Chapter Text
We’ll Be Here When The World Slows Down And The Sunbeams Fade Away
”Come Along” - The Much Much How How And I - Cosmo Sheldrake
Martyn has been worried about his brother.
Grian was never a heavy sleeper, given to tossing and turning and flinching awake since they had shared a room. But the scarlet-tricolor had been waking up screaming every week for a while now, ever since they’d returned from the End. The ordeal had been more than taxing on all of the Second Expeditionary Force, and on the four Foretold especially, but Grian had always seemed to bear his experiences better than the other three. He joked about the Garden, he poked fun at the archaic way the Plants spoke, and he still wore sculkcloth occasionally. Usually, the occasion was to visit the Project and ask it questions, which is what Martyn assumed he planned to do after lunch.
“Why the face, Martyn?”
The green parrot paused in his eating. “What face? Mine?”
Grian laughed. “Yes, your face. You were making a funny expression.”
“Well, I was just thinking about… uh. What you’ve said about your dreams.”
The other bird cocked his head in curiosity, soup spoon clattering to the bowl. “My dreams?”
-
A parrot kneels at the foot of the man who rose from the dead. The man is shocked and his eyes are wide. He is stained with dirt and mud, standing in the bottom of a newly exploded hole. The three patches on the front of his jacket are now marked by the explosion. One is dull grey. Two are sickly yellow. The markings on all the others are all full, green and lively. His own vibrant green feathers are now racked with chills of guilt.
Scar the Fallen looks at the parrot in disbelief. “Was that you?”
The parrot sighs. “Yes. It is my fault. I owe you a debt. I took your First Life. And so my First Life is yours.”
Scar the Fallen gestures for Grian the Debtor to get up. “Stand up, then. We have work to do.”
-
“Grian, are you alright?!” Martyn practically leapt over the table as his brother’s eyes rolled back and his head crashed into the soup bowl. It didn’t break, but it did send the cream-of-mushroom splattering everywhere. Holding Grian’s head up, he could see that he was breathing steady. Digging around in his pockets, Martyn practically broke open a shulker-box to get at the splash potions inside, promptly smashing them together over his brother’s head.
With a gasp, the scarlet-tricolor blinked his eyes open. It took Martyn a second before he realized his clear purple irises were now clouded with teal and stars.
“Oh goodness. Oh. Martyn?” Grian turned his head away. “I… see the Sun. The Broken Sun.”
Martyn kept his face frozen, but inwardly he was nearly screaming. “Grian, close your eyes. All of them.”
His brother turned his head back around and screwed two of his eyes shut. “I’m trying, I’m trying. I swear I’m trying, Martyn. I’m just so tired, Martyn… The Sun is so warm.”
Grian had slipped back into unconsciousness. His breathing was calm now, and it seemed that the potions were doing their work. Martyn just hoped they would be enough.
-
Grian the Debtor wraps his cloak around him tightly against the harsh wind of the desert. He can see the entirety of his new kingdom, an area of sand in the corner of the world. Forests and flowers and mountains and water are spread out beyond it, but he will never belong there now. Already the sand felt familiar, comforting, soft between his toes. A rumbling grumble came from the llama behind him, and the crunch of boots on sand.
Scar the Fallen calls out to him. “Whaddya think? Pretty amazing, right?”
Grian the Debtor turns to him. “It sure is a view.”
Scar of the Desert grins. “Yeah, it sure is. We’ll make this a real monopoly, become kings on this hill to rival the mountain folk! I swear to you, Grian, we will make a home out of this desert.”
Grian of the Desert smiles too, a smaller smile that is hesitantly happy. “I’ll hold you to your word.”
-
Martyn flinched as he heard Grian start mumbling something. He had been fighting the urge to Listen too closely to his brother, lest he accidentally notice something that was private, or worse, dangerous, but he could make out the words without even trying now.
“Scar. Scar… Scar no. Scar no. No. No.” His voice trailed off, returning to deep unconsciousness.
Martyn sighed, settled down again, and waited for his brother to wake up.
-
Grian of the Desert pants hard as he stoops half-crouched on the sand next to the chasm. Scar of the Desert lays sprawled next to him, staring up at the sky. Scar the Fallen’s body is now damaged even more, marked with both burns and cuts, from fire and jagged stone.
Scar the Fallen sits up slowly. “Thank you, Grian. Thank you. I… I’m red now.”
Grian the Loyal looks over silently. The three patches on the front of Scar the Fallen’s cloak are now worn through and threadbare. Two are dull, one is bloody red.
“You still owe me your First Life. And now I’m on my Third Life. That debt hasn’t come due yet, Grian. We’ll still come out on top. Together.” Scar the Fallen reaches out a hand.
Grian the Loyal nods and grasps it. “Together.”
-
Grian’s eyes snapped open again, revealing all too bright sunlight and his hand outstretched and grasping the air. With a shudder, he sat up too quickly and nearly tipped right back over with vertigo. Martyn was there in an instant, one wing and both arms helping hold his brother in a half-sitting, half-lying down position on the moss. Grian’s eyes were unfocused and nearly entirely dark despite the daylight.
“Hey, hey, Grian? Can you hear me?” Martyn’s arms trembled as he spoke. “I’m here, brother. I’m right here. Can you hear me?”
Slowly, Grian blinked his eyes, and with each motion, they flooded with more teal sculk. “No… no. Why are you here? You of the Red Banner, you, the Hand of the King, the, the enemy? Where’s Scar? Where am I? Cleo? Joel? Scott? Scar? Scar!”
Martyn was taken aback as his brother pushed him away. “Grian, what are you talking about? What hand? What king? I’m your brother, not some… some enemy! Grian, are you alright?”
“No! No! I-I’m not alright, you of the Red Army! Where’s Scar? Did you kill him? Have I been made a prisoner of Dogwarts Keep?” Grian staggered to his feet, seemingly confused over what clothes he was wearing. He hugged his arms around his chest and bundled his wings in close as if against a frigid northern wind. “Where is the Widow of the Flower Valley? Where is the Mistress of the Crastle Ramparts? The Prince of the Wolves’ Woods? Are they dead? Have… have we lost the war?”
“Grian, you’re not making any sense. What war? The Stronghold War? That was years ago! We were kids then, princes of the Empire of the Emerald Lands! You’re a leader of a Civilization now, Sitter of the Sunset Coast! We have new lives here by the First Horizon. Please tell me you remember all of that, Grian Sunset. I-I swear by my own new name, Martyn Junglewood, that what I have said is truth!”
“I cannot trust a man such as you. Brothers? What brothers would find themselves on the opposite sides of a war?!? Your King, your Red Winter King, he killed so many, he is a tyrant! You are no brother of mine, Martyn of the Red Banner!” Sputtering and stumbling, Grian nervously drew his cutlass and held it like a short sword. Squinting in the bright light, Martyn could see the phantom memories of an extra pair of wings flaring from his back, and a veil of cloudy sculk suspended from a dark halo around his head.
Slowly backing away, Martyn held out a pleading hand. “Brother, Grian, please. I am not your enemy. I am Martyn Junglewood, formerly Virida, and I swear on my life that you are my friend, my brother, and by no means my enemy. You are Sitter of the Dusk Throne, ruler of a civilization, brother to me, ally to many, and good friend to even more. Remember Netty? And Big? And Mini, and Tomo, a-and System and Joeyish and Salem and Skizz and the whole revolutionary crew? For the hate of the dread Ender Dragon herself, remember!”
-
Scar the Disloyal holds a piece of ragged paper up. Written on it are the words No Kill Pass.
Bdubs of the Clock stares down Grian the Loyal with nothing but survival in his eyes. The clock around his neck ticks despite the damage it has suffered.
“Let this be the end.”
-
In a flash, Grian was charging at Martyn, still wielding the cutlass wrong. “Get away, you hand!”
Startled, he was only barely able to parry the blade with his own sword. “No! Grian, for Dragon’s hate, no! This isn’t you!”
-
Grian the Debtor sits up with a gasp in his blood-stained bed. His chest still aches from the slashes given by Scar the Disloyal. He feels the feathers behind his ears. All three are worn and falling apart. He knows that only one is bright red now.
“Damn you! You shall be the Last Dead for this, Scar… Scar, of Lies and of Debts!” Grian coughs out as he stumbles onto his feet.
-
Suddenly, Martyn was now at Grian’s throat, the keen edge of his cutlass barely a finger’s width from skin. “Brother, stop this. Think of all you have to live for! I will kill you, if you are trying to kill me. Prove me wrong, brother! Drop your sword!”
-
“TRAITOR!”
In an instant, Bdubs of the Clock finds a sword at his face. Grian the Revenger, his stunted wings flared out as he jumps, delivers blow after blow to his former ally. Barely two seconds after he leapt from the cliff, the former Crastle dweller was dead, unexpectedly speared on Scar the Disloyal’s blade.
Scar the Disloyal is motionless as Grian the Revenger stands up and levels the tip of the diamond-sharp blade at his face. “Traitor.”
His own sword miles away and yet right at hand, Scar the Disloyal sighs, drops it, and puts his hands up. “Dear Grian of the Desert, debtor no longer. For all you have done for me in service of the life-debt, you may slay me, make me the Last Dead, and take the Enchanter of the Mountains.”
-
Wondering if he was delusional, Martyn stepped back from Grian and lowered his guard. Grian simply stood there, gasping for air like a fish out of water as the sculk slowly dripped from his eyes in tears.
“Oh. Oh, Martyn. Brother. Friend. I can see you.” Looking up with a half-distraught, half-deliriously-happy smile, Grian dropped his sword and let it clatter on the tiles. “Oh, Martyn, I’m back!”