Days, or what passed for days in the timeless grey of the Archive, bled into one another.
Leo, in a fit of profound melancholy, had curated a film festival for himself themed around existential despair. He'd watched Blade Runner, The Seventh Seal, and even a particularly bleak Ingmar Bergman film where everyone just stared silently out of windows for three hours.
It was, he had to admit, a little on the nose, but it matched his mood.
He was halfway through a soul-crushing documentary about the heat death of the universe when the Archive, in its infinite and unsolicited wisdom, initiated a mandatory diagnostic.
A series of files, crisp and clinical, materialized in his consciousness, overriding his Bergman marathon.
[SYSTEM PROTOCOL INITIATED: POST-MORTEM USER ANALYSIS]
OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY PATTERNS OF CATASTROPHIC FAILURE TO OPTIMIZE FUTURE USER SELECTION.
"Optimize future user selection," Leo scoffed, the words echoing in the void. "That's a laugh. My next user will probably find a way to die from a papercut. Or boredom. Knowing this world, probably boredom."
The system, deaf to his sarcasm, began the review.
It skipped past the recent, messy demise of Alistair the Scholar and the surprisingly quick end of Lord Valerius.
It seemed to be working backward, or perhaps just randomly selecting the most humiliating failure for review. The grey void shimmered, and the memory of his second user, Sir Reginald the Valiant, filled his consciousness.
USER 002: SIR REGINALD THE VALIANT
DURATION OF CONNECTION: 8 HOURS, 14 MINUTES
CAUSE OF TERMINATION: SEPTIC SHOCK RESULTING FROM MULTIPLE INFECTED BITE WOUNDS.
STORY PROVIDED: BEOWULF
CULTURAL RESONANCE CHANGE: 0.0%
Leo winced. This one still stung. It was his second attempt, a mere fifty years into his sentence.
He'd still been filled with a naive, literary optimism.
He'd thought that an epic poem, a tale of a great hero and a fearsome monster, would be the perfect catalyst. What could be more inspiring?
The memory fused.
Sir Reginald was a man built like a fortress, with a mind just as fortified against new ideas.
He was a knight of the realm, a title that in Aethel meant he was exceptionally good at hitting things with a large piece of metal and wearing an uncomfortable amount of it.
When Leo had first made contact, Reginald had been ecstatic.
A celestial muse, a divine skald whispering tales of glory directly into his mind? It was as if the Maker himself had sanctioned his love of heroic violence.
"A spirit of story!?" the knight had boomed, his voice a cheerful, echoing clang inside his great helm. "Marvelous! Tell me a tale of valor, ethereal friend! A saga of mighty deeds to stir a warrior's soul!"
Leo, eager to please, had launched into his most dramatic narration of Beowulf.
He'd painted a vivid picture of the great mead-hall of Heorot, besieged by the monstrous Grendel.
He'd spoken of the hero from across the sea, the warrior with the strength of thirty men in his grip. He'd poured all his passion into the telling, his voice rising and falling with the rhythm of the ancient verse.
Reginald was captivated.
Too captivated.
They were riding through a dreary stretch of marshland, on their way to resolve a dispute over a stolen pig, when they passed a small, miserable-looking village.
The villagers, seeing the knight's banner, had rushed out, bowing and scraping.
"Oh, Sir Knight!" the village elder had cried, his voice a reedy whine. "We are beset by a terrible beast! A foul troll of the swamp, it creeps in by night and steals our chickens! We are poor folk, we cannot afford such losses!"
Reginald's eyes had lit up with a terrifying fire. He turned his great helm, and Leo could feel the knight's mind connecting the dots in the most spectacularly wrong way possible.
"A monster, you say!" the knight had boomed, his voice vibrating with heroic purpose. "A foul beast that preys on the innocent! By the Maker's anvil, I shall not stand for it! This is my Heorot! This is my Grendel!"
Panic flared in Leo's consciousness. "Reginald, wait! Hold on a moment! It's a story! A metaphor! Grendel isn't real! It's an allegory for the darkness in men's hearts!"
"Of course he is real, my spectral skald!" Reginald had declared, already turning his warhorse from the path. "The suffering of these good people is real! Their chickens are most certainly real! Therefore, the monster must be real! It is the undeniable logic of chivalry!"
Leo had tried to argue, to explain the fundamental difference between narrative and reality, but it was like trying to teach a hurricane to be gentle. Reginald was a force of nature, a man of singular, simple-minded purpose. He was going to slay his monster.
He'd galloped into the swamp, which was less a swamp and more of a large, muddy puddle surrounded by scraggly trees.
The villagers pointed him towards the lair of the "troll," a dark burrow under the roots of an ancient, gnarled willow.
"Stand back, good people!" Reginald had bellowed, dismounting with a clatter of steel. "I shall face this fiend alone! Let the bards sing of this day!"
"There are no bards, Reginald!" Leo had screamed into his mind.
"They were all executed for 'promoting frivolity'! And it's not a troll, it's probably a fox! Or a large raccoon! Please, for the love of all that is literary, just poke it with a stick first!"
But Reginald was already in his battle stance, his massive broadsword held high. "Come forth, Grendel!" he roared, his voice echoing across the dreary marsh. "Face the wrath of Sir Reginald the Valiant!"
What emerged from the burrow was not a fearsome, man-eating troll. It was a badger.
To be fair, it was a very large badger, a grizzled old boar of a badger with a scarred snout and a disposition that made a thunderstorm seem cheerful. It was cornered, it was terrified, and it was absolutely furious.
Leo watched in horrified fascination as the scene unfolded, his own epic narration turning into a black, farcical comedy in his mind.
The mighty hero, Sir Reginald, his armor gleaming like a promise of justice, met the foul beast of the bog in a clash of steel and righteous fury!
The troll, a creature of shadow and razor-sharp teeth, lunged forth with a guttural snarl that promised a swift and painful demise!
Sir Reginald, his heart a lion's, his courage a mountain, swung his mighty blade, a sword that had tasted the blood of a dozen brigands in the northern hills!
The blade, alas, a silver meteor of righteous doom, met only the unyielding, muddy earth, for the beast was possessed of a low and cunning stature that defied all heroic convention!
The badger, moving with a speed that belied its bulk, had ignored the sword entirely, run straight up the inside of the knight's leg, and started biting.
Viciously.
Repeatedly.
Its sharp teeth found the gap between the steel plates of Reginald's greaves and his leather boots.
Reginald, bellowing in a mixture of pain and profound surprise, had stumbled backward, his heroic charge turning into an undignified hop.
He tripped over a gnarled root, no doubt a treacherous tentacle of the swamp troll's dark magic—and fell with a mighty splash into the muddy puddle.
The badger, seeing its chance, had given one last, vindictive nip to the knight's exposed ankle and scurried away into the woods, leaving the hero of the hour sitting in a foot of murky water, his leg bleeding freely.
Reginald had returned to his castle, not defeated, but triumphant in his own mind. He had "driven off the beast," after all. He limped into his great hall, waving away the concerns of his servants.
"It is but a scratch!" he'd declared, looking at the multiple deep puncture wounds on his leg. "A love bite from the fiend I have vanquished! It will serve as a fine scar to commemorate the tale!"
Leo had spent the next six hours in a frantic, desperate attempt to explain the concept of infection.
He'd simplified the story of Louis Pasteur, describing the invisible "demons" that lurked in dirt and grime. He'd projected images of festering wounds, of gangrene, of men dying from a simple cut.
"Nonsense, talking spirit!" Reginald had scoffed, his leg now swollen to twice its normal size and turning an alarming shade of purple. "A knight's blood is pure and his will is iron! A little honest mud will do me good! It is… earthy!"
He'd died that night, delirious with a raging fever, his final, muttered words not of his family or his god, but of the "great swamp troll of Mud-Water Fen" that he had so valiantly vanquished.
The memory file closed, leaving Leo floating in the silent, sterile grey. The Bergman film had resumed its silent, depressing vigil on his mental screen.
Eight hours, he thought, the memory leaving a bitter, metallic taste in his consciousness. He lasted eight hours. And the worst part is, he died happy. He died a hero in his own story.
He had tried to inspire heroism and had only managed to facilitate a fatal, one-sided feud with the local wildlife.
The diagnostic, merciless and efficient, continued its inexorable crawl, pulling up the next file in the queue.
User 001. Lord Valerius.
Leo shuddered.
This one was even more stupid.
He quickly minimized the diagnostic and maximized the Bergman film. He needed a moment. The image of a man staring silently out a window at a bleak, grey sea had never felt so relatable.