NOVEL WEB [-1-] Dead Twice
Dave Walter had been a perfectly unremarkable IT employee. He had job security and a steady income, but was bitter and lonely, an example of the average, microscopic cog in the vast and bewildering corporate machinery of Serv0tec Inc. He was a gear that spun about aimlessly - not even connected to anything, often getting paid for doing absolutely nothing.
His daily routine was a never-ending labyrinth of pointless business meetings about reallocating priorities, starting projects that never finished due to being reassigned, and pretending to satisfy clients who couldn't be bothered to use Google.
On this particular Wednesday, Dave was feeling particularly disgruntled. He had been stuck in a meeting nearly all morning in which his colleagues discussed the importance of prioritizing tasks.
As if on cue, his manager poked his head into his cubicle. "Hey, D, could you grab everyone some coffee?"
Dave felt a sense of mild irritation wash over him. His office manager's idea of "office efficiency" involved wearing two watches for tracking two time zones and shortening everyone's name to a single letter or two. He wondered if he would ever be able to reclaim his full name at this rate. It seemed quite a hopeless endeavor, so he chose not to argue and accepted the quest with a nod.
As Dave stumbled into the elevator, the grating sound of elevator music assaulted his ears. He winced, wishing he had the superpower to control the musical choices of elevators.
He spotted one of his overly chatty coworkers in the elevator and quickly averted his gaze, pretending to be engrossed in his phone. He knew all too well the agony of being trapped in an eternal loop of small talk with Karen.
As the elevator doors opened, Dave bolted out of the building, eager to temporarily escape the blandness of corporate life. He flashed his ID badge at the security desk, feeling a small sense of satisfaction at the semblance of authority it granted him and strode toward the nearest Starbucks.
Dave had been walking across the street on his way back, trying to balance an absurd amount of coffee cups in his hands, when he heard the screeching of tires and felt the crushing impact of a car.
. . .
An otherworldly, ethereal chorus resounded in his mind.
As Dave's eyes fluttered open, he saw a blurry figure looming over him, surrounded by a halo of radiant, brilliant light.
"Congratulations!" a voice boomed in his head, "You've been reincarnated to Arx, hero! Welcome to your new life of adventure, magic, and dragons!"
Dave struggled to focus on the figure in front of him. The image flickered and doubled like a film slide layered over itself.
With a tremendous effort, Dave managed to mentally focus on one of the images and the double effect suddenly popped like a soap bubble encountering a child's finger. The image of the haloed Goddess converged into a paramedic girl in a bloodstained orange vest.
"Where are my dragons?" he slurred.
The paramedic's blue eyes sparkled with amusement. "Sorry to disappoint you, hero," she said, "but there are no dragons here."
Dave's heart sank. He had been hoping for a more exciting afterlife. But as he looked up at the paramedic, he couldn't help but notice how pretty she was. Not in a perfect, ethereal way, but in a human, flawed way. She looked a tad exhausted, with locks of blonde hair escaping from a tightly bound bun, but all the tiredness seemed buried beneath a brilliant, wide smile.
"You've been dead for three and a half minutes. That's a lot of minutes. Probably enough to see dragons. You're welcome, by the way," the paramedic stated. "Consider yourself lucky. It's Wednesday!"
Dave couldn't help but roll his eyes. "What's so lucky about Wednesday?" he groaned.
"See, statistically fewer people die on a Wednesday, therefore you're in luck to pick this day to get run over by a taxi. Get it? You don't look convinced. You're right! I just made that fact up to cheer you up." The paramedic's smile widened. "I'm Laricianna by the way. Stupid name I know, I didn't pick it. You can call me Lari. Remember to stay positive. Everything from here on is only going to be better! You can't get any worse than being dead, see?"
Lari just smiled and went back to her work.
As Dave stared up at the ceiling of the ambulance, he couldn't help but feel a sense of bitter irony. He had always wanted more excitement in his life, but he never imagined that it would come in the form of a car accident and a mangled body.
"Well," he muttered to himself, "at least I can say that I died doing what I loved. Drinking coffee and ignoring traffic laws."
Lari chortled overhead. Dave wondered if there was something wrong with her, nobody else found his horrible jokes amusing.
. . .
Lari or Dave's hallucination, whichever it was, had been spot on - Dave had been reborn. But this wasn't like the kind of rebirth experienced by some new-age yoga enthusiast after a few deep breaths and a green smoothie. This was the kind of rebirth that involved learning how to walk again, talk again, and a series of surgeries.
Dave lost his job at Serv0tec, the one thing that used to give his life some semblance of purpose. He was now stuck with a disability pension. He spent most of his free time moping around, feeling sorry for himself, and calling Lari just to hear her voice. She was always there to give him the tough love he needed.
"Don't focus on regrets," she said. "Focus on the future. Focus on being productive, on learning new things. You got a new lease on life, don't blow it or you'll disappoint me."
At first, Dave resisted. But as he slowly recovered both mentally and physically, Lari's words began to sink in. He read an article about Google's Lamda project and discovered the “Attention Is All You Need” paper which captured his interest.
Dave joined an online community of AI enthusiasts and started collaborating on an open-source large language model. Though challenging at first, he steadily improved his understanding of this new field, integrating LLMs with game engines.
As he worked on the project, Dave began to feel a sense of purpose again. He was determined to make something of himself despite the setbacks he had faced. His friendship with Lari grew and blossomed, and he found himself looking forward to each new day.
. . .
Six long years had passed, and the code that he had poured his soul into made contributions to the greater goal of making open source AI assistants and limitless open world games. Alas, it was a bittersweet success that left him feeling empty inside, due to an unfortunate twist of fate.
On a very dreary October morning, Dave found himself standing in front of Lari's grave. The flowers he had brought with him seemed unable to express the depth of his grief. He finally understood why she had refused to date him, why she had kept him at arm's length. She had been fighting a battle that was bigger than both of them, and in the end, cancer had claimed her life.
He looked up at the sky, as if he could somehow find the answer to his pain there, but all he saw was an expanse of gray clouds. He knelt down in front of the grave, tears streaming down his face, and placed the flowers at the base of the headstone.
Thunder cracked overhead, a rainstorm rolling across the sky. The rain poured, chasing people away from the cemetery.
Dave found himself alone. He fumbled with the keys for a minute before finally managing to start his car. He drove aimlessly, away from the city.
The road was a blur as pouring rain and his tears clouded his vision. He felt the weight of the world crashing down on him, mocking him, taunting him. What was the point of anything if his best friend was no longer there to share it with him?
The road home was far worse than he had anticipated, and the slick asphalt snickered beneath his tires as he found himself drifting into the oncoming lane. There, a car loomed, blinding him.
Dave attempted to swerve out of its path. His new, unforgiving trajectory flung him off the road, through the parapet. His car flew towards a proud and ancient six hundred year old sequoia, who had, over the course of its long life, acquired a certain amount of indifference towards the comings and goings of lesser beings.
The tree withstood the vehicular onslaught with the sort of quiet dignity that can only be achieved by spending centuries minding one's own business.
The programmer, on the other hand, found himself decidedly less fortunate in this encounter.
Dave blinked, trying to focus. His head throbbed with a pounding ache, a reminder of his recent encounter with the sequoia. By all rights, he should have been a mere smear on the forest floor, yet here he was... inexplicably alive.
Opening his eyes, Dave found himself surrounded by a sea of naked people stretching as far as he could see. Millions of confused and disoriented individuals filled his vision. Women shrieked and covered themselves, while men muttered and cursed. A cacophony of voices blended together in shared bewilderment.
Dave couldn't help but wonder how he'd ended up here. Was this some twisted version of the afterlife?
Looking beyond the crowd, he noticed something odd about the sky - or rather, the lack of it. There was no horizon line, no clear delineation between earth and sky. Instead, the world seemed to curve upward in a dizzying kaleidoscope of landscape that just didn't seem to end.
Rivers, mountains, lakes, and continents formed a patchwork that defied comprehension. Storms swirled overhead, volcanoes belched smoke and ash, and oceans shimmered under a scorching sun. Glaciers gave way to vast deserts, while azure lakes dotted the terrain like jewels.
The horizon continued to curve upward, with continents becoming mere specks in the distance. Parts of the terrain bore massive circular impacts.
Dave's mind raced to make sense of what he was seeing. This world appeared to be a hollow sphere, but on an unimaginably vast scale. The realization hit him: this had to be a Dyson sphere, a theoretical megastructure built around a star.
"Bloody fantastic," he muttered sarcastically, his gaze returning to the increasingly agitated crowd. "I always wanted to be part of a giant nudist colony in the afterlife inside a Dyson sphere."
"CONGRATULATIONS!" a loud, snarky male voice boomed, causing Dave's eardrums to throb.
"What?" Dave asked, feeling an unsettling sense of déjà vu.
His comment was drowned out by the sounds of the crowd. The mass of naked, bewildered humanity stirred.
"Your old lives have ended, and you have been reincarnated by my divine grace!" the deafening voice resumed, making Dave wince.
The crowd stirred, a cacophony of millions trying to respond.
"SILENCE!" The voice echoed across the landscape.
Dave turned to see the source of the voice, as did millions around him.
A rotund figure of a bald, bearded man in gold and black robes sat against the yellow sky of a distant desert. The clouds passed through him as if he were a hologram.
"I AM THE GOLD DRAGON-GOD-EMPEROR," the figure bellowed. "I summoned you to aid me against villains who threaten my domain! You'll have a chance to become heroes and citizens of my Empire. If you don't wish to work for me, raise your right hand and I'll free you from this responsibility. You have one hundred heartbeats to decide!"
Dave kept his hand down, eyes fixed on the Emperor's figure atop an inverted stone pyramid.
One hundred heartbeats passed quickly. Dave looked at the ground beneath his feet, made of something white. He leaned closer, trying to figure out what it was.
"Marvelous. For those who didn't raise their hands, observe!" The Dragon Emperor's eyes flared as he uttered: "Isekai!"
Suddenly, the air was filled with the sound of popping, followed by a chorus of screams. Dave turned to look at the old man standing next to him, who had raised his hand in response to the Emperor's job offer. The man was no longer recognizable as a human being; he had been twisted and fused together with another body, creating a grotesque, surreal abomination. Two mouths were open wide in agony, four eyes bulging.
Dave saw that all of those who had raised their hands suffered the same fate of being juxtaposed with another summoned body. They were choking and gasping for air, their faces turning blue as they collapsed to the ground.
"This is how I deal with useless chaff," the Dragon Emperor declared. "Disobey me, and you'll be liberated. Serve me well, and you'll become part of the team!"
Dave suddenly understood the answer to his query as he bent closer to the ground, heaving. He saw that he was standing on a carpet of bones, the remnants of countless genocides that had been compressed and compacted by millions of feet over the years into white sand.
"Now, march towards my city," the Emperor commanded. "There, you'll be given food and weapons!" He smiled, adding, "And remember, you can always choose to be free, to walk away! Go ahead, I'll be watching."
Dave felt numb as he began trudging towards the city with the others, knowing that anyone who tried to escape would be killed instantly by the 'isekai' spell which summoned people... into people in a blink of an eye.
A great yellow-white city loomed on the horizon as Dave and the naked, thinned-out but still massive crowd shambled towards it.
With each step, they stepped over and onto the corpses of the millions of the "liberated". Dave's unease grew as the walls made from white blocks stretched away from him for miles in every direction.
Gigantic white pyramids loomed above the walls, their golden caps glittering in the sunlight. It was a grotesque, ludicrous sight, and Dave couldn't help but gulp at the enormity of it all. He saw distant, tiny people, working away at the walls and the buildings.
White walls. White pyramids. White like the ground beneath his feet. Bones.
The city was constructed entirely out of bones. Bones of the people that had been summoned here by the millions, perhaps even billions, after they died on Earth.
In a few hours, Dave stumbled through the gates of the bone-white city, exhausted from the long march. The crowd dispersed into a maze of entrances. Dave found himself in a queue leading to "GATE 76" in bold, English letters.
Eventually, Dave reached a white counter inside a vast hall. The desk attendant, dressed in clothes sewn from human skin and adorned with bone jewelry, looked like a horror movie villain.
"Name?" the skull-mask attendant asked in a bored British accent.
"Dav... David Wallsberry," Dave fibbed.
"Welcome to the Gold Dragon Empire," the attendant said dryly. "Everything here is made from people, by people. You're one of us now, Mr. Wallsberry."
He handed Dave a black, hexagonal-textured bracelet, instructing him to put on the bracelet and say "CONNECT TO THE SYSTEM."
When Dave complied, a blue holographic window appeared on the bracelet.
"Follow the prompts, get assessed for magical affinity, complete a quest, murder some people and get a magic skill," the attendant explained casually. "It'll all be there. Only you can see your system prompts."
Dave nodded wearily, overwhelmed by the bizarre new world he'd been thrust into. Despite everything, a small part of him clung to hope - hope that he might find Lari if she too was reincarnated here, or maybe figure out a way to bend this world's rules to his advantage.
[SCANNING SOUL... PLEASE WAIT]
The blue window blinked.
[SOUL INTEGRATION IN PROGRESS...]
Dave felt a strange, tickling sensation in his chest as the blue window flickered. He wondered what was happening inside him.
"Your first mission will be to head back out the gate and carve gold out of the dead," the desk attendant added, handing Dave a short bone knife.
Dave accepted the knife with a trembling hand.
"The knife is made from compressed human bones. Tougher than regular human bones," the man explained. "Bring back one thousand gold tooth crowns. No rules. Feel free to kill as many people as you want, it'll increase the chances of you getting a rare skill. We only accept strong heroes here."
[GOD-EMPEROR'S CITADEL D-114, GATE 76 - QUEST: Bring back one thousand gold teeth to gain access to Citadel D-114.]
[Accept: Y/N?]
The blue window changed.
Dave struggled to find words as the desk attendant handed him a belt and a pouch clearly made from human skin. "This is enough food and water for the day."
Dave's stomach turned at the sight, suspecting what the contents might be made from.
"Good luck," the attendant said, pointing back towards the field of corpses. "Next!"
As Dave rushed outside, nausea hit him. He clutched his bone knife tightly, feeling lost. He had no idea how to do magic or fight.
Around him, some half-merged people were still alive, groaning pitifully. Others armed with bone knives were already harvesting teeth from the dead or dying. Gangs were forming, and fights breaking out over the gold crowns.
"Show me your teeth, you look rich!" A muscular man yelled, kicking an old man on the ground.
"This is hell," Dave thought. "I died and went straight to hell."
He retreated to the gate where overly muscular skull-masked guards stood in relative quiet.
Suddenly, a menu appeared on his wrist:
[TABULATING CREDIT RATING...]
[CORE SKILL ASSIGNED: PHANTOMANCY!]
[Evaluating Overall Stats. Displaying Overall Stats.]
Name:
Dave Walter
Age:
33
Species & Subtype:
Human
Core Affinity:
Phantomancer
Level:
0
Anima:
86/86
Anima Stamina:
0.1/0.1
Mana:
0.1/0.1
Mana regen:
0.1m/hr
Strength:
0
Agility:
0
Dexterity:
0
Vitality:
0
Charisma:
0
Magic:
0
Foresight:
0
Intelligence:
0
Wisdom:
0
Skills:
Phantom Sight
"Say what? A skill? Phantom-what now?" Dave muttered, looking down. "Why am I all zeroes?"
One of the guards nearby harrumphed, somehow having overheard him. "You got a skill already? Lucky you!"
Dave squinted at the muscular man in a skull mask.
"Your stats are zero because you haven't killed enough people," the guard added.
"What?" Dave asked.
"How do you think I got this job?" the guard asked. "Lots of stabbing. Best make good use of that knife! The more people you put out of their misery, the more your own stats will grow."
Dave simply stared.
"End someone with more muscles than you and you get the tiniest bit of their strength. End someone prettier than you and you increase your charisma," the skull-masked man explained.
"So the only way to get stronger is to... kill someone?" Dave gulped.
"Pretty much," the guard shrugged. "Be glad that you were summoned by the Dragon God-Emperor and not some other loser that'd send you out hunting dragons on your first day. Plenty of half-dead, fused fools outside to finish off to get stronger, see?"
"I will get stronger by stabbing someone who's already dying?" Dave asked.
"Yes," the guard nodded.
"Uhm... and what happens after I get a thousand gold crowns?"
The skull-masked man tapped a black collar with a red circle on his neck.
⭕
"You'll be rewarded with an obedience collar just like this," the guard said. "It'll keep you extra-focused on your job, see?"
It seemed that the only way forward was death or collecting teeth and getting collared into servitude.
"How do I use my skill?" Dave swallowed nervously.
“Just say 'activate skill name',” the guard suggested. “It might help you avoid getting stabbed. Or not."
"Activate Phantom Sight?" Dave whispered, trying not to think about muscle gains through murder.
The world became bathed in murky gloom as if someone turned the knob on the dimmer that controlled the local sun. A million sparkling silver dots suddenly overlaid themselves atop of reality.
Dave reached out to the nearest star embedded in the wall and touched it with his hand. It vibrated in his hand with a dying scream, a flicker of memory of a person that had perished here.
After about a second of twilight-view, the skill winked out, seemingly running out of power.
Dave sighed. A second wasn’t very much.
The likelihood of getting stabbed by some other knife-wielding man was far too high while it was daylight out. He needed time to process, to plan, to use his skill more effectively.
Looking around, he cautiously wandered outside of the gate until he spotted a small, uneven alcove in the city wall a few meters above ground.
Perfect.
He quickly climbed up the wall of compressed bones and squeezed himself into the tight space, grateful for the safety it provided.
As the sun slowly dimmed, Dave watched the frenzied activity outside slowly die down, testing the limits of his skill.
Phantom Sight worked for a second and took ten minutes to reload.
The dead were seemingly everywhere, especially within the bones that made up the wall he was occupying. Dave extended his fingers out and grabbed the wall, activating Phantom Sight once again. He watched as sparks suddenly began to flow from the wall into his fingers.
[Phantomancy LV 0 skill unlocked - Phantom Absorption]
Another message flickered above his black bracelet.
Dave relaxed ever so slightly. It appeared that he could just sit in the wall all day and absorb power from it without going anywhere.
Slowly, but surely, with every passing hour he absorbed the dead from the wall. As he did, the length of Phantom-sight seemed to increase while the reload time seemed to decrease.
In a few more hours, the view of the corpse-laden wasteland gradually faded into an inky blackness. The sounds of struggle and despair grew quieter.
None of his other stats changed except for:
Anima:
86/86 + [2.1482]
Anima Stamina:
0.1/0.1 + [1.8426]
Mana:
0.1/0.1 + [0.0096]
Mana Regen:
0.1/0.1 + [0.0029]
Which seemed to tick up by a fraction of a percentile as he absorbed tiniest, dim stars from the wall of bones.
In the pitch-black night, Dave took a deep breath and whispered, "Activate Phantom Sight."
The darkness gave way to a ghostly landscape, illuminated by ethereal threads and spectral forms. The living appeared as dim, spark-wreathed human figures as they were covered in dust made from the bones, stumbling blindly in the dark, still searching for gold teeth.
The wall and the ground was painted in very dim silver sparks too, made up from countless ground down souls.
But it was the recently deceased that truly caught Dave's attention. They shone brightly in his magical vision, like brilliant ghostly trees rooted in the corpses that littered the ground.
Carefully, Dave climbed out of the alcove, reaching the ground.
He moved with deliberate slowness, placing each foot with utmost care to avoid making noise.
His heart pounded in his chest, but he forced himself to remain calm.
As he approached the first corpse, Dave hesitated for a moment before reaching out to touch it. The instant his fingers made contact, brilliant motes of spectral light began to flow from the body into his hands.
His stats ticked up far faster from a recently deceased.
Encouraged by this discovery, Dave continued his grim work. He moved from body to body, each touch drawing more of the ghostly energy into himself. He wasn't sure how it might help him, but he knew that he was growing stronger, somehow increasing the power of his own soul with each absorption.
Guided by his spectral vision, Dave continued his silent harvest of the fallen, hoping that each absorbed light might bring him one step closer to understanding and perhaps escaping this terrifying new reality.
. . .
[Phantomancy LV 0 skill unlocked - Postmortem Parleyer]
The menu suddenly flashed over Dave's hand.
As Dave touched the next body, a flood of knowledge rushed into his mind. Suddenly, he knew everything about quilting - the intricate patterns, the careful stitching, the art of piecing together fabric into beautiful designs. But before he could fully process this information, it was gone, fading away like a dream.
Intrigued, he moved to another corpse, activating his new skill.
This time, culinary expertise filled his thoughts. He understood the delicate balance of flavors, the precise timing needed for perfect dishes, the secrets of a world-class chef. Yet, just like before, the knowledge vanished after a few minutes, leaving him with only a vague recollection of what he'd briefly learned.
Dave began to move more purposefully across the field of corpses. He absorbed the bright sparks through his hands and feet, feeling the energy course through him. As he continued, his body began to glow from within, like a living constellation of stars, each point of light representing a fragment of someone's life and knowledge.
As he traversed the grim landscape, Dave's eyes became drawn to an unusually bright soul. It emanated from the fused bodies of a fit-looking man and a larger woman. Curious, he approached and made contact with the man's hand.
Instantly, Dave was overwhelmed by the clarity and rationality of the memories that flooded his mind. Unlike the jumbled, emotional recollections from other bodies, these thoughts were organized, precise, and analytical.
He realized he was experiencing the memories of a detective.
Vivid scenes flashed before his eyes: smoke-filled alleys where informants whispered secrets, rain-soaked streets where clues lay hidden in plain sight, a dimly lit office where pieces of complex puzzles finally fell into place. The detective's life had been a constant pursuit of truth, driven by an insatiable curiosity and a keen eye for detail.
Dave found himself oddly comforted by the detective's rational presence and pulled all of the shining threads from within the man into his hands.
[Level 1 Phantomancy Skill Unlocked: Wraith Wingman. You are now able to hold 1 distinctive imprint of the departed within yourself and call upon its knowledge and skills for aid.]
The menu on his wrist declared.
"Interesting," Dave thought.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of a violin in his head, soft and somber.
"I'm going to call you Sherlock," he thought at the violin. "Can you understand me?"
The bittersweet ebb of violin strings answered his call seemingly saying 'yes' that Dave somehow understood.
[Level 1 Wraith Wingman slotted: Sherlock]
The menu commented.
With the symphony of the violin strings spurring him on, Dave strode forward reaching out to every shimmering spirit tree in his path.
As he touched the imprints of the dead, vivid memories of random professions blazed forth in his mind like a meteor shower.
An embittered cobbler, a hapless fishmonger, a dim-witted cleric, a tax accountant, a cheerful kindergarten teacher, a motivated soccer coach, a tired housewife, a landscaper, a tour guide, a taxi driver... all were illuminated in the brief, bizarre vignettes that passed behind Dave's eyes in a dizzying procession.
Some of the jobs were as simple as a professional reader, others were quirky and complex such as a STEM researcher.
The violin strings hummed with a strange, deeper energy, each note seemingly helping him sort out the memories of the departed. He closed his eyes, listening to the chorus of voices that sang to him with a surreal blend of infinite possibilities of other lives.
"More," he whispered, reaching out to another spectral tree.
[Phantomancy level 2 reached]
The bracelet flashed on his hand.
David ignored it, preoccupied with consuming the dead.
A sea of memories and personalities cascaded through him like a fountain of light, each one a chevron in the tapestry of various lives. He felt an electric sense of awakening, as if his mind had tapped into a vast network, a web of knowledge and potential. The essence of the dead swirled within him like a tempest, a symphony of voices whispering to him from beyond the veil, like waves of stars beating against the shore of his being.
The night wore on and Dave continued his voracious pursuit of all the unlife he could absorb.
His strides grew surer.
"I'll show that fat sky-bastard," he thought of the God-Emperor that brought him to this hell.
As if to answer his thoughts, the wind blew bone dust through the desolate landscape, painting it in a shawl of stars that too sought vengeance for their deaths.
[Phantomancy level 3 reached]
A message flashed on his wrist.
"I have to keep going," Dave thought to himself, feeling delirious from tiredness, hunger and thirst. "Have to keep getting stronger if I am to survive."
He realized that somewhere along his path of collecting ghosts, he had already chugged the questionable water from the flesh-pouch.
A loud snarling noise suddenly interrupted his journey. It was far too loud to be human.
Dave spun and spotted a monstrous thing looming over the corpses in the darkness, painted in sparks of the dust made from the dead. It was an awful, grotesque mixture of a giant bat and a dragon. The beast was feasting on the corpses, spark-painted blood dripping from its maw. With his heart thundering, Dave raised the bone knife above his chest, his eyes focused intently on the creature.
The thing let out an ear-piercing screech and suddenly lunged at him, a hurricane of wings and claws.
He slashed at the abomination, but he was too slow. His Phantomancy did nothing to help him. The monstrous beast grabbed Dave with its talons lifting him off the ground.
Dave felt his body being crushed by the creature's massive claws, the wind rushing past him.
The snarling beast seemed to be… laughing?
"What's so funny?" he snarled, flailing but not breaking free.
The creature simply continued to laugh like a hyena, a wild, savage sound that echoed across the field of the dead. Dave's stomach churned as he was hoisted higher and higher into the sky by the monster, his knife useless as his hands were crushed to his body.
The beast that held him emitted an awful aroma, even worse than the field of the dead.
"Just my luck," he thought. "I get reincarnated only to be eaten by a giant smelly bat."
He struggled in the bat's grip for what felt like hours. He had no idea where the beast was taking him, but it probably didn't bode well for him. Soon, daylight began to light up the landscape. Dave saw jagged mountains below him and gulped.
As the bat's mad laughter once again filled his ears, Dave suddenly heard a new sound - a low, ominous hum. The beast seemed to pause, its grip loosening as it looked around, as if searching for the source of the sound. Something massive struck the oversized bat in mid air. Dave yelped as two monstrous, dark, blurry things fought and spun in the sky.
He took the given opportunity, twisting his body and struggling free of the creature's grasp.
When his arm became free, he stabbed at the claw that held him again and again.
Suddenly, he was free of the large talons. He then discovered that he was plummeting down, his knife clutched tightly in his fist. The entire world spun, lit by the pink morning light piercing through the clouds.
Dave tried to reorient himself, tried to spread his hands and feet as far as possible, to increase his chances of survival. The violin within him sang, pushing him to do something, something important that he had to do to survive. Acting almost on instinct, Dave mentally pushed all of the stars he had absorbed from the dead into reinforcing and strengthening his own body.
With a sickening thud, he slammed into the snow-covered ground, his bones jarring from the impact.