She was seventeen when she took her own life for the first time.

She was fourteen now, and Marianna ran through the cornfields as she chased her older brother. Both laughed in the sunlight of the day, and their mother called out for them--had been calling out for them, and they only just noticed.

The mother was the spitting image of Marianna as an adult, only a bit older, a bit kinder, a bit more gentle. The brother took a running leap into her arms, and the mother swung him around in a hug.

Marianna tried to catch him there, but her mother swung him too fast, and they spun around as a laughing, smiling family on an ordinary summer evening.

Her brother shouted something. The name of the father.

Marianna looked over at the fence gate and saw a man there. Her father, but she almost didn't recognize him in those clothes. A uniform. A military uniform. But he had just left this morning in his coveralls. On his face was an empty smile and a somber air about him.

Her mother covered her mouth. Her eyes widened.

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Two years later, Marianna found herself pulled along by her mother, the brother following closely behind, the group of them hurrying as fast as they could down the narrow dirt road as quietly as they could manage on a foggy winter morning.

Marianna slipped and crashed into the mud. Her mother winced and tried to help her up, but her ankle--Marianna wouldn't be running any longer. Not at this pace. She pulled Marianna beside the roots of an overturned tree and started to bandage her.

The brother stopped and stared down at her with shaking fists, and he shouted. He demanded to stay and fight the invaders, but--

Her mother told him that the enemy was justified. They were the defenders in the war, but--

Her brother didn't care. Attacker or defender or enemy or not, all he knew was that his home was burning about three miles back, and his friends were gone.

He had a hunting rifle on his back, and he swung it around to shoulder it.

He turned to leave, to fight as his father did, and the mother called out to him.

The boy turned, smiled one last time, and his chest erupted in a spray of scarlet. A gunshot rang out--the other side of a ruined house--and the brother toppled to the ground.

The mother howled and hurried to him.

Marianna reached out.

And a spray of bullets shredded her mother.

Marianna covered her mouth and swallowed her scream, tears running down her face, and she hid there by the roots of the overturned tree as the enemy soldiers hurried up to check their kill. Young men were all they were, scarcely any older than her brother, and they laughed and congratulated each other for the job well done, and when they felt ready, they brandished their long knives and began to work the bodies, to poke and prod and cut not just to ensure the kill but to satiate their morbid curiosity.

Marianna left the tree three days later.

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She was seventeen when her father found her.

She had been caught up in a refugee shelter, lost there, only living to eat and eating to live, and already a year had passed since the war's end, and she stayed there at that camp until it was no longer just a refugee camp.

Her father found her alone there in the cafeteria, and he sat with her in silence. Neither could look into each other's eyes. He took her home--a new home--where he drank away his trauma, and she ate to live and lived to ate, and eventually--

She knocked over a glass, and it shattered on the floor.

The father rushed at her, balled his hand into a fist, and punched her.

Marianna lost teeth. She bled all over the kitchen.

The father was horrified. He marched back to his living room chair, took his service rifle, aimed it carefully into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

Marianna was alone again.

She stared at him for what seemed like an hour, and when she felt ready, she stared at the gun for what felt like another hour.

She was seventeen when she took her own life for the first time.

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Marianna found herself in the infinite dark and in the presence of the man behind the desk. He greeted her, introduced himself as the goddess, and explained the rules to her.

That she was the kind who would be reborn into a new world as herself, and that she had the gene to keep her memories. A very rare and lucky person, he told her.

But for the first time in years, Marianna felt emotion. Fear. Terror. Regret. Dread. Hopelessness. Despair.

It was a curse, she explained.

But he rejected that idea. She'll have a better time in a new world. A fantasy one.

She blinked.

And she found herself in a forest with vivid red and blue trees and a sky almost as blue as the ones from her childhood. There was hope here. Brightness. Color.

Until the knights found her.

She tried to run, of course, but they chased her down. The dog was the one to catch her by the calf, and they captured her beneath those colorful trees.

The hope was gone.

She was taken fenced-in camp where the dogs never quit barking, and she was enslaved there, chained, and beaten to instill fear from her owners. Soon she was sold to a middle-class couple, and Marianna felt a glimmer of hope.

The couple seemed nice. The house was big. Her only duty was to be a handmaiden for the aging wife.

She had to help cook, clean, organize things, and tend to the dogs.

The first few months were everything she could hope for. The couple was clean-natured, so the house rarely got dirty. The most cooking they made her do was boil water. Everything was already organized perfectly. But the dogs--

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The dogs were fed a kind of meat that made her skin crawl. It was not so much the off-texture of the skin, but it was the way the dogs greedily devoured the carcass of it.

By the fourth month, the husband took a liking to her and began to use her sexually. The wife took notice and began to resent her. Marianna was, of course, young and pretty, and now she had taken the husband's attention.

And the wife began to hurt her. When the father wasn't home, she would tie her up in the basement and beat her. The husband would return and ask about her bruises and cuts, and Marianna was forced to lie, but the truth was obvious. Obvious to them both. Marianna was just a slave, and all hope was gone for her.

The abuse continued for months.

The husband began to lose taste of her.

And he also began to resent her presence. She was out of fashion, and by this time, damaged goods.

One day, while Marianna stoked the fireplace, the wife appeared behind her and presented a hunting knife. She wanted a length of skin for a project she was working on, and Marianna had nice skin, and nobody was really using it anymore, so the wife decided to borrow a slice.

Marianna begged. She didn't like knives.

The wife told her that if she didn't do as she was told, she'd be fed to the dogs like every pretty maid before her.

The wife gripped her by the forearm. The knife angled against her skin.

And she panicked.

And hit the wife with the fireplace iron, killing her.

Marianna ran for her life. She escaped from the estate before the husband returned and sprinted back to the colorful trees of the fantasy forests, to see the blue skies again, but--

The dogs barked in the distance. A crowd of men's voices shouted after her.

She hurried through the evergreen forest, toward the colorful trees, the dogs barking louder, the men angrier, and--

She found the same clearing she had opened her eyes to, but--

The colorful trees were dull, and the sky turned grey.

By the time the hunting party found her, she had bled out from a gash on her neck.

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Marianna met the goddess again. He told her the same thing. She begged for real death. He again told her the same thing.

The rules are rules.

And she was reborn into a different forest.

This time she was ready, and she did everything right.

She focused on stealth and survival, and within weeks she made a stable life for herself as a rogue in a fantasy world. She hunted in the forest, learned how to cook for herself, and learned to steal from passerby using her rogue stealth abilities.

It seemed her life was moving forward for once, but--

The skies were as dull as they ever could be.

One day she came upon another young woman her age in the forest, right near the same clearing she started from. A group of city guards attacked her, wanting to sell her to the slaver camp for a little bit of money on the side.

Marianna killed the group, saved the girl, and took her to safety.

Soon, Marianna found herself helping the girl survive in this world, to hunt and cook and sneak, and before either realized it, they had become close allies and best friends.

Her name was Leila. She was born from a disgraced noble family, run out by rival houses, and she was the only survivor. She loved to sing, and always wanted to do it professionally, so she decided to be a bard.

And together, the first party was born.

Soon they added a few more to their group. Two guys and another girl--a tank, healer, and a mage. All greedy for adventure and riches and good times, and they fit right in.

Time passed, and before Marianna knew it, she had found a new family. Close-knit. The jokester knight with a drinking problem. The greedy healer who was fast to heal but slow to care. And the mage who tried too hard to be cool, who was really just in it for the title. Still, none were as close to Marianna as Leila. Leila sang to her every night. The others thought they were siblings.

One day, they found a quest for a bard--a singer--to sing at a nobleman's banquet. Leila was perfect for the job. So the group packed up and ventured to the nobleman's estate and spent the night.

It was quiet that night in that eery castle, and Marianna was restless. She couldn't sleep. Leila was in the noble's guest room, seeing as she was an honored guest, and while Marianna was proud as proud could be for her, and while she hoped that Leila was getting pampered and taken good care of--

Marianna was lonely. She hadn't slept alone in so long.

So she dressed in her rogue gear, determined to sneak out and visit her, and just when she creaked open the door, a hooded man's face peered back.

Marianna stumbled away in shock.

The hooded man threw a potion at her, and it shattered on the far wall, pouring a purple mist across the room. A sleep potion. Marianna drew her knives and slew him there in her bedroom.

And when she caught her breath, she felt her blood run cold, and her hairs stand up on end.

She burst into the hallway and sprinted to where Leila was, and when she turned the corner to the other side of the castle, she found them.

Leila was in chains. Blood smeared across her face. On either side, carrying her by the arms, were the other party members. They stared back with wide eyes.

It relieved her a moment that Leila was okay, saved by those dependable party members, but--

The knight and the healer and the mage. Their eyes were glazed. Almost desperate. Almost ashamed.

A group of people approached from behind the party. More hooded men. All stared back at Marianna, and Marianna stared back as the reality sank deep into her, draining the hope and life from her eyes.

The knight pointed at her and spoke Marianna's name, the name of Leila's sister, and a member of that house.

Leila denied it. Marianna had no part in this.

No one believed her.

The hooded men gave chase.

Leila shouted for her to run.

There were too many. Marianna didn't have a choice. She escaped through a window and down the side of the castle and into the forest.

And behind her, the dogs barked, the crowd of men shouted into the night for her, and she cried as she ran.

And it was here something changed within her.

Marianna slowed to a stop and turned around.

She drew her knives.

And killed everyone who came at her.

She returned to the castle. She killed the guards.

She scaled the walls and hurried back inside.

She killed the maids and the butlers and everyone she could find, but she couldn't find Leila. She could only find a pool of blood where Leila had knelt just a little while ago.

It was still warm.

Rage boiled within her. Leila was dead. Taken from her. Betrayed by her party members. And she would have her revenge, and for the next half of a year, she did exactly that.

She tailed them as the party made off with their reward, tracking their movements across the continent, and she finally caught up with them in a small tavern by the sea.

The knight was drunk. He didn't see her knife coming.

The healer tried to shout, but her throat was already slit.

The mage was the last alive. Marianna pinned him to the table with a knife through his gut.

The other patrons nearby tried to help, but Marianna barked at them to stay back. This was revenge, after all. These three killed her sister.

But the mage told her that Leila wasn't dead. Leila was sold to the slave camp.

Horrified, Marianna killed him there, and she raced back to the forests where she started to find the slave camp. It took only days to find it.

There were hundreds there. Hundreds of young women behind tall metal fences with the barking dogs and the angry men, and in madness, she killed the guards and freed the girls.

And she found Leila.

Broken and beaten. Shriveled and pale. Her fingers filed down, and her tongue cut out.

Leila was thankful. Not that she would be freed, but that she could finally be allowed to die.

Marianna refused.

Leila begged. Her body was broken, and she could no longer sing. She begged with the same heart that begged Marianna to stay on that first night.

Marianna relented.

She took her body back to that clearing and built the best pyre she could make, filled with the most colorful flowers and the best herbs and the best woodwork she had ever done.

And when Leila finished burning, Marianna lit her own.

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When Marianna returned to the goddess, she hopped over the desk and tried to choke him to death, but the man was immaterial to her. His form fled her grip, and his laugh--his haunting and encompassing and patronizing laugh--followed her into the next rebirth.

There she began the plot, the scheme to kill the goddess. She just needed to find a way, but the world didn't have the answer. So Marianna tried the next, and the next, and so on until an indescribable amount of time had passed traveling the multiverse. Until one day, in High Fantasy World, she stumbled upon the legend of the Sword of Gods' Twilight--the tool to kill the gods.

She spent years studying it.

Years more to gather the ingredients.

And with great cost, she made it. She crafted the Sword of Gods' Twilight, but it was inert. Unusable in this form. She would need to siphon incredible amounts of energy into it to distill its god-slaying power, but her world had no means to accomplish it.

So she buried the weapon and forced several more rebirths until she ended up in Cyberpunk World. There, she developed the Gate technology used to cross over into other worlds, and with an army, she invaded the High Fantasy world and took back her sword.

Then she needed a siphon--a ship. A large vessel that could drink from the greatest energy wells--the planet. She had it commissioned from the ancients: the humanoid-animal hybrids from Furry World. It was those creatures that helped her build the ship, and it was those same creatures that fought back against her once her scheme was revealed.

And so the first war began.

The furries chased Marianna and her Cyber Scifi fleet across the multiverse, culminating in an overly-dramatic final battle that ultimately ended with the near-extinction of the furry races and with Marianna's final defeat above Earth.

With her death, the ancients sank the ship deep into the ocean, and anticipating Marianna's eventual return, they occupied the planet for centuries.

An indescribable amount of time passed.

The ancients died out. The furries long forgotten.

And one day, Marianna opened her eyes to the sleepy city of Lambston.

She grinned.

It was time to find her ship again.