They were watching the whole thing replay in slow motion when he respawned. The screen was filled with a sepia toned version of himself, slowly being impaled. Nel hit her space bar to pause at the exact moment when the spike had lifted him off the ground.
“Remi, this is the best part!” She tapped her space bar, and the replay resumed its slow motion humiliation. He watched as his limbs flailed and his mouth formed a perfect “oh no” expression. You could actually see on his face the exact moment when he realized how he’d fucked up.
Everyone was laughing, except Remi; even the Crucible seemed to want to join in the fun. The image stuttered, and for one absurd second his whole body dissolved into a chalk white skeleton, arms locked in comedic panic before collapsing into a heap.
There was the system ding.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
New Title - Remi the Daring
Reward: You’re not dead. And skeletons don’t get rewards.
Remi sighed as he headed back toward the door.
“Were sorry. We shouldn’t laugh,” Nel said as Remi stepped back into room one. As the door closed behind him, he heard the normally stoic Amihan call after him, “Forward, Guro, not skyward!”
At that, even Remi couldn’t help it; a tiny laugh escaped.
Attempt: 56
Remi wasn’t sure what was worse: all the laughing or what followed. As he respawned, he found neither of them staring at the screen. Instead, Amihan had found a chair somewhere and had pulled it up to Nel’s window. There was a small gap through which they were passing cards.
“Do you have any threes?” he heard Amihan say as his consciousness snapped back into place.
“Are you two fucking playing Go Fish?”
They didn’t even look up from their game. “Sure you did,” said Nel. “No, sorry Amihan, go fish.”
“Ah, fuck you guys.” Remi couldn’t blame them really, even he had long tired of this game. He said the mantra out loud as he started again, “left boulder, quick right spire, dodge right, duck, jump, roll forward—”
The door closed, cutting off of the rest his pattern. Behind it, he heard Amihan’s voice faintly, “Got any kings?”
Attempt: 62
Eventually, a simple list of movements wasn’t enough. Remi named them.
He spotted a shadow shift to his left, so he jumped right and spied the blade as it shot from the wall he was now too close to.
Polonius’ Curtain Call it is. Don’t trust what’s on the other side, Remi!
[RESET]
Attempt: 74
The Evil Twin
As the piston slammed downwards from the ceiling, Remi side stepped. He took just a second to take in what was coming next, but a half beat after the first column slapped the ground, a second piston dropped from above. Like bones shards through an hourglass, so went another of his lives.
[RESET]
Attempt: 89
Chekhov’s Panel
He’d stepped forward confidently and instantly spotted a raised tile. Too easy—he stepped over it. Only to have the tile in front of it break underneath the added force of his jump. The nest of spears at the bottom of the fall was quite far down. Plenty of time to come up with a witty name for his latest stupidity.
[RESET]
Attempt: 90
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Chekhov’s
Pit & the Pendulum
Remi cleared both the raised tile and the masked chasm in a single board. He easily cleared the threshold, his momentum carrying him forward into a rotating saw blade that swung down from the side. At least the bisection was fast.
[RESET]
“Oh, my Poe, Poe, Remi,” said Nel with a laugh.
Attempt: 113
A roll of the Eurydice
The soft metallic scrape came from behind him. It was too light to be a piston and wasn’t the whine of a distant saw blade. It was too loud to just ignore. He knew better. He knew better. Yet, he looked anyway.
It was just the tiniest glance over his left shoulder; it showed nothing new, only a maze of sprung and avoided traps he’d already survived. The horizontal log made no sound as it swung through the air. It is tough to miss a giant column of wood swinging through the air, intent on having your ribs and spine tragically meet.
Unless you aren’t looking at it.
He struggled for breath as his broken ribs crushed his lungs. Remi managed to gasp, “I’m embarrassed for me.”
[RESET]
Attempt: 119
As he came to, Remi still had the ringing in his ears. It took several seconds, and Amihan’s frantic waving of her hands in front of his face, for him to register he was back in the training room. The room had always been right, but this time the write felt wrong. It felt too bright, too present; its starkness was much more vibrant than any other time he had been in here. It hurt not just his eyes, but the inside of his skill. There was just so much light. Too much light.
He blinked hard, once, twice. When his vision finally steadied, he looked up and found Nel watching him. Her eyes were waiting. He recognized the fear in them, the desire for his recognition. She needed him to be here.
All he could do was stand mute.
“Remi, are you okay?”
He shook his head no.
“What happened in there? We’re sorry we weren’t watching. When you took so long, we pulled up the feed, but all you did was…stand there. We couldn’t see what you were staring at. You didn’t move. Finally, you stepped backward out of frame and were just…back here.”
He nodded agreement. Still unable to speak.
Nel continued, her voice uneasy. “We got a system update while you were frozen there. It was very concerning—.” She hesitated after trailing off, and glanced at Amihan before finishing, “—we’re glad you didn’t go in there.”
“Guro,” Amihan said quietly, and the concern in her voice cut through some of the ringing in his ears. “That space is not supposed to be there, but the Crucible has made it a part of your module completion.”
Remi didn’t move. He didn’t speak, but he already knew this deep down. He was going to have to go in there.
Amihan took a step closer, lowering her voice.
“We need you to tell us what happened—especially because Nel will not say this part aloud.”
Nel stiffened but didn’t interrupt. Amihan continued, steady and honest, “The system has disabled the respawn feature in that room.”
The words hung in the air, but also didn’t come as a surprise to Remi. He knew it, as he stared into the wrongness of that space, he knew that only death awaited. Real death, not like the ones he had grown shockingly accustomed to.
Amihan placed a hand on Remi’s forearm, and her touch helped him to feel more grounded. “So we need you to tell us what you saw,” she probed.
“So we can help,” Nel added.
But Remi still couldn’t speak, so he instead pointed at the screen.
The replay had finished loading; it was waiting patiently to be started.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded one more time.
* * *
Nel pressed play.
[CRUCIBLE REPLAY STARTED]
ATTEMPT 118
The screen told the story that he wasn’t able to. It flickered once, then began at the start of his last run through the gauntlet room.
He stepped into the long corridor of death and immediately stepped to the side.
“Left.” His voice was flat and numb, barely above a whisper, yet cut through the training room. It came automatically, as if calling inputs to a game that his body remembered from repeated play throughs.
Remi slid left on the screen as the ceiling block slammed down.
“Quick right.”
The horizontal spire carved empty air where he no longer stood.
“Dodge right.”
The wall-blade snapped out, missing his ribs by inches.
“Duck.”
A rotating wooden arm swept over his head.
“Jump.”
Remi vaulted the spike pad.
“Roll.”
Then he hit a shoulder roll under the next sweep.
“Jump right.”
The shadow shifted, but he moved before the blade even appeared.
“Sidestep.”
A narrow dodge around the false safe-zone spike.
“Slide.”
He slid under the horizontal log on its return pass.
“Spin away.”
Remi spun around the floor-saw ring.
“Over.”
A quick hop across the raised tile trap.
“Clear.”
But Remi tucked and rolled as he landed, tumbling past the collapsing floor and pit of waiting spears.
“Under.”
The pendulum shrieked overhead, missing him by miles.
“Right.”
The first piston rushed empty floor.
“Hold—Left.”
And the Evil Twin piston slammed where his head had been.
“Forward.”
Shards of metal rained down behind him, bouncing from the ground harmlessly.
“Stay low.”
In a crouch, he passed under two logs that swung in to meet each other.
“Ignore it.”
Remi strode forward, shoulders squared. The log swept through the space he no longer occupied.
“Up.”
He hurdled the swinging armature bar.
“Step left. Hold.”
A cross-slice saw bar whirred under his right knee.
“Long jump.”
He cleared the second pit.
“Diagonal.”
A rolling boulder thundered past on a slanted track.
“Forward.”
The corridor stuttered, and so did Remi. The screen blinked, and Amihan and Nel gasped. They could finally see what they had missed before.
Remi stood at the threshold of an empty corridor. Where the wall should have been, with the door that marked the end, there was simply nothing—as if the entire spaced had been ripped out of existence.
Before Remi, the void awaited. The replay froze on Remi’s silhouette, violet-lit and still.
The screen had told the story that he couldn’t. It showed what he must face.
“Oblivion.”