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No one is born on this server.
That doesn't mean players don't enter, they have for years, but no one is actually born here, and a lot of people aren't born at all.
Spoke is The exception.
He thinks it's because he isn't a player. Or, he is, but he also isn't. He isn't human at the very least.
Usually, with servers, a player steps in through the in-between, a liminal Space Between Worlds. Spoke has never seen this, only knows bits and pieces from overheard conversations, from dreams. A walk to whichever lovely, swirling portal calls your name. The waiting room between worlds contains all the player's memories from previous servers, memories hidden away once the entrance of a world is breached, once the player starts to be in a new server. Come back to the in-between, your memories, including the new ones, all come rushing back. Fascinating, right?
No one knows this. At least, no one on this server knows this.
Spoke, being The exception, was born.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Something.
Darkness swirling and condensing, pressing against a forming body until, with a shatter, limbs break through the liquid surface. With a gasp, the creature— a creature who has formed itself from nothing, literal nothing, out of sheer wanting to be alone— reaches out to the light, a tiny trickle that expands and glows in the inky blackness that was once home, now parting to distinguish itself from the creature stretching new limbs out to test function. It does not know how to be, just that it wants. Want. It is the first sensation gotten, a seed of desire curling up in its gut.
The void reaches out with soothing black-purple-blue hands and presses fingers to a newly sculpted forehead. Suddenly it knows everything, It knows about the distant worlds, it knows that it is not supposed to be alive, not supposed to have form and yet it does. It knows that it has defied the code of this world and that it feels good to do so. It knows that it has powers sitting almost accessible in front of its new clawed hands. It knows how to hop between worlds, how to keep its memories.
But it does not know how to not be lonely.
The void, with bittersweet palms begins to lift the creature up to the light. A gentle, steady rising, like an elevator as knowledge continues to flow liquid gold into veins and sharp mind. The creature's claws remain outstretched towards the light until it is covered in the beautiful, glowing substance, until it can taste sweetness like the break of candy code against sharp canines. Code flits between its fingers as, like a baby, it tries to reach out and grasp what cannot physically be grasped. (How funny, Spoke has always been turned toward the light, huh? Has always tried his hardest to reach past the daarkness he is made of?)
"I will find light," it says, forcing words through vocal chords just now used. It is the first promise made in this world. It means to be one with light, it means to make the light its. It means to undo its birth and reform itself of this golden hue, this liquid warmth that smudges everything in pastel softness. It means to find permanent joy, it means to find purpose and being.
And it spoke this. Spoke. Spoke. Now it has a name. Now it is. And with a name comes being, right? As a child is named after the womb. With no parents, the process of naming is given to it, along with all that comes about after— all the personality, all the character. And now with all that, Spoke finds himself born from the abyss, finds himself standing on bedrock with a goal in mind and a lantern hanging above his head.
Spoke is born that day.
It should be a momentous occasion but it isn't, because, as Spoke soon finds, there is no one here.
The world above, vast and untouched. Silent except for the wind. For all the work he did, forming himself out of sheer will and the want to live, there really is nothing to live for. He thinks that his goal is impossible to obtain alone, and yet there is no one to help.
He searches, plods his way steadily, gets used to walking in this body, to keeping it formed and solid and as real as it can possibly be when it is something from nothing (a truly Herculean feat!).
He notes down everything of importance. He visits other worlds, learns how to break the fabric of the universe and spool it back on a thread that he weaves as he pleases. He learns how to manipulate, how to forge trust, how to laugh and lie and cheat. He learns how to be a lot of things, but none of them are quite what he is looking for, and he always leaves the friends that he has made behind to come back to this world, lonesome as it may be.
Because it offered him a rainbow— the first thing he saw stepping out of the cave. Shielding his eyes from the glaring, glorious sun, the air fresh with the smell of damp earth, there it was, faint and colorful, arching above him like a welcome sign. He took inspiration from that rainbow, integrated its vibrant colors into the folds of his monotone gray clothes. He was more colorful now, no longer just blue-gray skin and not-quite-white eyes and gray and black clothes, but red and orange and green and purple and all these lovely things that made him thing that he belonged. That he was beautiful too, not just voidmatter but maybe something more alive, with a beating heart to match the first players who joined the server.
Spoke is no stranger to death.
It varies depending on the server and depending on what he's done. Sometimes it's jumping into the void and feeling the burden of an old, betrayed team heavy on his back as his lungs constrict, forcefully expelling all the air out from his lungs. It's like drowning, with that same cold numbness in unresponsive limbs as when one tries to swim in too cold water (he would know!). It is looking up at fading ground, feeling endless falling, trying to take in a breath and failing. It is painful and deserved.
Sometimes his head is being held underwater. Sometimes he doesn't thrash, other times he does, moves his arms and legs, tries to scrabble animal-like at the firm arm and hand holding him down, tries to scream muffled by bubbles and silt and water as his eyes sting and his body takes in a small, traitorous breath before taking a bigger one. As he feels water rush into his lungs and sting down his throat, as his tears get washed away by the current.
Sometimes he bleeds out on his own accord. Sometimes it's from someone else. Sometimes he jumps just to feel the rush of wind in his hair, to feel what it is like to fly, if only just for a moment.
They never quite lose their pain. You can be drowned again and again and again and it will still hurt the same every single time. (Spoke takes morbid comfort in this. What? It is nice to have a constant in all the change.)
So yes, Spoke is no stranger to death. But he hasn't died on this server. The code here is all wrong and funny, missing ones and zeroes where there should be numbers. The world speaks to him, or tries, pulsing out a faint SOS signal but try as he might, he cannot hear how he can help, can't understand what is wrong. Everytime the words drop off into silence, like a person trying to find their thoughts, like someone cut off mid talking.
Spoke knows two things.
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Dying is permanent. There is no coming back.
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Death isn't so bad.
Okay, well, Spoke hasn't physically died on this server yet, but he has died. Sitting curled up on the floor of his base sniffling pathetically is kind of like dying. So is losing a friend. So is losing yourself and your power. So is having nothing to fight for.
So there really wouldn't be a loss if he did die. Actually, physically died. He really is more of a walking corpse instead of player. And really, he's never been a player anyways. He masquarades as one but doesn't have any sort of connection to anything outside of this world. He leaves it and feels the draw back, a fish to the surface, hook in its mouth. He doesn't have the invisible string that goes up, up, up, the one that contains all the player data and all the character. He just has a name that he gave himself that really possesses no meaning, It isn't a player tag, just a couple of letters arranged in a way to fall of the tongue pleasingly. And, as Spoke has learned, words are very, very weak.
So there Spoke is, dead. He shuffles along and mumbles to himself because there isn't anyone to talk to. Everyone he meets looks at him in a way that shakes him to his core. They all look at him with those wide eyes and they know deep down that something is terribly wrong with him. They can't feel any of the server-reaching connection that stays even when memories are surpressed. He has no connection to any of the people on the server because even if he knows them, they can't remember anything about him at all.
Death, now, is so close. Just a slip off the edge. His life is tied to this server which means there will be nothing left of him. He will seep back into the code, go supernova and then be nothingness again. And no one will care.
Spoke hasn't reached his goal. He hasn't obtained light yet. Depsite it existing everywhere, it always avoids him. Like Tantalus, doomed to stay reaching, tantalized by what could be but what will never be.
When Spoke was still forming himself, was still in the half-stage between nothing and being, he thought that existing, that thinking and all these things previously not offered to him would be amazing. But living isn't what he thought it would be. Living is hard. Apparently just for him though.
Spoke is ready. He is ready to find a place to curl up in and never come back from. He is ready to say goodbye, to hold his broken dreams to his chest like a kid holding a stuffed bear in their hands. He is ready.
He is ready.
He is ready.
He is ready.
Dying will not be different from any of the other times, just more permanent. A final giving up.
Spoke gets ready to take his final bow, with his dead, rotting mind and his decaying hands that raise as he looks out into the emptiness and prepares to face the ground. Like an actor finishing a play. Like a—
He shuffles his feet over the edge, takes his last breath. Then he steps off. Wind greets him like an old friend, the ground raises its arms in a hug. Spoke meets it with all the force of a falling body, collides like a deer and a car. Except it's daytime and the headlights aren't on so there is no glorious light to delude him into thinking that there is something more, something greater than himself, something after this. Nothing to delude him that he is good and worth mourning, nothing to distract him from the inevitable metal upon bone and flesh, or in this case, solid dirt and stone.
He lays there dead, a morbid painting of a life not worth living, a silent warning, a what not to be to all who passed to his broken body seeping red lifeblood and black ink. Faceless, nameless, unloved.
No eulogy for poor Spoke. No, he lies where he ought to have long before this. A Sisyphus who tried to be something greater than himself, who paid the price for it. An Icarus whose wings melted hot wax into poor shoulders, whose elation turned quickly into grim acceptance.
Flight for flightless man is still a feat, even if it is only for a little while.
(And how Spoke flew!)
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Something.
Broken bones unbreak, fuse back together. Blood seeps back into body, any lacerations, any broken skin is mended like a needle and thread to torn clothes. Color seeps back in. Lungs begin to inhale, begin to take in clean air. Heart begins to beat as a foreign hand reaches out to grasp Spoke's own, warm and achingly caring.
Spoke is born again.
Spoke experiences a second life quite unlike any second chance he has ever gotten. It comes not by the forcing of breath into lungs by an apathetic world obeying its code, but through the gentle guidance of pale hands, a gentle coaxing of life back into something long dead.
It comes through Mapicc.
As he gasps up and looks into this person's face, at their jabbing horns and their red hoodie and red, red, red, Spoke realizes that this is color. And light makes color. And in some weird roundabout, illogical way, Mapicc is Spoke's light.
Mapicc is what Spoke has been looking for. He has found Spoke and brought him back and they exist now and existence is okay and actually wonderful and when Mapicc looks at Spoke it is with the utmost softness and friendship and pure joy and no one has ever looked at Spoke like that before. No one has allowed Spoke to take their hand, no one has ever made him feel like living isn't so much of a burden, like there is actually a reason he exists, not through the selfish want of being, but something higher. More of a human-like flourishing. With Mapicc, Spoke might as well be human. Might be something more than deadly, suffocating void. Mapicc, lovingly, assures him that he is.
And wow, what he was searching for was right in front of him all long. He had been looking too much at the sky and his shoelaces and the ground. Had been looking too inward, and here Mapicc was, patiently waiting to save Spoke and hold him in a comforting embrace.
Spoke makes another promise to himself, in the moment, that he will never let this light go. That he will not make the mistake of holding Mapicc so far up, because as much as Mapicc sometimes feels so wholly unreachable to Spoke, (not in anything else but in his grace boundless forgiveness in care, not anything else, because he makes himself so reachable to Spoke so it is Spoke's issue, really), a statue on a pedestal cannot be embraced, cannot be held, cannot be loved. And Spoke wants to love Mapicc, wants to offer him the same care he gives Spoke so freely, like it isn't at all a chore, like Spoke is worth caring. (Which really makes him wonder why it seemed so difficult for everyone else).
And with Mapicc, with Mapicc, Spoke thinks that he will never die again.