Dreams were for those who had wishes unfulfilled. That’s what the experts said. I’d had dreams just like this one—being killed and waking up as someone new, someone different—for the past five thousand years. Each time I was reborn, I had the image of living a long life in that era, meeting someone special, working, and raising a family. It was a simple, basic expectation. 

Unfortunately, each time, my dream ended the same way. I’d always die.
Dying sucked. I’d battled the same entity—a minion of hell incarnated as a man named Carna—the past six times already, and each and every time, the result had always been the same. I’d lost. It didn’t matter what era we battled in or how crude our weapons were. Crudeness didn’t matter. Lethality did.

It also didn’t matter what form we took. A dim memory flashed across my mind’s eye, that of me in a field in the afternoon, long ago, nibbling on a dandelion. I was a rabbit, one of the rare times I hadn’t been reincarnated as a human. 

Something large swirled in the sky, and a bad feeling ran through my body. My foe had arrived, but not in the form of a man. He’d transformed into a kind of hawk, only much bigger. In a cruel joke understood only by the gods, he had the ability to shift his form, and for some reason, I couldn’t.

I’d let out a squeal of terror and then turned and run. I zigged this way and zagged another, running faster, faster, ever faster…running for my life. That life stopped when his talons sank into me. I had only enough time to twist my neck around and bite his leg before the lights went out.
Another time, we’d started out as human, but when the final throwdown came, he’d unexpectedly shifted into a form like an octopus, only larger and more fearsome. I’d managed to wound him by poking his eye out, but his tentacles, slimy and foul-smelling, then wrapped themselves around my neck, choking me, and one tentacle held a dagger that slid into my gut…

And, of course, I’d died, and a nanosecond after my death, that slide down the tunnel of eternity began with me not-alive-yet-not-quite-dead, and it went on and on, only for me to eventually stop and wake up in what I’d come to call the Void.

A black and empty area of seemingly limitless space, I’d waited there, suspended by an unknown power. All I had during the waiting part were my memories, and they’d always been of the lives, however brief, that I’d lived.

None of them had been overly pleasant. However, those memories were all I had, and so I waited for what seemed like an eternity until the spirit of my mentor—Vishana, she who held my fate in her hands and had the power of reincarnation, among other things—appeared in front of me, a ghostly apparition with the face of a young woman of indeterminate race. Her first question was always the same. “What happened this time?”

My answer, of course, never changed. “I lost. Why do you think I’m here? It’s not my idea of a vacation.”

Okay, that sounded modern. Granted, long ago, people spoke more formally and with more reverence toward the deity or deities they were conversing with, but after five thousand years with no time off for good behavior, I was getting sick and tired of always coming out on the losing end.

But now I came out of that dream state to discover that I was once again alive, my soul transmigrated from my previous form into someone new, someone different, someone who had abilities and knew how to use them. 

I also knew what to expect. After my mentor asked the inevitable question of what had happened, I’d answer, and then she’d say, “All right, you have another chance.” 

A moment later, off I’d go on that slide-ride through time and space again, only to land in a different body.

Different body, different era, but once I woke up, I’d groan, perhaps curse aloud or silently, and then I’d wonder who I’d become. Reincarnation was so unsettling, and now, for what seemed like the umpteenth time and not wishing to delay the inevitable, I opened my eyes—yes, I groaned, too—and repeated the oft-used phrase. “All right, who am I this time?”

My body didn’t hurt. I tried to recall the events of my past demise that had happened only a day ago—or so I thought. I was…rather, I’d been Callisto Merriwether, living on her own in her own apartment, very unusual for that day and age. It was the year eighteen-twenty-four, and I was the daughter of two teachers in New York City, single, and twenty-one years old.

Although I’d been endowed with language abilities for whatever culture I’d be reborn into, in addition to receiving knowledge of the ways and mores of that society, it had never seemed to be enough, and once again, I’d met my demise versus Carna.
Carna, that bastard. The very thought of him made me clench my teeth. Each time he’d killed me, whether he was in human form or not, it was with the same right-hand swipe that opened my gut. 

I recalled sinking to my knees in pain. Shock then set in as my lifeforce ran out. Carna had always stood in front of me, grinning from ear to ear, pleased with his handiwork. 
Worse, like the incompetent warrior I was, I’d asked him, “Why?”

He’d never replied, only grinned, and then I’d pass out, and that slide-ride into the Void began, only to finish with me being reincarnated. One would think I’d already learned my lesson on what to watch out for…