unfortunate feedback loop was created. Where the more ordinary mortals that died the more ordinary mortals there would be. It’s a downward spiral that 13 Rings are supposed to fix, by turning the pitiful dead souls into extraordinary ones. Plus those that fail get their very existence wiped. As though you never existed in the first place.

Ah see you're making my job so easy, I don’t even have to explain anything to you. You already know. The mustache took a bite of  bagel only adding to the cream cheese on his mustache, before continuing, Now your next question should be why haven’t I been erased from existence, well I saw your performance and thought, ‘Wow that just might deserve a second chance’. However, to offer this deal to you the terms have changed for you.

He paused as he let that sink in, and he raised his hand to waist high.

Now your soul is just above half way, decent, but not what we are looking for. Now to get this second chance, you would have to wildly exceed the requirements. You would have to ascend the tower alone, and become such a towering existence that you raise others up just by being near. Failure isn’t an option, you start again from nothing, save for your personal Will. Oh, and there are many roads down which you can travel, and though it may be confusing a map is always helpful. So do we have a deal?

This was such an obvious no-brainer that the last thing I remember seeing is the mustache writhing as the bagel applied more cream cheese to the mustache.

I shot bolt upright in an empty white space, and it was then I realized that the mustached mouth wasn’t attached to anything. My mind flashed back to the odd static feeling I had. It came from the thousands of insects that were crawling all over me. I remembered the feeling of something around my throat and curling up to my ear. Whatever it was, that was what had been speaking to me. I shuddered, supremely glad I was dreaming for that whole conversation.