“Ahhh!” I made three steps since I decided to ignore this voice. The first step was surprisingly easy. The second and third step on the other hand … well let’s say that I changed my opinion. “Is that what you wanted father? Is that why I awoke here? So that I would choose food over a potential human in need? I am not saying that I am not tempted, but I won’t follow this sick play you orchestrated for me.” Maybe, just maybe he even knew that I was going to help her, but in that case, I would at least keep my humanity.

And so, I turned around with a protesting stomach and tore the webs apart. They were certainly sticky and quite durable, but the dagger cut through them cleanly. And so I slashed weakly at the web countless times until it finally gave in and revealed another section of this home.

I was completely right. It was a spiders’ nest, but the spider itself was quite dead and honestly a bit too disgusting to look at. The legs, longer than my forearms, were still twitching and all in all, it was certainly not eatable. Maybe I could give it to the bats in return for my crab, but even that was out of the question as brain matter gushed out from a wound. I certainly wouldn’t touch this thing.

Ignoring the spider for now, I looked at the brown haired woman who struggled against the webs with renewed enthusiasm as soon as she spotted me. “Bitte nicht …” She mumbled something again, this time it seemed even more desperate. She looked away each time I tried to make eye contact, but I could still spot her green eyes occasionally. Somehow, she feared me quite a bit, although that was to be expected when she was trapped like this and some stranger shows up. Still…

“Hey, I´m not that ugly to justify that you don’t even want to look at me. At least I hope that I am not. Whatever, could you please quit struggling so I can free you? I have a meal waiting for me.” She obviously couldn’t understand me and was trying to free herself even more. A loud protest from my belly strangely interrupted her struggles and she looked at me with fear. Finally, she gave up and I lifted the dagger up high.

I just wanted to strike the web as I nearly fell forward, my stomach violently protested and strength left my body. I knew that I couldn’t make it to my meal if it was still there in the first place. But I could try to free her and if she didn’t turn out to be a heartless monster, she would give me some food later on. And so, I stabbed the dagger deep into the spider web and pulled the handle downwards. Just like the last time, it cut through the web perfectly and even freed the left hand of the woman.

Unlike last time though, I was done for. I staggered to the side and fell on my knees, completely devoid of any strength that I woke up with. With sheer willpower, I grabbed the blade of the knife which now laid on the floor and screamed in pain. It felt like I touched a stove and my flesh hissed as the dagger started to burn my fingers away. Surprisingly, I didn’t let go of it, but threw it towards the woman instead. I didn’t know if she caught it or not as I lost consciousness before I even hit the ground. At least, it wasn’t stone that I hit, but rather a web that cushioned the impact of my face on the ground.

Stones. Sones come in a variety of forms. Some are round and uncomfortable to sleep on, some are sharp and uncomfortable to sleep on, some are normal and uncomfortable to sleep on, some try to kill you outright and … did I write uncomfortable to sleep on yet? Anyway, stones also have some interesting properties. For once, all of them suck to sleep on or even interrupt your sleep as they are hit together.

“You just couldn’t wait to see me again, did you?” But whatever one may think about stones, one couldn’t deny the fact that they were incredibly useful to hurt someone. From simple stones to bricks that made a wall, to 90 kg stones that were launched over 300 metres, they all were incredibly useful to hit something. And oh dear did I wish to hit the evil god with a stone right then.

I opened my eyes and saw the usual darkness of purgatory, only barely illuminated by the light from souls that held their distance to us. My body was back to how I remembered, older and more mature.

“Didn’t I wish for immortality? Wouldn’t that mean that I don’t die? So, why I am here?” I could barely control my emotions and threw a stone I just took in my hand away. Stones weren’t the way to go here as words were more impactful in this situation. Hopefully.

“I am a god of death. Do you think I can give you eternal life or something like that? You should have asked the fairies in that case. No, I did grant you the absence of death.” He said it like he was proud of his abilities, but I didn’t get it.

“And what exactly is the difference?” To never die because there was no death, or because one has eternal life, I just couldn’t wrap my head around these different concepts. He was not amused by my inability to grasp his godly powers correctly and voiced that loudly.

“Why not you just use your walnut sized brain for one second?” I tried. I really tried for a second and then gave up as he would explain it anyway. I heard disappointment in his voice as he told me the difference. “Alright … imagine a twenty year old human who has eternal life … stop whistling and please think more quietly.” I stopped my whistling immediately and concentrated on him. Thinking about if this place had seasons or weather wasn’t worth ignoring his words.

“So the human with eternal life will live forever, obviously, but will die when something heavy falls down on him for example. Understood?” It was quite easy to grasp, but I still had an important question.

“And if it is a woman? Will she die or will something else happen?” Was that too cheap? Or did he know that I wanted to agitate him once more? Either way, he sadly ignored my question completely and just stared at me. After some time, I felt quite uncomfortable, so I broke the ice between us. “Alright, continue with your presentation. Would be nice if you had some diagrams to visualize your point though.”

“… But what would happen with someone who death itself doesn’t accept? His body would still fail obviously and his soul would arrive at the same place you are right now, but unlike the others, he would be sent back to his body if it healed enough or be forever damned to wander around his planet as a ghost.” Spicey. Wouldn’t that mean that old humans would never die, but age on forever and basically die continuously? I began to fiddle with my dress, hoping to get some idea how I could escape this fate. Sadly, none came, but the god delivered one quickly afterwards.

“I know that it has some problems, but there are solutions to everything. And these innovative but stupidly great solutions are presented to you by … a pie chart!” I shortly wondered if he was kidding, but there was really a circle of black right in front of me. A circle that strangely had two variants of black, one darker than the other, but still quite distinct from each other. These two colours each made up half of the circle, making it a quite useless chart.

“Solution number one: Incredible healing even after death! I´m quite proud of that one, but the second one will surely blow you away: No aging at all! Yes, you heard correctly, no more anti-aging crème and no more beauty sleep needed!” I shortly wondered if this meant that I couldn’t nap anymore or wouldn’t need to nap anymore during midday but noticed that this should probably be lower on my priority list than figuring out what his words meant exactly. After a minute, I hoped that I figured it out.

“Does that mean that I will be brought here whenever I die until my body healed enough?” The pie chart vanished quietly and he nodded enthusiastically. “Meh. When can I go back? I just made friends with some bats.” He was quite dumbfounded and I just had to smile as I realized that. Making him speechless was always a great achievement.

“You don’t even want to know what race you are? You know quite a bit of European folklore, so maybe you even know this race from legends?” I smiled sweetly as I realized that he really wanted me to ask him to explain what cruelties he did to me. I obviously wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, so I chose quite a different route.

“I don’t want to know it from you. Father, you had the option to at least make me an adult, but you made me a child because of some weird fantasy of yours and threw me in this crabby place. Is this really the most beneficial to you, or did you create this weird body because it suited your tastes?” He came closer and leaned over my shoulder, whispering directly into my ear. If I could sweat, I would certainly do so right then.

“Does it matter? I can do whatever I want with you, daughter of mine. I already created your body, so what will happen when I start changing your soul to fit your body?” The smile on my lips vanished completely. “Will you throw everything away for my sake after I moulded your soul into the perfect form, or will you still try to struggle against my grasp?”

I stepped to the side and turned towards him, wearing a completely blank expression but thinking about his words rapidly. Soon, I found the solution I was looking for although I certainly didn’t like the implications.

“You cannot do that.” I was quite proud I realized the problem he had with his plan. “Human rights charta article 5. You see, it´s illegal.” That was obviously not his problem, but we both knew that I knew that he knew that I knew his problem, so why not waste time until I was released from this torture again?

“And who will enforce that? The police?” He laughed quite madly and I was quite interested who threw him in here if not the police or a similar institution run by the gods. “They don’t care about your race and I advise you to keep distance from them. You could burn yourself in their light of justice or whatever they call it nowadays.” I whistled because of their bad naming sense. I mean, who would worship these guys if they called a weapon like that? Whatever, I somewhat trusted him in that regard. After all, the body he created for me would certainly anger the gods that threw him in here, so I chose to keep my distance to all gods as much as I could, including him.

Yes, that was my plan. I just needed to work hard on not dying and he wouldn’t be able to play around with my soul as his influence on me when I was alive should be minimal. He did create a new body for me from scratch, I had to give him that, but it shouldn’t be possible for him to change my soul over such a large distance. Otherwise he would have already started which didn’t seem to be the case.

“Whatever, I think I´m going now. Bye.” I turned around and wanted to follow the other souls, but he held me back.

“Again? Could you please stop showing me the cold shoulder like this?” Did I really hear correctly? Was he hurt because I wanted to get back to my bats that were better companions than he was?

“Don’t worry, we will see each other again. There is always just a lifetime of separation in between our meetings, which you certainly hope will be very short, don’t you? You sent me there to die. Not once, not twice, no, you want me to die countless times. You need me here to manipulate my soul, but I don’t get one thing. Why didn’t you change me beforehand if you can change my soul in the first place?”

“You cannot leave through the portal if they detect my magic on you, but that isn´t a problem anymore as you will be dragged out of here forcefully when you healed enough.  That should be any second now. Good luck with surviving though, I will make sure to make it as hard as possible for you.”

True to his words, I was lifted up from the ground, just like back at the portal that carried me to the sky.

“That´s not a father-like thing to do. I thought you loved me?” That was his promise after all but I didn’t try to bet on it. Love can have insane forms and his was definitely one of those.

“I do and I will make you perfect. When you get me out of here, you will be the perfect woman I wished for.” He showered me in controlling, abusive and completely twisted love, something that I certainly didn’t want. I cursed him silently as I closed my eyes, completely worn down by the day so far.

I didn’t want to gamble on my life, I didn’t want to fight a crab and certainly didn’t want to die over and over again. Just twice was already quite enough and if he was really intended to brainwash me while I was in purgatory, I needed to make sure that I wouldn’t die which was quite hard.

There were exactly two paths I could take and both seemed quite impossible for now. One was obviously to escape and live in a safer city or fight every danger head on.

“So tiresome …” I loved a peaceful life. I loved sleeping way past what was acceptable and I loved to watch the stars alone. Everything was taken from me, even my race. The sole reason I didn’t want to know what I was reborn as, was that I couldn’t accept what happened to me. Survival instinct makes one do strange things, but after some time even this wears off. And I was certainly way beyond this point.

“Time to sleep I guess.” My consciousness started to fade away, not because I was too tired, but rather because I reached the limit of the sky where every soul starts to vanish, myself included. I left behind a largely unknown world, only to go to an even more unknown world again. The only constant that stayed the same was my desperation to escape this horrible fate I was given by powers out of my control.

I woke up in my new body but felt like I haven’t slept in days. I could barely open my eyes as I fought the drowsiness that threatened to pull me back into the darkness again. Somehow, I knew that I would die again when I closed my eyes now, something that I needed to avoid at all costs.

With a blurry vision, I could barely make out the woman I saved previously with something large and brown besides her. She held something glittering in her hands, probably the dagger I was given by the bats and didn’t realize that I was awake directly as I struggled to even speak. I felt so exhausted, so weak, that I couldn’t even lift a finger. She threw the dagger in the air and nearly failed catching it again as she finally saw my barely opened eyes.

“Ich mag Züge.” Was she threatening me? She seemed to be incredibly cautious of me who was as defenceless as a little kitten and her words sounded incredibly harsh. I saved her and yet she was quite distant to me for some reason. She didn’t even try to help me at all at first and just stared at me.

I have never wronged her in any way, so the only reason she behaved around me like that was either because she was always like this, or my race was so repulsive, so despicable that it wasn’t enough that I saved her to justify any helping actions. Either way, I was done for again and lost all hope to survive this predicament I was in. And so, I closed my eyes, ready to face the evil god again, not quite realizing that she stood up and did something with the brown thing besides her.

A fascinating scent filled my nostrils, barely dragging me out of sleep again, but not enough to make me act in any way. I was just too tired to do anything, even when I felt two hands open my mouth and warm liquid flooding into it. Honestly, it tasted awful, even more awful than the old food we found inside a kitchen shelf would have if we really ate it. It tasted like a toddler put every seasoning inside a cup of water, salted it a lot and then put old socks inside it, just to give it a fabulous extra. Needless to say, it tasted incredibly awful but strangely revitalizing as well. After several seconds, I opened my mouth on my own and drank this awful fluid, just to escape this tiredness, but the woman moved the brown thing away from me and started running away.

Before I could stand up, she was already out of my sight, which I found quite disappointing. I would enjoy talking to her and learning her language and I would certainly appreciate if she could get me out of here, but it seemed that it wasn’t meant to be that way. She ran away, a brown leather flask in one hand, a dagger in another.