A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix

the deintegration wand, my mekbi companion had just gone down with his head as well as his limbs missing, and there was a whole new wave of enemies coming around the corner, waving their glowing, pulsing, sparking hand weapons of great destruction.
    When in a situation like that—essentially being about to die— it wasn’t helpful to suddenly realise that without a connection to the Imperial Mind, I really was going to die, like permanently .
    There would be no weighing up of my service by the priests of the Aspect of the Discerning Hand, no rebirth.
    I just wasn’t that special after all.
    And as I discovered, right then, I really really really didn’t want to die. It was all very well thinking about death in the abstract, secure in the knowledge that in the very unlikely event that something lethal did happen to me, I would almost certainly come back, compared to the finality of it all when it was actually happening.
    But on top of these sudden, mortal terrors, I also grasped at one slim hope. Perhaps the directing Sad-Eye had been mentally walled off by the priests of the temple. Maybe I could connect to the Imperial Mind after all. I just had to remove my Psitek defence suit hood in the few seconds remaining before the horde descended on me.
    Lacking a left hand, I found this easier said than done. Holding the wand with three fingers, I reached up and ripped the hood apart with my thumb, hoping that I would feel the sudden flowering of a connection to the Mind.
    But I didn’t. Instead, I felt a cold, loathsome touch, almost as if something had plunged its frozen fingers into my brain and was feeling around for something it had lost. I knew instantly it was the Sad-Eye puppeteer, and more than that, I could sense a kind of illusory Psitek tendril leading back into the pack of attackers, and suddenly I knew exactly where the thing was located—inside the head of a humanoid creature who was moving slowly in the rear ranks of the assault, taking care to be shielded by a large creature, with grey folded skin and a trunk, whose ancestors might well have been uplifted elephants from old Earth.
    My first shot from the deintegration wand took out the elephant creature. The second shot was more difficult, because the mental fingers in my head were stabbing everywhere now, no longer looking for something, just causing me intense pain and disorientation. But I managed it, and the humanoid’s head was blow apart.
    I nailed the Sad-Eye itself with my third and final shot as it was hurled out of the remains of its host. It had probably been hoping I’d miss so it could scuttle away on its horrid little feet and find a new home inside the head of one of the dozens or perhaps even scores of its puppets who still remained.
    But it wasn’t going anywhere.
    With the death of the Sad-Eye, the terrible pain inside my head disappeared. The puppets also regained control of their senses, but not in quite enough time to do me any good. I’d fired just as the leading wave reached me, and I went down under multiple charged weapon blows. I think I lost my other hand then, trying to shield my head, but I can’t be sure. Certainly many blows struck my body and legs.
    But as I lay dying against the bulkhead that I had defended with my life, there was a sudden, blissful buzz at the base of my skull.
    :Connection reestablished Prince Khemri <>and running. Check. Check. Save for rebirth assessment:

7
    T HAT WAS MY first death.
    The next thing I knew, I was lying on a broad and very comfortable bed. I had the sensation of having just woken up, allied with the wooliness of being half asleep and not quite knowing where I was.
    Then I remembered. I’d been dead. I mean, I was dead; I’d been dismembered by Sad-Eye puppets. . .
    I checked my internal systems. Everything was working. I could feel all my limbs. All augmentation was operational.
    :Welcome back Prince Khemri II <> You have been weighed in the balance by our