Sam lay there, looking up at the ceiling, unresolved wishes and last minute lingering regrets swirling through him, tugging his mind in a thousand directions at once. Underneath it all was a single, iron core, a memory that stretched longer, more solid than any of the others, the Sam who spent five hundred and fifty years with Ann and Tom. The other memories were more vibrant and provided deep insights into people and things that that Sam had never known, but they were wrapped around this iron core like a spool of wire.

Just to be sure, Sam looked down at his ravaged legs.

“Yep, still that Sam.” Sam said, attempting to quiet the panicked thoughts that swirled through him from each other Sam. Was she going to be okay? It was five hundred years ago, either she was or she wasn’t, nothing we can do now.

I could have pulled the trigger one more time before Theold saw me, I know I could… why’s everything getting dark? Whatever beef you had with Theold is meaningless now, besides, he seems like a nice enough guy.

A wave of ugly emotions swept over Sam, along with grim memories of the young Theold carving a bloody path through human society in the name of elven freedom. Apparently the kid had gotten a taste for it after he killed Tom and Ann. No, that was another Sam’s opinion. Theold had been hunted, and the only way to defend himself was to kill his implacable pursuers.

Sam’s head began to hurt as he thought about a figure from his past, someone that more than one of his memories were familiar with. Their dissonant whispers made his head feel like it was splitting.

Lesson received. Don’t think about people or events from the past. It was like stubbing his toe, he now had to tread carefully in the confines of his own mind lest he disturb something that would rear its ugly head, forcing him into a panic attack or extreme migraine.

Forget about Theold, Sam needed to stick to the facts. Fact one: everyone was dead, except Theold, there could be more, and even the country was gone. It was a clean slate. Fact two: there were a thousand Rats- Elves being held against their will, and Sam knew where they were. Fact three: Sam needed some emergency treatment, or he was going to bleed out.

I’m sure you can all agree with trying to stay alive. Sam thought humorlessly as he propped himself onto his elbows. He shouldn’t have been surprised when a fraction of the Sam’s memories washed over him, engulfing him in self-loathing. Sam found himself looking for a piece of broken glass when he resurfaced.

“Alright, sit down and shut up, me’s!” Sam shouted into the floor, turning away from the broken window. “We are getting out of here, and any of you that don’t want to help better get the fuck out of my way!” Sam began crawling toward the four step staircase that lead to the hall.

“I wish I could do Faera’s healing jiggery,” Sam muttered as he crawled over one step after another. Just getting the bleeding to stop would improve Sam’s chances tremendously, but he’d need to be able to walk, or at least hobble if we was going to get out of the ant’s territory fast enough to avoid becoming dinner.

“Wait a minute.” Sam said, his neurons beginning to fire, making connections between the disparate thousands of memories. The implant could retain and imprint memories, and supplement learning, but it took a real brain to think. Sam reached the top of the stairs, chuckling evilly as he formed a plan.

Sam wrapped his legs in gauze with the little time he had before he crawled out to the entrance of the Facility, a massive double door overgrown with trees and grass. There were hacked off roots and linbs where Ann had busted through, allowing Sam to open the door and crawl out without too much difficulty, holding a technician’s scalpel in his teeth.

Now time was of the essence. Now that he was outside the confines of the facility, the ants would home in on him in a matter of minutes, bloody as he was. Sam crawled through the forest, his eyes open and desperately searching for Unicorn Frond. After only thirty seconds, Sam found some and crawled through a bush to get to it. The experience made Sam wish he had spent a few minutes of his precious time bandaging his sensitive junk as well, but he’d figured it was unimportant.

Sam used the scalpel to cut the frond and take some bark from a nearby alder,

“Technically still a virgin,” Sam chuckled as he wiped some blood from his wounds onto the frond before mashing all three ingredients together. The technique was a trick a unicorn hunting Sam had developed a long time ago. Unicorns didn’t get off on Virgin blood specifically, but if you mixed some with Unicorn frond and Alder, it was like nails on chalkboard for them, and they would come to investigate. Usually angry.

Sam leaned toward the mush and whispered a name three times. ‘Linquala.’ He heard crashing through the woods, and Sam prayed it was the unicorn and not an ant.

“Whoever thinks th- O, goddess, Sam!” Linquala bent forward, touching her nose to Sam’s chest.

“Wait,” Linquala said, her nostrils flaring before she reared back. “You’re not Sam!”

“It’s me-“

“What have you done with Sam, monster! He was as ambrosia, while you smell like an entire city of… Sams… Sad, tired, broken, used, corrupted Sams.” Linquala’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do to yourself, Sam? There is no becoming the person you were again.”

“It’s a long story, let’s just say the person I was would be dead by now. He certainly wouldn’t know how to summon a unicorn. Can I bum a healing spell from you?”

Linquala took a step back, tossing her head before leveling her gaze at Sam again.

“What do you intend to do if I heal you?”

“I still just want to help people, Linquala.” Sam said, looking up at her. “A lot of Sams got caught up in the killing, and once they realized they were doing more harm than good, they were already too entrenched in the circle of violence. But I’ve got a chance at a fresh start.” Even now, Sam was assimilating all the Sams, gathering the individual wires and trying to forge a single man out of the disparate pieces.

Sam had a shot, because at their core, each of his lives was a reflection of who he was, who he could have become. If it had been the lives of thousands of strangers, Sam would be raving mad right now, still thrashing on the floor of the Observing Deck.

The silence spread through the forest as Linquala decided Sam’s fate, silencing birdsong and the rustle of the wind, until all was still. Sam felt as though her brown eyes were piercing his soul and examining each fragmented piece.

“I’ll help you.” Linquala said.

An hour later, Linquala delivered Sam to the edge of the forest. Sam used a new crook to shore up his balance. His left knee was fine again, as there was enough flesh left there to fix, but his right foot was entirely missing, and so Sam had a well healed stump just above his ankle, settled into a peg Linquala had made for him.

Sam did his awkward stump walk out into the open plains to the south of the forest, until the Forest began to shrink behind him. Sam looked right. There lay the realm of Tyranus and the captured elves. Far to the left was the edge of the Empire of Mississipi.

A more cautious, reserved man would head for Mississipi, try to blend in and live a simple life as a hermit. He could farm and fish and make a steady living hunting and trapping, eating potatoes in the fall and fern sprouts and meat in the spring, just getting by. All the while, he’d be leaving the future of the world in the hands of an immortal dictator built like a tank crossed with a fighter jet that breathed fire.

That wouldn’t do. Sam had people who needed saving, and a big ugly dragon that needed to be taken down a peg or two.

Maybe Sam’s confidence was all in his head, but it felt as though the other Sams were beginning to become one, unified in purpose. Linquala’s healing had helped, but what had cemented their cohesion was Sam’s decision to stump-walk all the way to the factory where the elves were held and free them by whatever means necessary.

Sam was glad be hadn’t killed Tyranus. Now that Sam had so many memories to pick through as he walked, he realized that killing the dragon in the middle of the city would have caused the deaths of a huge number of civilians, unable to handle a Molt. Sam swallowed a wave of guilt about the hundreds that had died in Tyranus’s flames.

That didn’t mean Sam wasn’t going to kill the dragon, he just had to be smarter about it. Killing him at the factory would cause the elves to Molt and the human guards to die, then the trip back to First word would be a leisurely breeze.

The only problem that remained was actually killing the dragon. That part would take some effort. The elves worked in a factory though, there was no way they didn’t have access to something that could do some damage.

Sam clomped on through the grass of the plains, occasionally getting his peg leg caught in the burrow-hole of some small animal. If Faera was still alive, she would be with the rest of the elves.

Elves had magic, lots of it. The factory must have some way of keeping that under control. From what Faera had told him, it took a lot of time and effort to master a single spell, so the civilians were for the most part helpless, but it would only take a handful of fighters like Faera to stage a revolt. So either the entire factory was a magic dead-zone, which, according to a Sam’s memory, was wildly expensive, or they kept magic suppressing binding on them at all times, which was notoriously prone to failure.

Sam leaned on the crook and stopped to rest. The hitching gait with the peg leg was making a stitch in his side, and his new muscles, which had only been stimulated in the most major regions while his body was in the Bath, ached so uniformly that he felt as though his blood had been replaced with a mild abrasive. Except for his missing foot. That itched.

As the sun went down, Sam sat down and took off the peg, allowing his skin to breathe. His left knee ached and his right foot itched. Sam focused on the wounds, grounded himself on just which Sam had acquired them, and told all the other Sams to take a back seat. Sam closed his eyes.

Open Sierra Folder, practice subfolder. In front of Sam, Greg’s notebook opened up, its pages turned by Sam’s own fingers. Sam paused the recording and began scanning the page, his eyes moving beneath his eyelids as he absorbed the contents of the notebook. At least five hundred Sam’s had bothered to learn elven writing, many of them so they could hunt the rats better. Rats from a sinking ship, was the stigma humans had placed on the refugees, blaming them for ruining their planet and then coming to ours.

Following the instructions, Sam took deep breaths and slowed his breathing, searching for the power just below his navel. The constant droning of worry from other Sam’s faded away, leaving nothing but the beat of his heart. Sam felt like his consciousness was a miniscule little one man submarine, searching the insides of his body for something, anything in the dark, lightless void inside him.

Sam sat this way for hours. Resurfacing occasionally when an errant thought struck him, or when he paused to review Greg’s notebook. Other Sam’s had read how-to books on magic, but none of them touched on the subject matter contained in Gregs small, handwritten notepad.

There had been books on magic and spells in the twenty one twenties, when magic was largely declassified, allowing for eager human enthusiasts to publish them to the millions of hopefuls that wanted a bit of that magic for themselves. It didn’t help them much. It was assumed that it was because no human had aptitude, since most elves could pick up a shiny new book on magic from Amazon, and duplicating the instructions precisely, have a reasonable chance of making the magic happen. This was not the case.

There were more things at play. Even the elves, young ones, only in their fourties or fifties, produced effects that were nothing like the descriptions. Officially it was because magic was thin on earth, and maybe that played a part, but what really stopped people from learning magic was this: All the true masters of the arcane had been killed or were in hiding.

The people who knew the secret to true, powerful magic had been intentionally culled, leaving the elven people weak and disconnected from their own heritage.

Sam took another deep breath and let his mind empty, silently allowing his thoughts to leave his mind as he delved into himself again. Another hour ticked by, and Sam’s little submarine analogy had taken on a life of its own. Blinking lights and dials were spread around his ‘cockpit’, and two foam-covered steel handles gave him control over his heading. Behind Sam’s eyelids, he saw a panoramic window into himself, watching imagined blood vessels go by as he navigated his own body. Sam breathed in, and watched his insides pulse with life.

An intangible force wrenched Sam to the side. He tried to fling his eyes open to see what had happened, but he was still in his little submarine, locked inside himself. Some force drew him forward, into the black behind his sealed shut eyelids. Sam wrenched on the controls, putting his thrusters in reverse. Sam felt a stretching sensation in his abdomen as he tried to fight the pull. The forward slide slowed, but it did not stop, and out of the darkness, he saw a burning white hot light in front of him.

The heat from the light soaked through the window, and Sam felt the heat on his face as the little burning ball grew in size.

Calm down, you knew this would happen, all you have to do now is establish a link, without losing yourself. Easy.

Sam hauled the sticks to the side and put as much speed on as he could, settling into a high-speed orbit around the burning sun inside him. This was it, the contents of Sam’s very own magical resevoire, burning with white hot brilliance as his body purged it from his system. If Sam could just harness a fraction of the heat he felt rolling through his skin…

Sam reached out, the tendons in his neck standing out as he fought the centrifugal force of his imaginary sub fighting the pull of his Yuenan’s gravity. Sam reached out, his arm straining against the walls of the sub as he kept his course with his other hand. The ball of burning light reached back, a single strand stretching toward him, pulled by Sam’s will.

Sam felt the heat reach new highs as alarms in his cockpit blared. Sam ignored them, and kept his hand outstretched, even as the side of the sub melted away, letting in a flood of pitch black water, along with a single glowing, white hot extension of the sun.

Sam’s sub was losing power, and his orbit was decaying, bringing the strand of white hot light in contact with his hand. There was no pain, simply a lack of anything. Not hot, not cold, Sam felt like his arm had instead ceased to exist. In fact, he’d never had more than one arm, that would be ridiculous.

Sam’s brows furrowed as he recalled practicing with Tom and Ann. They had two arms, though. In fact, it seemed like all their gear, including Sam’s had been designed for two. Sam glanced back at the white light engulfing his shoulder and released a scream of terror.

He was losing himself. Greg had written that you must impose your will on the Yuenan, imprint yourself upon it, rather than allow yourself to be consumed by the well of power.

Sam wasn’t quite sure how to do that, all the talk was in metaphor, leaving Sam only the most general idea. One thing was certain though, Sam didn’t intend to die a drooling vegetable on the plains of America. Sam focused on his training, his body settling swiftly into a relaxed state despite the encroaching light, tickling its way toward his neck. He had died before. This was nothing special.

Sam buffeted the light with his memories, unleashing a wave of ego on the light. The memories took physical form, each of the lives Sam had lived glancing off the light, shaping it like invisible hammers striking down on molten steel. It flattened, and it slowed, but the individual memories were fragmented, they did not strike as one, not like the method detailed in Greg’s book. Sam needed one thing, Some unifying concept to bind all of his lives as one and beat the light away from his… what was it again?

Sam’s brow furrowed. None of the Sams had an identical personality, shaped as they were by their lives. Some had been happy, most had not, some hateful, others dispassionate. They held values that ran the entire spectrum. Sam dug deeper as the light approached his chin. There was one thing he could think of, and like an echo, it resounded through all his other lives.

Sam was proud.

“I…” Sam said, glaring down at the white light spreading to his chest. “Am the culmination of three and a half billion years of conflict.”

“Don’t. Fuck. With. Me.” Sam’s memories were in agreement, They hated to lose. As one, his memories swept past him, peeling the light away from his arm.

Sam used the surge of strength to break the light away from it’s source and hammer it into a glowing ring, twice the size of the sub. The Sub crumbled away, and Sam found he could breathe in the black depths. The glowing ring remained under Sam’s feet, orbiting the furnace inside him.

Step one complete. Sam thought, sagging in relief atop the ring. The glowing ring formed a path about four feet wide and twenty feet from either side. That was the hardest part. Now Sam could add to and expand the ring, using the first as scaffolding.

Sam lay down on the ring, heaving a sigh as he wiggled the toes on his right foot. Sooner or later he’d have to go back to the real world, but it was nice to have two feet in his imagination.

Sam still had a lot of work to do. He needed to make more rings, create a channel for power to be drawn from his Yuenan, and more structures to focus the power. The thing that Sam had laid the foundation for just now, was called Isayatta in elvish, or ‘inner palace’ in English.

It was the life’s work of any spellslinger, and it separated the real heavyweights from the amateurs. Sam hung his feet off the edge of the ring and looked down at the ball of fire slowly spinning beneath him. He would have to spend years getting the whole thing in order, but Sam had already done plenty. He needed rest.

Sam opened his eyes, and the sounds of the night flooded in around him. The wind swayed through the grass, nearly covering the sound of crickets chirping. Sam lay back and studied the stars. The culmination of three and a half billion years of conflict, huh? Sam thought to himself. Look at the ego on this guy. Sam’s eyes drifted closed, and he fell asleep as the grass tickled the sides of his face. For the first time in twelve generations, Sam was exhausted, mentally and physically. He ached.