I admit: I hesitated at the tower. It had been a couple of days since I first spawned here so my real death was still more fresh than I would like to have been. Standing before the black stone of the tower, my heart was racing and reminding me what death had felt like. If it weren’t for the crowd behind me that were starting to doubt my commitment to the plan I had presented, I would have given up. I had to show them that this was a good plan, I had to get my party back.

I took a deep breath and stepped into the tower. I thought I would be stepping directly onto the second floor, but I had not. I was on the landing of the staircase with the stairs to my left and the way to the second floor on my right. I knew what waited for me on the first floor, a boss that wouldn’t activate and a long hike to where any monsters were. I didn’t know anything about the second floor, though, other than it was a field of flowers with a volcano off in the distance.

“Might as well learn something new while I get killed.” I mumbled in annoyance and stepped into the second floor.

The scent of flowers was overwhelming. One of my childhood friends had a grandmother that kept a big blow of potpourri that smelled just like this. It was enough to make you gag even though it was a pleasant smell.

There were no monsters in sight and I could see far. My only guess was there might be something in the copses of various trees. My ram legs stomped along towards one of those areas. I figured making as much noise as possible would aid in my endeavor to, well, die.

I made it to the first collection of trees to find myself surrounded by thick foliage. It is larger than it appeared from the tower, a mini forest. My anxiety was making me impatient. I just wanted to get it over.

“Hello! Anyone out there to kill me?” I shouted while part of myself screamed in frustration that I was so quick to agree to die.

While I had been very depressed in life and wished things would end, I wasn’t exactly suicidal. I just didn’t want to bother with life stuff, which I know doesn’t make sense to want to die but not at the same time. This was my feeling now, but amplified. This made the arrow that suddenly appeared in my back a blessing and a curse.

Pain. It wasn’t like how I remembered pain while alive. It hurt, but it wasn’t agonizing. It wasn’t crippling. I wasn’t shutting down due to the sharp wrongness of having something stuck in my flesh. If anything, it enraged me.

I spun around, a feral growl on my lips only to be met with three more arrows in my chest. Normally, I would say four arrows could easily have killed me during my life. In my afterlife, however, it took seventeen arrows from the green pixie creatures that hid in the canopy of this grove before I collapsed on the ground. I saw red as my body began to pixelate and disappear and everything went dark.

I was in my father’s kitchen and I was short. I felt ill. To be specific, I felt queasy, feverish, and had a massive headache. It was the flu. I remembered this.

I wasn’t really here, this was a memory. It was more vivid and real than most of my memories. Though, most of my memories were things I couldn’t remember until people brought them up. This one was one I had nightmares about often. It was one I didn’t forget and couldn’t forget.

Unwillingly, I turned to look farther into the kitchen and my voice spoke without me willing it to. I was experiencing the dream from inside myself, completely aware of my younger self and my afterlife self, but unable to turn away. I tried. I struggled, I internally shouted at myself.

“Angie, I don’t feel good.” I said to the brunette in my father’s kitchen.

She was making breakfast. An outsider would think she looked warm and inviting with her sundress and apron, flipping pancakes on the stove. She was a monster, though, and it was clear even in my young eyes as she turned to face me with a sneer.

“Of all days, on your father’s day off, you choose to be sick and ruin his whole day.” Her voice always brought me to tears. She hated tears, but I couldn’t help it. The woman was mean and I couldn’t understand what I did to make her so mean to me. “Ugh, don’t give me those crocodile tears. Here, just take this.”

She opened the cabinet where we kept simple medicine in near the sink. She handed me a little pink pill that afterlife me recognized as benadryl. I had never swallowed a pill before. I couldn’t remember what age I was in this memory, but it was probably when I was in first or second grade.

“Daddy gives me syrup, I can’t swallow this.” I said holding it back out to her.

She bent down and took my face in her hand, pinching my jaw tightly and bringing my face to look directly into hers. My heart stopped beating. When she did this, nothing good happened after. I had trouble looking people in the eye because she would do this whenever she was angry with me.

“I don’t care what your daddy gives you. I gave you this and you will swallow it.” The words hissed through her clenched teeth. She squeezed with every word and shook my head violently before releasing me with a push.

I didn’t fall this time. I usually did fall when she would let go of me like that, but at some point I learned to expect it and just step back.

The nasty woman handed me a glass of water and crossed her arms. Fear and anxiety spread through me, making my mouth dry and my throat clench. A shaky hand placed the pill on my tongue and I tried to swallow. I couldn’t. The water went down, but the pill remained in my mouth. I tried again with another drink of water, tilting my head back, but something went wrong and I gagged. Coughing and spitting, the pill and water went all over the floor.

I was crying now. Child me couldn’t do it and I felt terrible that I couldn’t do what I was told to do. I felt terrible that I was sick and ruining the day. I felt terrible that I just made Angie mad.

Oh did I make Angie mad. She bent and picked up the pill from our filthy floor, grabbed my face again, and forced it into my mouth. The words she said to me were hissed out again. The afterlife me that was being forced to relive this realized she was whispering to prevent my father from hearing.

“You stupid little whore. You will swallow this, you will feel better, or so help me.” She poured water into my mouth and held her hand over my lips. “Swallow it. Swallow it.”

I tried. I did everything I could, I was coughing and water was going out my nose. I couldn’t get the pill to go down my throat that felt sealed shut from the anxiety I felt. Angie just shook my face and got louder and louder until she snapped.

Crack!

She smacked my face with the spatula she had been using. I went sprawling onto the floor, spitting out the water and pill, and loudly wailing. This earned me no sympathy. Angie bent over and picked me up roughly by the arm.

“Great, now your father can hear you. What is he going to think when he finds out you won’t take your medicine to get better? Go to your room and stay there until you can behave.” She demanded.

Young me obeyed as afterlife me was screaming inside to do something about her. To go tell my dad. If only I could do anything but go back to my room and be sick. When I opened the door to my room, I left the memory and was on the dark dock of the spawn pool.

I wiped tears from my face and sat there in silence for some time.

I am sorry to see you return here so soon. The Nothing said.

“If you didn’t want to see me here, you shouldn’t have made the game so difficult.” I countered, looking down at the water.

You can’t be rewarded without going through something difficult.

That enraged me. “Haven’t I gone through enough difficult things?! Haven’t I suffered enough? I have struggled through life, every step of the way, now I have to struggle in death? Fuck you. Fuck your game. Fuck all this. Just give me the damn boat so I can go back to what I was doing before.”

Tears continued to run down my face and I let them. The boat appeared and the Nothing did not respond. I jumped in and set off to return to New Beginnings.

The sunshine arrived suddenly as I passed from the spawn well and it felt like a betrayal with how beautiful it was. It felt unfair, everything did. My life, my death, my afterlife. I tried to be good. I tried to be helpful. I tried to get people to like me. It didn’t work. I went through difficult things with difficult people and no matter how I tried to appease them, it didn’t work.

“Why do I do that?” I asked myself as the boat slowly floated towards the docs. “Why do I try to do things the way people I don’t like want me to? Why do I run the moment things seem hard?”

I, of course, didn’t know why. It has always been this way for me. I find myself in great anxiety if I am not trying to fix a problem, handle other people’s emotions, compromise on everything until I have nothing left on my side.

My anger shifted from the dazzling sun to my actions. I’ve been upset with myself before for my inadequacies, but this was different. It was my actions I was upset with. I was tired of being disappointed in myself and the only way to not be disappointed in myself was to stop doing those things. I had to stop letting those I know are wrong to push me in the wrong direction. I had to stop allowing myself to give up when things got hard. I had to accept that when I have a plan, when I have a direction I want to go, that I am the leader.

It is one thing to know that change needs to be made, but a whole different beast to make the changes. I wanted to change, though. No, I needed to change. My party was depending on it. It was time for me to not hope people choose to do what I presented to them, but lead. Going off and dying was not going to gain any of their respect, not really. It would make them feel heard, but I didn’t need that right now. I needed fighters and if they would not fight, they could be left behind.

My mind was made up as the little boat pulled up to the docks. There were several people wandering the wooden walkways when I arrived. The first to spot me shouted to others and soon a fair amount from the inn had gathered. I take note of the people around me. I do not see many of the ones who were in doubt.

One comes forward and I recognize him as Rick, the man whom I had healed. I tensed, ready for some kind of dickish remark.

“Are you ok?” He offered me a hand to help me out of the boat and onto the dock. Confused, I accepted it. “That first death is a doozy.”

“I am ok, it was quick enough.” I let go of his hand as soon as my feet were solidly on the wood of the dock.

“Liam is an ass. His pride was hurt when you turned down joining his party. He has been insufferable ever since. I’m sorry he made you go do that.” Rick offered.

I shook my head. “I could have, should have said no, but I wanted people to think that I can be trusted.”

Rick laughed. “I think most people already trust you. You made it to the second floor, clearly you know what you’re doing. While you were gone, most of us have already started going in and clearing out the Blight in quick waves, coming back before we are killed. It has been working, we just need your help healing.”

I was a little shocked. I clearly had read the room incorrectly, I thought they all doubted me. I thought they all would not do what needed to be done. This was it, this was what caused me so much trouble. I focus on one person who had no good intentions for me and tried to please them. I would be so blind in that I couldn’t see that they are such a small part of the picture that they don’t matter, that they cannot stop me. I let this Liam change my actions, I focused on him when I should have been focusing on myself.

I knew my friends were alive as my coin purse would jingle from time to time. Clint and Jun were working hard. I needed to work hard too. They deserved to be able to get back to town and get a share of all these coins that were starting to weigh me down.

“Great, I can heal a lot faster than I used to. Hopefully it will be enough to help.” I started jogging towards the center of the city, Rick and the others following.

A few stayed behind, I guess they were waiting on others who were about to respawn as well. Down at the tower, I could see people sitting along the path. Most looked worse for ware.

“Are there no other healers?” I asked Rick as we took the stairs as carefully as we could.

“Two, but they take about five to ten minutes to be able to cast again.” He said as he started to pant. “Have you heard from your party yet?”

“No, they are on the first floor, of course I haven’t heard from them.” I scoffed.

“They can write on the party page messages to you.” Rick said. “There’s no way to know if a message is there for you unless you’re expecting it and I guess your group didn’t know. It is a good way to keep in contact when split up.”

“Damn, that would have been nice to know. Thanks for sharing that, though.”

“No prob, I’m headed back in. Good luck.” Rick said, pulling out his sword and running ahead to the black tower.

“Stay safe.”

I reached the first injured person. He was hurting bad, one heal was not going to get him back to fighting condition. I gave him a brief apology and moved on. It hurt to triage people like this, I didn’t want any of them to be injured, but I had to stay focused on what needed to be done. I had to stick to the plan. The most people in and fighting as we could get.

I could cast my spell about once every two minutes. Within the first half hour, I had all the minorly injured up and back onto the floor before the first ones returned. When possible, I started healing those who were more seriously injured and directing the other healers on who to handle. Several times, I hesitated to do this as I worried if they would find me bossy or that my choice was wrong. Again, I reminded myself that I was not going to fall into that pattern. I did not want to feel like my child self, I did not want to put myself in that situation again. I was in control because I knew what I was doing.

I was right. I was ready. I had this.