Surtr moves from the south

  with the scathe of branches

  there shines from his sword

  the sun of Gods of the Slain

  -Voluspa

  The last thing I remembered was burning. Burning really, really sucked. It was awful. It was shit-tastic, even. A real bummer. Easy winner of the “least favorite life experience” award.

  I was in a hospital. Or at least, I had to be in a hospital. There was no way I’d come out of that particular weenie roast without being put into a hospital.

  My eyes were closed. I couldn’t move my legs, twitch my fingers. But I could hear, and I could listen--and hey, I’d been pretty good at listening my whole life.

  It was what I was listening to that was making me doubt that I was in a hospital. But I couldn’t be anywhere else. I wasn’t in pain, which was weird. So presumably I’d been put on an impressive amount of drugs. Wasn’t super excited for when that wore off, but that was Tomorrow Teddy’s problem, not Today Teddy’s problem.

  No, my current issue was that the doctors were acting unusual. Probably surgeons, though I wasn’t sure why I had this strong feeling. I didn’t remember anything about the surgery, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t having it. Surgeons were supposed to be a lot of things, but all the ones I’d met over the years were cut roughly from the same cloth--arrogant, confident, to the point.

  Not odd. Or vague.

  “This one has the best alignment to the task,” said one voice. It sounded solemn, dull, pretty emotionless.

  What task? Organ harvesting? They had to know I was alive. I could…not hear my heart, actually. I concentrated. Had I just forgotten what it sounded like? Was I overthinking it? Probably. I still had a heart, it was just…hard to hear. I mean, I couldn’t think without a heart.

  “It is archaic,” said another voice. “With no concept of what is needed or required.”

  “It has the best alignment to the task,” the other voice said again. No change in inflection.

  “It belongs to the System. There are others, not from the first set.”

  “Sacrifices must be made. It has the best alignment to the task.”

  “We have used another.”

  “It failed. This one has always had the best alignment to the task.”

  There was a humming click, and quiet.

  When I woke up again, my eyes worked. They opened to white. Clean, hospital white. I blinked. Still, eye-searingly bright.

  I took in a shaky breath. My chest moved. My heart beat. Relief filled me, a balm to the rising anxiety that I’d had. I’d a weird suspicion that I wasn’t in some sort of hospital. Was paranoia a side effect of being burned alive?

  That might just be me. I’d always had a chronic nervous streak.

  My eyes darted around. White. Perfect, featureless white. I waited for the light to adjust, squinting into it. There should’ve been walls. A window. A chair or two, with my sister in it, yapping about whatever had shown up on her social media feed.

  Nothing formed. It just stretched, onward and forever.

  Alright. This was not okay.

  I lurched to sit up without thinking about it. That move should’ve really hurt, but it didn’t. In fact, I didn’t sit up at all. Suddenly, I was just standing, arms at my sides, surrounded by a pale void and a mirror in front of me.

  I recoiled.

  It took me a while to recognize, well…me. Middling height. Stout, round face, piggish nose. Black hair, brown eyes.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  No, Brown eye.

  Except it wasn’t just that, anymore. Horrible, rippling burn scars covered the right side of my face, stretching from lip to forehead and disappearing down my neck. My flesh twisted and melted together, forcing part of my lip upward and revealing teeth. I no longer had one eyebrow, and that eye was gone. Some of my hair on that side was gone, too, like I’d partially shaved my head.

  “Oh,” I said, staring at my reflection. My hand shook as I raised it to touch the new scars.

  Words flashed on--no, hovering over the mirror in front of me, in bright, neon orange text.

  Would you like to confirm appearance?

  “What?” I asked.

  The orange text rippled. Yes or No?

  “I want to look like me,” I blurted. My one good eye darted around, searching. Nothing. There was just nothing. Was I dead? Was I going to Heaven, or Hell, or some other place?

  What the fuck was happening?

  Selection confirmed. WARNING: Base Charisma Will Be Further Reduced.

  Was God floating orange text? Man, that would really upset…a lot of people. I don’t know how I felt about it.

  The thoughts were incongruous with whatever was going on, but that wasn’t new. My panic felt distant as I sat there. I stupidly blinked my one good eye at the orange text, the mirror that showed me, and the white void. The panic receded from me, a tide retreating. What filled the empty space behind was a litany of stupid little thoughts that I couldn’t escape, but had the sense to never actually say out loud.

  Like, why orange? God was pretty universally associated with shiny shit. You think he’d have gone for gold. Orange made me think of fire--and not the holy kind, either.

  Also, base charisma. I knew what charisma was, I didn’t--

  Everything changed, again. It blurred, silver and orange and white, and then I was standing in grass. It was the middle of the day somewhere. I heard a bird chirp, and I felt the warmth of sunlight, but much like the featureless white void of before, the grass stretched on forever. It didn’t even change in height--there wasn’t a hill to be seen, the suggestion of a divot anywhere.

  The orange text appeared again--this time on a white background, like a floating computer dialogue. It filled in as I looked at it. I tried to turn my head, and it came with me, still taking up the center of my vision.

  Well. That was fucking trippy.

  Your Class has been selected for you. You are now a PALADIN. Please select your Blessed Weapon.

  As I finished reading, the box moved upward. Three objects floated in front of me at chest height, surrounded by a gold, glowing outline.

  So, I was definitely dreaming. Alright, cool.

  The objects were small…fist sized, actually. The first was an elaborate sword and shield, silvery and intricate-looking. The second was a wicked-looking warhammer, flat on one hand and spiked on the other--clearly some sort of two handed weapon.The last was odd.

  It was a shovel. It was perfectly innocuous. Long, but not too long. I’d say it was the length of my torso? It had the typical shovel scoop that went down to a point, a handle at the end. Little flat metal things were at the bottom of the spade-head that I could step on to force the point of the shovel to go deeper.

  I stretched out a hand to touch it. As I got closer, another tiny box popped up, with orange text in a darker shade.

  Blessed Garden Shovel

  Blessed by what? Dollars to donuts if I grabbed it, though, that would count as my selection.

  I eyed the other two weapons. I didn’t know how to use a sword. Or a hammer. I’d dug holes before, though. Everyone has dug holes, unless you’d been born with a silver spoon really far up your ass.

  I grabbed it. For a moment, it was like grabbing air, and then the next, the glow disappeared, and the object got much bigger. I was holding a very hefty-looking garden shovel in my palm.

  I almost dropped the damn thing. It had a smooth, solid wood handle, and the metal of the shovel was black. Steel, probably? A little longer than my forearm.

  There was nothing else about it. It didn’t glow. It didn’t shine. It didn’t seem to have any particular property.

  The floating dialogues had disappeared. The grass remained.

  I squinted, uneasy, shovel in hand.

  My sight, now that I had taken notice of it, was reduced. My field of vision was smaller, narrower. I had to turn my head to see things that would’ve been visible in the corner of my eye in the past. I did just that, searching.

  The wind whistled. A bird chirped.

  “Hello?” I called, soft. No response. The grass rustled--and then froze. The wind stopped. The world ground to a halt and hung like a program crashing.

  The sky flashed red. A siren blared directly in my ears. I jumped, staggering back. Raising the shovel, I grasped onto the base of the handle with two hands. I crouched, my head swinging.

  Red, flashing text floated in the sky, so large it blotted out the sun. It was all in bold and in capital letters.

  LIMITER DESIGNATED FOR RESURRECTION RAID DCCXXVI : THEODORA SMITH

  “What the fuck--”

  And everything was gone. Again.