My whole life has been a constant climb.
I was born and raised in the lowest level of the bleak, starting my ascension from the bottom rung of society.
As daunting as it was looking all the way up to that top rung, I stayed calm and told myself to simply take it one day at a time.
Left and right, and all around me I saw others who were not so fortunate get their necks wrung by bigger, meaner, or stronger people, but I kept moving past them towards my goal.
Having barely survived my adolescence, I took the next step towards escaping the bleak by enrolling in medicinal school. Every day, for years, I’d suffer through lecture upon lecture until the bell rung, saving my brain from exploding due to the abundance of information being crammed into it.
Then I took a massive step up towards bettering my life when I achieved my doctorate. With that degree, I successfully punched my ticket into the upper crust of Arcadia. The credits, the prestige, the women, and everything that came along with it put me on a level above the vast majority of my peers.
Next came the climb, and as I climbed higher, step by step, I surpassed everyone in my field one by one until I was recognized as the most decorated doctor and surgeon in all of the levels.
Zeus even came to me and begged me to work for him in the Pantheon as I watched him hurl thunderbolts from the clouds down onto his world below. I had reached a level I never thought possible—
The pinnacle.
I had reached the top of my ladder.
I had achieved and acquired everything I ever dreamed of, and could honestly say I was happy.
But as they say, once a climber, always a climber. And I wanted to push my limits.
I wanted to climb higher.
When I looked around from my peak, searching for my next ladder to climb, I noticed another set of steps that led up to a new peak:
Mount Olympus.
So I took a leap of faith, landing firmly on the bottom rung of my new ladder, and started the climb all over again. This time, my greed motivated me to accumulate all the gold and decorations above and beyond what made me happy before. This was a new side of me that I needed to explore, just as this new ladder was a new set of rungs to conquer, and with each step up, whether it be a victory, a championship, or more, my hunger grew.
I was insatiable.
Higher and higher I climbed, to a place where blind men even could see. My head was up so high in the clouds I felt like I was living a dream. Again I climbed to the top, and when I looked down all I could see were little lambs trying to climb up after me.
I held my OSW World Championship high above me, shining it down on them like the sun.
Then the alarm bell rung.
And now the fear of the fall kicks in.