Prologue

"This... it's just too sad." She wouldn't look at me; no she couldn't look at me. I didn't blame her. 

The sky above was blue, such a pure blue that stretched beyond the limits of my eyes, to graze the mountain tops far in the distance. Grass swayed, small blades that lashed at my hands as I knelt face turned towards the earth, long ragged hair covering my face, faint tears at the corner of my eyes. Only the sound of birds able to break the silence, twittering their nameless songs within the limbs of the willow tree above. 

"Please" I whispered my voice catching in my throat. "Please don't leave me!" My voice raising, the birds silenced, the faintest sound of the wind through the leaves filling the void. "I don't want to be alone..." I looked at her but she wouldn't return my gaze, she stood there back to me arms folded before her, gaze upon the horizon far away. 

"Why are you doing this? You don't owe me anything, I told you, you don't owe me anything, you tried your best" I reached forward my hand grasping at the empty air as my chest tightened slowly crushing me, my heart, my soul. Why did it have to be this way, why, why was I so pathetic? I demanded answers, from who I do not know, perhaps it was god or perhaps I was just screaming at a world I did not belong in. Then as if to mock me the countdown began. 

"One hundred seconds" she spoke calmly though a tension was held in her shoulders. "I still don't understand... How you can look at me, how you can look at me with those eyes." She turned a squalor of wind rising to cast her hair about her, revealing pale skin and eyes the colour of ice, a clear blue, sad and lonely looking upon a world that had left her broken. "Tell me, why... why you couldn't just let me die back then?" I tried to call out to her; to tell her why. 'Because you did not deserve it’ those words were hollow to her, even if I tried to save her, even if I tried to help her. It was all worthless, it amounted to naught but a gaping hole left in our world. For what reason had fate saddled me with this burden. I felt like the world lay upon my shoulders as tears streamed freely from my eyes. 

"No!" I screamed, a howl like a beast in the midst of its death throws, hopeless, alone. But that was all I could say. 

"Brother, I never did forgive you for throwing it all away" Those words echoed in me, like a blade that pierced my heart. My hand grasped at my chest my eyes looking upwards towards a figure that was no longer there. Faded into the darkness an existence I would never see again. Except from in my nightmares. 

'Atlas'

I wept, my mind ripping, her words were cruel and cold, made all the harder by there legitimacy. It was my fault, I done this to her, survival had been a punishment for the pair of us, all because I was weak, I was pathetic I tried to protect others when I could barely stand on my own two feet.

'Atlas!'

The sound was growing louder, louder beating at the inside of my skull and shaking the earth. It was then that I noticed. The grass, was not bending in the breeze, for their was no breeze, the clouds in the sky perfectly still, the boughs of the willow petrified, unmoving as if caught in a picture frame. The world was still. And my eyes turned to the countdown, stuck in place a zero painted clear as day upon the screen. Perhaps there was an error, an issue, this world was just an imitation of the dreams of man, and their fantasies brought to life. Yet I knew in that instant I was not just looking at the world I was there, I stood upon the ground, the world beneath my feet and the sky above my head, no monitor no screen, no headset. Perhaps I was dead, if it were true, at least my pitiful excuse for a life could end here and now. 

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'Atlas, my Atlas!' 

The voice was insubstantial echoing about the world, and as it spoke reality seemed to bend. Dark, the skies became dark as if stained by black ink, the earth white pale and ghostly, everything changed, But I who remained constant wrapped within my madness and fear.

'You are my Atlas?' 

The voice had gained a note of femininity, something soft the empty beating vanished and left me awestruck. It had finally happened, I'd gone off the deep end. Then another voice joined the fray, strange and metallic, indifferent without purpose or reason well and truly soulless.

'Anomaly detected, code unknown... error ID player name... error ID NPC, NPC type: error.' 

The voice continued to drone, but the original grew in volume the very air shaking as the earth beneath me twisted in to bizarre mockeries of the human form. Grass, earth, stone, all forming into pseudo life forms eyeless with only gaping mouths and indents in their skulls. NPC tags hung over their head. I recognized a few: kings, wizards, sages, warriors and priests, there was no end they seemed to come from about the world and they were screaming. "Please Atlas, Please save us, save us, save us" they howled and screamed clawing at me. And with each touch they grasped on, their bodies seeming to warp about me encasing me. I fell backwards my head striking the tree as a pseudo being grasped at my collar the foul homunculus clawing about my neck a pair of hands emerging from the trunk of the tree itself. 

'Thank you my Atlas' 

The voice cried at last as my vision turned black and I relented to the torrent of the darkness...

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  Fate has a cruel way of changing things; the word is constantly in flux. Good fortune or bad one will eventually befall you. fearing these changes is like fearing death, standing atop a cliff with no intention to leap into the abyss yet despising the risk it presents all the same.

  I was fairly confident I was dead... 

  At least to begin with i could say that was true, darkness surounded me, all encoraching wrapping my vision so neither time, space, reality, truth, reason: the anchoring points of our world, were no more than the concillations of the past. I knew well enough that these falsehoods held no place within such a dark domain. Perhaps i should have been afraid, i should have screamed and cried tried to return to my previous world. but this existence, cold and alone, it was a kind reprieve. Atleast for someone such as myself. 

  Perhaps to spend all eternity alone within the darkness would be my punishment, would serve to pay some small debt of the damage I had caused. And floating there for perhaps eons I came to accept this. I cannot say for certain how long it took for me to realise the change but eventually I did. The darkness had iluminated to grey a cold light shinning from below me, if below was even the right word. Perhaps God had come to claim my soul? 

"Assessing" the eternity was broken by that voice. the world was ripped asunder and fear was struck into my heart. Was my rest over would i have to return to the world The possibility alone, was enough to sicken me. I withdrew from the voie cowering. "source code assessed... anomally encountered: Atlas system. Player ID Discovered, player; four-five-eight-zero-zero-two-six: Droga. subroutine initiate 'spark' procedure initialising... spark procedure implemented. 'Atlas foot' function initialising. reviewing data; Droga age reset to zero, race set to human, gender set to male, level reset to zero. NPC IDs detected; 'atlas foot' protocol will assimilate all statuses, varriables, and classes."

  For a long time i just sat there wondering if the voice would return watching the cancerous light spread about my domain of darkness. "subroutine, memory will be initiated on rest periods, routine 'Atlas foot' will confer all changes to character upon intergration into the 'God system' message relaying... "My Atlas, cast down the heavens." analysis complete activation sequence successfull. transfering data and shutting down." 

  and for an instant i wondered if it really would be nice to return to the world. was there really a harm in trying?

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I awoke; a cold sweat clung to my body. The room was dark drowned in midnight, the heavy scents of earth and wood filling everything. My bed creaked beneath me as my hands clasped and unclasped before me. "Nightmare?" my brother asked from his bed just a few feet away. 

"Yeah" I responded on instinct. I lay back down looking up at the ceiling. It wasn't fair to call it a nightmare; no memory was probably more accurate.