It was the start of my next day. I stirred in my chair and stretched my back. The LEDs built into my PC’s fans sent a cone of sharp white up the wall; the only light in the room other than the strip of orange curated by the curtains as it spilled in from the streetlamp.

I shook my mouse and my two monitors kicked into life. On my main monitor I opened Discarded Shards’ launcher which popped up with a login screen. I threw in my password and while it connected to the server I looked to my secondary monitor. I pulled up a forum page discussing the meta-game of Discarded Shards. The launcher had connected and opened the main program. I hit ranked matchmaking as always and jumped into a queue to find a game.

I opened up a fresh packet of citalopram and swallowed three without water. It had been a long week of repeating this cycle. I went through the same exact motions every time I woke up. I stopped paying attention to the time or to my hygiene. There just wasn’t any point. I had no reason to get dressed; the only people I communicated with were through a vast network of light and wires and they only ever saw the text I typed into the in-game chat or on the forum. However, today was different.

Discarded Shards found me a match and put me, and my four matched teammates into the character selection screen. I moused over the portrait Gordon the Beacon, my personal favourite warrior and one seldom used by anyone else. The portrait went grey and I stopped, stunned. Someone named Cpt.Bantz had claimed him as his own. This never happened. Gordon was a good character, this was well known, but there were many warriors that were just as good and didn’t require anywhere near as much tinkering to make work. Now that the warrior for our team had been locked in I had no idea what to do. Our team had a ranged character, a warrior, a healer and a tank. The only spot left was the assassin. I hated playing an assassin.

Assassins did high damage but had no health. They couldn’t go toe to toe with anyone but another assassin, they needed to hide in bushes or lurk at the back of a team fight and pick off the wounded as they fled. I much preferred being a warrior, mid-level health and good damage. With a tank and healer to help, a warrior could decimate a team. That was my place, and I liked it there.

The clock was ticking, I only had ten seconds to choose a character. I chose Damien, Hells Gatherer. I don’t know why but I think I was drawn in by his scythe. Damien’s portrait appeared next to my username: TeryakiAngel.

‘Damien?’ Cpt.Bantz put into the team chat. ‘We lose’ they added.

I sighed. It always annoyed me when people write off lesser played characters as ‘we lose’. It happened all the time with Gordon, so at least that was familiar.

The game began and was fairly uneventful in the first half, a lot of posturing for position. We managed to push the top lane to the edge of the enemy’s heart. Unfortunately we weren’t able to stop the enemy destroying the bridge that connected top and mid, slowing down our ranged and tank teammates coming down to help support us in team fights. As a result we began to lose our mid lane and very quickly they were on top of our heart.

All five of us rushed in to stop the full force of the enemy as they barrelled down onto us. A volley of abilities came flying from all sides, aimed at both teams. I dodged around at the edge of the fight, paying attention to health bars. The enemy warrior was low. I could take him. I used my teleport to dive into the middle of the fight. I hit the W key and clicked the target, slicing with Damien’s doom scythe. The warrior should have died. He should have been struck down and erased from the fight but as I dove onto him the enemy healer hit him with an ability that turned all damage for the next second into heals. My doom scythe gave him half of his health back. I hit E to cloak myself, disappearing from the enemy’s vision long enough for me to dodge out of the way of a few stray area of effect shots and hide in the bushes.

With my three main abilities on cooldown I had no choice but to sit and watch as my team dissolved and their respawn timers appeared at the top of the screen. Everyone died and the enemy team began an assault on the last wall protecting our heart. My abilities slowly ticked back off cooldown and my team mates had twenty seconds before they returned to the game. Twenty seconds was a long time, and with the entire enemy team still alive they would destroy the heart long before then. I needed to do something.

The opposition’s assassin, Delox, swanned into my vision. He was low on health and I hit Q to teleport directly to him before I thought my whole plan through. Poor Delox had no idea I was there and he completely missed his shotgun blast in panic. I used my basic attack to slice through him in no time. With him dead I gained enough experience points to unlock my ultimate ability. I grinned.

The enemy team was clumped around the gate and I cloaked with my E ability to get into the centre of the enemy. I hit R, appearing in the middle of them all and immediately getting targeted by their attacks. My R ability took two seconds to charge, and then I unleashed a giant scythe that swung in a three-hundred and sixty degree arc deleting all four health bars surrounding me.

Damien’s ultimate ability is called ‘Fell the field’ and as the entire enemy team’s respawn timers appeared on the screen I couldn’t help but think I embodied Damien perfectly. My team respawned and all it took was a simple stroll through the top lane to destroy the enemy heart and close out our victory. I laughed and threw my arms up in the air.

A message popped up in my Discarded Shard’s inbox from a player named Mulch. It was our team’s healer.

‘Good move.’ The message read.

‘Thanks’ I replied.

‘Do you play assassins often?’

‘Never, I usually play warrior.’

‘Good. I have a team that needs another player, if you’re interested.’ Mulch’s message sat there for a moment as I thought about it. Was he serious?

‘Absolutely’ I had always wanted to play in a team, the communication and co-ordination would take my game to the next level. That was a hopeful view though. Most likely this would just be a group of people I routinely played with. I doubted that Mulch would have a full group of people aspiring to go pro. Worst case was we’d play together a few times and then fall out of contact. It could be fun though, so why not?

A new post popped up on the forum page on my second monitor: Insane Damien play! The post had a link to a YouTube video of my game winning ultimate. There was already a comment: OP please nerf. I recognised the name responsible for the post and looked back to my inbox.

‘You uploaded that video?’

‘You’re welcome.’

I sat and tried to think of something to say, my tentative hands hovered over the keys, but Mulch sent a message first.

‘So, the team are all getting online in about an hour, so if you want to meet everyone and play a few games you should go shit, eat or whatever now.’

‘Ok’ was my painfully memorable reply. I didn’t move from my seat though. Instead I did a quick internet search for “Mulch, Discarded Shards” and found his player profile.

I discovered that he was a fellow brit. His main was Beruial, Ex-Vampire, a healer with his own modest damage, and very meta focused. Mulch was clearly the sort of player who watched every official tournament, read every forum post and tried his hardest to play the characters who were recognised as the best of the best. His stats however, weren’t that great. Judging from the page in front of me, which admittedly wasn’t a good metric of a player’s skill, I was far better at the game than him, and maybe his teammates would be in the same boat. What if I had just agreed to join a team of players far worse than myself?

I pushed that thought away and hopped over to the Discarded Shards’ forum again. I quickly looked through some of the most recently posted builds on the meta focused characters. I wanted to know who was being played and how they were being played. Mulch would know this stuff intrinsically so I needed to make sure he, and his teammates, thought I was in the know too.

I spent the next hour looking through builds until a message from Mulch came through asking if I was ready. I wasn’t. I was nervous. I was meeting a team of people who probably all knew each other and would spend all our games judging me, seeing if this random player Mulch had invited to their team was worth his salt.

I joined the lobby. Waiting for me was Mulch, Joel (Who, as I later found out, was Swedish, and pronounced his name “Yoel”) and AccountingOtter.

‘Welcome!’ was the message from Mulch that greeted me. ‘We’re just waiting for our fifth’

‘Excellent’ I typed back. ‘What does everyone play?’ I asked, trying to act knowledgeable.

‘I play Beruial.’ From Mulch.

‘Skar’ Joel sent. Skar was a ranged damage dealer.

‘I play Damien, and I play him better than you.’ AccountingOtter sent, with a : P at the end.

‘And our fifth?’ I asked

‘He plays Tyranous.’ Mulch sent. So our fifth was the tank, perfect, that left the warrior for me.

‘Yourself?’ AccountingOtter asked.

‘I play Gordon.’

The chat stopped, I had a moment of worry that my connection had gone. A few long seconds later ‘OK’ came through from Joel.

Before anything more could be said Chalkwing94 joined the lobby.

‘Hey all sorry I’m late.’ Appeared in chat as soon as he did. Then matchmaking began immediately, started by Mulch. There were some greeting to Chalkwing94 as we waited but I stayed quiet, made uncomfortable by the reaction to my choice of character. We found a game and all chose our preferred characters. All except from AccountingOtter who chose Delox, beaten to Damien by the enemy assassin.

The countdown began and just before the loading screen appeared Mulch slipped a GL HF into the chat. Good Luck, Have fun.