Death, Death, and a Dictionary of Swears

 

The Many Deaths of Myles

It began, as most tragedies do, with Craig issuing a warning.

“Don’t get too close to the giant sandworm corpse,” he said, “or you’ll die.”

This from the man who once jumped headfirst into a canyon because it “looked like a shortcut.” Naturally, we ignored the irony but obeyed the advice. Nobody wanted to be remembered as the guy who died sniffing a radioactive worm husk.

So, we crept beneath its ribcage, shuffled onto the causeway, and engaged in the usual warm-up routine: exchanging bullets, blades, and creative insults with heavies, stabby lads, and your bog-standard shooty grunts. All perfectly ordinary, until we reached The Chamber.

The Chamber of Solo Death

A boss room. But not just any boss room. A solo boss room. One at a time. No buddy system. No Zaph lurking in a corner ready to snipe her kneecaps. No Dave shouting lore at her until she surrenders. No Craig testing whether she had a weak spot in her spleen by repeatedly poking it with a halberd.

Zaph went first. He emerged victorious, sweaty and smug.

“Had to use a sword,” he announced. “Gun didn’t work.”

This was ominous news, because if there is one thing in the known universe Myles cannot do, it is wield a sword. He can map a dungeon, catalogue reagents alphabetically, and survive three decades of Craig’s tactical advice, but put a blade in his hand and he’s basically a butter-knife enthusiast at a gun show.

Dave went in next. Guns blazing, boss collapsing.

“Pfft. Guns work fine,” he declared.

And then it was my turn.

The First Death (The Classic)

I did what any self-respecting Mentat officer would do: deploy decoy, deploy turret, fire disruptor.

The bosswoman looked at the decoy, shrugged, and came straight at me anyway.

Knocked prone.

Couldn’t get up.

Dead.

Respawned back at the ship.

Through the gauntlet again.

Enemies had respawned too.

Died again en route.

This, dear reader, is what scholars refer to as foreshadowing.

The Second Death (The Pointless)

After being escorted by my so-called comrades (who mostly came along to watch the spectacle), I carefully re-read the respawn options and discovered—

Oh.

I could have respawned in the chamber all along.

So I did.

And died again.

No lessons learned, except that profanity really does echo magnificently inside a steel-lined bunker.

The Third Attempt (The Swearing of Distinction)

By this point I was less Mentat officer and more obscenity-generating automaton. If there were academic honours in swearing, I’d have been given a robe, a mortarboard, and tenure.

Decoy down.

Turret down.

Disruptor clip emptied.

Reload—oh no, I’m about to—

…and then, inexplicably, she just dropped dead.

Turret fire?

Cardiac arrest?

Pity?

We’ll never know. But the boss died, and therefore, technically, I won.

Epilogue: Déjà Vu, All Over Again

Standing over her fallen body, gasping and confused, I couldn’t shake the feeling.

We’ve been here before.

The endless dying. The swearing. The improbable final victory.

Like spice visions, but without the enlightenment.

Mission accomplished—if you stretch the definition of “accomplished” to include “eventually blundering through it while screaming like a medieval sailor.”