Chapter 1
Everyone always said that Mondays were the worst of all the seven days. Probably because they signaled the ending of a glorious weekend and the start of a not-so-glorious work week. Since I rarely had what most people would call a glorious anything, my least favorite days were Wednesdays.
“I’m dragging the little arrow across the screen, and it’s not moving!” the old woman barked through my earpiece.
Way-Back Wednesdays as we called them in the office, due to the fact that nearly everyone who called in was older than dirt. I had nothing against the elderly, but most of them had legitimate issues that even someone my age would struggle with. But then I get stuck with the old bitties that can’t even move their cursor across their screens.
“Ma’am, are you dragging the mouse on your desk?” I asked.
“No,” she snorted. “I’m dragging it across the screen like you told me to!”
I had to resist the urge to sigh. One of those, I see.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t explain myself properly.” Or I was speaking in Latin to her, I guess. “What you need to do is move the mouse across the surface of your desk. There’s a light at the bottom that reads that movement and will move the cursor--the little arrow--on your screen.”
She was breathing heavily into the mouthpiece of her phone. I could just barely hear the scratching of the mouse along some surface.
“Oh, there it goes!” Just like that, her voice was so much brighter. “That was really easy! Thank you so much!”
“Is there anything else I can help you with today, Ma’am?” I was so glad I didn’t have to plaster a fake smile when I said that over the phone.
“Not a thing! You’ve been such a dear,” she gushed. “Thank you again, Sebastian.”
I might have been a little too eager to hang up the phone. The clock on my own desktop said it was time for a quick break, but I stared at it for a moment and willed it to just jump ahead to clock out time and let me leave for the day. Nope. No superpowers for me.
My coworkers chatted as they made their way to the break room. I should have followed them, but I was dead tired. The next installment of my favorite game had dropped the night before, and like any decent gamer, I had stayed up far too late playing, and I was really dragging today.
Our break was only fifteen minutes long, but a quick nap would go a long way when dealing with all the Way-Backs still to come. I set an alarm on my phone, laid my head down on my arms, and I was asleep almost immediately.
It was all too soon that a chiming noise filled my ears and dragged me from my slumber. I let out a groan and reached my arms up to stretch. My left hand hit something hard on the way up, and when I turned to see what it was, I realized that I was not in the office anymore.
I was laying on my back on some kind of cold platform that was a far cry from the hard desk I had face-planted on. The ceiling was made out of some kind of rock, and the light kept dancing in orange, yellow, and red across its surface. It definitely wasn’t sunlight coming through the windows, but my first thought was a torch or flame and that made about as much sense as the cold bed I was on.
“I see you have finally risen, O Great One,” a male voice declared.
The voice belonged to an older guy who would have fit right in at an anime convention. He was tall and lanky with paler skin than mine, and his bald head was covered in the kind of tattoos I had only seen on elf characters in video games. The long gray robe he wore was open in the front because of the way he held his arms out. In his right hand, he held a long staff. In his left, a curved dagger.
Several other men stood nearby, and I leaned from one side to the other to count. Fourteen men in the room, aside from the sorcerer and myself, and they all wore some form of leather armor. Most were covered from neck to toes, with even their hands shoved into leather gloves, but some of them sported a leather cap or had their legs and arms exposed for easier movement. Every single one of them had a sheath on either side of their belts of varying lengths. Most were long enough to be swords, but a handful had to be daggers.
“I am Raijin Thornheart, the greatest sorcerer in all the land,” he said with a bow. A fake name if I ever heard one. “Are you ready to begin?”
“Begin?” I sat up and glanced around the room. “What are you talking about? Where am I?”
I definitely wasn’t in Kansas. And I could knock off Oz, too.
“You are in the Great Catacombs of Legend, of course!” The sorcerer gestured to the room around us, as if I was just pulling his leg with my questions. “And I, Raijin Thornheart, have summoned you for your greatest purpose.”
I was probably just dreaming. That made perfect sense. I shook my head at Raijin Thornheart. Seriously, could he have picked a name more ridiculous?
“Greatest purpose, sure, and what would that be?” I turned on the stone bed. It was raised up from the rest of the floor and up a set of stairs from the so-called sorcerer. I had never had a lucid dream before, but it couldn’t hurt to play it all out, right?
His face twisted into a grin that made me shrink back. “Why, to die at my hands, of course! Your power will enhance my own, and I shall be truly unstoppable. It should be an easy task, looking at your pitiful form. I expected you to be more…” The sorcerer tilted his head slightly as he looked me up and down. “You are not what I was expecting at all.”
That wasn’t what a guy wanted to hear. Shouldn’t my dreams be filled with hot women telling me how amazing I am? How did I get stuck with this Voldemort-face-tattoo-cosplay-weirdo instead?
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here,” I said as I rose to my feet. “You obviously have the wrong guy, so I’ll let you try again.”
“You cannot outsmart me, O Great One.” The sorcerer shook his head, chuckled, and handed his staff to one of the men standing beside him. “I called for you and here you are. Your pitiful visage is clearly an attempt to discourage me from taking your life. You cannot fool me.”
“I mean…” I chuckled. “Whoever put those dumbass tattoos on your face already fooled you, soooo…”
“What?” His face twisted into a snarl as he lunged for me.
“Dream chase scene!” I jumped to the left to avoid him and then tried to weave my way through his men.
“Get him!” The first man dug his fingers into my wrist, but I slipped free as I laughed.
Then I made it two steps before I slammed into a second man who was built like a brick wall. He held my arms down as a third came up on my left.
“Ohhh… Nice dagger you got there,” I snickered as I saw one of the leather-clad goons hold his dagger up, but then he shoved it in my side, and agonizing heat filled my chest.
Oh shit. That actually hurt, and I stared down at my white button up shirt as the color turned red around the dagger the asshole had shoved into me.
Wait. This wasn’t a dream? Shouldn’t I have woken up?
“Owwieee,” I gasped. “What the fuck?”
“You thought you could escape me?” Raijin cackled as his goons turned me around to face him. “Put him back on the sacrificial dais.”
“Yes, master,” one of the men holding me said, and then they began to pull me toward the stone bed I’d woken up on.
“Wait!” I groaned as I felt my legs start to go numb. “What the fuck is going on? I thought this was a dream! You can’t fucking kill me. How is this--”
“It’s all about power.” The sorcerer lifted both of his hands above his head as soon as his men yanked me onto the platform, held the dagger in both hands, and plunged it down into my chest. “And now yours is mine.”
It was as if I had jumped into an inferno after taking a shower in gasoline. Every inch of my body burned with such intensity that I couldn’t believe I was still alive to feel it. I opened my mouth to scream but no sound came out.
Just as quickly as it began, it was all over. Darkness seemed to press in on me from all sides. The burning feeling was gone, and I felt numb by comparison. I couldn’t move my arms or legs, but I figured I was still asleep. My heart slammed against my ribcage as I tried to take slow deep breaths. It had been the most vivid dream I had ever had in my life, and I would be happy to never experience it again.
The chiming of my alarm rang in my ear. Time to wake up.
“I see you have finally risen, O Great One.”
I opened my eyes and turned to see Raijin Thornheart standing just a few feet away with that terrifying grin on his face. The cold rock beneath me, the flickering torches, the minions standing at the ready. It was all the same as it had been just a few minutes ago.
I wasn’t back in the office.
“What the fuck?” I asked as I blinked my eyes against the torchlight.
“I am Raijin Thornheart, the greatest sorcerer in all the land.” Raijin bowed, just as he had before. “Are you ready?”
“You already said that?” I asked.
“Huh?” he raised an eyebrow as he came up from his bow.
“You already introduced yourself and then killed me or something?” I asked. “This is the fucking weirdest dream. Also hurt like hell. Are you--”
“I can assure you that this is no dream, O Great One,” the sorcerer growled. “Now that you are here, I will sacrifice you on this altar, and your power will become mine.”
“Uhhhh… Okay?” I cleared my throat. “But… like… this already happened?”
It wasn’t just a coincidence. It was literally happening all over again. My heart continued its abuse to my ribcage and was practically screaming for its freedom.
This baldass tattooed motherfucker had just killed me.
And he was about to do it again.
“You cannot fool me with your riddled talk,” he said with his twisted grin. “You will die now!”
I jumped to the left as Raijin lunged for me. The three minions that had caught me before surged forward.
“Not this time, bitches!” I danced around them, easily dodging the dagger from the third as he came up beside me. A fourth snatched the collar of my shirt, and it ripped as I tore away from him.
Two more converged on me, and I managed to dodge one, but the second got his arm around my neck and pinned me to his chest.
Nobody came up and stabbed me in the side this time, but everything else played out the same. I was dragged before Raijin, the sorcerer brought his dagger down into my chest, and I was filled with the intense heat and pain that I would feel for a thousand lifetimes.
And then the chime.
“I see you have finally risen, O Great One.”
“Son of a bitch,” I groaned as I blinked my eyes open and looked again at Overzealous Goth-Punk Voldemort.
It was immediately clear that third time that I was not dreaming. I was stuck in some kind of bizarre loop that kept bringing me back to life just a few minutes before my death. How was I supposed to live if I kept dying? Was I just supposed to repeat this agony for the rest of eternity? Everyone always said Hell was filled with fire. I always thought they meant literal fire and not the searing pain I had endured.
Raijin the sorcerer did his little monologue and then lunged for me. I managed to get past the first two sets of his minions that had stopped my escape before I was captured once again. Another dagger to the heart, another round of hot agony, and I was on the dais once more.
Then the chime.
I didn’t even wait for Raijin to introduce himself. The moment the feeling returned to my limbs, I vaulted from the stone dais and tore a path to the right. Everyone in the room shouted as they tried to stop me, of course, but the guys on the left had all been successful in every previous try. The goons on the right might be more incompetent and could be the key to getting out.
The first guy tried the same wrist move as the guy on the left path, and I dodged him without even trying.
Maybe the two sets of minions would react the same no matter which path I chose?
A second man was waiting for me to slam into him, just as on the left, but a third came out of nowhere and body-slammed me.
I crumpled to the floor under his weight and smashed my head against the stone floor. Dark stars danced in my vision, and I swayed as I was yanked to my feet and dragged across the room.
Raijin the Sorcerer sounded like he was in a tunnel as he spoke and cackled.
Then he plunged the dagger into my chest and my world became fire and pain.
Chime.
“I see you have finally--” the sorcerer began.
“Oh, go fuck yourself, Raijin!” I roared.
I rolled from the dais and lunged at the sorcerer before he could begin his irritating monologue. His eyes widened as I slammed into him and knocked him to the ground. The dagger skipped across the floor upon impact. He still had his staff, but he hadn’t used magic on me in the other respawns.
Maybe the staff was the key.
I snatched the magical item from his hands with ease, and he didn’t even put up a fight for it.
The men in the room staggered away from us as I stood over their fallen leader. Fear seemed to be filling the room, and for once, it wasn’t mine.
“This ends here, you bastard!” I hissed.
I lifted the staff and closed my eyes. Magic worked differently in all the video games I had ever played, but focusing on the sorcerer exploding from the inside and spraying everyone with blood and body goo seemed like a good place to start. I could see it behind my eyes. My agony would become his. I would beat him using the very weapon that made him a sorcerer. I would escape this stone room and see what crazy world I had been summoned to. And maybe find a way back home.
It couldn’t have been more than a minute that I stood there with the staff over my head. Nothing happened.
“Did you think it would be so easy, O Great One?” Raijin cackled from beneath me and wrapped a bony hand around my ankle.
I was basically holding a fancy wooden rod. It wasn’t going to perform any great magical feat, but it wasn’t completely useless. I held the staff in both hands and brought it down on the sorcerer’s head. He blocked at the last second and gripped the staff just below the glowing rock at the very tip of it. I brought my foot back to give him a swift kick, but his minions converged on us and tore me away.
“Well… that was an amusing attempt.” The sorcerer rose to his feet, took his dagger from the minion that retrieved it, and cackled at me.
Then he plunged the dagger into my chest, and all I knew was the fire.
Chime.
“I see you have finally risen, O Great One.”
“Fucking shit,” I groaned. I had to figure this out. For some twisted reason, I had been summoned from my office chair to lay on a stone dais in some sort of great catacomb. There were plenty of catacombs on Earth, but none of them were around where I worked, and I doubt any of them had assholes like Raijin conducting villain monologues. Besides, how would I have made it from my office chair to some underground crypt without remembering how I got there? I wasn’t a sleep-walker, and even if my coworkers were assholes, this was a bit too extreme for a prank.
Plus there was the whole respawning thing that only happened in video games. Virtual reality games had come a long way in my time, but the pain was too real for it to just be a game.
This was going to be my life if I didn’t come up with a way to escape.
“I am Raijin Thornheart, the greatest sorcerer in all the land.” The sorcerer bowed, again. “Are you ready?”
It didn’t seem to matter if I got to my feet or even looked at the sorcerer. He was running on some kind of script, and he was clearly eager to kill me and take my power. So far, all I had the power to do was die, and that couldn’t be what he was talking about.
“Fine,” I sighed as I rolled to face him. “Let’s just get this over with.”
The sorcerer cackled as he lunged forward. Going to the right, left, and forward had all gotten me killed. I rolled to the back of the dais and the scratch of a metal dagger on stone shrieked a moment before Raijin the Sorcerer did.
“Get him!” he shouted.
The minions surged forward and quickly blocked off the exits to the left and front. I darted to the right and punched the first guy that got in my way. The crunch could have been his face or my hand, but pain rattled from my knuckles to my elbow on impact, so I guessed it was me.
The men started following me behind the dais, but there were more behind me than there were in front of me. I dodged a man with a dagger, slipped from the grasp of a burly minion, and turned to see the exit wide open before me.
Warmth seeped through me from my heart, as if it was telling me to run as fast as I could and get out of this place. I didn’t need the encouragement and tore ass to the room’s only exit.
I didn’t even make it to the threshold. Three of the men hadn’t followed behind the dais and slipped into my path at the last moment, so I skidded to a halt to avoid crashing into them. The rest of the group converged on me and I was captured.
“Fuck!” I cursed.
Every respawn was exactly the same: I woke up, Raijin ranted, I tried to escape, I died. I tried the backward tactic several more times since I had been so close to my freedom. Those three guys always got in my way, and even when I did try to bowl them over, they were made of tougher stuff than I was and merely stood their ground.
Every death seemed like it was more than I could endure. My heart never stopped pounding in my chest after that first death. Eventually, it would just beat so hard that it either broke my ribs or stopped beating altogether. It wasn’t humanly possible to be killed hundreds of times and have your heart keep beating.
Of course, it wasn’t humanly possible to be killed and come back to life in the first place.
I couldn’t even say how many times I died in those catacombs. Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? It felt like forever. But with each respawn I got just a little bit closer to the doorway leading to what I hoped was an exit. I never actually made it out of the room, even when I managed to kill two of the minions with their own daggers.
“I see you have finally risen, O Great One.”
“Yeah, I know!” I snapped. “You’re Raijin the Sorcerer, greatest in all the land, reliant on your minions to keep me from escaping because you’re too much of a little bitch to just kill me right now!”
“Uhhh, The Great One knows my name?” he gasped as his dark eyes widened.
“Yeah, you pasty little bitch,” I groaned. “You gonna use that dagger, or what?”
Raijin the Sorcerer lunged for me, and I dodged to the left once more. The first two minions were easily dodged, since I’d now memorized exactly how they moved, and when the third one came in to wound me with his dagger, I met his face with my elbow. His nose broke now, instead of my hand, and he yowled in pain as he dropped the weapon.
Right into my hot little hands.
Just like a hundred times before.
Before he could recover, I drove the dagger up and under his ribcage. Blood soaked my arms as his dead weight tried to unbalance me, but I had already killed him once before, and I was ready for it. I braced my knees against his weight, pivoted to face the next set of minions, and pushed out with my legs like I’d done a few dozen times in my other lives. The body launched out from me like a bowling ball, and the other two assholes fell like pins when the corpse plowed into them.
The other two men I had dodged a few moments earlier came up behind me, but now that I was free of the dead man, I could give them all of my attention. Neither one of them had a weapon drawn and that would lead to their quick deaths.
I slashed one across the face and he split the air with his shrieks of pain as blood sprayed across the catacomb walls. The other rushed in to cover him, but I sliced off two of his fingers like hotdogs. While he looked at the little red fountains, I slashed the dagger across his throat, and his body fell sideways onto the face-slash guy as blood sprayed across the floor like a spilled wine glass. I wasn’t about to leave him alive to crawl out from under his companion, so I reached over, grabbed him by the hair, and dragged the dagger across his throat.
He gurgled and choked on his own blood for a few seconds before he went still. He’d stabbed me like a few hundred times in my previous lives, so honestly, fuck that guy.
The pin-minions had managed to get their dead friend off of them and darted forward as a group. I let the one grab hold of me and used him as a counterbalance as I jumped and kicked the second one in the chest. All three of us fell to the ground, and I was able to flip the dagger in my hand and use my falling momentum to drive it into the man beneath me. He let out a screech as I twisted on top of him, dragging the blade straight across his midsection. Blood and worse flowed from the gaping wound, and he was dead in seconds.
The guy I had kicked was too busy staring wide-eyed at his fallen comrade to even try to defend himself as I grabbed his head, pushed it against his shoulder, and thrust my blade into his jugular. He croaked out a dying breath as his life drained from his eyes faster than the blood from his carotid artery.
The dagger’s handle was now slick with the blood of several men, and both of my arms were soaked in the warm liquid. I would probably cause a mass panic if I suddenly returned to my office looking like that.
Some of the remaining minions hesitated as I turned to face them. The dagger had felt very awkward in my hand when I had first gotten it many deaths ago, but after so many attempts at this battle, it almost felt like an extension of my arm. I wasn’t about to drop it because I knew which ones would aim for that hand and how to slip past their attacks. I was invincible because I knew exactly what these mother fuckers were about to do, and this time, I was going to come out on top.
As I expected, one brave man with a sword came charging forward with a battle cry. He swung the weapon like it had been given to him just before I had been summoned. More bravery than sense, the poor guy.
I stepped aside as he swung down, and then I hooked my foot around his ankle as I’d done a few hundred times. His momentum carried him further along until he lost his balance entirely and smashed his face into the wall of the room. Bones crunched, blood splashed, and once he hit the floor, he didn’t get back up again.
It had taken me a few dozen tries to figure out I could just kill that one by tripping him cartoon style.
I turned to the nearest minion. “May I have this dance?”
His face went straight past red and turned purple before he drew his own dagger and sprang forward.
I easily parried his first slash since I’d seen it hundreds of times before, and then I grabbed his wrist when he brought it back around. With a twist, his wrist snapped, and the dagger dropped into my waiting hand.
He screamed in pain as I retrieved the fallen weapon. Then I kicked the back of his knees. They buckled beneath him and brought him down to a better level where I could plunge the daggers into both sides of his neck between the collarbones and the shoulderblades. Blood spurted out from both sides before oozing down his body and soaking into his leather armor.
Halfway there, but I’d been “halfway there” like twenty times, and this next part was a bit more difficult.
If they had been hesitating before, the remaining minions looked almost too terrified to try to take me down. They even had the advantage with their numbers: seven to one. But the blood of seven of their allies now pooled on the floor around us. They were either afraid to slip and fall or didn’t want to become victim number eight.
Their cowardice gave me all the strength I needed. I rushed into their midst and slashed at the first guy who tried to retreat, but he fell to the ground and was immediately stomped on by another sword-wielding minion.
“You stepped on your bud,” I snickered as the swordsman stumbled on the man’s body.
“What?” the man gasped as he awkwardly swung the blade to keep me at bay.
“I may have seen this all before.” I knocked the blade aside with a flick of my wrist and shoved my other dagger deep into his inner thigh.
Blood sprayed everywhere and soaked into the genius’ leather-clad legs. He collapsed with a shriek and further trampled his fallen comrade.
I gave those two some alone time and feinted toward another dagger-wielding minion. He darted back like I knew he would, so I turned and swung my own daggers at Raijin the Sorcerer.
There was a reason he had brought fourteen men with him into the catacombs. The sorcerer was not a melee fighter by any stretch of the imagination. He needed their protection, so Raijin let out a pathetic squeal as she dropped his dagger and stumbled away from me.
“Here, hold this,” I slammed the dagger in my right hand into the thigh-minion’s back for safe keeping, and he stopped screaming.
Then I brought the toe of my shoe down on the guard of Raijin’s dagger, and the blade catapulted up into my fingers.
“Upgrade!” I laughed. The sorcerer’s dagger was a bit longer than the others, and the curve made it look like the talon of some giant creature. The blade was perfectly balanced, and in previous attempts where I’d obtained the blade, it parried the other minions’ weapons like they were made of plastic.
I was almost there.
I kicked one of the men into another that was wielding a sword, and he lifted his arms to protect himself from my blade, but this dagger was pretty fucking awesome, and it took his arm off at the shoulder while I shoved my other knife’s tip right into his eye socket.
I guessed the man died instantly, but as his cut-off arm fell toward the ground, I kicked the sword up and out of his dead hands and snatched it with my fingers that used to hold the dagger I’d just planted into his skull. Then I drove this blade into the neck of the fucker I’d kicked him into and spun around to fast the last three dudes.
The remaining three men converged on me as one. The middle man and the one to my left carried swords, while the one to my right carried a dagger. I dodged the thrust from the middle, parried the dagger on my right with Raijin’s curved blade, and used my elbow to try to knock the other sword out of the left man’s hand. He managed to hold onto the blade, so I shifted my dagger to point toward him and drove the blade through his arm. The muscles lost their tension, and the sword fell to the ground with a clatter that was nearly drowned out by the man’s screams.
“That’s gonna leave a mark.” I left the blade in his arm, grabbed the other man’s sword, and ran it through the dagger-man.
The horrified swordsman let go of his blade and got my sorcerer’s dagger through the throat for his effort. The man with my other dagger in his arm yanked it out and came at me. He was clearly not lefthanded, and we’d danced this dance a few dozen times, so I was able to knock his weapon from his grasp and cut him down.
The only living minion at that point was the one coward who hadn’t even bothered to try to wiggle out from underneath his dead comrade. He whimpered at me as I approached, and his blood splashed against my shoes after I used the curve dagger to rip his throat open.
All that remained was Raijin the Sorcerer himself.
“Well, that was fun,” I said as I pulled my left-hand dagger out of the skull of the one-armed dude I’d killed a few seconds ago.
“You are even more powerful than I imagined, O Great One! Fourteen men, gone in the blink of an eye!” The man stood there with a grin on his face, and his eyes were lit up with the kind of delight only an insane person could muster.
“You seem a bit too happy for someone who’s about to die,” I growled, and my blood-soaked socks made a squelching noise as I stepped around the bodies and came to face the sorcerer once more.
“What?” he squeaked and bowed his tattooed head. “Noooo… O Great One. I am your servant! I’ve summoned you to this world to be your minion.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I sighed. “You’ve killed me probably five hundred times.”
“I’m sorry, Great One,” the sorcerer gasped as he bowed lower. “I have not ever killed you. I summoned you because I wanted to see your great power, and I wanted to be your aide as you conquered this world.”
“Yeahhh,” I groaned as I studied the man for a second.
This might be a trap. He might be waiting to use his trump card for the last possible second. Or maybe was a necromancer, and I had just given him all of the manpower he could ever need. Of course, if he was a necromancer, he would have just come in with a horde of zombies instead of bringing in live men. Dead people don’t need to eat as much as the living, and he did seem like a cheapskate.
Then again. It really didn’t matter if he had a trick up his sleeve. If he killed me now, I’d just do the whole sequence over again. I had every step memorized, and all that was left was to kill this motherfucker.
“Let’s hope this ends whatever loop I’m in,” I said as I swung my left dagger at him.
He jerked his staff upward and managed to parry my attack, but the block was lazy, and I had put more effort into my blow than he had in his defense. The staff shifted in his grip, and I brought the other dagger in to completely disarm him. The wood cartwheeled through the air and landed with a clatter somewhere off to my right. Raijin’s gaze followed its trajectory before turning back to me with terror in his eyes.
He knew as well as I did that he was finished.
The sorcerer opened his mouth to speak, but I was sick of listening to his obnoxious voice, so I shoved one of the daggers into the back of his throat and, while he choked on that, I brought his old dagger up and brushed the front of his robe out of the way. I stared into his terror-filled eyes as I carefully thrust the blade up under his ribs. I watched the light of life leave him, and I reveled in his body sliding down onto the stone dais.
Raijin the Sorcerer was no more.
My heavy breathing seemed to echo around the room and at first I thought I had more enemies to deal with. I spun around and held my daggers at the ready as I watched the flickering shadows bend and crawl along the walls. I held my breath, and the only sound was the faint crackling of the torches and the occasional dripping of water somewhere deep in the catacombs. I listened hard for the footsteps or echoing whispers of approaching enemies. Nothing. I was alone.
“Yessssssss!” Relief swept over me like a bucket of cold water. My hands shook so violently that I dropped both daggers. My legs would no longer support me, and I staggered away from the steps of the dais to slump against the left wall. Fourteen men and a powerful sorcerer. Dead at my hands, and they super deserved it for being complete assholes.
“I won… Finally.”
I sat and stared at my hands for a long time. Once they finally stopped shaking, I tested my legs. The first two steps were more stumble than stable, but at least I could support myself again. Now that the threat had been dealt with, I was able to get a really good look at the room I had been stuck in for the past thousand lifetimes.
It wasn’t a very large room. Each wall seemed to be about the same length, maybe about fifteen feet or so. The stone dais was in the middle of the back wall but away from it toward the center of the room by about four feet. The stones were covered in moss here and there, and the scent of wet earth and blood filled the air. The doorway leading out of the room was along the wall opposite the dais, slightly off-center and more toward the right wall.
That was my way to freedom.
As soon as I crossed the threshold, there was a little gust of wind. It whipped through my hair and fluttered my clothes, and it seemed to be coming out of the floor. I couldn’t see any huge gaps beneath my feet, but the breeze didn’t last long enough for me to drop down and really investigate.
The strangeness of the wind made me do another quick check of the room behind me, but a shimmering light drew my eye to the left wall. Some kind of weird writing had suddenly appeared in neon blue ink on the stone.
“What the fuck?” The text seemed to flow like it was underwater. It wasn’t in any language I had ever seen before, but it had to be important somehow. I walked over to the wall and tried to touch it. If it was carved into the stone itself, maybe I could find a way to copy it onto paper or imprint it onto the leather of the minions’ armor.
The moment my finger passed through the floating text--because it wasn’t carved into the stone--the letters suddenly shifted and morphed until I could actually read it.
You have been called, O Great One, to save this world from its destruction. Heed your power and use it well, for with it you shall defeat every foe that dare stray across your path. For you cannot fail when you can repeat your attempts as often as you need. Go forth, God of Time, and return hope to the heart of this world.
I stood there and stared at the writing for a really long time. What was this power it was referring to? I was gonna have to figure that out pretty quick if I was this God of Time they were talking about.