I take stock of myself as best I can; that is not as easy as you might think after fighting so hard; but my arms move without too much trouble so I pat down the areas I should be most concerned with, my head and neck, before sitting up and taking a more holistic view.

Oh, right. Aside from my leg that the wolf shredded the hell out of, all the rest of my injuries were on my back. Leg aside I was moderately successful at avoiding wolf, but the Orc Rider was able to lean over the tear my exposed back up rather fiercely. So, you know. Sitting up hurt. A lot.

Maybe we should have switched to taking out the Orcs when they reached melee; those guys hit entirely too hard to ignore. Sure, the wolves might hit a bit harder, but that is a maybe, and those wolves are far tougher than the run of the mill Orc. Since the orcs hit comparably hard but go down easier, we would've taken less damage by taking them out once they reached us.

I expected that the wolves would be tougher to take down than the orcs, but the difference in toughness exceeded my expectations. Taking the wolves out at range still made the most sense since that would break up their charge and impair their ability to swarm us, but in hindsight a change of tactics once they reached us may have been the more appropriate plan.

I check for my possessions and find that most of them are still present, although I do not seem to have my crossbow on me. I want to heal myself, right now. My injuries burn and throb, threatening to tear open with every slight movement, and I'm pretty sure my back has already resumed bleeding. I am at 1 health, so my recovery must have been through natural healing.

How long was I out, I wonder? I refrain from grabbing a potion and healing myself that way. If I had to recover naturally, that means Joaqim is either more seriously injured than I am, or he is dead. I really hope that he is still alive. I hope they all are. I clamber out of the shallow hole, it is only slightly deeper than I am, moving as stealthily as I can, and I try to find the rest of the team.

I find the carriage that the carriage is close, only about 10 meters away near a small fire circle, though there is no fire lit. My horses are alive, at least, and my carriage still seems to be in good condition. I do not see any of the others. I don’t see Regina’s horse, either.

Well, that tells me that there are people in my team alive, but I am not very optimistic anymore. If the whole team was alive but injured, whoever brought me here and dug that hole should have brought the rest of the survivors with them. I have a sinking feeling that our team of 4 might only be a team of 2, though who the second survivor is I do not yet know.

I check the carriage where we would keep loot. I see several sets of studded leather armor, some falchions… And 2 sets of quicksilver full plate armor. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Bucky did not talk much, but he truly was a gifted fighter. He was on track to become an amazing fighter, and beyond that, everything I've learned about him showed him to be a really nice guy. Now?

Well, you know the answer to that. Now, he is dead. And Joaqim? That man has been helping and supporting me ever since I requested that he be captured while I was still in the Lizardfolk village. Nearly 3 years he has been answering questions, providing guidance and advice. Every step of the way, he was supportive and helpful. Why are they dead and I, the most useless out of all of them, why am I alive?

Stop it, Elliot. You know what this is, this is survivors’ guilt. It is not your fault, you know it is not your fault, and you know it is perfectly normal to feel like it is anyhow. You already did the what ifs. You might have been better off switching to the Orcs when they reached melee. You really might have been. But you did not know that at the time, because you have never fought so many of the wolves before, and never paired with orcs. Maybe you could have guessed it, and maybe you should have, but ignoring the Wolves would have also been extremely high risk. Even now, you do not know that it would have had a better outcome, you just think it would have been.

Think about it Elliot. Maybe mobility is the reason that Regina was the one who lived. Unlike the rest of us, it is normal for her to be fighting while on the run. If we'd ignored the wolves as soon as they reached us, there's actually a pretty good chance she wouldn't have been able to escape the wolves the way that she could the orcs, so if you'd targeted the orcs instead, you might have ended up with all of you, including Regina, dead.

So, stop kicking yourself, you made the best decisions you could think of at the time those decisions had to be made. Even if hindsight does end up proving that switching targets would have kept you all alive after all, which doesn't seem as likely to me now that I know who the survivor was and I can speculate on how they survived, transitioning from analysis to blame is poison.

Accepting this commission was reckless and dangerous, and you knew that. But you wanted the experience and the money and the ability to stay in the only human city you feel remotely safe in so that you could do more to be ready for whatever it is that either already is, or is going to become so horribly fucked someone felt the need to chuck your soul across dimensions.

My wife, my kids, Gerald, Pain, Smith, White, West, Branch, Gonzalez, Doc, Noel, Krider, James, Quick, Black, Small, Green, Roanoake, Jim, Joaqim, Bucky… The list goes on and on, feeling like it never ends. You have been through this dozens of times. You know what is happening, you know why you are trapped in this head space, and you know why you are beating yourself up about it.

Gods, sometimes I think I truly am cursed. I think that more often than I want to admit. People I am responsible for, good people, they just die, one after another, for the stupidest reasons. Again, and again, and again. If there really is a god, a real one, not someone on Mental Me’s level who is terrified by and unable to comprehend “The Abyss” that keeps eating souls in front of him. A real god, the omnipotent and omniscient sort. If such a being as my version of a true god is real, I believe that he hates me. I do not know why, but it just completely lacks any sort of rhyme or reason that over the years one person after another dies, while I live on.

At that moment, a strange thought hit me. I am not special. I am not always the survivor. It wasn't just my wife and kids that died back on my home planet. And against all rationality and reason, that realization… It helps. I start laughing, a bit madly. But I feel a little better.

I die too. I died to a nuclear blast right along with my own wife and children. I could not save them. I wish I could, but I couldn't. I wasn't even able to save myself, much less anyone else. And that pitches me into a fit of mad laughter worthy of The Joker himself.

Sometimes our fate, whatever degree of relevancy such a concept actually has to the world, dictates that things simply won’t end well. And in this world? Let's be honest, I will probably die just as ignobly here. No, not as ignobly. Dying to a nuclear blast is completely beyond anyone's personal ability to resist. It might not be noble, but it's sure as hell not something that'll have me going down in history as having died ignobly, it's understandable and human that I'd die to that. That anyone would. By contrast, my death here will probably be far more pathetic and miserable, I will probably end up being digested by some giant slug monster or something. And if that's not a reason to feel better, I don't know what is.

“God,” I say, “Whoever or whatever that actually even means, I just want to let you know. I know you hate me. I don’t know why, and I don’t much care as to your reasons. But it's true. You know it and I know it. You wouldn't make me live a life like this twice if you felt some other way about me. And you know what? Fuck you for making life so fucking miserable, for setting me up to live like this, and then deciding slogging through it once wasn’t enough and putting me on repeat. You are a real piece of work, and you can rest assured that I have every bit as much contempt for you as you have for me. But… Also, thank you. Because at least here, there is a chance that I will be able to fix some things. I know better than to think I can fix everything everywhere, but the things that I see in front of me, at least, maybe I can do something about some of those, some of the time. I know I'll probably still end up failing at most of the big things, and even though I have yet to figure out why I was reincarnated into this garbage dump of a world. Even though I have no idea how to stop what is coming, or even what exactly it is that I am supposed to stop. Even though any outsiders looking in would think it's a much worse place to be, thank you. Because here, if I try hard enough and get lucky enough, and given enough time, maybe I can do right by some of the people who help me along the way. Maybe I can bring Jim, Bucky, and Joaqim back. So, fuck you. And thank you, for at least leaving me a chance this time. That's all I've ever asked anyone for, a chance."

“Not sure I think thanking anyone is the call to make right now, or if you do thank someone, it should at least be me… That was an interesting speech. If nothing else it explains why some of the things you say make you come across madder than a hatter. You're not from around here, so you not making sense makes a bit more sense.” Regina says from a shadow, about 2 meters away from me. She takes a step forward, allowing the moonlight to illuminate a pail face, freckles insufficient to hide the accumulated strain and exhaustion.

“What the hell! Jesus, you scared the shit out of me!”

“See? Like that. I’m not Jesus, I’m Regina. Is Jesus your god, then?”

“No. It’s just an expression we use back home. In my real home, that is. It means you are really surprised or startled, or you just want to emphasize that you have a strong opinion about something. You might say, for instance, Jesus this smells bad!”

“Ok, so who or what is a Jesus?”

“I don’t know. Probably just a made-up story, but no one still alive when I left knew, not really, we just like to pretend that we know because certainty brings comfort.”

“Well that’s… An interesting opinion. Possibly true, I guess? Are you actually willing to tell me about your home, then? Your real home?”

“If I can’t tell you about it and expect it to stay a secret, who else could I possibly ever trust with something like that? It’s not as though I’ve been lying about it, it just isn’t something that really comes up in conversation much. I mean, if you'd outright asked 'Hey are you reincarnated from a different world?' I probably would have told you. But without the question, even if I told someone, the odds are pretty good no one would believe me. They'd just think I was madder than a hatter.”

“People are reincarnated or resurrected all the time, it’s just that the ones that get that kind of privilege are usually fantastically rich. I’ve heard of rare occasions where someone who is blessed by the gods will get resurrected, but I think there is a reason it doesn’t happen often. I don’t know that reason might be, but it's so rare for it to happen that way there's gotta be some sort of reason. Joaqim probably would have known…” she says, trailing off into silence for a few moments before continuing “Would it be ok if I asked you a few questions?”

“Sure. My world, my home, it’s very different from here, so some things probably wouldn’t make sense without having to explain things in some pretty inaccurate ways though.”

“Were you always like… This?” She says, gesturing towards me.

"This?"

"That, yes. A lizardfolk. You're… Not the way that I've come to expect lizardfolk to be. You're… You're more like a human, you know, just… A really weird one."