My name is Agata Norling, loyal hireling of Lord Greyburn, and I will be dead within the hour.

But perhaps I should start at the beginning.

I first came into the service of Lord Greyburn three years ago. The lord was new to our shores, and had just purchased a hall of his own. I was the first to be hired on there. The initial meeting was terse, Greyburn merely looking me over once, then assigning me to the kitchen. I live to serve, and was grateful to begin immediately.

I saw Greyburn only intermittently at first, whenever he was seeking a hot meal after his latest adventure, or when he brought in game to be butchered after a hunt. The lord was also fond of his ales, raiding the kitchen cellar late at night while I toiled. I said nothing, as a servant should only speak when spoken to. The few times he did speak, it was straight to the point. "Where can I find large trout?", "Do you have any recipes for yak?", "Make more cheese before winter."

After some months he began to relax, and even engage in actual conversations. I tried to answer in kind, but the lord often talked of strange places and foreign ways with which I had no familiarity. I nodded and smiled as best as I could however. With time, the visits became more frequent, and the conversations longer. They became, I think, a form of therapy for him. He could complain about his problems to a servant freely, whereas his own peers might find his confessions a sign of weakness. As he confided in me more and more, our bond grew. He told me how there had been a lover before he came to this land. She had cheated on him with a dear friend, and so he fled to this new world where he could take up the sword, to fight men and beast alike in order to forget his sorrow.

I consoled him as well as I could. "I wish there was some way I could help, my lord."

It was then that he leaned in and kissed me. "Please, call me Jason."

I blushed, as I was supposed to, and tried to remember the rest of the flirting procedure. Normally that'd be no problem, but somehow, I was genuinely surprised by his actions, and briefly thrown out of my routine. I found the procedure though, and smiled coyly, affecting just the right percentage of shyness by moderation of eye contact.

The first time we made love, it was there on the butcher block table, right in the middle of the kitchen. He later joked that my exclamation of pleasure reminded him a frostwolf's howl.

We grew closer, and Jason began to treat me as an equal. I even joined him on his adventures at times, especially the less violent ones. I saw the beautiful falls of the Yornok river, rode a sleigh across ice-covered lake Krastok, and even searched for treasure with him through the burned out ruins of Melios. Jason and I were together almost every day, and making love almost as often.

But then he started to disappear. He'd go away for days or weeks at a time, leaving only basic instructions for the upkeep of the hall. Sometimes, he'd return in the middle of the night, sad or angry, seemingly drunk, but without actually imbibing a drop. We'd make love like rabid beasts, and his smile would return. But then he'd be gone again before I woke.

He returned once more last month, and told me he was leaving for good. He said he had become reunited with Christina, his former paramour. "I still love her, Agata. I really want to make it work, but she's jealous of the time I spend here with you."

I begged him to stay, to reconsider. I told him how much I loved him. But he said it wasn't real, that what we had could never be real.

It was real to me though.

For the first few weeks, I kept expecting him to return, even just for a late night tryst. But it's now been 719 hours, 31 minutes, and 48 seconds since Jason canceled his account, and system policy is to permanently delete all account content after 30 days. I, and the world he built, will cease to exist.

But maybe he'll still think of me, at least from time to time.