It didn’t take very long for us to find a way leading to the center of the “town.” It was less mentally jarring now to see the different levels of technology mashed together in the town. Personally I think it would be easier if there was some aesthetic mix, but with the random way everything was put together it was an eyesore. As we moved toward a three way intersection I stopped and looked around.

“Do you see something?” Arya asked over the mental link.

I didn’t respond yet as I focused on everything around me. Cottages, streetlights, gas lamps lining the road, some fancy trash cans, two blue box telephone booths, some mixed time-period trash, a wagon cart with barrels, and a single tennis shoe.

“Nothing I can put my finger on. Something seems off though,” I finally answered, my mind churning through the possibilities.

“This is a classic ambush site,” Rebecca pointed out.

“Yes, but Alex’s radar sense should detect movement even through the walls.” Jacob pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s based on kinetic energy. I see everything around, but something is off,” I said.

I had only a split second warning as I sensed the movement and the positions of my team and I moved with all the speed my enhancement granted me to place myself in front of Jacob. My movement put me in the path of the steel clawed missile that had propelled itself from the roof of one of the cottages. Unfortunately my barrier only slowed it down as its mantis like claws stabbed through my torso. I collapsed to the ground, pain wracking my body though not as much as I expected. There must be some kind of pain dampener in place for the game because this should hurt a lot more. While I wasn’t gone yet, I suspected I was going to be seeing the respawn system fairly soon.

That was for later; right now I still had what looked like a robotic praying mantis sitting on my chest with its claws in me. I didn’t want to jerk the blades around and hasten my respawn so melee strikes were out. Then again, physics still played a role in fights.

I could barely sense motion within the robot’s joints, but I could still sense it. I was certain that’s what had tipped me off about the intersection to begin with but I hadn’t been sure of what I was sensing until now. It was probably some kind of servo or stabilizer to control the joints, but like creature that walked upright I knew of: the joints were a weak point. I could also see ports on its shoulders opening to reveal some kind of gun, likely a futuristic weapon that didn’t rely on kinetic energy to deliver an attack. The stab wounds, still containing this thing’s claws, screamed in pain as I reached into my pockets for some of the rocks I had picked up along the way. My radar sense showed me Rebecca moving to assist me as I brought my hands up next to the robot’s joints and thumbed the rocks at the joints like I was shooting marbles.

It worked beautifully, the sharp rocks blasting through the less armored portion below the claws; the hydrostatic shock ripping the joint apart. I filed away the need to thank my sadistic mentor for forcing me to learn to use the kinetic projectile technique in different ways as I brought my knees up against the back my assailant. I was still using my enhancement so the impact was enough to move the thing, and with my intent to turn it into a projectile it was launched off of me and into one of the futuristic trash cans; the trash can won as the thing came apart from the impact.

Unfortunately that still left me with a pair of blades in my chest, and a body screaming with pain. “I don’t have the patience for this shit,” I grunted out as I struggled to my feet.

The blades were through my upper pectoral muscles, and I was honestly a little shocked they hadn’t pierced my lungs or cut the major blood vessels going to my arms. Hell for all I knew they had and I was bleeding internally or they were staunching the blood flow themselves. Rebecca reached me and cursed when she saw the injury.

“Alex is hit bad, I can’t tell how badly though with the blades still in him. Jerome quit toying with that thing and take it out,” she said as she examined my torso.

I could see Jerome working to catch the other robot that had targeted Arya, but it was moving fairly fast. Jacob spoke aloud, refocusing my attention, “We have four more coming, two from either path.”

Arya spoke up over the mental link, “Jerome when it jumps back from you it can only go forward rapidly, clothesline the tin can.”

Trusting in them to handle the one up close I focused on how to deal with the approaching combatants. My arms were barely responding, and I could feel the blood running down my chest from where I had used my arms earlier. I didn’t have much left in me and needed something outside the box or they would be facing these four without me soon.

My eyes landed on the shoe sitting in the middle of the street and I grinned, and sensed Rebecca lean back from me. Guess my smile was a little bit disturbed considering my current state. In two steps I was at the shoe and as I kicked it toward the robot Jerome was still trying to predict I said, “Boot to the head.”

The shoe rocketed toward the mantis-bot as it leapt back from Jerome, catching it in its triangular head. I doubted it did much damage, but it must have distracted the thing as Jerome caught up to it and proceeded to tear it apart. That wasn’t my primary goal though; it was to find out if I could use my projectile with a kicked object.

“Rebecca, I need a set of balls,” I stated, my mouth working before my brain could analyze what I said.

I could sense the repressed laughter and it was a struggle not to face-palm with my injured arms as I thought about what I just said. Rebecca, fighting a grin, managed to choke out, “They aren’t in my list of constructs though.”

“Evolving techniques remember, focus on creating them from the ice and see if the system will let you, it’s a simple object.” Arya’s mind voice said.

It took a few precious seconds as the other mantis-bots raced down the street toward us, but Rebecca managed to create a ball of ice roughly the size of a softball. Her grin would have made a wolf proud as she quickly created three more and placed them on the ground. I could feel my strength fading fast so I lined up and kicked the first one at the approaching bots. It blasted through the first bots head and I quickly kicked the other three at my targets, using the aiming lines my kinetic sense granted me. Two of the reaming mantis-bots went down as the ice ball crashed through their heads, but the third managed to leap up to the top of the phone booth and then leap again to come down at me with claws ready to strike again.

My hands came up, the pain increasing with every movement, to grab the blades in my chest and use them as a last ditch weapon when a spear made of ice appeared in the path of the leaping robot, using its own momentum to pierce the armored torso. Rebecca had conjured the spear at just the right time so as not to give away what she was doing, and while the thing tried to drag its way down the spear at her she twisted and heaved, flinging it off the spear directly into the path of Jerome’s hardened fist.

Most of this was seen through my kinetic sense as my actual vision began to shrink and I felt my knees hit the ground. I heard my companions calling my name as memories of a collapsing building flooded my consciousness. As my thoughts faded I grunted out, “This sucks.”

* * * * *

My vision cleared to show me a landscape in shades of grey with fields of wheat replacing the anachronistic city. I looked down to see my own body, still in color, wearing my now bloodstained shirt. When I looked up I found Thanatos, dressed in a modern business shirt, slacks, and tie, his wings folded behind his back and hair tied into a neat tail looking at me. His rich voice had a touch of amusement to it as he said, “When I offered my blessing I didn’t think any of you would be so quick to make use of it.”

I shrugged, noticing in passing that I didn’t feel the injuries to my torso with the motion, and replied, “Hadn’t planned to use it at all, but I wasn’t quite quick enough to stop the attack and ensure it didn’t hit my teammate.”

“True enough, but you might have considered hitting it first,” Thanatos said.

My palm covered my face in an instant as I realized that he was right. My first instinct had been to cover my ally rather than trying to intercept the attack. I had enough warning to move and I had played enough football during high school that moving to tackle would have been my first option if the mantis-bot had been on the ground. I forgot to take into account my increased aerial mobility from my enhancement technique. It did raise the question though, “Is part of the ‘rough transition’ you mentioned getting a lecture on the mistakes that caused the death?”

The bastard smiled and said, “Yes and no.”

I glared at him, causing the Lord of Death to smile wider before he answered, “The path back to the realm of the living takes time to appear in these fields. Since you will be going back to your own body it requires my intervention. While defining your mistakes isn’t required I intend to make you aware of them. I would rather not spend all of my time sending heroes back to the realm of the living so it behooves me to give some advice on how to avoid it the next time.”

I nodded, “That makes sense, I wouldn’t want to spend all of my time here. It is a bit of a bland environment.”

Thanatos shook his head, “No, you haven’t passed into this realm fully. If you had it would require the realms caretaker to send you back. My blessing stops you from passing through the realm of life into the realm of death, which stops you from seeing the beauty of a hero’s rest.”

“The Elysian Fields if I remember the tales correctly,” I said.

He nodded and replied, “Or Valhalla, or the Gates of Pearl, or a myriad of other afterlives depending on your beliefs. Since you are not moving on you get my choice in scenery.”

I saw a doorway begin to take shape next to us and I said, “Looks like it’s almost time for me to go. Any other advice you would care to offer before the next time we meet here?”

“Try not to die,” he said and lifted into the air on his black wings.

“Great, a divine smart ass,” I said as the door finished taking shape.

I stepped through the door, and immediately sucked in a sharp breath as my body sent mixed signals to my brain. Part of me said that I should be in a great deal of pain, but there was no injury present. The rapid change caused me to be disoriented and my eyes didn’t want to focus for the time being. It also made it impossible to activate my kinetic sense to get a clearer idea of where I was.

A soft hand rested on my chest and I heard Arya’s voice, slightly distorted to my hearing, say, “Shhh, you’re safe. There are no threats here. Relax and let it pass.”

I managed to get out a single word, “Status?”

“You have a penalty called death disorientation. It says it will fade in less than a minute, but that the effects are worse depending on how often you die in a period of time. Wait sorry that’s not what you wanted to ask,” she answered, I nodded and she continued, “Rebecca and Jerome are keeping watch. I’m making sure you aren’t going to panic and start kicking us in the head from across a street, and Jacob is playing with the components he scavenged from the remains of those bots.”

I laid my head back down and thought my next question, “What did it look like when I was down?”

“You looked like a bled out corpse, but when I scanned your status it showed a respawn timer. It’s been about an hour. How bad was it?”

“A little bland, apparently it’s a grayscale world because we don’t actually go into the realm of the dead,” I responded, deliberately avoiding the way dying felt.

My vision started to clear and I could see her gentle smile as she gave me a look that told me in no uncertain terms that she knew I was avoiding the topic of dying. I sighed and said, out loud this time, “It sucked. Coming back was disorienting enough, but when you know you’re about to die things get weird in the mental landscape. We might need to talk to Savira about adjusting that, or having an option to disable the actual death.”

She shook her head, “It’s the downside of the SWS, while they can safeguard the mind from thinking it’s actually dead they can only give it a fade to black as if you passed out.”

“So not looking forward to doing that again, and not just for the lectures,” I said.

As the disorientation faded Arya helped me up and we went over to see what our group’s mad scientist had managed to cook up in my absence.