[WP] "Ah, this is unexpected," you mumbled, watching yourself get stabbed for the third time.

...

Ah... This is unexpected." As pain blossomed and I fell backwards, the sarcasm that laced into those words seemed lost on everyone but myself.

"They've slipped the lines! Engage!"

Distantly I could hear my companion's shouts, and the wild blurring din of violence around me as I was stabbed for the third time. In a disconnected way, my eyes were watching absently as a crudely sharpened bit of wood went about poking another uncomfortably large hole in my abdomen, and I could see the gleeful smile of the disgusting creature holding the weapon.

Of that green and warty mug, a large and toothy glower of vengeance was plastered, muscular arms raised high and ready for the delivery of a final blow. Then, the expression slackened to a more blank and confused state, previous victory replaced by the sharpened length of a familiar shovel that had brained its head in rather deeply.

As a set of warm hands began dragging me backwards, I could make out hushed words muttered under breath. "Oh gods. Oh gods." I heard a voice overhead curse and beg with equal measure, "Please be alright. Please be alright."

While I watched the red seem to flood out of my gaping wounds, and my ears were overwhelmed by more screams and yells ushered around by stomping feet and clashing steel: My mind floated backwards in time to what lead me into such a fucked up situation. Far before I'd found my insides coming out.

Way back.

All the way to the beginning, before anything of violence and death had ever entered into the picture.

You see, I wasn't one you would have pictured fighting for glory or gold in battles of life and death, and I certainly wouldn't have been one to choose such a direction without a lack of alternative options. Contrary to the circumstances which brought me to such this world, this continent, this army, and even particular battlefield: I'd never been a very exceptional person.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

My life was a long running series of failures and shortcoming. So bad, that my own mental outlook had reached (even at my youngest remembered years) to find itself at a point and level of a mild- yet constant state of paranoia.

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From a young age I began to recognize I was different, and not in a helpful way. Where I found others learned to do and succeed with apparent ease, I would find myself learning the very same by brutal failures and catastrophic mistakes. For every "perfect on the first try" individual who passed me by in academics or skills, I would struggle and fail dozens of times, finally picking myself up to follow their easy successes, exhausted.

No matter what subject came upon me in my adolescence to young adulthood: It was truly as if I were cursed by some divine act of false-logic, to toil and struggle in the muck in order to find fifty viable ways to do something completely wrong- before the one obvious way to do something right.

In time, as the years passed, I came to accept it. I came to learn from it. The quirk of failures became a part of me, inefficient and frustrating as the experiences were. When presented with failure, I was not disheartened- but expectant: Before I overcame whatever problems were to come my way, things were going to go wrong.

There's so much blood. Where is the healer? Please! He's dying!

That same familiar voice seemed so far away from me now, but I could hear it through my tired mind.

Whatever combination it was that had lead me to watch my life soak out into the black sand beneath it, I was far from considering their details with any manner of deeper reflection. Instead, I generalized the many: Acknowledging some of them were more an odd combinations of luck, misfortune, (and perhaps even fate- should one believe in such a thing) rather than troubling myself as if they were objects and circumstances I could have avoided by acting differently.

I couldn't change this, couldn't have done much differently. I'd trusted my gut and gotten at least a few holes in it, and that was that.

All honesty aside, by the very nature of reality as most understood it, I shouldn't have been lying atop a friend's knees, watching their desperate eyes leak tears like a broken faucet. I shouldn't be staring at them, or listening to their shouts pass by in some far-off echoing somewhere in the distance beyond my view: I knew none of what was happening should have happened in the first place.

Not meeting them, not going on adventures- Not even arriving in this world to begin with.

But it had.

I'd hung on by the skin of my teeth doing everything in my power to keep ahead of the unpredictable madness that haunted every following step along the way. I'd learned what I could, made my mistakes, adapted and strove towards some far-off goal of progress, and even laying on the ground like a sorry sack of spoiling meat drifting towards the silvery brook, I could hold at least a small amount of pride in those many efforts.

I had done everything within my capacity to prepare for the expedition in the few weeks of time I'd had to prepare for it. No stone left unturned, no option left unchecked and followed up: No supplies left behind or gold unspent towards the ultimate goal of our survival.

Please don't die.

As I listened to the oddly comforting sounds of a far-off voice holding back sobs, I watched my vision blur, drifting thoughts carried on without my consent like a winding cable being drawn in. Downward after those I watched, floating in a slow decline along strange avenues in the depths.

A healer is coming, please.

Was there something that I might have done different to avoid this? The sole consideration remained, ever vigilantly searching for an quiet answer to right my mistake.

Don't die. Hold on.

Could I still avoid this?

Hold on-