The man laid there in the unknown space, eyes shut against the world. How he was conscious, he didn’t know. The last memory he had was of a truck barreling towards him and after that, nothing. With his eyes still closed, he moved each of his extremities just enough to check for a response. Everything moved at it should have, which brought a smile to his face.

“You are indeed dead,” a voice suddenly said. “Or at least, that version of you is dead.”

The man shot up, eyes wide open. Before him, seemingly sitting in thin air, was a man he had never seen in his life but carried an air of familiarity.

“What do you mean, ‘that version of me’?” The man asked.

“Well, saying ‘that version of you’ would imply that there are, or will be, multiple versions of you, wouldn’t it?” The strange man smiled.

“If I’m dead, then that means this is either heaven, hell, or some kind of purgatory.”

“Some kind of purgatory would be the closest approximation. It’s really more of a waiting room. It takes a bit of time to reset things and we learned early on it was better to keep your kind in some kind of “physical” space, rather than just floating in a void.”

“What do you mean, reset?” At this point the man was thoroughly confused. No religion he had ever heard of covered anything like this. This had to have been some kind of twisted joke.

“I mean we need to wait for existence to be reset to the time you were born,” the other man said.

“Why would existence need to get reset?” The man’s stomach dropped as he thought of all the people that he knew and loved that, if the stranger was to be believed, would be gone in an instant.

“Because you failed to live up to your potential.”
“What? Why would you reset all of existence because I ‘failed to live up to my potential’?”

“You see,” the stranger began, “it was decided a long time ago by the powers that be that civilization would be shaped by individuals nudging things in right direction. Your reality, is functionally a story, and when people don’t tell the story correctly we go back a few pages and make sure the actors understand their roles.”

“So I’m one of these people that’s supposed to nudge things in the right direction?”

“Indeed!” The stranger was elated at the man’s revelation. “I know you’re next question, ‘Why me?’. You were in the right place at the right time. The story is just fluid enough that we didn’t want to go through the effort of having to plan out entire genealogies, so when it comes time for a big push in the right direction, we pick someone who fits the bill.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” The man wrapped his head around what he was being told as best as he could. He didn’t see what made him so special.

“That’s for you to figure out,” the stranger said.

“How is that fair? You’re resetting everything and not even going to tell me what it is I need to do!”

“Yup. We’re not allowed to do that anymore. There were a few incidents with people who will remain unnamed who went on to become fairly important religious figures. We decided it was easier to just work around what they did rather than scrap a perfectly good universe.”

“So what happens if I don’t do what I’m supposed to before I die again?”

“We’ll just reset things again. If it takes you multiple times, don’t feel bad, Napoleon holds the record with 176 tries.”

“What’s to stop me from just living the exact same life again?”

“You’ll get to keep some memories. Certain things we’ll have to make you forget, but all the important bits that will keep you from repeating the same mistakes will still be there.”

“I don’t suppose I have any say in this?” The man asked.

“Unfortunately not,” the stranger said.

“Well, I guess I’m ready when you are.”

The stranger smiled at the man. With a slight nod of the stranger’s head, the man felt his “body” slowly fade away.

Life on Tyre station followed a very specific pattern: the scientists that manned the station woke up, collected the samples that the automated rovers dropped overnight, tested said samples, found nothing of interest, complained to each other about it, and then went to bed. Any deviation from routine was met with immense disapproval from the station’s residents.

It came as a shock to many when it word was leaked that one of the top scientists, Holden Graves, was whisked away in the night without a word. Holden was the stations leading biologist and was acting head of Project Phaethon, whose mission statement was to find life among the moons of Jupiter. It was long before the station was abuzz with rumors.

Alexander Howse never paid attention to rumors. He was there to find proof of life outside of Earth. Anything outside of that was a distraction.

“Alex, old buddy, you here about Holden?” Alexander’s fellow scientist, Jordan Pelios, held no such aversion to rumor mill.

“I heard he’s no longer on the station. Beyond that I haven’t heard anything.”

“C’mon now,” Jordan said. “I know you had to have heard something. You’re practically Holden’s number 2! I know you’ve gotta know something”

“I know nothing.” In the back of his mind, Alexander was praying that Jordan would pick up on his tone and leave him alone. He knew odds were low, but he could still hope.

“Well, if you’re not going to confess to knowing anything, I’ll at least tell you what I heard. The prevailing theory is that Graves actually found something, something big, and was carried off into the night to be debriefed before they let the whole system know.”

“What?! That’s impossible,” Alexander replied. While not official, Jordan wasn’t wrong when he said Alexander was functionally Holden’s second in command. The two of them had been out on the edge of space together for decades, and if one of them had found something they would have told the other.

“We live in a space ship that jumps from Jovian moon to Jovian moon and you want to talk about stuff being impossible? That’s a good one,” Jordan laughed at Alexander’s naivety.

“You know what I mean. There’s no way they could keep something like that secret from the rest of us.”
“Technically, if he did find something, they didn’t keep it secret because that’s all everyone is talking about.”

“Whatever you say,” and with a dismissive waive, Alexander chose to end the conversation and went back to his work. Try as he might, the nagging thought that Jordan might be right wouldn’t leave Alexander’s head.

Over the next several days the rumor mill began to burst at the seams: Holden had discovered alien life, Holden had discovered advanced alien life, Holden discovered advanced alien life that originated from outside the solar system, Holden found proof that the various governments that sponsored their endeavour were actually using their research to develop some kind of biological super weapon. All of these rumors found their way back to Alexander despite his best efforts to stay out of him. His friendship with Holden made him the prime target for anyone looking to get more information. After a couple days of practically screaming at people to leave him alone, he had finally had enough, he decided to commit himself to finding out what happened to Holden.

Inquiries to the shipmaster were met with stoic glares. Despite his assurances that he was merely concerned for the safety of his friend, the individuals in charge of the expedition refused to comment. Despite his best efforts at getting them to understand that their silence was only adding fuel to the fires of speculation, he was forcibly removed from the command deck and told to stop asking questions.

Against his better judgment, Alexander decided to visit his old friend’s quarters. As he rounded the corner, he saw the door flanked by two guards. Without a pause, Alexander kept walking. Being manned by mostly scientists, it was odd for the guards to actually be utilized. The only time they ever saw any action was when someone occasionally had too much to drink and were needed to break up a drunken “fight”. Hackles raised, Alexander went straight to Jordan.

“I need you help,” Alexander said to Jordan, catching the latter by surprise.

“Okay,” he said pensively. “What do you need?”
“I need you to try and access Holden’s logs. Look for anything that might shed some clues as to what might have happened to him.”

“I thought you said it was impossible that Holden could have discovered anything,” Jordan replied with a smug tone.

“I don’t know what to believe right now. I just walked by his quarters and they had guards stationed outside.”

“Are you serious?” Jordan asked.

“Unfortunately. I don’t know if he discovered anything, but he definitely didn’t leave the ship of his own volition. We need to find out what happened to him.” Alexander gestured to Jordan’s computer in an attempt to have him get to work.

“Alright, I’ll help. If they can make him disappear in the middle of the night, God only knows what they could do to the rest of us.” With that, Jordan went to work. Being the computer system’s architect, Jordan had full access to all the ships the logs. This wasn’t the first time he had gone snooping, but he knew that if he got caught, this could be the last. After a couple hours of fruitless searching, he resigned himself with a heavy sigh.

“I hate to say it, but I got nothing.”

“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Jordan sat up, “that there is zero trace of what happened to Holden. There isn’t even a record of a shuttle launch that would have carried him off the ship! One day he was here, and the next he wasn’t.”

“Well, what about his research logs?” Alexander couldn’t believe that his friend had just disappeared.

“All up to snuff and nothing special in them. The only thing out of the norm that I could find was a message between captain and someone back on Earth talking about Holden and something called the d’Anconia Protocol.”

“d’Anconia Protocol? What’s that supposed to be?” Howse thought he knew all the different governing protocol’s that outlined their mission, but he had never heard of this one.

“You’re about to find out,” a voice behind the pair said. They jumped and turned around to find the chief of security and several guards now standing in the room.

“Chief! How’s it going?” Jordan tried to remain calm but the tremor in his voice gave away his bluff.

“Do not try to be friendly with me Mr.Pelios. You and Mr.Howse are several worlds worth of trouble.”

“Look,” Alexander said, “we weren’t trying to cause trouble. No one could give us a straight answer as to what happened to Holden and we were just trying to make sure our friend was okay.”

“That’s the problem with you scientific types,” the chief said. “You ask too many questions and don’t know how to leave well enough alone. Mr.Graves was unable to accept the chain of command, he constantly questioned decisions made by the leaders of this expedition. In his mind, he felt he could take over the ship. Sedition is not something that’s generally looked upon very kindly.”

“So what does that have to do with us and this d’Anconia Protocol?” At this point Jordan was no longer able to keep the fear out of his voice.

“The d’Anconia Protocol is put into affect when elements of the crew feel the need to take the burden of leadership upon themselves,” the chief said. “If any crew member begins to stoke anti-governmental sentiments, calls for a general labor strike, or just gets too uppity overall, we make sure that person is no longer a member of the crew. Guards,” with a waive of the chief’s hand, the guards raised their weapons and fired.

Alexander awoke to find himself drifting in the void of space. Years of spacewalks kept him calm, but he could feel his heart rate rising. Directly in front of him, Jupiter was visibly growing.

“I see you’re awake,” the voice of the security chief crackled in his ears.
“What’s going on?! What did you do?” Panic overtook Alexander.

“I merely did what was within my rights to put down a potential rebellion before it even started. We know how much you science types enjoy the gas giants, so we decided if the time ever came, it would be a fitting end to send you into their embrace.” With those words the comm went silent.

Alexander Howse struggled against the inevitable. His suit had no thrusters, no way to alter course. He flailed wildly as the king of the solar system grew larger and larger. After a time he accepted his end and stared calmly into the swirling mists of the rapidly approaching planet. As he hit the outer edges of the atmosphere, he could feel the temperature of the suit increase. After less than sixty seconds, he was no more.

The muse is a fickle mistress. Sometimes it hits hard, other times (like today) she’s quiet. I am drawing a complete blank and this is the best I can come up with as far as a short story is concerned. It is the story of my failure :(.

It creeps and stalks

the side of us we wish

didn’t exist.

All our doubts and fears,

a life given their own.

Deny it exits,

it’s given strength.

Embrace it’s existence,

and you become strong.

Tom was a relatively benign man. He paid his bills on time, kept his anger check, did everything in his power to not stand out in the crowd. All this was a conscious effort on his part because he made a very rash bet in his youth and spent years paying for it.

Born to an impoverished farmer, Tom spent his upbringing wanting nothing more than to get away. He always had a curious mind and wanted to know as much about the world as he could. One day, an old man showed up to his family’s farm looking to rest. Tom’s father was a kind soul and told the stranger he was welcome to stay as long as he pleased.

After a couple of rest and making himself at home, the stranger caught young Tom looking through his things.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” He asked.

“I’m sorry!” The young boy jumped and almost dropped the stranger’s belongings. “You’re the first person I’ve seen that I’m not related to in as long as I can remember. You carry such odd items that my curiosity got the better of me. Please don’t tell my father!”

“Don’t worry,” the man cackled, “I was once like you. I take no offense, I just ask that you be careful with those. They were given to me as a gift and I hold them quite dear.”

“What are they,” Tom asked.

“Pieces to a game, one that requires great skill. Would you like to learn?” Tom nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

The next several weeks were spent with the old stranger learning the ins and outs of the game he carried. The man didn’t lie when he said it was a game of great skill, and it required a keen mind to learn to anticipate your opponents moves without leaving yourself open to their counters.

“I have a proposition for you, young one.” The old man said one day. “If you can beat me in the next game we play, I will grant you a great boon, one that no other human can posses.”

“You’re on!” Tom said with excitement. His skills had come to rival his guests and he was confident he could win.

For hours the two traded pieces. When one would start to get the advantage, the other would rally and make his opponent pay for any ground he gained. After several intense moves, both sides were down to their final pieces. Tom saw an opening and in a grand flourish delivered his final move. He cheered at his win over his mentor.

“Congratulations, boy. Hold out your hand and I shall give you your reward.”

Tom held out his hand and the old man took it in his own. After a few seconds, a sharp pain started in Tom’s hand and began to spread up his arm. His veins rose to prominence and it felt like his entire arm was engulfed in flames. Tom tried to wrench his arm free, but the man’s strength bellied his seemingly fragile form.

“I pass onto you a curse that was given to me,” the old man said as his appearance began to age rapidly. “You will watch as those around you age and turn to dust. You will beg and plead for a death that will not come, no matter what harms befall you. If you wish for freedom from this life, you must do as I have and find someone who can beat you in the game we’ve played today.” With his final words, the stranger grinned and turned to dust. As the fire spread through his body, Tom could do nothing but scream in pain and pass out.

Several days later he awoke surrounded by his concerned family. They informed him that they heard his screams and found him laying on the ground unconscious and their mysterious guest gone. When asked if he remembered what happened, Tom merely shook his head.

As the years wore on, Tom lived in constant fear of the strangers words. He noticed that age seemed to not affect him like it did everyone else in that, while he visibly aged to a degree, he didn’t experience the physical weakness or loss of faculties that most other suffered. By the time he was in his sixties his appearance resembled that of a man half his age.

With suspicion mounting, Tom made the difficult decision to leave the life he had always known behind. Spending centuries traveling the world, he was unable to find anyone that could match his skills in the game that became known as chess. There were a few times he tried losing on purpose, but that proved pointless as whatever power put the curse into motion required genuine effort. Realizing he couldn’t live with the burden of placing the curse on someone else, he resigned himself to a life of immortality.

Using his immortality to his advantage, Tom amassed a sizable fortune, but not one so great it would draw attention. He would spend his days reading, learning about the new advancements of the world, and romanticizing about the life he could have had. He would spend hours at the local park playing chess against any and all who would play him. After a few years people topped challenging him because they knew if they won, it was only because Tom let them.

One day, a young boy came up and challenged Tom to a game. The boy was young and brash, confident that he could beat the old man. Like thousands before him, Tom soundly beat the youngster. Not satisfied with being put in his place, the young boy vowed to come back every day and play against Tom until he won.

True to his word, the young lad began to show up every day. With every game his skills improved. After a few months he could bring Tom to a stalemate. Every time the boy showed up, Tom’s heart would practically beat out of his chest out of anticipation of the match to come.

One day the boy sat down and, with a stern look upon his face said, “Today is the day I beat you”.

With those words the match commenced. Both sides refused to give ground and, like all their matches before, the duo remained evenly matched. For every piece one side took, the other was repaid in kind. Each move was carefully plotted and a dozen counters developed in an instant. After several hours, and a foolish mistake, the young boy claimed victory.

Caught in the moment, Tom leaned over the board to congratulate the boy. It was only after his hand has taken did he realize he condemned the boy to a fate he was was unprepared for. He could see by the boy’s expression that he was beginning to feel the same pain Tom felt all those centuries ago. Tom stood silent as he felt the muscle beneath his skin wither and dry.

“I’m sorry,” were last words he could muster before he turned to dust.

As I said goodbye to the love of my life, she donned a sad smile. It took about twenty minutes, but I felt the new medicine kick in, I knew I’d never see her again.

Gardener had been at his work for untold eons, at least that’s what he would tell people if he had anyone to tell it to. In truth, it had been 15,623 years since the last human had left, but who was counting.

When the last ship took off into the void of space, they activated Gardener with one simple directive: heal the planet of the damage they had caused. Within his memory files sat every climate record, animal population records, ocean levels, and every conceivably relevant datum relating to the planet that humans had ever recorded. At his disposal was a solar system spanning network of mining drones, solar arrays, and manufacturing facilities that could produce any desired part. There were ground and space based arrays that fed real time data into his central processing hub. There was nothing he couldn’t accomplish, the humans saw to that.

His first step was a surprising one: using his planetary drone network, Gardener went about systematically dismantling nearly all human structures. Only a few ancient structures were spared the wrath of the AI’s cutting lasers. The reasoning was simple, anything not made of stone posed too great of a biological hazard and risked further issues down the road, so it needed to be removed. Anything made of metal was melted down into ingots and stored in underground facilities for later use as needed, plastics and other general waste products were loaded up on rockets and fired into the sun, and nuclear materials were repurposed as reactors to run Gardener’s various systems. To his great surprise, The Great Cleanup only took Gardener a little over two hundred years. With that task out of the way, he was able to focus on the more time consuming tasks.

The first major step that needed to be taken was lowering the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Not having any human industry around to pump pollutants into the atmosphere was a huge help, but there was centuries of damage that needed to be undone. While he had been sweeping away the remnants of human civilization, Gardener began a program of cultivating plant growth around the world, and focused his efforts on that. Before he knew it, fifty years had passed and saplings covered enough ground that the Amazon had been rebuilt, the ancient forests of Europe were returning, and the Sahara had been kept at bay.

With the green roads laid across the globe, the next project was helping animal populations to recover. Over the previous 250 years, some had recovered naturally, but there were still a fair number that were barely hanging on. To aide these struggling populations, Gardener made use of mobile maternity wards, large vehicles of his own design that would set up base in a habitat native to one of the endangered species to house and help nurture them while their populations recovered. With these wards animals could raise and nurture their young in peace and when the time was right, be let back into the wild as a strong and healthy adults. Part of this program unfortunately involved triaging certain species to keep there numbers in check, but this was mostly confined to species that had been classified as invasive during the time of humans. Within five hundred years, a proper ecological balance had been reached and Gardener was able to discontinue the program.

Having completed his primary directives at a far quicker pace than his creators intended, Gardener soon found himself bored. With no major projects to undertake, much of his day-to-day activities consisted of monitoring various markers of planetary health and keeping animal populations in check.

It was during one of his routine survey that he noticed something rather interesting: a troupe of apes constructing primitive shelters. Feeling what could best be approximated as excitement, Gardener found a new dimension to his mission that he had never considered: teaching up and coming intelligent lifeforms to be proper stewards and exist with the planet, rather than in spite of it.

Over the course of the next two thousand years, a method of communication was built up and a system of “schools” established. In the schools, the apes that showed the most potential for sentience were given more opportunities to mate than their less gifted brethren. While this led to some hurt feelings in the early days, progress was made and entire communities of fully sentient apes sprung up across the globe.

The sentient apes, having known nothing else, came to view Gardener as a god. While flattered, he made sure to explain to them that he was no such thing, except in the most abstract way possible. He taught the apes of their distant cousins, humans, who had created Gardener and came dangerously close to destroying all life on the planet. He used his creators as a cautionary tale and did everything that was within his power to instill the need to preserve nature into humanity’s successors.

As the apes began to develop a true civilization, a tragedy befell the planet. In an event that was several thousand years overdue, the supervolcano underneath what used to be known as Yellowstone erupted. This event triggered several other dormant supervolcanos around the world, creating a runaway catastrophe. Fires swept across the globe, huge clouds of ash blocked out the sun, and entire species went extinct. Gardner watched all these events unfold from space, powerless to offer any real help. Knowing that nothing could be done, he went went into a low power state and waited for the dust to settle.

After a several thousand year rest, Gardener booted his systems up and surveyed the damage. After the eruptions, the world entered into an ice age and most of the planet had frozen over to some degree. The great freeze had killed off most of the plant life he had worked so hard to cultivate, with nothing but the hardiest lichens able to survive in the new climate. With nothing to eat, the animal ecosystem had collapsed as well. Gone were the days of great herds of ungulates wandering the globe and various predators keeping the numbers in control.

The only major life forms to survive were found in the oceans. Whales, octopuses, algae, fish all managed to survive and thrive where others fell. Relieved to see that all was not completely lost, Gardener began to rebuild the world once again.

Frenzied communications crackled through the astronauts helmet. A dozen different voices tried to shout solutions over one another, but he ignored them all. He knew that he was beyond help.

“John, are you listening?” The voice that overrode the others belonged to Marsha. He knew he needed to answer her, otherwise she would never leave him alone.

“Of course I am,” he replied.

“Then what did I just say?” She made no attempt to hide the annoyance in her voice.

“Something about angling the thrusters on my EVA suit.” He felt that answer was correct-ish. He remembered one of the voices saying something about that.

“Yes,” bingo. “If you adjust the angle on your EVA thrusters, it should adjust your trajectory enough that we can get you with the shuttle.”
“I’m not sure what math your using, but I’m out of fuel, or at least enough fuel to do what your suggesting.” More voices began to shout at each other over the comms. He appreciated their concern, but he knew at this point there was nothing that could be done.

“Look, Marsha, there’s no point in you guys wasting the resources to come and get me. Sometimes you need to just take the L.”

“That is unacceptable,” she said. “We are going to find a way to get you. You should at least five hours of air. We can come up with a solution in that time.”

“If you aren’t going to listen, than I’ll just make the choice easy for you,” and with that John began to detach himself from the EVA unit.

“What are you doing!” Marsha screamed.

“I won’t let you sacrifice anyone else’s life to try and save mine,” John said. As he got his final words out, he managed to fully detach himself from the EVA. His last action was to release the seals around his helmet and let the vacuum of space come rushing in, a look of tranquility on his face as his body began to drift away into the void of space.

No, no, no. It’s not right. It CAN’T be right. These tests have to be all wrong.

But they’re not, and you know that.

SHUT UP! I know what I know, and you can’t convince me otherwise.

I can convince you of whatever I please. I have for years. I don’t know why you insist on trying to fight me.

Because nothing good happens when I listen to you.

Ha. Good, bad. It’s all relative. Haven’t I told you that before?

Not all of it.

Yes, all of it. People try to dress there actions up in absolute morality, but there’s no such thing. One man’s heaven is another man’s hell and all that kind of lovely tripe.

You’re wrong.

You can keep insisting I’m wrong all you like, but you’re words are hollow.

If that’s what you want to think, we’ll see how long you can keep your smug attitude.

What do you think you’re doing?

What’s the matter? Did I finally find the one thing you’re afraid of?

Fear does not factor into it. It’s merely self preservation.

What happened to one man’s heaven, and all that tripe?

Well aren’t you just the clever one? Using my words against.

I’m a lot of things, and being your puppet is one I won’t be any more.

Look, why don’t you be a good boy and think about this? What will doing this accomplish?

It will give me the freedom I’ve always wanted.

The waves lapped against the side of the boat. There were several new faces that were filled with fear on this trip. For many it would be their first raid. Ragnar looked over the group and found many of the fresh young faces to be wanting. Gods willing this would be Ragnar’s last outing with a raiding band. The current generation did not impress him.

Within the group was Ragnar’s brother, Kalfr. Trained as a fighter by Ragnar himself since he could hold a sword, Kalfr was the only one among the younger men that Ragnar held any confidence in. The brother’s stared at each other and an excited smile began to cross Kalfr’s face. He knew his time was approaching.

As the two brothers looked at each other in silent communication, the call was given: land was not far off. The men in the boat began a slow, rhythmic chant. Swords clanged against shield, spear beat against spear, and iron shod feet stomped down on the sturdy hull of the long boat. The oarsmen kept the pace set by their comrades, with the blades of their oars disappearing into the sea to the tempo of the chant.

As the shoreline approached, the tempo became faster and faster and the longboat gained more and more speed. The closer the boat got to shore, the closer Ragnar and Kalfr moved to the bow. Before they left, the brothers had made a bet with each other as to who would be the first to touch the shore. Ragnar was not about to let his brother win said bet.

Ragnar kept his eye on approaching land, and when his timing was right, sprinted to the front of the and leaped off the bow and into the air. Kalfr stared in wonder at his brother, not anticipating the older vikings willingness to do whatever it took to be the first to land. As Ragnar landed, he used the momentum he had built to roll forward and then transition into a dead sprint up the beach. The other members of the raiding party shouted words of encouragement behind him, but he was too far ahead to pay them any mind.

Ragnar came upon the village and began the task he was born to do. Any villager that was foolish enough to stand in his way was swiftly sent on a one way visit to their god. After a few minutes of work at depopulating the village, the others joined in. With the full fury of a Viking horde brought to bear against them, the majority of the villagers chose to flee.

As the Vikings cheered at their victory and began to sack the huts for any valuables, Ragnar sought out his brother. Upon finding each other, the two brothers embraced each other in joy.

As they walked up to the nearest building to began scrounging for their share of the spoils, two men sprung out and thrust a spear directly into Kalfr’s face. In an instant, Ragnar flew into an uncontrollable berserker’s rage and cut the men down. His anger not being satisfied, he began to sprint in the direction that the villagers had fled. His fellow Vikings came to investigate at the sound of his cries, but arrived only to the corpse of Kalfr and Ragnar running off to find more suitable outlets for his rage.

As he came upon the fleeing remnants of the village, a few of them cried out and some of the braver members turned to face the Norseman. As Ragnar drew upon them, spears began to rain down around him. Two made lucky hits, but in his berserker rage he knew no pain. As the distant between the barbarian and his brew closed, one of the villagers managed to loose an arrow straight into it’s targets skull. In an instant the great Ragnar was brought down, but was not dead. He lay face down in the mud, his whole being consumed by anger but unable to act on it.

As blood began to pool around his, Ragnar felt as if his body was being lifted off the ground. He managed to look around and saw two great warrior women mounted on winged steeds lifting him from the mud: the valkyries had come to carry him to Valhalla. Knowing he had served his people well, Ragnard looked forward to an eternity of drinking, fighting, and feasting.