Chapter Text
The Secret Keeper has no eyes on its stone body, but still it watches them.
Scar should have failed, that first day, is the thing. He did fail, but Grian had granted him a second chance. Grian had; not the Secret Keeper. That Grian even had that authority had not been lost on Scar, but then everyone knew that Grian wasn’t exactly a normal avian. There was something there. The faded remnants of his vex magic could sense it; a magic much older and grander than his own. It might’ve made him wary, except Grian still teases him, and smiles at him, and is only a threat when he needs to be. These games turn them all into threats.
Grian breaks the rules to help him.
Scar starts hearing the whispers the next day.
His hands are coated in clay as he builds his trading post, the sun shining brightly and the autumn air just chilled enough to be comfortable to work in. He’s carving out a window when the voices come. They talk over each other, faint and echoing in the wind.
Scar jumps hard, turning around with a strangled yelp, leaving the window horribly misshapen. There’s no one around that he can see, and he laughs softly.
“I can hear you whispering,” Scar calls to the empty air, almost smiling. His servermates love to cause mischief. “I’ve got a whacking stick and I’m not afraid to use it!”
There’s a pause before the voices resume, only slightly louder than before. There are too many to quantify, really, and Scar notes with growing unease that none of them sound familiar. They do, however, sound the slightest bit angry. Curious.
Scar’s eyes flicker towards where the Secret Keeper sits on the horizon, silhouetted by the setting sun.
“Hello?” he calls again, and his voice wavers. Whatever he’s hearing, it’s not his friends.
The voices layer and layer on top of eachother, and Scar strains his ears trying to pick out something — anything. He only catches one word, repeated every so often in the cacophony.
Favored, the voices accuse. It’s spoken like a condemnation. Spat like an insult. Asked like a question.
Favored.
It takes a long while for the voices to die down to something manageable. They’re still there, and Scar can still hear them, but they’re fainter.
Scar swallows, his mouth dry, and goes back to building his window.
He gets used to the constant whispering pretty fast — which probably says a thing or two about his character, but oh well. It becomes background noise, blending with the wind and birdsong until it’s just… a part of life. A part of Scar’s life at least, since no one else seems to hear it.
“Alright Scar, your task…” Martyn begins dramatically, where he’s cornered Scar near the Mounders base. “Your task is to pretend to hear someone else talking to you in the middle of a conversation, or— or multiple conversations.”
“Hm?” Scar hums, and it takes a minute to register what Martyn had said. The whispering tends to get louder around some people. Martyn included. Martyn especially. “Oh! No, that’s not my task.”
“Wha— Are you sure?” Martyn sounds almost offended, taking a few steps closer and narrowing his eyes. “Maybe it’s something to do with acting distracted then? Imaginary friend, maybe?”
“Actually, I finished my task already,” Scar says, and laughs at the annoyed look on the yellow name’s face. “Like— like an hour ago.”
“And you let me just—!” Martyn throws his hands up in frustration and trails off into grumbling.
“Well you seemed so excited to ask me! I thought it’d be rude to interrupt.”
“Well why are you acting so weird then?” Martyn asks, but even he is smiling like the ridiculousness of it all has caught up to him. “Everyone was telling me you were acting strange, staring off into the distance, trailing off in the middle of a sentence, just— weird.”
“Oh, you know me,” Scar replies, waving a hand dismissively. Maybe the voices had been getting to him more than he thought. “Strange Scar, they call me.”
“That might actually be true if you keep this up,” Martyn jokes, and then he sighs. “Man, I’ve had no luck today with guesses.”
“Maybe next time,” Scar says with a mischievous grin.
“Yeah, alright, I’m coming after you first,” Martyn threatens playfully, gesturing with his hand, and the voices in the wind get louder.
Enemy, the voices insist, angry and talking over each other. It sends a sharp pain through Scar’s head, and he winces, eyes flickering unbidden towards the stone figure to his right. Maybe it’s not the Secret Keeper talking, but he’s pretty sure it’s got some sort of significance in the situation.
Enemy, the voices hiss. One without Sight.
Scar ignores them. It’s just Martyn.
“Shut up,” Scar mumbles under his breath, strained but firm, and the whispers actually do die down a little, even if it’s only in surprise at his audacity.
“...Are you sure you’re okay?” Martyn asks, and he actually looks concerned, now. Oh, jeez. “You do keep zoning out.”
Distantly, the Mounders are laughing at something inside their base. The sun is shining in a cloudless sky, nearby sunflowers swaying gently in the breeze. Someone is riding a horse on the other side of the map before disappearing into the woods. Skizz and Tango are at the Secret Keeper watching BigB cash in his success, and they’re all smiling – joking around. It’s just another normal game for them. Nothing they haven’t done before. Scar can’t have that now, because now he has hundreds of backseat drivers in his head, watching his every move and commentating on it without even the decency to take turns.
“The voices in my head don’t like you,” Scar says, and he means for it to sound more like a joke than it does. Mostly, he sounds stressed, and he cringes when the furrow between Martyn’s brow deepens, something like surprise flickering behind his eyes before it settles into something else. Something— Wary, maybe? Concerned?
“If this was task related it’d be a lot less concerning,” Martyn says, and seems to be thinking hard. “What did you mean by that?”
Scar hesitates, a little unsure how much is wise to share. This was a game of Secrets, after all, although no one had expressly said that he had to keep this one. And if he was honest with himself, he kind of wanted a second opinion. Maybe some reassurance that he wasn’t going completely off the rails. The voices were already giving him headaches. He’s not sure he wants to know what the escalation of that would be.
“What voices, Scar?” Martyn asks again, a bit closer now, snapping him back to attention.
“You— You know the Secret Keeper voices? When you succeed your task?” Scar asks, the words practically bursting out of him, propelled by the pressure of being kept at bay for so long.
Martyn’s eyes narrow just slightly, his gaze flickering to the Secret Keeper and then back. “Yeah, I’ve heard ‘em. We all have, far as I can tell.”
Scar nods and swallows, pasting on a shaky grin. “I hear them all the time.”
“…You hear the Secret Keeper voices,” Martyn repeats faintly, and seems abruptly paler in the face. His mouth presses into a thin line, and he looks at Scar with an odd, worried look in his eyes. “What do they say about me?”
“Nothing very nice.” Scar shrugs awkwardly, looking away. “They kind of implied you were blind, which— I don’t really think being blind is an insult, that seems kind of rude, actually—“
“One without Sight?” Martyn interrupts, a new urgency in his voice as he steps even closer, gaze boring into his own and a hand reaching out to grasp his arm. “Scar, this is important, is that what they said?”
The whispers turn to shouts, and Scar growls in pain and frustration, pressing a hand to his head. He still can’t tell what they’re saying, but they sound angry. It makes his heart beat faster.
“Scar!” Martyn has both hands on his arms now, squeezing hard enough that it’s nearly painful, but it succeeds in bringing Scar back to himself.
“Yeah,” Scar croaks, and lets out a weak laugh. “That’s what they called you.”
Martyn growls under his breath, eyes cutting towards the Secret Keeper with an angry glare, but his hands on Scar’s arms are gentle, comforting. He looks back at Scar, mouth twisted in a frown.
“I have to talk to Grian,” Martyn says, something apologetic in his tone. “Do they get quieter when I’m gone?”
Scar can only nod, overwhelmed and confused. Martyn at least seems to know what might be happening. And if he’s getting Grian, then maybe Grian can make the voices go away.
“Alright, wait here, get your bearings,” Martyn says, guiding him to a rock and sitting him down. “I’ll be right back, yeah?”
“Okay,” Scar says, already feeling a bit more stable now that he’s off his feet. “You’re lucky I finished my task already, I had to run around trying to get people to trade for things.”
“Then you probably need to rest, anyway,” Martyn replies, and then again, “I’ll be right back.”
Scar watches as Martyn starts running towards where Grian’s egg house is, and he sighs and leans back further on the rock he’s sitting on. There’s still tension in his shoulders, but he doesn’t feel quite as hunted as he did before. The voices die back down to something manageable, and Scar lets himself relax, absentmindedly listening to the distant conversation between Mumbo and Bdubs. The headache is waning. He’s tired.
He makes the mistake of closing his eyes.
Favored, the voices say, clearer and more singular than usual. Almost gentle, but something about it sends a shiver down his spine. Favored. They say it like it’s his name.
When Scar opens his eyes, heart beating in his throat, there’s a book in his hands. It’s shining and shimmering with magic and enchantments, leather bound and marked with that same strange symbol from the Secret Keeper. It looks the same as any other task book, except Scar has already handed in his task. He can feel the weight of many eyes prickling at his back, but knows he’ll see no one if he turns to look.
Scar stares down at the book in his hands, and the voices are utterly and suspiciously silent. The sunflowers surrounding him are still.
Scar opens it.
The world — melts. Or maybe it’s Scar that melts; Scar that slips quietly out of reality like water over stone. In one moment, he is sitting on a rock in a tangible, quantifiable space, and the next he is standing in pitch darkness, untethered from anything that feels real. The book is no longer in his hands.
The abrupt change makes him dizzy, and he pitches forwards with a strangled cry, landing hard on his hands and knees and coming face to face with his reflection in the floor. It wavers and ripples like water, but the surface is hard and smooth. His own heavy breathing echoes back at him, loud in the quiet, empty space.
Huh. This isn’t usually part of the games.
“Gosh, oh my— Warn a guy, maybe,” Scar says shakily, sitting back on his knees and looking around warily. There is only endless dark, and Scar has the foreboding sense that it goes on forever, somehow. “...Hello?”
Just his luck, to get yanked out of the fabric of reality and no one is even there to greet him. Chivalry really was dead.
He opens his mouth to call out again, but it cuts off into a strangled gasp. A soft breeze circles him, with a sense of curiosity. The back of his neck prickles and his ears ache, like there’s a noise that his human ears can’t quite hear. Still sitting on his knees, Scar cranes his neck and looks up with wide eyes and a rapidly beating heart. Above him, one by one, countless stars blink into existence. His breath hitches.
Slowly, he gets to his feet, throat tight with awe and terror, eyes still fixed skyward. There are too many stars to count, now, and Scar gets the feeling that they’re not really stars at all. He can’t explain it, but— They’re blinking. The stars are blinking.
Shivers race up and down his spine — a sudden and inescapable presence appearing behind him — and Scar whirls around so fast that he stumbles.
The Secret Keeper is more than just a statue. It’s alive and moving, and not made of stone at all.
It’s wearing a deep purple robe, the colors shifting and flowing minutely, in the same way magic on enchanted items does. The clasp of the cloak looks like an eye of ender, bright and shining. It’s wearing a stark white mask beneath the hood — or maybe it’s not a mask, and isn’t that a disturbing thought — and on the mask is that familiar symbol, somehow glowing with every shade of purple at once. Every part of it seems to be moving, swaying; the cloak is floating and rippling gently, the colors in the symbol scaling up and down slowly, even the pupil of the eye of ender is expanding and contracting just enough to draw notice.
In the reflection beneath their feet is its stone likeness. Scar looks down at the reflected statue, and back up at the giant figure before him. There is the faintest shimmer of something behind its back, something that moves and distorts the stars. Scar feels very, very small.
“Is… Is this about that task I should’ve failed?” Scar croaks, mouth dry and voice strained. He clears his throat. “It’s not— It wasn’t personal. I didn’t mean to— insult you.”
The Secret Keeper tilts its head, and the stars flicker like they’re laughing.
“Is it you that’s been trying to talk to me?” Scar asks, and feels a bit hysterical. “That’s— You’re not too great at it, I’m sorry to say. I could barely understand a word of it, I think— You should definitely practice. Not on me.”
The figure before him just stares, just watches, and Scar swallows. His shoulders drop in defeat. Whatever’s going on here, he doesn’t really see a way out of it.
“...What do you want from me?” Scar asks finally, voice quiet.
Whatever is shimmering behind its back moves a bit, and though it makes his head hurt to stare at it for too long, Scar thinks it looks a little like wings. Near invisible and huge and impossible, but still wings.
When the Secret Keeper speaks, it comes from every direction.
[ He likes you. ]
Scar chokes on an inhale, fingers flexing with nerves and his back a line of tension. It wasn’t a question — had barely even had an inflection — but it seems to be waiting for an answer, anyway. His mind races.
“Well, that’s…” Scar shakes his head, trails off. “Who?”
The Secret Keeper makes a sound that might’ve been a hum.
[ He breaks the rules for you. ] says the creature, still in that same blank voice. It’s almost melodic. [ You are favored. ]
There was that word, again. Favored. For a moment, Scar still doesn’t understand. Then it hits him, and he blinks in surprise. He breaks the rules for you, the Secret Keeper had said.
“Grian?” Scar asks, and this time the hum from the creature sounds vaguely disgusted. Something defensive guides his next words to be hasty. “Well, they’re your games, right?” Scar musters up the courage to stare directly at its face. “Why did you let him?”
The shapes behind the Secret Keeper flare out, solidifying just barely, and Scar can make out the shapes of the wings clearly. There are more than two.
[ He likes you . ] The Secret Keeper repeats, and it doesn’t sound like a question anymore. Like maybe now it thinks it knows why.
“We’re friends,” Scar says, and almost wishes Grian was here, if only to explain some things. If only so he didn’t have to be alone. “He was just helping me out.”
[ He breaks the rules. ]
Scar laughs in stressed irritation. The repetition was getting to him. “What do you want?”
[ He breaks our rules. ] The Secret Keeper repeats, something starting to shift beneath its robe. [ We will break his. ]
From beneath the robe come hands, huge and gray and clawed, reaching out. Reaching for him. Scar stumbles back, stars twinkling brighter with excitement, and he wants to run but there is nowhere to go. He trips and starts to fall backwards with a strangled gasp, except he never hits the ground.
Instead, he starts to float.
When he regains his bearings enough to process things, he is floating in midair before the faintly glowing form of the Secret Keeper, one of its hands hovering below him and one above. The impossible creature looms and stares. Scar feels his throat squeeze and his eyes burn with helplessness.
“What are you?” Scar asks, voice angry and scared and breaking.
[ What you will soon be. ] the Secret Keeper replies, and then pauses. [ You’re a strange little thing. Maybe I would like you, too. ] Scar glares, and the Secret Keeper sighs. [ But Xelqua knows the consequence. ]
Scar has the numb realization that the consequence might be him.
[ Do not be afraid. ] The Secret Keeper says, and Scar would laugh if he had the breath for it. [ Your eyes will open soon. ]
It sounds like some sort of established saying, like something the creature has repeated for centuries. Scar doesn’t have the chance to wonder about it before the pain envelops him.
He opens his mouth in a soundless scream, vision whiting out and ears ringing as the very fabric of his existence warps and tears and bends and reforms. His atoms feel electrified, his limbs feel numb, his head is throbbing in time with his heartbeat, and after a time that feels like eternity, all of the pain gathers and stabs at his back. Something is growing beneath his skin, something that pushes at either side of his spine, and Scar can finally let out a strangled scream as whatever they are break free. The stars in the sky start to wink out of existence, and Scar stays suspended in midair, the pain in his body giving way to a dull, constant ache. Distantly, he realizes that whatever is on his back is shifting; rustling.
In the disturbing calm that follows, Scar can only hear his own breathing, his own heartbeat. He looks blearily at the Secret Keeper with vision blurred by tears, watching as the creature lets its hands disappear back beneath its robe.
[ Xelqua should see this as a Gift. ] The Secret Keeper muses. [ But he will not. Which is why it is a punishment. ]
“...Let me go,” Scar says, hoarse and nearly inaudible.
[ He likes you. ] the Secret Keeper says again. [ He will not like what you’ve become. ]
Before Scar can even begin to parse that statement out, he drops.
He lets out a gasp as the reflective floor rushes to meet him, the stone reflection of the Secret Keeper getting closer and closer. There are no more stars in the sky. He braces, but instead of hitting the ground, he passes through it. His skin tingles and he shivers, closing his eyes tightly against the sensation.
He… loses track of himself for a while. When he next opens his eyes, there is a soft wind blowing by, and he is laying on hard stone. The sky is dim. He’s curled on his side, dazed and breathing slowly. He tilts his head slightly, groaning with the effort, and looks up. The stone statue of the Secret Keeper looms behind him, its arms outstretched around him. He’s laying where the prizes are usually spit out after someone hits the success button.
He jolts as his arm scrapes against the ground, except both of his arms are already on the ground, and neither of them are moving, neither of them are behind him—
Scar turns his head over his shoulder, and sees the wings. Oh. His gaze drifts back up towards the statue above him. Right. The pain in his back. The feeling of something growing, ripping through his skin. Wings.
They’re small — would barely reach his fingertips if he spread them out. The feathers are a soft gray, and fuzzy. It reminds him of a baby bird before they’re ready to fly. Great, I don’t even get cool, badass wings out of the deal, he thinks hysterically. He’s still laying where he was dropped. His body feels too heavy to move. He doesn’t currently possess the will to even try.
No one else is around, the world still and cold with the autumn night, and there’s an empty space in his chest that aches. He doesn’t want to be alone. He wants Martyn to come back, he wants Mumbo to stumble across him, he wants— He wants Grian. Wants him to come and explain things, wants him to come and take him away from the statue that is more than a statue. He wants— He doesn’t know what he wants, exactly. There’s some deep pull in his chest, some new instinct that urges him to seek out his friend.
The Secret Keeper’s parting words echo in his mind, causing his stomach to twist harshly. He will not like what you’ve become, it had said.
Scar lays still and waits, and hopes it isn’t true.