The first fall was one of the shortest. His consciousness first resumed in the middle of a darkness, some shadow material with sourceless light silhouetting a texture like ink in water. After an indefinite amount of time in this inky void in which he felt completely at home, he began to feel a dryness on his feet. He was aware then that he was falling out of the darkness and faced upwards to see the source of his fall. Floating in a blue sky was a black coffin shaped pod that he’d fallen out of. The pod was surrounded by thousands of others, separated by mere feet in each direction. He began to fall through the open air beneath him but realized as he fell that the black pods were only visible from below. His pod wasn’t on the lowest level like he first assumed. He just couldn’t see the pods between him and the pit below.
Before anything else he saw a pyre. Calling it a pit would be wrong because most of the bodies were still alive. Tons of people were falling just like he was and the pile of people below was constantly growing. It rose several hundred feet at its highest and the writhing mass of bodies let out a constant wailing.
One thing he knew from the forgotten period between now and before was to run. He fell fast, too fast. He braced himself as the ground raced towards him. On impact he felt a white hot pain, both legs snapping. He tried crawling away from where he landed but a person fell right next to his prone form, folding on top of him. The next seconds were a scramble as more people began piling on top of him. All were naked, only their bodies transported to this new world. The press began to increase, pressure making it difficult to breathe. The only sound he heard was his heart beating and after an indeterminate amount of time being squeezed and pressed, his vision went dark.
He was back in his pod. He felt perfectly rested. He fell again.
It took ten falls before Atticus stumbled away alive. Each time he died horribly, and the once ground had quickly become a massive pile of living and dead bodies. He’d had to scramble down the growing mound. There was no longer ground on the landing spot. Already he had died ten times already, which he was aware he should keep track of. Others were scrambling away from the pile of corpses, the blood from all the bodies were slowly creating a puddle he splashed through as he got away.
Around the pile was a massive desert, the horizon seemed very high in the sky, and it dissipated rather than cutting off at a line. Walking further away he saw the cluster of pods in the air hovering above the pile. There were thousands, perhaps more of them floating in the sky creating a massive shape he couldn’t make out from this distance. The solid black stood out from the sourceless light, or maybe the light came from behind the darkness somehow without the source being viable.
Several others were moving from the pile. Not all were human, but most were humanoid. All were naked, without the option to bring anything into this new hellhole. Without wounds Atticus began his first trek out of the desert.
His body did not feel good. What was the point of sensation and doing what one felt when all around was so disgusting. The sand was coarse and collapsed slightly beneath his feet. Making each step measurably more exhausting. There was also an oppressive weight of sunlight he could feel, despite the lack of visible sun in the sky. He walked for an hour before taking a break and assessing his situation. A few miles away he could see the pile of corpses, it seems to still be growing, maybe a thousand people had made it out of the death loop by now, but a constant stream falling from the sky indicated that this was only a portion of the population. Ten deaths was what it had taken to get out. After an hour of walking he saw no difference in the angle of his shadow. His instincts told him that this wouldn’t change, perhaps the planet was tidally locked to whatever strange sun it orbited. Every death took longer to come on. The muscular tension involved in trying to desperately escape a crush of bodies somehow translated to his body getting stronger each time he died. The first death took only a couple minutes before the pressure of bodies broke his spine. By the tenth death he was able to land the fall without bones snapping. It took over twenty minutes in the crush to die this time.
He knew another thing from that time between worlds. He had a thousand lives, as did everyone else. His pod would capture his soul and regrow his body a thousand times, after that he was back to being mortal. This was a competition of some sort, and due to its extreme lethality all contestants were given a thousand lives to progress. He wasn’t sure what he was progressing towards. He didn’t know what the objective was exactly. He just knew that he had to run; to move far away from the desert of origins.
Now he marched on through the desert. Walking across a flat section between two dunes he paused sensing life somewhere nearby. He began to look around for the source when the ground around him started bubbling. The spike of adrenaline of his life being in danger hit him and he jumped to the side as the sand began to aerate beneath where he’d been. A ten foot circle rumbled to life, the sand going from solid to fluid in moment. Atticus, naked and lacking any form of weapon decided he would kill the source of this trap. Surely if he could hear God right now it would command him to destroy this thing.
The dunes around began to collapse slightly as something beneath them lost volume. After a few seconds of air pumping through the sand causing its liquidity eight bladed legs reach up and clasped around the place where prey would have been. Atticus hopped further back in preparation.
A form like a crab pulled itself from the sand. Its shell was blood red, with a soft texture and lacked shine. On its back were two thin yellow sacks that deflated and pulled inward as it rose. On its belly were what looked like gills. Its two foremost legs had long, thin, pincers more designed to cut than to grab.
Atticus began to move to either side, allowing himself to fall into the headspace of a killer. The crab thing maneuvered itself somewhat awkwardly to keep him to its front. He ran forward, leaping over the two claws as they came together to where he’d been. He aimed for one of its two eyes with his fingers and lunged. His hand dug into the soft tissue. The creature pulled back in pain. The motion of it raising its body jerked his hand, still stuck in the eye, upward, positioning his shoulder directly in line with its mandibles. They were soft, with long black hairs that loosed stuck sand with every motion. With a blur they came together crushing through his shoulder tissue and bone in a single motion. His skin ripped and he fell back screaming. After that agony a bladed foot coming down and piercing him was nothing more than the killing blow.
His body was stronger each time he woke up in his pod. He was also able to escape the pit the majority of the time. After fifteen deaths, 4 of which were from the crush of the pit, he approached the crab for a final time. During one attempt he’d succeeded in blinding both eyes, then he’d started causing damage to the gills on its belly. This time as he came up to it, the crab was partway through burrowing into the sand for ambush. There were 11 bodies of Atticus during his previous attempts on the ground. They didn’t disappear but instead just became corpses.
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Jumping onto its half buried body, he shoved his hand down into the gill-like opening. The crab began to react but Atticus heaved, pulling up on an armful of crab, and nothing happened. Why didn’t something happen? He tried multiple more times putting all his weight into prying on the gills, dodging spiked legs the whole time. Still nothing was happening. He felt the force of pulling on the crab, but it felt utterly immovable. He leaped off the crab before it could catch him and stepped back. The crab once again rolled over and Atticus immediately came in to attack again. He punched at its head, also to no effect. He punched several more times, ten, twenty times he punched it and nothing happened. Had God cursed him?
The whole while he was dodging vicious mandibles and springing claws, he had learned this monster completely.
He stepped back and felt a sudden weight of exhaustion. He took a deep breath and let it out, the crab watching him but not immediately attacking. Then it blew up. The belly of the crab fell out from below, the shell ripping open, and breathing organs destroyed. This would’ve been enough to kill but the head also exploded. It ripped to pieces, blowing upward into the sky and falling down in gory chunks. What in the world just happened?
He began to harvest his kill. He pulled the red plates from the corpse, making a wide sled like object from the top of the shell. He was able to fashion a fairly sharp knife from one of the legs. Then several more from the other legs. Next he started tearing into the body of the crab. He pulled out the various meat and viscera. Inside the body he managed to find the two air sacks the crab had used, inside was nearly a gallon of water in each sack. The crab-thing likely used these organs to store water, while also functioning for its trap mechanics.
With a source of water found, and a mobile shelter he took off further into the desert. In the distance he could see ranges of mountains, impossibly high. He used a specific feature to guide his direction, to ensure he could find his way back. He walked for hours, keeping his distance from all noteable features in the wide expanse. Winds waxed and waned, blowing back towards the dark cloud in the center. He kept himself under the shell of the crab thing. The piece he’d cut out was about eight feet across and made a slight bowl. It was light and thin, providing protection from the sun. After a day of walking he slept for the first time in this world. He dug a hole and lay under the shell with his few new belongings.
For the first time in what felt like days, Atticus Drake was able to think. How long had he truly been out here? What was he meant to do? Some of those things he knew the answer to. He had to go “out” towards something. Once someone claimed that something they’d be able to move forward. He wasn’t entirely sure what any of those things meant. The knowledge itself was taught to him sometime between leaving his homeworld and getting here.
Something about the fight was still nagging at him. He’d done something that allowed him to kill the crab monster without spending nearly as many lives as he expected. He expected to need another ten before he'd be able to win. The sensation he’d had while fighting was like holding his breath, but his breath was some disconnected muscle he didn’t understand. Thinking about the sensation now he could feel himself constantly breathing out through that mechanism. A flow of energy was constantly going into and out of his body in all directions. Somehow in the moment he had paused the output of that flow and let the energy build up to hit all at once.
He closed his eyes and focused in on the feeling of it. Everything in life was feeling after all. He swiped his hand through the sand in his little hole while holding that imaginary breath. He held his actual breath at the same time since it helped him better imagine the process. His hand pushed against the sand like it was solid stone. After a second he released his breath and the sand moved all at once.
Next he tried hitting the same spot over and over. When released the sand acted as if the force of all three attacks hit it at once, leaving an oversized indentation where he’d hit. Some sort of method to delay the impact of his punches? He tested various other way. The strangest result was when he held a fistful of sand in the air. He still felt the weight of the sand but when he released it the effort of holding it up wasn’t amplified at all. He tried again, this time trying to raise the sand, and found it utterly impossible to lift, he heaved, and the sand didn’t budge. When he released his hold on it the sand exploded upwards in a fountain. The energy required to counteract gravity wasn’t applied when the force was released, but all excess energy was.
Laying in the desert in a hole of sand shielded by a shell ceiling, he thought he was starting to understand the stakes. Dying and pain was a resource here, a currency to be spent to strengthen one’s body. There was magic here, and Atticus could somehow manipulate the flow of energy out of his body? He wasn’t entirely sure how his magic worked yet. He needed a plan, and a way to prepare himself for journey out of the desert. After dying fifteen times he was aware that his body was growing stronger each time. The hours of hiking through the sands should have left his skin burned and blistering, but it seemed his skin was growing resistant to solar radiation.
He needed a plan to stay ahead of his competition. He planned on being the first one to the ‘end’ of this place, whatever that looked like. Lives were limited and he only had 985 remaining. Everyone would be conserving themselves as much as possible but Atticus saw this as a flaw in logic. Dying wasn’t a disadvantage but it was a boon. The muscular tension and strains the body went through while dying allowed the strange restoration to strengthen it extensively when reviving. His first priority should be ensuring he could run out of this desert without worry of overheating or dehydration. He got to work.
His first order of business was to build a shelter that would last. Obviously he wouldn’t be sleeping in the shelter, but he’d be using it for storage. Twelve hours away from the flesh mountain in the distance, he started working on his shelter. To be more precise he left all his stuff between three dunes and started walking back towards the corpses he’d left behind. Everything would be useful here. He began the laborious process of dragging ten of his own corpses across the desert two at a time. He removed the blood and guts at the location of the kill, lessening their weight by a lot. He worked in the sun for 14 hours before collapsing in its heat. He was exhausted like he’d never been before. His skin was burned by now, his lips chapped, and his hands cracking. He had stopped sweating hours ago and had gradually stopped being productive.
Left his fourth body in the dip where he planned to settle. there was still so much to do. He stood up for what he planned on being his final time and began to run. He held his magical breath and the sand beneath his feet became solid as stone. He began to run in a circle around the three dunes of his new home, and felt his body collapsing from the exhaustion. His eyes were drying out, bloodshot, and strained. He held his aether, how he began to refer to the non-breath breath he held, straining to hold it as long as he could. As he ran the sun cooked him and the warping heat of the ground drained him of all that was left.
He managed to run for an hour before finally collapsing, no longer able to get his body to move. In all the time he’d been here the time of day hadn’t once changed. It was eternally under the sun here, a constant breeze bringing not relief but the sensation of being in a convection oven to his skin. Then, for the sixteenth time, he died.