(In an effort to reawaken my heavily distracted muse, I decided to follow the advise of MetalDragon and rewrite the first chapter. The first part will be broken out into a prologue section to improve the flow. Thank you to Siatru for giving this a look.)
The shrill whistle of incoming shells startled me awake. I was already in motion before full awareness of the situation dawned, engrained instincts coming to the fore. Rolling out of my cot, I reached for the computation orb hanging from my jacket even as my sleepy brain scrambled to understand what was happening. Time seemed to slow as the incoming scream crescendo'ed, and I lunged forward, heaving myself across the dark confines of the flimsy canvas tent, scrabbling for my one shield against the shrapnel and concussive power of high-explosive 105mm shells.
How is the artillery reaching us?! We're miles behind the li-
Even as my questing fingers closed around the Type 97, the endless second of noise and confused panic ended abruptly in an incandescence of white light and overwhelming noise. There was no way to describe the moments that came immediately after, but as the light faded and the sound of the explosion was drowned out by the fresh bursts of following shells, the pain slammed through my shredded nerves and crashed my train of thought.
The shock of being shelled, and the shock of... something... happening to me had left me numb, but my rational and well-trained mind recovered in seconds. I knew that the darkness surrounding me was not caused by the tent's canopy blocking out all light. The cheap material barely kept out the glare of the constant star shells at the best of times; besides, I couldn't blink. In fact...
Experimentation and empirical evidence are important, I firmly told myself, trying to convince my unwilling body to move. I must take stock of any damage so I can plan accordingly.
Despite these sound arguments, I felt a quiver of fear deep inside me at the prospect of what I might discover, but I quashed that emotion as unworthy of a professional soldier and a rational individual. I forced myself to move, lifting my left hand up to my face to figure out what had covered my eyes... Or I tried to. For one reason or another, my left arm didn't seem to be obeying my orders. In fact, I couldn't feel it at all beneath the shoulder. How peculiar. I tried to lift my right arm instead, but found a similarly strange result when only the upper part of my arm twitched into motion.
That shell must have detonated very close to my tent. My internal voice was absurdly calm. I had always tried to remain calm about issues and problems I could do little about, considering raging against things beyond my control a childish reaction at best, but... I can't feel my arms. I can't move my eyes. I can feel my body, but... The numbness from the explosion was fading fast, and every scrap of rationality and emotional control I'd built up over two lives struggled to maintain my internal calm and deny the obvious implications.
And all of a sudden, I couldn't deny the obvious any longer. I had spent almost a year on the Rhine Front, months of intense combat in the trenches and the skies over the torn and blasted land, and I had seen many men die from the relentless and impersonal explosions of the artillery. Almost universally, soldiers agreed that death by artillery was the worst – it shredded the body, leaving horrible injuries on the living and reducing the dead to mince. At least getting shot left a mostly-clean corpse behind, something that could be buried in a casket instead of a coffee can. The worst part of shelling was how inescapable it was, and how you could never be sure you were safe...
Aerial mages, of course, didn't feel the same existential horror that the mundane infantry felt about artillery. Mages were very rarely killed by artillery strikes, as we spent most of our time on the front airborne and even a weak magic shield could protect against most shrapnel and blast waves. Aerial mages tended to fear other aerial mages, aces like myself, rather than the impersonal grinding horror of drumfire or the sudden hurricane bursts of shells that heralded another enemy attack across No Man's Land.
But... I hadn't been airborne. I hadn't been awake enough to spin up a shield, or to fly away from the impact. I had been asleep in a tent after a twenty-eight hour patrol with the rest of the 203rd , preparing for Operation Revolving Door and keeping the Republic's mages away from our lines...
Is this what you wanted, Being X? I snarled inside my mind, my mouth unaccountably unresponsive. Did you think this would make me pray, hmm? Foolishness! I channeled my rising panic into anger at the alleged divinity, yelling at him and stridently ignoring the painful tingling beginning to fill my body as the numbness continued to dwindle away. How is this supposed to encourage faith?! Death by artillery is purely bad luck, and if anything proves your lack of omnipotence! If you were a god, you wouldn't let something as uncaring and random as artillery simply kill your flock! What terrible human resource management!
To my surprise, I found the lack of any response horrifying. While I had never been happy to hear from that obnoxious false god before, hearing from anybody, anything would have been a welcome distraction from my current situation. Worse, if he wasn't responding... Being X? Are... Are you there...?
Only silence. I was alone. And I had no mouth, no eyes, no hands. No magic. I was alone, and I was dying, and I was so scared, and so tired, and I just wanted some of Visha's coffee and a bar of chocolate and Please, please, please! Help me! Did you want prayer? That's what you wanted, right?! I'll pray to you! I'll use the Type 95! Just please! Help me! Not like this! I don't want to die like this!
A few minutes after the shell had exploded fifty meters from her tent, Major Tanya von Degurchaff died from exsanguination, her body mutilated almost beyond recognition by shrapnel
The world paused. The nurse, thankfully not a nun this time and dressed in a uniform identical to those from my memories of hospital trips in my first life, stopped jotting down notes on her clipboard and looked up at me. I was struck by the memory of eyes and faces moving in another frozen moment, and was struck with a deep sense of anger and shame.
I knew that Being X wouldn't let me escape so easily, and had clearly decided to force another life on me once more to continue his ridiculous attempt to prove his divine nature. That explained the anger.
The shame came from knowing that, in the end, I had broken down and asked for his help. I had given up the fight and, like a drowning man, reached for even the flimsiest of life-ropes to save me. I was certain that he'd gloat about that, about how he'd always known I'd pray in the end...
HELLO AGAIN, MY CHILD. IT SEEMS AS IF YOUR PREVIOUS TEST WAS CUT SHORT.
Quit playing around, you incompetent! I snarled back. If you're here to gloat, you should spend your time doing your job instead! If you were my employee, I would reprimand you for misuse of company time!
Somehow, the puppeted nurse's face looked... embarrassed? Chagrined, maybe?
DUE TO UNFORESEEN ISSUES, YOUR LAST LIFE ENDED BEFORE I HAD ORDAINED IT TO DO SO. AS A RESULT, I HAVE DECIDED TO GENEROUSLY GRANT YOU ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT TRUE GRACE.
Wait, he... It hadn't intended for me to die? That wasn't a gambit by Being X to make me pray? My mind reeled at the thought. On one hand, I had been proven unambiguously correct – this creature was no god. It hadn't intended for me to die, yet I had, proving that it was not omnipotent. And seeing how it hadn't mentioned my last futile prayer, the only truly sincere prayer I had ever made, it clearly wasn't omniscient either.
On the other hand, it meant that the only time I had sincerely prayed, nobody had heard it, and this new life wasn't the result of any faith or such nonsense, but the pure pettiness of a bully who couldn't stand to let his victim escape, even through death.
Oh, spare me your lies – you and I both know you're no god. That artillery shell was more a god than you are, and did a far better job inspiring faith than any amount of petty bureaucrats ever will!
YOUR CONTINUED LACK OF FAITH SADDENS ME, BUT YOUR ADMISSION OF ANY DEGREE OF FAITH GIVES ME HOPE FOR THE SALVATION OF YOUR SOUL. I SHALL GIVE YOU ANOTHER LIFE OF WAR AND STRUGGLE, THAT YOU MIGHT COME TO KNOW ME ONCE AND FOR ALL. GO FORTH AND PREACH MY EVANGEL.
And just like that, time resumed. The false god vanished, the nurse returned to her notations, and free of any social expectation or need for emotional constraint, my new body screamed its wrath at this latest injustice until I was gagged with a bottle of formula.
Another life... Years as an infant, learning to walk and talk again... And then puberty... I'd barely started it last time around, damn the lack of nutrition in Imperial Army rations... Damn you, Being X! I hope this whole affair stands as a black mark upon whatever record your supervisors maintain!
