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Pearl has just finished digging out her trap when Bigb brings news of his unfortunate demise at the hands of the reds.
“They didn’t invite me to their team,” Pearl pouts.
Bigb jolts. “Why would they invite you?”
“I mean, I’m a red name too! I think I should be permitted to join in on murderous activities as well.” Pearl muses.
“That’s true, that’s true,” Bigb concedes, but he still looks hung up on his unfortunate death.
“I would’ve stopped them, if I were there,” Pearl assures her companion, patting him on his back. She doesn’t miss the way he tenses as her fingers graze the two dips between his shoulder blades, her own handiwork.
“Would you have really?” Bigb questions, tilting his head. Pearl hates the way his eyes bore into hers, forcing the truth out of her. She is unable to lie, and she hates it.
“It depends.”
She remembers the bang of a firework rocket. Berry bushes pricking at her fingers. Blood in her mouth, as she stumbles over her words– “Bigb, you traitor, you coward–”
But Bigb– the Bigb standing in front of her– is neither of those two things, so she swallows the metallic taste that still lingers in her mouth. Same body, different soul. “As your friend and loyal ally, no.” She casts her gaze around, making sure there are no eavesdroppers.
“As the Boogey…maybe.”
——
Grian shrieks, arms windmilling through the water. Behind him, the ravager is closing in.
Pearl watches. Like a cat watching its prey, she makes a split-second decision.
Grian had ridiculed her before her allies with that stunt he pulled with the button and the gravel. In her defense, she had no idea she’d put that trap there! Afterwards, when she confronted him in front of the Clockers, he had just shrugged. “Wasn’t my fault you put a button right in front of me and expected me to not push it.” He clapped Pearl on the back. “Seriously, Pearl. I thought you knew me better than that.”
That sentence— I thought you knew me better than that — hurt. Much more than Pearl was willing to let on. But it also gave her an idea.
So Pearl offers him a hand and helps him out of the water, pushing down the part of her that just wants him to drown. He looks quite like a sopping wet bird, with his hair plastered to his forehead and his red sweater clinging to his bony frame.
On the other side of the river, the ravager huffs in anger before charging into the water, scattering droplets everywhere.
“It can swim !” Grian yelps, scrambling for higher ground. Pearl hauls herself up the cliff after him, panting and laughing.
The curse coursing through her veins is yearning to break free as she watches Grian wring out his sweater, completely defenseless, his armour discarded on the grass. But her sword is heavy in her hands and made for someone of a larger stature. She’ll have to end him in a trap.
She feels Bigb’s eyes on her back, silently encouraging her.
“Say, Grian,” she starts, leaning forward. She already knows the answer, knows he cannot resist, but asks the question nonetheless for mere theatrics. “What do you say of a game?”
——
Grian knows he should not be following a red name into the woods alone, but as one could say, curiosity killed the cat. Plus, he’s sorta indebted to her for helping him out of that river! It’s just Pearl, after all. Pearl who is rational and reasonable and totally not an unhinged madwoman.
What a ridiculous proposal, that Pearl would be anything than reasonable.
He sneaks a closer look at her, but falters when he expects to see her face but he only sees the top of her head— mousy brown hair pinned back with a golden crescent hairclip. Two tiny space buns are perched on each side of her head, bound with dark elastics. There’s something off about her hair, though— scratch that, there’s something off about her whole self , something that Grian just can’t quite pin down.
“Wait, Pearl, did you dye your hair?” He blurts out the question, immediately regretting it when Pearl stops dead in her tracks.
A hand flies up to her hair. “What?”
“No, it’s just that— your roots are pink.” Grian says. He tries to take a closer look, tries to figure out if it’s just the silvery moonlight playing tricks on his eyes, but Pearl swiftly tugs her hood over her head. It’s a very large hood, he notes. He doesn’t remember it being this oversized on her— it hangs low, almost obscuring her eyes and draping her features in shadow.
“I may or may not have been experimenting with hairstyles,” Pearl says evasively, regaining her composure. “Which is none of your business.”
They start walking again.
——
Grian considers his odds.
His senses are tingling, warning him to not follow wherever Pearl takes him— it is most definitely a trap. Pearl said it was a game of chance, but he highly suspects it is rigged for him to lose. His precious belongings, or worse, his time.
But Grian is still coming off that high of killing Pearl and Timmy, and he is curious to see what Pearl concocted for him as payback. The possibility of her being the Boogeyman crosses his mind, but he brushes it off. After all, she had plenty of opportunities to kill someone and didn’t.
A cold wind breezes through the trees, and Grian shudders. His clothes are still damp from his dip in the river, and the night air is not making it any better.
He dispatches a skeleton lurking under a tree with a few well-timed swipes of his sword. “Does this place have a monster infestation? There are so many mobs, and it’s not even the new moon,” he says, if only to break the awkward sheet of silence that fell over them. “I mean, where could they possibly be spawning from?”
“We’re in a dark forest, there’s bound to be monsters,” Pearl replies, although she too seems perturbed. “Maybe we’re just unlucky.”
Grian wants to laugh, because he knows that there is no such thing as luck in this world. There is only the will of the—
He’s lost his train of thought.
He settles for a “maybe,” and they fall into silence once more.
When they come out into the clearing, they’re met with a horde of zombies, just milling about the place.
“Oh,” Pearl says, voice tinged with nervousness.
They make a run for it, zigzagging around the undead until they reach an oak door built into the cliffside. Pearl barrels into it with her full body and it swings open, sending her tumbling to the rough stone floor. Grian yelps as a rotting hand catches his side, and leaps towards the general direction of the door. It slams closed behind him.
The zombies pound at the flimsy oak, and Pearl swears. Cracks are already beginning to form in the door, so she blocks it off with dirt and turns to face Grian.
“There we go,” she says, breathless. “That wasn’t that hard, was it?”
Grian takes a moment to take in his surroundings. They’re in a simple stone basement, lit only by two dim torches placed haphazardly on the wall. The ceiling is low, claustrophobic, and a set of cobblestone stairs lead deeper into the cave.
Grian peeks into a chest by the door, looking to see a hint of what would be in store for him, but it is mostly empty, just various types of stone and a bucket of lava and some rotten flesh. Pearl nudges him away and towards the stairs.
“After you, sir,” she bows.
The staircase is surprisingly short, and at the bottom, there are a set of dark oak doors. He pushes them open, half expecting a TNT trap to be triggered, but there is only the usual creak of a door.
For what Pearl described as a ‘gameshow setup’, it is very rudimentary. It’s a small room, for starters. The floors and walls are an uneven mix of cobble and smooth stone, and there is a large square pit in the middle, deep and wide enough for four people. Dark oak buttons line one edge of the pit, and above it, a spruce sign reads in all caps LET’S PLAY A GAME . A frame in the corner of the pit holds a single piece of redstone.
“If you win the game, I have something to offer you,” Pearl says, sidling up to him. Her voice has turned sugary sweet and persuasive, as if she were coaxing a dog to go outside.
“How do I play?” Grian asks. His fingertips are already tingling at the sight of the buttons, and he imagines pressing them, one by one, listening to their soft clicks.
“Here is the prize,” Pearl says proudly, producing an enchanting table from her bag. “I bet you want it, I got it from…”
“An enchanting table?” Grian interrupts, recognizing the shiny thing in her hands. “But how do I play?” He’s itching to push those buttons as soon as he can, but Pearl is still rambling on about the origins of the table. A flash of annoyance courses through him.
He loses patience. His fingers reach out, and he firmly presses the dark oak buttons,
one
at
a
time.
He’s surprised by several things in brief succession.
First of all, the buttons cede almost immediately under his thumb— a sure sign of use, which surprises him, given that Pearl insinuated that he was the first to play the game.
Secondly, a hissing sound emanates from the corner covered by the item frame and it breaks. Lava begins to flow out almost immediately, slowly but steadily.
There is a brief but awkward pause, as both parties are too stunned to react.
Then, Pearl gasps, and the world starts moving again. “Oh— oh, you’re supposed to get in there—”
And last of all, Grian feels a kick in the small of his back and he tumbles forward, body twisting and flailing—
“No!” He lands knee-deep in the lava, fumbling for his sword. He swipes it in the direction of Pearl, but she leaps out of reach.
He laughs, incredulous, as he tries to jump out of the pit, but the lava drags down his feet and flames cloud his vision. His amusement fades when his health bar starts to decline rapidly, six hearts, five hearts, four hearts—
“Nono no !” He shrieks, hands desperately grabbing onto anything, nothing. His mind dissolves in a panic, all rational thoughts out of his mind. He can’t afford to die like this— he’s turning red in one minute and thirty-eight seconds— “I’ve actually got no blocks!”
Three hearts.
His hands finally land on a couple of smooth orbs— Ender pearls, convenient for a quick getaway. He raises his head to look at Pearl again, aiming the pearls for the doorway, but for a single second, her face is someone else’s, someone unfamiliar yet haunting. He freezes.
Two hearts.
One heart.
Grian tried to swim in lava to escape P̴̡̤̗̝̖̩̠͓̽eǻ̵͉̫̰̮͘ȓ̶̙͉̟̣̬͚̺̄͂͋̉̈́͗͆͠le̵̢̲̹̺̗͍̼̭͈̬̰̔͛͆̌̒̀̽̕͝͝s̷̹͇̟̪̠̥̞̲͇͗cen̸̯͍̘͕͖͚̫̙̰͙̔͌̑͛͊̿̎͐̕͝͠t̵̫̫̤̒̈́͂̚̕ṁ̵̧͔̲̯̯̘̙̖͙̘̗̙̱͑̍͗̏͠oö̵̧̺̜̩͇͖͔͖̹̗̩̱́̓͊̿̉̄͝͝ͅn̵̨̢̧̧̟̫̙͍̳̗͚͇̣̦̋͑͒̽͗́͝.