An old man stood at the edge of the world and stared out at the land beyond the barrier. He did not look old, his character had been locked into its youthful appearance long ago, but he certainly felt every bit his true age and then some.

He finally turned away as evening drew darkness across the sky. He took great care as he slowly collected his supplies, depositing them into his inventory, then turned his attention to his latest painting. It felt derivative, too alike to some others in the series.

He felt trapped, restrained, limited, and the painting reflected that lack of care, the sense of futility. A sure sign that he should move on.

First thing in the morning, he decided. He would leave this spot and find another. Surely there must remain someplace in the world he'd yet to visit, some new scene he hadn't captured a thousand times before.

He took the painting and easel into his inventory, then walked gingerly to the center of the hill, its highest point. Or as near to it as he could reach, with the invisible barrier that blocked his way. Advancing any further north was impossible.

He stared up at the immobile night sky as stars began to appear one by one. They never changed. They didn’t move. There was no slow wheeling about, no seasonal shifting. The stars appeared exactly as they ever did. His eyes flicked across the heavens, picking out where each would appear in the moment before it did, the sequence long since committed to memory.

Once the final star appeared, he closed his eyes.

Log out, he whispered in his mind. It hadn’t worked in over two hundred years, but there was always the chance today might bring an end to his long imprisonment.

He opened his eyes, just long enough to verify that he was staring at only the same accursed static sky, then closed them again.

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Three days longer than yesterday. It was a good thing he didn’t bother with such things as hope any longer.

He hardly remembered the days when the game had felt enjoyable, like something he would actually choose to participate in, but he remembered thinking that this would be better than death.

He had been very young, then, and very ignorant. Funny, how quickly eternal life could become a personal hell.

He sighed and opened his eyes. His nightly ritual completed, he picked his way slowly back to the patch of ground he’d staked out for his campsite. It was a bare patch of earth, with only magic to light and warm it.

With his luck, an actual campfire would have ignited the entire hillside, or at the very least burnt him in his sleep. It made life difficult, made action of any sort dangerous, made the weakest combat encounter deadly and pointless. But he had a lot of experience working around his particular limitations. In a way, sheer stubborn spite was all that kept him going.

Yet the same misfortune that plagued him was also what made his art worthwhile. The constant threat of mistake, the pressure toward destruction and chaos, the constant struggle to force his mind to his own will and not that of his captor, that was what lent vibrancy and passion to his brush.

He glanced at the flickering die in his inventory, and his lips twitched in grim satisfaction. He hadn’t given in yet, and he wasn’t going to.

When someone had nothing left to lose it became very hard to employ any leverage against him, and the old man had lost everything a very long time ago.

Wrapping himself in his blankets, he closed his eyes and fell asleep with that same determined expression stamped across his face.

He could live with an eternity of dire misfortune, so long as he denied the Trickster the satisfaction of winning him back.

End of Book One