Patrium Aeternum

An endless country, Patrium Aeternam,  
you walk soulessly across sand dunes with no borders, no world, no life.  
The spellmaker's work.  
With all his power, he chose you  
to be the first to live in his construct.  
Stalking your house one story below the dark,  
laying claim to your ultimate demise.  
 
A charmer entrusted you with a ruby gem that represents whoever you wish from your reality  
as body broke through the earth material of air,  
to  
Patrium Aeternum.  
 
Your goal is to find hope beyond hope,  
discover the end of eternity.  
But you have no need for sleep here.  
No need for food.  
Your only sensation is in your heart  
and it beats so weak so alone.  
It's tedious.  
Never ending.  
A purgatory of sorts.  
 
Miles and miles in.  
The charmer riddled that even eternity has an ending  
if you walk long enough,  
through enough geographical fields.  
There is a room at the edge,  
from where it is "all decided".  
 
Why were you plucked out of your comfort?  
Why did the spellmaker seal your fate among all others  
in this labyrinth?  
Why did the charmer appear at the beginning of the decided eternity and give you this rock?  
 
...  
 
"I was eating dinner with my family.  
A desert?  
How did I end up here?  
Is there a way home?  
For my sister.  
She needs me."  
 
Like crimson blood, the person stone, once used, decompresses off your palm and fingers, and vanishes,  
and you have made your summoning.  
 
As you were plucked, a green tomato out of the bush,  
you have called your best friend to march through this tragedy with you.  
 
Loyal, brave, he takes you through jungles.  
No animals. Just a terrain.  
There are rivers.  
Everything from The Fourth Day.  
He offers you the company you refused to journey without.  
 
You can't age here. You can't freeze in the tundra.  
You can't die.  
 
But luckily, the charmer allowed you one friend.  
 
And that friend also holds a summoning jewel  
to spirit away anyone he wants,  
from routine  
to burdening travels.  
 
What greater love hath any man  
that he would lay down his life for his friend?  
 
It's all trivial now.  
 
But the metallic room where all things are decided has a machine.  
That transports people from Patriam Aeternam  
back to their leisured fragility.  
 
But only one can go. One must stay.  
That is the rule of the spellcaster's dimension.  
You never know until you hear his voice congratulating you for the win.  
 
To prey upon the weakest human on the earth  
and have him or her summon a friend to share in their torture  
and his Majesty the Spellmaker Masochist and the Charmer, one,  
can wallow in the joy of their exponential madness and betrayals.  
 
The two of you wait for hours.  
The outcome is too big to decide.  
"For whoever comes, only one can be saved.  
The other forever remains unless he trades the life of his friend  
for the exit."  
 
And sure, the brave have more to live for.  
But the coward cares more about living.  
 
"He panicked.  
He pushed me and panicked.  
And now he is free,  
turned from all the nothingness.  
I doubt he'll tell anyone on the other side.  
He summoned me and now he'll forget.  
But I will stay here forever  
because no one else will live in my hell."  
 
An episodic wave rises above the end of eternity
and washes the leftover by flood
to the first scene.
 
...
 
Miles into the dunes like when summoned,  
the old pal takes steps knowing that the single life not damned  
is to damn the life of another.