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In a flurry of slashes, Ro found himself stumbling into a cave and cowering behind his fracturing armour. He could barely force out his buzzing thoughts, ribs shaking with desperate gasps of air. Ro can’t forget to breathe in these dire situations because that would be a dumb way to go out.
“Mapicc! Talk to me- Mapicc!” Ro sobbed in the middle of his words, hands shaking around his sword. He didn’t want to kill his teammate, his former friend.
One second, Spoke isn’t there. The next, he landed an axe crit into his shoulder, the contact cutting Ro’s next words off. Sparks went off in his eyes, pain shooting up his neck and seizing his body. But he resisted the shock reflex, using the remains of his strength as he shoved them off. He couldn’t believe he managed to shake them off as he escaped the cave, breathing hard. It was only a matter of seconds before they emerged from the mouth of the cave, stalking after him. Like hunting dogs after a fleeing rabbit.
Ro certainly felt like a fleeing rabbit, having Mapicc hot on his heels and Spoke following behind. He couldn’t help but cry out when a blade lodged itself in his neck, his vision blacking at the edges. His body worked on its own, spinning around despite the agonising pain, and striking Mapicc in the face with his axe.
He instinctively apologised, immediately biting his tongue afterwards as he scrambled for his life.
Mapicc was a battle machine who could dominate and overpower him in sheer strength. Ro’s power only came from stamina and endurance, as he paced his strength over a long period of time and relied on his tactics. Mapicc was a firestorm on the battlefield, and gods, did it make fights a heck ton funner with him.
With. The key word was with.
In the adrenaline of the moment, the ache had disappeared from his legs. It returned full force as his legs gave out underneath him, agony splintering through his shins. It was an untimely fall as Ro’s vision filled with stars. Mapicc’s sword dived into his shoulder, and it wasn’t hard with some brute force because Ro was weaker than him, limbs pliant from pain rushing through.
All he saw was red dripping from his shoulder. Where was his chestplate? Did it break? His questions were immediately answered when a cracking noise filled his ears, but he couldn’t discern whether it was bone or netherite.
Ro sharply inhaled as he dodged Mapicc’s manoeuvre for his exposed side. He hastily grabbed a golden apple and chewed into it, using the rush of healing and adrenaline to lunge a final attack at his opponent.
He knew it was in vain. His sword never met Mapicc’s neck, never drew blood before it was thrown away, clashing into the stone five feet away. Ro wasn’t prepared, expecting Mapicc to have been banned off the server and Spoke to have been his closest ally after him. And now he had to pay the price for it.
This time, a loud crack echoed in the cave and Ro screamed, hands reaching out to Mapicc. Perhaps to pull him in for a hug or to push him away, he didn’t know.
All he knew was Mapicc’s sword that found itself home in his rib, the pain that followed and his dying words he didn’t even think, just knew he had to say.
“If there’s anyone’s hands I’d want to die at, it’s yours.”
---
Mapicc’s face soured at Ro’s words. The idiot’s sappiness wasn’t going to change anything. Still, regret simmered in his blood. Ro would be in the End, isolated and alone, just the way Mapicc wanted.
Blood poured down Ro’s leg, spilling from Mapicc’s blade in his lower abdomen. Ro’s heartbeat pulsed around his blade, travelling down the expanse of netherite and trembling the handle in Mapicc’s grasp.
He dropped his sword, watching the body crumble into the ground in its bloody glory. Mapicc’s face and chestplate was splattered in blood, which he wiped off with his wrist. He’d grown used to the sensation of the red liquid dripping down the middle of his brows, too familiar that he usually left it to stain his skin because he thought it was sweat.
<Mapicc> enjoy your utopia
“Enjoy your utopia,” he murmured after sending the chat message. His stomach churned with a concoction of regret, pity and a sense of victory.
He licked his bloody lips, turning around to face Spoke, waiting expectantly for the next command.
Spoke flickered his gaze to his feet, signalling to Mapicc. He was demanding something that Mapicc had only ever done twice to Ro as a sign of his devotion to him. Spoke wanted him to kneel.
Mapicc had only known Ro for his entire life. Ro, his cornerstone, the one who held his leash with a light grip and let him bare his teeth at anyone, as long as he’d let them speak. Staring into Spoke’s void black eyes that demanded the same devotion to him twisted his gut into knots. Ro never demanded it from him because Mapicc would always choose him as his leader.
Times had changed, and Mapicc wasn’t sure if he’d ever choose Ro to hold his leash again.
But Ro was gone and Mapicc was the one to do it. He’d no longer have the leash comfortably slack on his neck, as Mapicc would be exchanging it for Spoke’s vice grip and his demand to threaten everyone without negotiation.
With the image of Ro amidst the desolate void in his head, Mapicc knelt.