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There is lightning forking through the sky as Grian falls to his knees beside the Entity.
A massive storm rocks the server, so harsh and billowing that it feels as though the entire server is quivering under its force. The wind tugs at his hair and feathers, tousling them beyond recognition as its fingers yank violently on everything that moves. Rain pelts down from the heavens, as though the entire sky has split open all at once, and it puddles in the mud beneath him as he curls in on himself, making everything slick and wet.
The worst part, however, has to be the lightning. It flashes through the sky with such demanding brightness that it makes his head spin, that it burns behind his eyes for seconds afterwards, blinding him in its brilliance. The rattling of thunder follows shortly after, as if the eye of the storm is centred directly above him; as if the lightning is only moments from striking Grian where he lies. It makes him shake and shudder, trembling under everything that the lightning surely still means.
… Because, it surely still means that, right?
Grian jolts as lightning strikes again, and he can’t help but think it’s strange how the effects of the life series sometimes only show up months later. The manifestation of traumas is that he didn’t know he had.
Grian hasn’t encountered a storm since the end of Limited Life, but that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t lived through similar things in these past few months. After all, the sonic beam of a Warden is similar enough to lightning, just as the rumbling of a Ravager is similar enough to thunder. But, still- apparently neither of those compare to the real thing, because they have never managed to send him to the ground with quite the same trembling in his bones. They’ve never managed to set every strand of his hair on end, or make his heart feel as though it’s about to climb up and out of his throat.
Because, well- lightning had been more than just a symbol on the Limited Life server. It had been a warning and an omen, but also a very literal representation of death.
It had been the last thing he saw before he lost his boys.
It was the same for everyone. There was a rumble of thunder, a flash of lightning, and then they had run out of time- they were done for. The lightning was similar to the ticking of a clock, Grian thinks, it chimed the end of an hour. The end of a life.
Grian wonders if anybody else finds themself in the same situation, thrown into a whirlwind of awful, bubbling terror at the noises of a storm, as he clamps his hands over his ears and wishes that he was anywhere else. It’s like some new weight that the mansion left behind has suddenly settled on his chest all at once. It’s like everything that that mansion was, and could have been has fallen upon him in the same instant.
More than anything, more than fear of the storm or grief for his boys, Grian feels alone. More than he thinks he has in a long time.
Part of him longs to call out for Jimmy or Joel, to wail and scream and sob until they come back to him; until they wrap him in their arms and carry him back to that familiar rooftop, that familiar bridge, that home. Part of him wants to see them again, but the rest of him just wishes that he had had a body to bury. That he hadn’t had to settle for empty graves.
The storm is too much. It’s everything all at once. It’s every tiny detail that he thought he was over, that has apparently left more of a mark than Grian could’ve ever imagined. Every flash of lightning is another person dead, another old friend out of time, another grave that will never meet its owner.
It’s freezing, as he lies there with his trembling arms wrapped around his middle, trying to cradle himself like Joel used to. In that way, he knows he will never be able to replicate. The rain soaks through more than his clothes, more than the earth around him- it soaks through his very bones. It soaks into his soul, and leaves him trembling, hypothermic. It’s so cold, and he just can’t bring himself to move.
There might be tears on his cheeks as he shudders under the weight of another strike of lightning, and, suddenly, as if the world around him has skipped a few frames, Grian finds himself reaching for his communicator. It’s stupid, really, but maybe hearing his boys’ voices would help. Maybe hearing them will tear his mind away from the awful flashes of the world that he keeps seeing, maybe it will help him to distinguish between where he was and where he is. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
It doesn’t take long to find Jimmy’s contact- he had been messaging with his brother-in-law only the night before, so it’s towards the very top of the list. They’d made plans to play some spooky game together, one that Jimmy has been talking about for months, but the reminder of the conversation quickly flashes into their laughing on top of the Bad Boy’s manor, and it’s still not enough.
He wants to hear Joel’s voice too, but his distressed, half-present mind can’t figure out the way to call them both at once. He needs to hear at least one of their voices right now, he can’t wait any longer- Jimmy can sort out the technicalities of adding Joel to the call once they’re there.
Pressing a few random buttons, Grian thinks that he might’ve managed to start a call, if the noise coming from his communicator is anything to go by. His vision is blurry where he lies in the soaking wet mud on the ground next to the entity, but it doesn’t matter. His boys aren't with him, even as his mind provides terrifyingly convincing flashes of them; even as every strike of lightning sends him back to that last moment, where he watched them fall.
So- his vision doesn’t need to be clear, he wouldn’t be able to see them anyway.
“-Grian?” a crackling voice erupts from right next to him. It’s so unexpected that it makes him jolt, mud splashing onto the screen of his communicator as he stares at it dumbstruck.
Right. He had called Jimmy. That’s right, he—
The sluggish tears on Grian’s cheeks turn to sobs at the sound of his voice- at the sound of his boy.
“Grian? What’s going on?” Jimmy calls again, and the concern in his voice only serves to engorge the lump that is taking over his throat.
Grian thinks he might be bawling like a child at nothing more than the realisation that the lightning can’t be for Jim; sobbing with pathetic, hitching, breaths and snot smudged on his face. He thinks he might sound like a baby, the force of his awful, choking sobs far too much for something as small and delicate as him to handle.
Each noise chokes him so badly that it feels like he’ll never breathe again, like his lungs have been stolen from him as they squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, until he’s finally able to suck in another wailing breath. It’s like every cry seizes control of his body, rocking him back and forth as his face turns red and his fists clench. Every gasp sounds like he’s stopped breathing, like that noise surely the final one he will ever make, and then, and every time he somehow manages to make another.
Grian doesn’t think he has ever cried like this before, not in any memory that he has at least. He’s always been good at stopping himself from crying, or from keeping himself as silent as he can possibly be, so this feels unfamiliar. It aches, it makes him feel so full and so empty all at once, like a tidal wave, swelling up and crashing down over and over. It feels like he’s expelling every part of himself, like each gasping, reedy inhale is sucking all of the bad things together, and every sob is coughing them out.
Someone is talking to him, he thinks. He can barely hear past his own uncontrollable wailing, past his heavy breath and panting gasps. Lightning strikes again and again, and he can’t tell what’s real anymore. Reality might be the wide, pouring skies of the hermitcraft server, or it might be the final, booming chime of that clock. It could be any part of either of them, any combination of the two, and Grian doesn’t know what to think anymore–
“-llo? Hello?!” Comes the crackling voice of someone familiar, once again. The sort of familiar that makes it even harder to understand where he is. “Grian! What’s happening!?”
“Jim?” He wails, tucking his curled fists close to his chest and wrapping around himself as much as he can, small and tired and vulnerable.
“Grian! Thank goodness, man- what’s going on?!”
“Jimmy,” he cries again, allowing the knowledge that his boy is with him to ground him as much as it can. He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know what life he’s living, but at least he’s not alone with the storm anymore. At least, he reminds himself, Jimmy’s voice means that the lightning isn’t for him.
Jimmy is still talking, even as Grian’s head spins and spins until the world is something beyond recognition. “-hey, hey!” He yells, “Are you safe? Gri?”
It just sounds like static, like unintelligible garble that could never be understood by anyone. Grian thinks that he might be turning to static too, as he cries hard enough that his throat feels as though it’s turned to needles.
“I need-” He gasps, body shaking in the same way as the muddied bushes next to him; in the same way that the ground does every time that lighting strikes. “I-”
“Take it slow, take a breath. What do you need?” Jimmy coos, and Grian can just about make out the rustling of fabric around the words. It sounds as though Jimmy is- getting changed? Getting ready for something? What is he..?
Maybe- maybe he’s putting on his suit for the funeral, similar to the one they had for Bread Bridge. There’s so much lightning, so much thunder, which means that there are lots of people that are dead.
Maybe he’s getting ready for Joel’s funer—
Grian keens at the very thought, something high-pitched and calling that tears up his throat. He lets the noise seize up his neck, lets it pick his head up from the ground and slam it down again against rocks and mud, as hard as it possibly can. He lets the noise do it again and again, lets it force him into hitting his head over and over as he screams out for, “J-im! Joel! Joel-!”
“Joel? What about him?” Jimmy says, as if it isn’t obvious. As if he isn’t preparing himself for Joel’s funeral because there’s so much lightning and Joel isn’t here and he must be dead he ran out of time Grian should’ve given him time it’s all—
“G-Grian!” Jimmy begs him to refocus, as he screams and thrashes and calls out for his boys. “Are- are you with Joel? Do you want me to call him?”
Grian doesn’t know how to tell Jimmy that Joel is dead, he doesn’t know how to say that there’s a storm and everything is going wrong and their boy has been stolen from them.
He doesn’t know how to say that, so instead, he simply manages to wheeze, “Call-”, before he’s interrupted by a forking strike of lightning, so bright and grand that it practically engulfs the entire sky, flashing endlessly behind Grian’s eyes as he stares.
It’s like it’s suddenly turned to day for- probably only a few moments, but it feels like hours. It’s like one of the Admins (Gods? Watchers?) of this world has typed in a command to instantly turn forward all of the clocks; like Grian is lying there, motionless and breathless, observing an entire day-night cycle pass by as he mourns– as he’s suffocated by the loss of the only people he can rely on.
Then, the world snaps back to all-encompassing darkness, and another voice joins the crackling conversation that Grian is half convinced is all in his head.
“Ayup fellas, what-”
“Jo- Joel!” Grian screams, his hands suddenly blindly searching for his boy. They close around something, something that is streaked with mud and freezing cold against his stiff fingers, and Joel’s voice gets louder as he draws it closer to his face.
“What’s wrong? Jim?”
Grian is too distracted by the fact that he can hear his boys, his boys must be here, to even consider responding for himself. He cradles the object – a communicator, it must be – carefully between trembling hands, and ignores the way that mud drips off of it and onto his face as he holds it so that it is taking up as much of his vision as possible.
“I- I don’t know-” Someone – Jimmy – says, and all that Grian can think is that he’s missed them both. “He called me like this, and told me to call you too- I don’t know.”
“I- right,” Joel responds, uncertainty lathering his tone, and every word from the both of them feels like a boulder being lifted out of Grian’s chest. Like a shard of glass being slid out of his heart, and it’s becoming easier to focus on them- the voices.
Grian sucks in a gasping breath, forcing his eyes to focus on the rain-streaked, muddy screen as he looks at his boys’ faces. They’re only still images, indicators of who is present at the moment, but it’s still so unbelievably comforting that Grian thinks he managed to gulp down a lungful of air fuller than any he’s taken in the last half-hour.
“I’ve never- I’ve never seen him like this,” Jimmy whines.
Joel makes a particularly confused hum, one which sends a shiver down Grian’s spine as he takes another almost-breath because it’s just so familiar, before Joel is asking, “Uh- okay. Gri, what’s-”
Then, there is another awful, blinding strike of lightning; one that leaves electricity rattling through his bones and the thunder ringing incessantly in his ears.
There is fire slithering outwards from some grass to his left, one that wasn’t there before. One that is close enough to feel hot against his freezing skin. Grian watches as the flames begin to creep towards him, most being splashed out by the rain but some continuing to smoulder. To claim.
He thinks that he might be seizing under the crackling weight of the electricity that hangs in the air around him, muscles straining and jerking and leaving every part of him with a deep, bitter ache. His tongue throbs like he's bitten it, and his jaw crackles in his ears as it swings open like a viper. That’s when Grian realises that he’s screaming, so loud that a nonsensical part of his mind thinks it might shatter the glass of his comm.
There might be yelling from his boys, but he can’t hear it as a few ashes manage to land on his pale skin; as he cries bloody murder and begs for help through airtight lungs.
Surely the whole world can hear him, Grian thinks. Surely everyone within ten-million blocks can hear the way that his voice is tearing up his throat, so- why does he feel so alone?
With his boys in his ears, speaking comforts and encouragements to him, why does it feel as though he’s the only one of them that remains, yet again?