9 : 252 : 06 : 04 : 55

A hard hand tears me out of the void.

I’m flung down to wet sand and feel the crushing burden of flesh on my sore, freshly knit bones. Freezing cold seawaves wash my skin and I cough and cough as air fills my tender lungs for the first time, crisp and raw. A relentless rain whips the length of my back and I tremble uncontrollably, my frail, newborn form struggling to stabilize its core temperature.

Now and then, a scathing light floods my skull as crackling thunderbolts cross the dark sky high above me. Those white-hot flashes pass with ease even through closed eyelids and the painfully throbbing orbs behind them. I keep blinking, hoping it will help the pain. All I see are vague, blurry shapes, a sort of ugly, gray-brown mass where various textures and shapes melt seamlessly together. My unaccustomed brain toils to parse the flood of sensory information, unsure of if it should perceive color or depth, or height or width, or all of it at once.

Then a huge hand grips my neck and I forget everything else.

I'm picked up from the sandy shore, my bare feet left dangling in midair. A booming voice barely any different from the rumbling thunder invades my head through the ears.

“What is this?”

A face emerges from the hazy twilight—a face I will never forget.

A pair of eyes like red hot coals bore into me, embedded in a dark, wide, rocky mug framed by a pair of curving horns. The voice erupts from a vast maw, where sharp, stubby teeth flicker behind parched lips that are like castle bulwarks. And the agony of living is replaced in my mind by the new emotional experience of total horror.

I struggle to get away from the grotesque face, but the arm strangling me might as well be made of stone and there’s nothing I can do about it. It takes my all just to get the bare minimum air to stay conscious.

“The container looks to be defective,” another voice sounds from the side, slightly less monstrous but no less heartless. “The Mirror must be running low on prana. It seems the force we have now is all we will get here.”

“Hmph, you mean to say it has a limit?” the horned monster booms. “Could the tools of the Old Gods truly be so feeble?”

“The constraints are not from the artifact, but the territory,” the second speaker dryly explains. “The Mirror itself lacks the capacity to store prana. It merely draws it from elsewhere, and there is already a presence siphoning the energy on the island. Something powerful.”

“The Cube?”

“It has to be. It seems our long search bears fruit at last.”

“What about this—thing?” The monster shakes me. “Reduce it back to mana?”

The cold voice chuckles.

“It should still serve as a distraction, for what it’s worth. That is what they are all here for.”

“Fine.” The steely grip lets go of me. I drop back to the sand, gasping for air and feeling my burning neck. “Brand it then.”

“Now that would be a waste of effort,” the other speaker retorts, half with spite, half ridicule. “Not like it has anywhere to run to. This is an island, after all.”

“I see your point. It won't live to see the dawn.”

Of course, their cruel exchange makes as much sense to me as the standard conversion rate of talions to mana in an anthropomorphic configuration. Wait, why would that make any sense to me?

I’m then grabbed by somewhat smaller but no less forceful hands. They drag me by the arms along the shoreline, and right as I’m starting to get used to the ride, they abandon me to stand alone on my shaky feet.

My eyes gradually gain focus and I begin to make out my surroundings a little better.

In addition to a lot of gray blur, there’s now also brown blur and a bit of green and blue.

With a bit of experimentation on my legs, I learn how to support my torso somewhat still and upright. That down, I venture to take a cautious look around, and find pale, wet threads that stick to my face, neck, and shoulders. They feel really icky and I’m about to panic, before I realize it’s my own hair I’m tangled in.

I pull the strands out of my eyes and see a line of people standing next to me.

Seeing as I was born hardly a minute ago, I shouldn’t know who or what they are, but I do. They’re normal human beings. Young men and women dressed in uniform gray, skin-tight T-shirts and pants. Upright and solemn, they face forward with a dull thousand-yard stare. There are about thirty of them.

What’s this? The Hunger Games?

Since I’m at the end of the same line, does that mean I’m human too?

I look down and examine myself closer. My absolute lack of a bust makes me wonder if I’m male, but neither are my pants bulging down there, so I have to admit I might be female. The others seem to have it together, while I’m still quivering all over, my teeth chattering, and have trouble standing straight. I’m shorter than the others too and unhealthily pale. It’s clear I’m not quite the same as them.

Is it because I’m “defective”?

It’s so fucking cold.

I hug my shoulders and hope this is soon over.

It’s just not me and the quiet line. There’s a big crowd spread along the beach, and not all of them are strictly “human”.

I see giant men dressed in shiny, violently shaped metal armors, wearing grim faces and fancy helmets. They look a lot like humans, except they’re all huge, their skin is spotless and matte like they’re made of plastic, and an eerie glow surrounds them in the dark. Their eyes glitter with a cold light and their ears are triangular and weird.

I also see horned monsters similar to the one I met earlier. They’re like a bizarre mix of bulls and krogans walking on two bulky feet, with rocky scales growing along their rough hides. They’re shorter than the shiny-eyes, but ripped and wide, like walking hills dressed in jagged suits of black-burned iron. There are also a handful of more or less regular humans in black armor among the creatures, but they seem barely worth mentioning. You wouldn’t notice they’re there.

I watch two glowie knights approach our line, bringing what looks like a floating coffin made of polished metal with them. The lid is open. They stop before each person and take something from the casket—a weapon—and hand it to the man or woman in the line.

“Brand type: striker.”

These words earn the person a sword, a mace, or some such melee weapon.

“Brand type: seeker.”

The person is given a telescope spear, or a big shuriken.

“Brand type: ranged.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The person is given a composite bow.

“Brand type: arcanist.”

A wand or a staff.

“Brand type...”

They keep going. No pointless chit-chat.

At long last comes the end of the line. Me.

The knights stop in front of me too with their floating magic box, and give me blank looks.

“...Unbranded,” the examiner mouths and glances to the side.

There, watching over us a short distance away, stands the dreadful duo who brought me to this place, including the one I couldn’t see before. A tall, pale guy in glimmering golden armor. I’m not qualified to comment on high fashion, but there’s nobody else in such a baffling outfit in view. Even my newborn head grasps that this fellow is cut from a different cloth than the rest, the sort of cloth you leave in the drawer.

He doesn’t spare me a look but only shakes his head. The examiner closes the casket and they take off without giving me anything.

Then one of the human knights comes to stand in front of the line. He carries his kettle-like helmet under his arm and gives us a good look at his near-bald scalp and coarse face that a prickly, grayed stubble covers. After the freakshow before, his appearance seems comfortingly mundane and familiar. Almost friendly.

There’s nothing friendly about his way of speaking, though.

“Alright, listen here, you little maggots!” the knight roars at us. “I know how you all feel. I know you can’t tell left from right, and are terribly lost and confused. Pay it no mind; the feeling will soon pass. Know that you are our new recruits! Born warriors, every last one of you, bred to fight and kill! Do as we tell you, and you will be rewarded. Do anything else, and you will die. As simple as it gets. Don’t think too hard about it. Just treat everything you see as one weird dream, and kick loose.”

I glance to the side. Nobody in the line comments, or objects. The faces stay stoic and blank, as if they really are seeing only dreams with their eyes wide open. That’s not how it seems to me, though.

The black knight continues,

“Out there, on the far side of the jungle you see spread before you, lies an enemy stronghold. A ptolean grief cathedral. As we speak, the enemy is preparing a ritual to unleash a great disaster upon our world. To do so, they need a certain celestial weapon. The Cube of Kronenberg. It is our duty to stop them. Make your way across the woods to the cathedral and kill all who stand in your way. Spare none. Your enemies are deplorable beasts, who deserve neither pity nor mercy. They wouldn’t think twice to slaughter the lot of you. Do not give them the opportunity. Should you find the Cube, you will bring it back to us. That’s all. Easy, isn’t it? This is your initiation ceremony, recruits, to see whether you have the right to live and fight as part of our numbers…Or do not. Go earn your glory! Else—die with honor!”

Everyone in the line tenses, gripping their weapons. Except for me, as I have nothing to hold and no idea what the hell’s going on.

“Til death!” the knight shouts. “For the White Lord!”

“For the White Lord!” the recruits parrot, suddenly stirring from their stoicism.

“Go! Go, go, go, go, go…!”

Like hounds unleashed, the line of young men and women take off running across the beach sand, towards the treeline uphill. I give one last look to the beast-like men and man-like beasts and then chase after the others. I may not know left from right, but my lamb instincts tell me I’m minced meat unless I play along.

Yes. Somehow, even without knowing anything, I’m hard-wired to value my own well-being, and do anything to protect it.

So I run.

I only learned how to stand five minutes ago, but when push comes to shove, I’m actually running. I keep kicking the wet sand and my legs gradually find their strength and stability. So I run, run, and run, like it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It probably is. It makes me feel free. Moreover, it warms up my hypothermic body. It teaches me to appreciate the flavor of fresh air, as brutal as it tasted at first. The previously torturous storm too has started to seem like an invigorating shower now.

There’s a narrow path cleared across the jungle, about as wide as a cart lane.

The runners head there. We hike up a ragged, bumpy path framed by malformed tropical trees and their dark, leathery leaves that leave no crack for light to pass through. In the distance stands a pair of enormous, flat-top mountains. They look like titanic pillars made to hold up the clouds, which coil above and around the rocky stumps. They’re dreadful to look at. Something tells me I shouldn’t go anywhere near there, but what else would I do?

Going there is the meaning of my life.

The beastmen and knights don’t follow us. As soon as we pass into the jungle, we’re out of their sight, but even then nobody utters a word, or stops to question the sensibility of what we’re doing. All everyone does is run, gazes firmly forward, the light of determination blazing in their eyes. The only thing that matters is fulfilling our orders. We all know this deep inside: living is wonderful. Dying is awful. So if we must kill to earn our right to live, we’ll do it. We’ll do it any number of times.

But do we really-really need to?

I seem to be the only one thinking that.

At least I’m not completely alone here. Somehow, that idea gives me solace. I’m fine with not understanding, as long as I don’t have to be confused by myself.

In a while, we clear the jungle and come to a steep, barren slope where no more trees grow. The land's covered in round rocks, slippery and glistening like bleached, polished skulls in the non-stop rain. A naked cliff wall rises up ahead, with a narrow crack in the middle, just about wide enough for people to pass through. That ravine may lead us closer to the mountains, so everyone aims that way.

Unfortunately, the way is guarded.

There being a path should mean others besides us use it too, but somehow, the idea never occurred to any of us. We learn this the hard way, only after we dash brazenly out of the jungle without looking ahead, and then it’s already too late to turn back.

What I initially took for a pair of large rocks to decorate the passage are, in fact, living creatures. It’s hard to tell until they start moving. Two bulky giants well over three meters tall, with stubby arms and legs, and round heads with black bead eyes. Instead of noses, they have only narrow cracks in their rough faces, and their round mouths are filled with blocky teeth. Their coarse hide is blue-gray like stone, covered in batches of moss and bird poop and other things, and only frayed leather rags cover the nether regions.

We see them. They see us.

No, they heard us coming from a mile away and were just waiting for us to get closer. And as soon as we’re close enough, the twin ogres leap into action. They receive us with a furious roar, which rebounds off the rocks and stuns the whole crowd. Everyone stops in their tracks, overcome with doubt. And then they’re upon us.

Both ogres tote enormous clubs fashioned from tree roots and they operate their simple instruments with a ravenous passion. A female recruit, too slow to react, is left under the first blow. Everything from her waist down is smashed on the rocks like a ripe watermelon. I get my first good gander at what people look like on the inside, and take my word for it, it’s not pretty.

Scraps of the corpse still stuck on the weapon, the ogre resumes the violence without any delay and swings at the next target, some guy holding a sword. He seems to think he can block a hit from an enemy over a hundred times his mass. He can’t. He tanks the blow mostly with his ribs and is sent spinning far over the slope downhill while spraying his colorful fillings everywhere, probably not a bone in his body left unbroken. Another guy turns his back and runs out of the raging giant’s way, but is caught unaware by the second giant that sneaks up from behind. He gets flattened under the club like a can of Mutti.

What am I doing?

Nothing. I stand frozen, stunned by the gore.

It wouldn’t say I’m scared. In fact, I momentarily forget I’m even alive to start with and just stare on, like a camera on two legs, feeling nothing, thinking nothing, as people run here and there around me.

Not everyone succumbs to panic.

To my left, one guy crouches to take aim with his bow. Out of nothing, a glowing blue arrow of light appears on the string and he fires it. The bolt hits the foremost ogre in the eye, cuts through the corner of the skull, and sprays green-black blood out of the side of the head. The monster recoils in agony, but such a small injury isn’t enough to kill that ginormous hunk of flesh. Its brain is only the size of a walnut and buried deep in the skull.

The ogre bounces back in injured rage and throws the glistening red club down on the archer. At the same time, a female recruit armed with a pair of short swords or daggers dashes in low and slices open the back of the creature’s knee. It’s staggered and howls so hard my head feels like it’s going to explode. Meanwhile, the archer dives to the side to dodge the off-course club swing. Bam.

It’s only then, when the titanic bludgeon touches down not three steps from where I stand, that I recall my own role in this improvised splatterfest. Having missed its target, the ogre turns the gaze of its remaining eye to me, since I happen to be there right in front of it. Facial recognition isn’t the monster's forte, so it naturally assumes all the pain and frustration must be my doing.

One furious roar later, the club is raised once again.

I instinctively recognize my imminent demise, and react the same way most standard people would in my position. I cross my frail arms over my head in a moronic attempt to shield myself from the falling mace, and duck low.

I don’t see what happens next. I’ve squeezed my eyes tightly shut. For a quick fragment of a second, I wonder if it hurts to die and if it takes very long. I mean, it definitely looked pretty painful.

I don’t want that. I don’t want to die. Of that, I’m sure.

Telling myself so, I promptly black out.

And you can get your refill of popcorn now.