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Chorby Soul’s first death was during season three, in a game against the Shoe Thieves.
The Millennials were home that day.
At the moment of death, the game had been tied. The Mills were fielding that inning, having just come off a home run from Dominic Marijuana.
Chorby was standing in the outfield when the umpire approached. They were focused on the game.
In a modern crematorium, the body may be heated upwards of a thousand degrees. However, what’s left usually isn’t ash, or what’s considered ash. What’s left are fragments of bone that are pulverized into dust.
A sound familiar to some players, and one dreaded by most, is the dull thump that bone makes when it falls to the ground, amid the remnants of a uniform.
For a time, there was some solace taken in the instant nature of an incineration- that was, of course, until it became possible to talk to the dead.
As any player, dead or undead, can tell you, you feel it. Only for a moment, but a moment of pure agony is of equal value to a lifetime of suffering.
But, only a select few can tell you how much being hatched again hurts worse.
Chorby Soul’s second death was during season sixteen, in a game against their former team, the Millennials. The Mills were home that day, once again.
Chorby was on the mound this time. They had been rendered Unstable, after their Debt was re-formed. Chorby had not been waiting to die, but the constant spiritual assault of the consumers had left them raw enough to feel something akin to what they felt that first death.
It was an endless assault of gnashing teeth, black-eyed creatures tearing at both flesh and self. It would destroy most players, and it had left Chorby barely functional, tired, injured, and hopeless on the field of play.
The Millennials were up by four that game, which is to say that the Garages were losing.
Chorby could barely keep their eyes open, so they didn’t see the umpire as it approached once again, sensing a cosmic wrongness in need of correction.
Not many players can tell you this, but the heat of an incineration changed between the eras. How it felt changed. It didn’t really hurt, in the moment it could be felt. Instead, it was a sort of starvation-feeling, leaving you desperate for fuel in your last moments. It burned out the plasma in stars. Or ate it, to put it another way.
Chorby Soul, the original, had one more death to go.
Season seventeen, the first game of the season. Batting for the Baltimore Crabs.
Chorby died in the outfield again. The instability chained. Another death in the next game.
The original Chorby Soul was never seen after that season. They were Preserved in the Vault, away from the hands of anyone.
They would not be the last dead Chorby, however.
That would be Chorby Soul III.
The replica Chorby died on day ninety of season eighteen, in extra innings.
They were fielding, once more.
The game was tied at that moment, one to one. In the following inning the Crabs rallied to score three more runs, winning the game.
The remaining Chorby replicas are in a number of places. Chorby Soul II was redacted. Chorbies Soul IV-VII were returned to the Vault for an unstated eternity.
To some, the rebirth and death of Chorby is seen as a ritual. When Chorby was vaulted, the idea rose to prominence. The replicas became an effigy to those who held to the idea.
The death of a Chorby would not leave an absence, and in their wake a new player would be born.
A death to call in a harvest.
But of course, nothing attracts crows quite like a body. And nothing ruins a harvest like birds.