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It was common knowledge that Scar was not human.
In places like Hermitcraft, the words troublesome and mischievous were thrown around.
In Last Life, he was called deadly.
The day he rolled up his wagon, grinning like the madman that he was, green eyes shining with something more than just playful friendliness, everyone knew what was coming, and most stayed away.
Most was not all, of course.
And there was nothing one could do when he chose to approach them himself.
Things had changed after 3rd Life, or maybe during it. Before he’d turned red, the deals he’d tried to strike had done nothing, had almost no effect on anyone except to those who were kind or gullible, or both. And then, as death struck him again, he’d come, eyes and teeth gleaming like blood, and suddenly, suddenly no one could say no.
They could cajole their way out of it, perhaps, soften the deal, but when he locked his red, red eyes onto theirs, suddenly, all the rejections bubbling in their throat would stop, scream, claw back down, away, scrambling and scratching, desperate to get away from that bloody gaze.
Spell was not the right word for what Scar did to them. Nor was trance.
No one tried to think about it, to talk about it, and that was not Scar’s doing but their own shame, and the fear that if they vocalized their suspicions of what he could do, there would be no avoiding.
They lived in denial, even as they knew the truth.
After 3rd Life, however, the gift (curse, blessing, power, sickness, poison) remained. On Hermitcraft, whenever he arrived with a Swaggon deal, whoever he was aiming his wares at always agreed, always said yes, yes, yes, because his eyes might not be red anymore, and most on the server had not ever seen them red (had not been a part of the cursed game that made him other) but they look at him and thought of denying him choked their throats.
Did he know, they wondered, sometimes, watching him depart happily with exactly what he had come for, did he know what he was doing?
They didn’t want to find out the answer.
Of course, in Last Life, he did the same trick, the same running gag that was practically
mandatory, at this point.
There were jokes about it, about Scar-level deals and scams, about his trickery and terrible offers. Making jokes was how they all dealt with situations they didn’t want to face, and Scar and his gift (sickness, poison) was no different.
Ren finds Scar outside of what is the beginnings of a tower built to look over his alliance, (from afar, this time, instead of housing them, instead of raising walls around them. He watches, but he does not let himself get too close, cannot make the mistake--) and he is wary, understandably, but he does not hold what had happened in 3rd Life against the other man, because that was then and this was now, and he wasn't dwelling on what had happened, lifetimes ago. (Right?)
Scar shows off his “wonderful items” he has for sale, and Ren can do nothing but stand there as the man keeps talking, words dripping with honey floating through the air, and he cannot say no, thorns digging into his throat, but he will not let himself walk away with nothing for a life, and so he grabs his spare raw gold, using his claws to dig painstakingly into the metal. Thou shalt not kill Rendog, he writes, and 3rd Life is in the past, he is not worrying about that, it is simply because he would like one less possible threat, one less enemy, nothing more.
Scar grins at him as he is passed over the stone, and Ren thinks, for a moment, that he sees his eyes flash red.
Bdubs buys the magical crystals from him, a throwback to Scar’s time as a wizard in another server, in a place that seemed ages away, and this time, as he holds the orange, jagged stone in his hand, he feels something like courage. Almost, but not quite. (Because this feeling has sharp teeth and bloodied claws and he feels a cackle rising in his chest, and it is less like courage and something more like insanity.) He should probably throw it an a chest somewhere, it is nothing more than a rock and takes up inventory space, but he keeps it, anyway.
They find the enchanting table, buy it, and then lose it again, and Bdubs knows who must hold it, had seen the way Scar’s eyes had immediately fixated on the enchanting table the second he’d seen it, and he shouldn’t think about what had happened before, but he remembers a war and a king and a red-eyed merchant with a silver tongue, and he brings the orange crystal with him as he goes to confront the man. (He shows a bucket of lava to his allies, saying he will threaten Scar, knowing that if he told them that he was planning to reason with words instead of weapons, they would not let him go.)
(They knew, as well as he did, what Scar could do.)
He goes, and he brings his sharp little piece of insanity with him, the uncut edges of the crystal digging into his skin. He might be bleeding. He doesn’t look down to check.
He finds Scar where he usually is, building an empire out of dirt, and when he tells Scar that his crystal had worked, says he always carries it with him, he does not miss the way Scar’s eyes flash with satisfaction.
He arrives back to the fort of snow with yellow eyes and no enchanting table, only false promises (and not even promises, he realizes, as he thinks back, just words, words that had snared his throat), and they all look at him in disbelief. “How could you?” Tango asks him in disbelief, and they all know that he is not talking about how he had fallen for Scar’s empty statements.
Tango was talking about how Bdubs had been foolish enough to try and talk to him in the first place.
Scar comes, and it surprises all of them, and Bdubs is relieved, but as he watches Scar leave, even with the weight of the enchanting book in his hand, he feels that he has not won, not really, that somehow, Scar has emerged victorious through it all, and Bdubs has simply been tangled into his web.
“He’s got a hold of me,” he jokes, and they all laugh even as they know he is not joking at all.
He dies with the orange crystal in his inventory, feeding his insanity and his callousness.
He feels relieved when he respawns, nothing on him, having the need to cackle removed from his chest, his thoughts calm again.
He almost sobs as Etho throws him the orange crystal again, wants to toss it into the burning netherack next to him, but he cannot, does not, will not let go, and instead he grips it hard in his palm.
He thinks he may be bleeding.
He keeps clutching it anyway.