Mark goes first.

His last life was exciting, romantic, insightful, and beautiful.  Which, naturally, means he has the fewest heartbeats out of all of us.

There’s a few things that correlate actions to heartbeats, achievements or notifications to heartbeats, but there’s so many times I’ve seen exceptions that I don’t think it’s really reasonable to try to track and plan for ways to stick around longer.  Killing things seems to work, usually, except when it really doesn’t.  So why bother being an asshole just for the chance that you’ll get a longer vacation?

The big man wraps me in a hug.  “Ohhhh, stop crying, it’s not like I’m dying .”  He jokes as his muscled arms do their best crush the slim frame I wear in the between.  “We’ll be back again before you know it!”

“‘S not enough time.”  I sniff, trying not to whine.

“It never is.”  Ellin sighs as she rustles my hair.  “What’re we gonna do about it?”

“Well, I’m  gonna do some really cool stuff, I think.”  Mark mostly lets go of me, leaving one arm around my waist as he turns to the others.  “Next time around, I’ll be out of here last, you’ll see.”

That’s almost worse.  But I don’t tell him that.

Mark does a last minute check of everything, as his heartbeats tick down.  He’s already finished running through all the between notifications from his last life, bought all the upgrades he wants, arranged his build, and dumped far too many marks and drops into buying a handful of colorful glass bottles that have been added to the shelf behind the bar.  There’s not really anything left to check, it’s just that there’s an unavoidable anxiety that comes from a countdown like this.

You can make a list, verify it, have your friends double check it, run down checking off everything on it, do a second double check of your completed tasks, and still have a feeling like you’ve forgotten something.  This isn’t an immortal thing, or an aspect of the between, this is just life .  A pure expression of the constant worry that you’re going to return to learn all too late that you left something on that you really shouldn’t have.

It’s almost comforting, in its persistent discomfort.  It isn’t , because that’s not how emotions work, but it  could be if my existence were art and not simply… life.

“I’ll miss you.  And I love you.”  I tell him, trying to put on a grin.

“Yeah, I know.”  Mark beams back at me.  “I love you too, Luri.  And all the rest of you too!  Even if Ellin still won’t kiss mmmggph-!”  His last word is cut off as Ellin, out of either spite or a dramatically misplaced sense of romance, does exactly that.

Mark vanishes when she is halfway through the motion, and both of us stumble forward.

“That man has excellent timing.”  Six comments.

“A paragon of the amorous.”  Jules bobs in a nod, a tentacle wrapped around Six’s shoulders as he sniffs back tears.  Jules takes people leaving the hardest, I think, though he disguises it as melodrama.

Ellin sighs as she rocks back on her heels, pressing palms into the table behind her as she looks at where Mark just vanished from, before angling an eye to me.  “What?  You too?”  She asked my gleeful expression.

“I mean, maybe!”  I say.  “That was just really cute.”

“Oy, well, thought I’d send him off with a good memory.  Less crying, more confusion.”  Ellin smirks.  “And now I have at least a few subjective years to figure out if I meant it!”

I press a trio of fingers to my forehead in a motion that I think I picked up from a cult five lives ago.  I love Ellin, I really do.  I love all of these people, with an almost blinding feeling of roiling heat in my chest that rends away the fear and uncertainty I feel and replaces it with… well, mostly confusion.  But a very affectionate confusion.  But my problems aside, Ellin is exasperating.

And I decide to let her know it.  “We have a hammock .”  I tell the taller woman, flicking a fingertip across one of her horns.  “You could have spent your whole afterlife making love to Mark, and you waited until now to decide that you might be open to it?”

“Luri, you’re the one who always tells us that we’ve got forever.”  Ellin doesn’t lose her peaceful smile as she leans her head back.  “Also I think I told you before, no one is having sex in the hammock.”

“Correct, the ropes are not the right thickness to make it viable in a way that would be comfortable.”  Six speaks up, and both Ellin and I slowly turn to eye the golem before we burst out laughing.

Goodbyes are painful.  They never stop stinging.  But they’re also a release of emotions, a flood of sensations that push us to say and do things we never would have been brave enough to before.  Each goodbye is a chance to grow.  And it really does help to know that we’ll all be back again.

Nothing is forever.  Not hello, and not farewell.

Ellin leaves next.

She doesn’t vanish like Mark does.  Instead, she chooses her own departure from Bastion’s.  Announcing that she’s taking to the halls and looking for anything neat to bring back next time around.  Six and I split some of our remaining points with her, and everyone shares hugs before sending her on her way.  There’s nothing so dramatic this time as with Mark, but she does flush at my suggestive wink, and I start to think it might be worth it to invest in finding a side room or a big bed as souvenir on my next life, just for the fun of it.  Even if the fun is just getting Ellin to blush again.  There’s a perverse joy in flustering the stoic warrior.

We’ve all had sex before.  It’s not an uncommon way to destress in the between, I‘ve found.  But there’s shades and nuances and layers to everything, and if nothing is forever, that means there’s always value to be found in trying something - or someone - new.

And then she’s out the temporary door, and into the halls of the between.  I don’t see where she ends up, because I’m not going with her, but I hope she finds something interesting.  She has a hundred thousand heartbeats left, which is both a long time and the blink of an eye.

“I don’t think I have it in my old limbs to play the knight errant this life around.”  Jules tells me as the three of us remaining curl up in the upstairs library.  We’ve been reading the same book and talking about the line by line dialogue between the characters, trying to determine if whoever authored this murder mystery was exceptionally good at metaphorical foreshadowing, or exceptionally lucky to have people like us reading her novel an indeterminate amount of time down the line.

“So you’ll be staying?”  Six asks, closing the book around a grey finger and settling it into his lap.  He and I are on the floor, with Jules’ tentacles curled around us as a makeshift chair, and I hate to admit that it’s more comfortable than most of our ‘real’ furniture.  The wood is hard on where my tail meets my back, though.  “That is good.”

“Yes, well.  It affords me more time with the two of you.  Though time does run short, and I should determine what my intent for next life is.  Or at the very least, what upgrades I wish to keep to prevent untimely deaths.”  Jules muses.  “Luri, you die in unexpected ways often, yes?  What would you say is the death you would most like resistance to?”

“…you can’t just ask me that, without an explanation.”  I shift into Jules’ rubbery tentacles to look up at his eyes.  “What are your options, even?  Do you have [Heatstroke Resistance] or something?”

“I have that.”  Six comments.  “Do you want that?”

“Absolutely I do yes.”  I jump at the chance.  I know I talk a lot about not falling into the trap of thinking that the rewards are the only thing that matters, but I do not want to die of heatstroke again.  Six passes me the meta item without comment, and it takes almost no thought for me to replace [Shovel Mastery Development]  in my aura with it.  “Thanks, Six.  Do you want anything?  I can make it a trade?”  He makes a downward swipe with a grey hand, and I let him get away with giving me a gift this time.  Though I make a mental note to do something nice for him in the future.

Jules vibrates a chuckle at the exchange.  “I was thinking that I could find an unlocked talent tree of mine and follow it to something you suggested.  I do still have [Serial Victim] , but as I have never been murdered in any of the lives since acquiring it, I do not believe it is worth the perk weight that it is carrying.”

I shake my head against him.  “Oh, yeah, no.  I had something like that too; sold it.  Anything that triggers on death worries me.  Perverse incentives at high velocity right there.”

“I do wish you would give me the credit of defending my mental state from wishing for my own murder .”  Jules grumbles at me, poking my side with a manipulator tentacle.  “We are not machines, Luri.”

“Ahem.”  I love how Six just says the word.  He doesn’t even bother trying to make it a throat clearing sound, he just speaks it.  “I could qualify as-“

Jules pokes him too, Six taking the jab unflinchingly.  “You are as much a machine as a horse.”  The words go in my ears, but I have to press my eyes closed to stave off a headache as I try to understand what Jules is even saying.  “You enjoy your state as stoic, and stone faced, yes.  But you are no more a machine than myself, Six.  Your aesthetic is your own volition, of course , but there is a deep well of emotion when you speak of learning and teaching, that no machine would ever match.  Please do not degrade yourself by dismissing your own value.”

“…As you say.”  Six says quietly.  I lean over the thick layer of tentacles between us to wrap a hug around the golem as he shifts in place.  I know he’s not uncomfortable, so it’s something more than that.  An expression of nerves that he offers very infrequently.  “Thank you.”

“Just cause you didn’t get a surprise kiss from Ellin doesn’t mean we don’t all love you, too, Six.”  I tell him with that confused fire in my heart.  “But also , don’t think I’m letting this sidetrack us from convincing Jules that he shouldn’t get himself murdered to build up murder resistance .”

Six nods, seemingly grateful for the return to the tangent.  “Yes.  Correct.  Murder is logistically difficult to arrange for oneself.”

Jules and I stop our bickering to turn to Six.  “Okay, no, hang on.”  I clear my throat.  “This raises a lot more questions that I didn’t want to have asked.”

“I’m keeping [Serial Victim]  until I can find a better replacement.”  Jules states.  “It is not as though it is interfering with my build, and if I do  become murdered, I will feel a deep vindication.”

Oh no.  He’s going to be so smug next time around if that’s what happens.  I actually look forward to it immensely.  Seeing my friends experiencing satisfaction for their chances and choices is a source of great fun for me.

We sit and keep talking for a while, going back and forth between our impromptu book club, and discussing Jules’ different ability loadout ideas.  In too little time, our warm pile of bodies threatens to lighten significantly.

“Ah.  Well.  Almost time for me to make my exit.”  Jules says, eyes flickering up to look at his own heartbeat counter.  “Six.  Luri.  It has, as always, been a pleasure to be with you.”

“Love you too, Jules.”  I say.

“As do I.”  Six adds.

The two of us hold onto the ends of his manipulator tentacles while Jules tries to keep his breathing steady.  More than anyone here, Jules hates being reborn.  It almost always means a new body that he will feel constricted in, and a new world that won’t understand his desire to be more .

For Jules, the end of his time in the between is far closer to the end of a life for a mortal who believes in a punishment afterlife than it is to feeling like a new chance.

And I can’t do anything about it for him.  Except to wrap my arms around his core, and whisper a lewd joke and tell him that it’ll be okay .  That he’ll be back before he knows it, that our one true superpower is the ability to attrition away every suffering we face.

I don’t know if he believes me.  I’m sure he hears, but the words are hard to swallow when you’re being taken away to something you hate.

“Well.”  The last words from him are a buzzing nervous vibration that tickles my skin as he speaks.  “I suppose that it cannot truly be worse than-“

I hit my head on a hard wood bookshelf as the air behind me is suddenly empty.  It doesn’t hurt, but it’s a little embarrassing since Six keeps almost motionless when our improvised organic seating friend disappears.

Then it’s just the two of us.

Six and I don’t speak for a while.  Bastion’s seems too large and too cold suddenly.  Which isn’t exactly a new sensation for me; it happens every time, and this false life is no exception.  There’s an emotional vacuum being formed; where over the last subjective month we filled this room with laughter and stories, jokes and wagers, discussions of philosophy and tactics of life, now there is a void.  Artificially imposed, and sucking away the ability to enjoy those things that I had found to be different facets of our ways of expressing love.

The room isn’t actually colder, or darker.  The lights are still on - though I do hope Ellin found some better lamps, these ones could use an upgrade - and the temperature is as standard as ever.  I don’t know what the between thinks room temperature is supposed to be, but I suppose Bastion’s is it.

And yet, it feels more claustrophobic. It feels like something is lost.  Becuase something is; the people who make this place a space I wish to be in, and not simply another oddity in the between, they are vanishing.  One by one.

Six pours me something that burns when I drink it, and I set the cup down to receive another dose of the poisonous medicine that tastes much the same as the first.  “I hate this part.”  I mutter.

“Yes.”  Six agrees.  “It will be quite sad without you all here.  I am not sure what I shall do.”

“Oh, Six.”  I snap my eyes up, a small mental nudge killing whatever insobriety I was allowing the alcohol to inflict on me.  “I’m sorry, I forgot you’re… you’re here for a while, huh?”

“I will have an amount of subjective time, yes.”  Six answers like it doesn’t bother him.  “Some of it, I will remain here.  Keep the lights on, as it were.  But after that, I may wander.  I am sure that I will see you again, so I do not fear.”

“I hate to leave you alone.”

Six wraps firm hands around my own.  “None of us are alone.”  He says, more poetry in his voice than I’m used to from the golem.  “Luri, we are all of us united by inevitability.  As you say, never does not apply to us .  Loneliness will not last.  We will see each other again.”

I smile, but I don’t feel it.  I know he’s right, but forty lives hasn’t ever made the process easier.  It doesn’t help that so many worlds I live through don’t have a concept of therapy.

The next world that takes mental health seriously, I’m getting my qualifications and seeing if I can pick up a resistance to dread.  Maybe that’s too much of a plan.  I don’t know.

Sometimes I think that half the reason I have an aversion to making plans is because my plans get derailed, and I’m tired of whole lives being disappointing.  But maybe that means I need a better attitude.  Or better plans.

“Thanks Six.”  Is what I find myself saying instead.  He still stares at me with those sunken ring eyes of his, dark circles more astute than his uncanny appearance would let on to most people.  “No, really.  Thanks.  You shouldn’t need to be reassuring me, though.  I just don’t want you being bored and lonely this whole time.”

“I will not be bored.”  Six promises me.  “There are books I have not read, and I can find a way to pass the time.  Perhaps I will meet someone new, or wander the between.  I will endure.  I am more concerned with yourself, and your final notifications, which you have been stalling.”

I bite my lip, and check the between’s log of my life.  Three things left, yes.  I’ve already pruned all the others.  Low priority influxes of marks and points, pseudo-quests paying out, a perk or two here and there.  Fifty subjective years, wrapped into a neat package and delivered to me like a poison gift.

“I’m waiting.”  I say.

“You do not have many heartbeats left, Luri.  Do not wait forever.”  Six reminds me.

I take a deep breath, which turns into a long sigh, and find myself baring my teeth.  Six reaches over in front of me and fills the clay cup that I’m trying to crush with my fingertips with a pour from a bottle of steaming violet liquid.  He doesn’t fill it that far, and I find out why as I taste from one of the things Mark left behind for us.

It doesn’t just burn, it feels like it’s trying to rearrange my nerves from inside my eyes and under my skin.  This cannot have been made for a human, and I think that if I tried it anywhere but in the between, I’d already be dead.

But I’m not real here, and neither is the drink, and even though I’m hacking out a cough, I let it get into my head just enough that I hit the mental switch on the last three mementos of a failed lifetime waiting for me to read them.

[You have gone over fifty subjective years before taking a combat action : +100 coins, ability granted - [Peacehome], talent trees expanded (Pacifist, Discipline)]

[You have committed regicide : +220 marks of war (modified by local authority weight, modified by [Declaration Of Azar Senate]), perk unlocked - [Regicide] ([Regicide] already available, 20% discount applied to next upgrade)]

[You have died.

You lived the life of a farmer.

You lived the life of an unintended hermit.

You lived the life of one who changed the course of a people.

You lived the life of one who died doing what they believed in.

Final grade : unavailable

Final true achievement : 3 (18 total)

Final reward : [King Jantu’s Broken Crown]

The between calls.]

That’s it.  That’s all it comes down to.

I stare at the words with tears in my eyes.  A lifetime of exile and loneliness for a crime that was committed before I was even born in that world.  A tyrant that was unopposable, and a fickle decision from that hateful monarch to kill a whole town for personal amusement.

If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought him another reincarnator.  But he was just a mundane kind of monster.

Two years spent getting close, once I knew I couldn’t just let things go anymore, putting upgrades and lifetimes of skills to use to do it.  All down to one moment with a knife.

Kings die like all men.

But I hate it.  I hate how my hands are shaking as I remember the whole thing, I hate replaying over and over in my head the feeling of being tortured to death afterward.  I hate knowing that changing the course of a people could very easily mean that I made everything worse.

I hate myself, for not acting sooner.  And I hate myself for acting at all.  I have more power than most mortals will ever know is possible, and I despise that using it always leaves me feeling as if I have made things worse .

Six leaves worlds he passes through smarter and kinder.  Mark leaves them a little more exciting.  Jules leaves them a little more progressive.  Ellin…

Okay, Ellin might also make things worse.  But it doesn’t bother her.

It bothers me.

The memories leave me shaking and crying.  I didn’t want to talk about this life. I didn’t want to think about it all again.  I know it’s stupid, that all suffering is transitory for me, that none of it really matters.  And I know that the man I killed did truly deserve it; I am no pacifist, despite what the talent tree I have claims.

But the feeling of hot blood dripping through my fingers makes me want to vomit.  The sensation of a body slumping like it’s strings were cut fills me with revulsion.  The sound of the last gasping breath of a person who no longer has an intact throat to gasp from is a personal nightmare that I cannot wake from.

This is not the first person I have killed.  It will not be the last, because never and forever don’t come for me.  This man wasn’t special because he was a king, or a monster, or a tyrant, or a killer.  He’s nothing new just because he deserved it.

It’s just one more corpse on the pile in my soul, filled with faces that I have long since forgotten, and made all the worse for the fact that I find it disgustingly, painfully, inhumanly easy to get over what I have done.

I try to hold on to the memory of the pain, and the fear, and the blood.  I try to reinforce that I can’t let that become my world.  That there has to be a better way to live.

But it won’t last.  Because nothing does.  And mostly what this lesson taught me was that I should be faster with the knife when I see a thing like this would be king.

I sigh again, and look up at Six.  I call up  [King Jantu’s Broken Crown] to my hand; a golden circlet set with a ruby the size of an eye.  It’s cracked, presumably from where he hit the ground after I kicked his corpse out a window.  But it’s mine now.

“Here.”  I hand it off to Six.  “Maybe sell this for something.  I don’t wanna see it again.”  He takes it from me wordlessly, dropping it into his inventory without checking if it has any stats to it.

The next few thousand heartbeats are me rushing to rearrange my build.  As the pain fades and the mental wound heals all too quickly, I set myself up with perks and aura layers that will make me healthier and smarter while I sing, help me learn faster, and help me escape bad situations.  I have a lot of stuff already slotted, but I rearrange a little bit to try something different.

“I’m almost gone.”  I say eventually.  A thousand heartbeats left.  A subjective hour, if I weren’t feeling the anxiety making my heart hammer faster and faster.  The words come out cold, but that’s only because I’m feeling dead and hollow.

Six’s arms press around me, but I don’t look up.  I didn’t see him cross from behind the bar to hug me.

“Everything will be okay.”  He lies to me.

“I know.”  I lie back.

“But when it isn’t, you can come back, and tell me that you told me so.”  Six lets a lilt slip into his voice.

A manic giggle slips out of my lips as I look up at his sparkling black eyes.  He smiles at me, and for just a second, I do believe him.  Believe that maybe this time, I won’t be so tired .

I run out of heartbeats.

I go next.