Day 1

Your friends lay dead around you on the checkered battlefield. You don't understand. You cannot comprehend how this could have happened. You remember back, just a few hours ago, you were all happy and together and alive and preparing to play an awesome new game.

And now look.

How did this happen? How could you have let them die? You knew only you had reached your quest bed and received its immortality. How could you have let them go into battle unprotected? How could you be so stupid?

You fall to your knees and feel the tears start to fall.

Day 2

It has been twenty four hours since they fell. You feel the complete and utter silence of the now dead session begin to press on you. You are Atlas, doomed to carry the weight of your dead friends and your dead session and the dead battlefield and the new universe, dead before it even had a chance to live, on your back for the rest of the foreseeable future and further still.

You haven't moved. Twenty four hours and you haven't moved an inch. Your muscles have long since gone stiff from disuse. Your arms and legs have gone dead. How can you move though? And where would you go? The world is empty. Dead. There is nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Nothing to run or hide from anymore. It's all gone away now, and only you are left.

Your tears have ceased to fall. Maybe even they are dead too.

Day 4

You have left the battlefield. You sit atop one of the spires of a fortress on your planet, the Land of Castles and Hemlock. It is hard to even think straight anymore. Four days of complete silence and you believe you are already going mad.

You laugh to yourself.

How fitting, for an heir of doom to be the only remaining player in a dead session. You thought that maybe being a hero of doom could help you prevent it. Maybe it could help you and your team come out alright. Maybe it would protect you.

You laugh again. A bit louder this time. Anything to fill the silence.

It protected you all right. It protected you, and surrounded you, and you became it.

Day 8

Killing yourself is not an option. After the fifth day, you tried. You crushed up some of the poison hemlock so abundant on your planet and boiled it into tea. You drank it, and you died.

But you came back.

You bounced right back in to the world of the unfortunately living that time.

And the time after.

And the time after.

And the time after that.

Day 13

You have developed a new habit. In your spare time, the time spent not trying to devise a way to effectively end your life that is; you have taken to shouting at the sky. You have found that your voice has deteriorated. It has become rough and callous from disuse.

Such a shame really.

Your friends used to say you had the most beautiful voice.

Day 15

You can barely remember them. What seemed like a lifetime in reality only lasted a few hours. You almost didn't know them at all. You only saw their faces alive once, in that final battle. They are fading from your memory now, replaced by silence and shadows and countless suicide attempts.

Such a shame.

You are starting to hear whispers, each time you attempt to die. Horrible, horrible sounds like someone is gargling nails and being strangled to death. You enjoy the reprieve from the merciless quiet.

Day 19

You hear them when you are alive now. Always there in your ear. Always whispering. Always watching. They get louder when you are about to kill yourself. They rise to almost a roar. And then, eventually, when you die, you can see them.

They are dark.

And vast.

And terrifying.

And when you see them for the first time, they welcome you. Almost as if you were a lost family member. Almost as if you belong with them.

Day 21

You have revisited the battlefield. Your friends remain exactly the same as they were before you had left. Still laying there on the ground, their shocked, dying expressions still locked on their faces. You find yourself unconsciously touching them, stroking their hair and murmuring soft encouragements to them.

Don't worry.

It's just a game.

You'll wake up soon.

It's just a game.

For the first time in lifetimes, you feel tears in your eyes again.

Day 23

You regenerate to find yourself lying on the battlefield next to your friends, where you should have fallen, knife still in your hand. The whispers are ever louder, rising sometimes to almost a roar. Whispers in your ear. Whispers. Always. Whispers driving you

Fucking.

INSANE.

You are breathing hard. Why? Why can't you just die? Why did you have to die on that quest bed? Why isn't suicide heroic or just?

Why

Can't

You

DIE?

Day 26

They have asked you to join them. The whispers. You will accept. Anything is better than this. This endless silence. You feel yourself trembling as you kiss each of your friends delicately goodbye. It is too bad they cannot accompany you into the endless void. It is really

Such

A

Shame.

You turn your back on them and prepare yourself to die one final time. A small smile creeps on to your face. Finally you will be dead. Dead and gone for good. Finally

You

Will

Be

Free.