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Grian looks over the edge of the cliff, wiping his hands on the sides of his pants.
A dry wind snakes through the broken remains of the sand desert, stiffening the hairs at the back of his neck uncomfortably.
“I’m getting you, I’m totally getting you, Grian!”
“I don’t think you are, Scar, you’re not even trying!”
“I am, Grian, look at me! I’m getting you!”
Scar lost his first and final lives at the hands of Grian.
Grian wipes the dripping sweat off his face with one arm trying to keep himself from looking at hands stained with the blood of his friend. Why hadn’t he fought back? Why did he let him win?
They’d been more than friends– they’d been brothers. Grian had grown to care for Scar in a way he didn’t for anyone else, and even in moments when he had been tempted to slay Scar in one blow—at the bottom of the cliff, in the pond, Scar struggling to swim when he was one hit away from his immediate death—Grian had found himself unable to take away his life.
And yet, he did it. Staring down the edge of the cliff, he thought about the ways in which he’d grown to love Scar.
It had been a tenuous friendship, one that began with caution and much distrust, but ended up lasting longer than any other alliance on the server. Scar had been Grian’s first and last friend on the server, and it’s only now with him being gone that Grian realises that Scar had never betrayed him at all.
Grian betrayed Scar.
“I have a plan,” Scar had grinned and whispered in Grian's ears right before he had charged down the cliff screaming betrayal. Grian had hit Scar, and Scar had looked terrified before he accepted it, hung his head and told him that he, if anyone, should be the one to take his life for all he'd done to keep him alive.
Guilt made Grian stop. He couldn't kill his friend. They'd made their way back to the sand desert, where they agreed to duel it to the end.
But Grian had wanted a fair fight. Scar never gave him one. And in the end, Scar's death was the inevitable conclusion of Grian's betrayal.
Grian understood Scar's little plan now. The plan was never in Scar’s favor, Scar wanted Grian to make it out of the server just as much as he wanted it himself, perhaps even more.
Grian betrayed Scar.
He sits himself down on the edge of the cliff, dangling his legs off the edge. He ran his hand on the sand by his side, collecting some in his cupped palm and then tilting it to let them spill over the edge and keep falling till they hit the bottom of the crater below.
He’d lost everything. What was even the point of living any further?
“Kill yourself then,” the voices whispered right on cue, carried by the dry winds. “No one will make it out alive. Join us, Grian, it’s only fair.”
Grian bit back a laugh. Even the ghosts wanted him dead. Grian wondered if Scar too, now amongst them, agreed.
He should’ve died. What made him special enough to be the lone survivor?
Grian bit down on his lip hard, tasting blood. He wanted answers. He wanted one last time with Scar. When he realised Scar was going to die at his hands, Grian had wanted to stop fighting, he had wanted to hold Scar by the shoulders and shake him until he quit his endless laughing and answered his questions. Why won’t you fight? Why're you letting me kill you so easily? Why won't you hurt me?
But he didn’t, because he couldn’t. Grian had been scared. The ghosts kept chanting murder in his ears, and even when fighting through tears and being unable to hold back fumbling apologies, he’d kept on charging, unable to stop for the sake of his own life.
Oh and Scar had taken the hits dutifully. Almost like he felt like he deserved them, that he deserved to die. Scar let Grian kill him, laughing till the last breath even in the midst of apologising too.
The apologies leave a sour taste in Grian’s mouth even now.
Grian trusted Scar, and when Scar seemingly betrayed him over a piece of paper, it’d hurt. It’d hurt unbearably much, and when Grian woke up in his red life, there was a moment when he wanted to jump in the lava moat around their sand base and end it all.
And then Scar had told him it was just a trick to get Bdubs to believe in him, and it felt as though Scar had never been a more loyal brother.
The apologizing hurt, because they felt genuine.
Scar had been apologizing for not being able to keep Grian’s trust in him.
The dry, hot wind engulfs him now, coaxing him in a foreign sense of warmth and comfort. Grian stands up, feeling slightly dizzy, and wipes his hands on the sides of his pants again. He glances back at the piles of armor and potions that just laid wasted on the lands of the desert and almost chokes on his tears again.
Beyond him, lies what remains of the kingdom he’d built with Scar. Most of the desert was one big crater now, with them having to skirt around its edges to get around.
Grian watches sand trickle down over the edges of blasted-out stone, like grains in a sand timer.
Time doesn't wait and he knows he needs to decide soon. Does he want to live on, and claim his victory? Or would he rather die to meet Scar and beg for his forgiveness?
He’s not sure. All he knows is that the world is quiet from up here.
Unbearably quiet.
Grian closes his weary eyes one final time and takes a step forward. There’s a roaring wind that burns his ears, a fire that fills his lungs as his world plunges into black– but it’s so warm, and so safe, surprisingly, that he can’t quite bring himself to care.
Grian fell from a high place.