Cycles

I awoke in a bright cell with a dark shadow over the bunk. I'm stuck in a room with someone I vaguely recognize. My memory is blurry. I know I know them but I don't know much else. There's an official there, who tells us we have a mission, and frees us. We're teamed up with other familiar people. Despite meeting for the first time, we're all very casual and relaxed with each other. It's a bit disturbing- like we're all very old friends who are meeting for the first time. I remember that a very long time ago the female friend I was bunked with used to hate me.

We're based in a tremendous white tower. The world is high-tech in centralized areas, to the point of casual low-magic stuff being able to occur. Outer regions are less teched, akin to modern technologies. In addition, there's some kind of bizzare phenomenon where you can wish for something and it'll be granted, but at a price. Whatever powers us is capable of making things real, but at reduced power to ourselves, weakening us. This manifests as curses, weaker strength, reduced intelligence, a various number of things. We're unsure of how this works and a first experiment with it ends with less than appreciative results.

Our mission is to take out a target, a religious enemy of whomever has been putting us up. We don't have much choice and it's implicitly understood that while we're not loyal to our commanders, we will obey for sheer lack of anything else to do.

We try and fail, once. We lose somebody, and someone makes a wish to bring them back. It works, at the cost of that other someone's life. We try again, and this time we succeed without any further losses, decimating the base we were sent in to destroy. At that moment an extremely powerful knight appears, congratulating us on our victory, and informing us that our slaughter was against the regulations (despite this being the exact order). We are easily defeated and detained. More of us die in the battle.

I'm locked in the cell again with the old friend. We realize now what's going on. We're being sent out on suicide missions and executed at the end of them, then revived again without memories to perform more missions every time. We're not the only team at work. We're pawns in some great tower, fighting a greater evil than it. I wish for my friend to retain memories of previous lifes. The cost is my own life to power this.

Whatever grants wishes is also the energy that revives us and gives us life- which is why when the power is shifted into a wish, the person is weakened in some other way. The next time around, I am dead upon revival- all the power for my life is now being vested in my friend, who's able to retain vague memories of the previous lifes. She begins, this time, to understand far sooner what's happening.

They don't know why I'm dead and can't revive me, but suspect. It's a race to free themselves before they're trapped again, forced to carry out missions knowing the end result, dying and reviving, fueling and stoppering an endless war with an enemy we don't understand. It's a cycle. An endless cycle they must break.

Realities

In the first reality, I was a teenager in a strange, almost kind of disciplinary school-styled house, with many staircases. We lived in the middle of an urban jungle, with fences marking the boundaries, and playsets crossing the borders. There was a girl there I'd known since childhood, who was patient, firm, and always somewhat annoyed, and an older man that would appear sometimes. It came to note that this older man was in fact the master of criminal ring, a fatherly scam artist who'd exploded from obscurity into a powerful figure almost overnight some twenty years ago.

At one point I decide I've had enough and spy on him, and watch him suddenly vanish before my eyes when he places his hands on a clock. I touch the same clock and suddenly! I'm in the second reality. A different reality. A clean house with lush green trees hanging overhead, where it's always raining. This is a facility for genius teenagers, and the childhood friend is here- but she's never met me before. This new place is bizzare and similiar, heavily policed, with a green architecture aspect in everything.

Here, the older man is somehow a benevolent tyrant, loved by many and despised by some, who somehow keeps the world running under his benevolently iron heel. I have a very bad encounter with the local security, and escape by the skin of my toes, hiding in a green room with my childhood friend's counterpart.

I admit to being frightened, and she embraces me. After a moment, it becomes more, but it stops before it goes too far. She invites me to meet three friends who are intrigued by the fact I'm off the security radar since I've never been "chipped"- nor am I part of any resistance, which is confusing.

One of them slips me a name. Security is coming. We scatter, and security splits up, but one of them is chasing me. I run down a long hallway and leap off a balcony. I land in the dirt in the first reality.

The Tyrant-King is caught by surprise as I land at his feet, curious just where I came from. I say I fell out a window and he's concerned and gets me to a nurse's office, but notices that I'm more fearful of him than normal. He begins to suspect I know the truth.

He invites me to tea. Childhood friend is bothered by my behavior towards her. Correctly surmises I might be seeing someone. I tell her she's the only girl in my life. She is confused and touched and somehow offended.