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The stars and the sky revolved around him. They move and balance themselves around him, the universe at his fingertips.
It wasn’t odd that no one ever really questioned about his origins, how the universe seemed to be held in his eyes, swirling and shining as bright as the stars on its darkest night, or how the night was made specifically for him, glistening brighter than before whenever his presence would bless the world once more. No one cared enough to ask.
It wasn’t until the 5th world. The world where the skies seemed to shake in excitement as someone had finally remembered that Planet was still in existence.
‘Spoke was strange’ Planet thought as his adventures of talking to the sky turned into late nights of gossiping with Spoke. His eyes reminded him of the brightest star at the very start of his existence. How the moon and sun came together to allow life to form, to allow him to live. He reminded him of the void, a much different place than the sky that Planet made home to. It was lonely, having no supernova or asteroids to keep anyone company.
Planet knew of the void and its existence, how after each stab into his heart or his limbs being pulled apart by the next person, it would beckon its call to the player with no remorse. He knew it was grim and sickening from the gossip of others and the thought alone made his stomach churn at each thought and he couldn’t understand how Spoke could’ve handled it, to have it be his home.
He never asked him. It sounded insensitive to tarnish someone’s home because you didn’t understand it, so he never did. He let the void take him, he didn’t fight or even try to convince the universe to take him before the void had consumed him anymore. He was fine with the idea because…well it was Spoke’s home so maybe he could find comfort in it as well.
He, much to his own shock, found the void to have become his second home. He found comfort in what felt like nothing and everything surrounding him and cradling his body. He enjoyed the small feeling of freedom that came with each unwilling death. Sometimes, if he had paid attention to everything around him, he could feel a presence from afar, a comforting one that watched until the earth and the sky had decided that the universe should be at peace once more.
In his moments of peace, he would beg of the sky to keep him there, even if it was just a mere few seconds, he would beg and his wish would be granted as who were the skies to ever disobey him? Even as time went on and the sun and moon dipped below the horizon each day, its warm, or cold, breeze light kissed his pale skin as a soft greeting or farewell.
He enjoyed the void but the skies definitely didn’t. The sun was dull and the moon seemed smaller in a sense. The stars didn’t shine and the days were uncanny. Switching temperatures, even on what others would assume to be a hot day, and even shorter days, while the nights seem to linger far too long.
Everyone noticed. For once, they would notice that the sky wasn’t normal when he was dead and the apocalypse within the stars would seep its way into the earth until Planet rejected death once more and breathed the air of the earth again.
Everyone was wary of him, either seeing him as a setback but not Spoke. He might have been the only one who had accepted Planet for all he is and for that he was grateful. They stayed through times where the stars almost went out and when the supernovas seemed to birth new life. It was comforting. It was the peace he wanted.
.
.
.
19 hearts.
It was strange for him to have ever been this powerful. He never experienced it but it felt great. He understood why everyone sought after it. The feeling of being above everyone else in terms of their own skills that they trained endlessly for. No one could ever surpass him in terms of how the universe was at his every control, but this, the hearts, made everyone fear him, there was reason, there was fear and he craved it. More than the stars would have liked, more than the moon and sun would allow, but they worshiped the man. Planet was the skies reason and they wouldn’t go against him, not like everyone else had.
And because the stars and every other thing out in the universe didn’t dare to interfere, Planet lost himself. No longer the universe’s golden ruler but a bloodthirsty man with one goal. A goal that he wanted to complete, regardless of consequences.
They watched as every person he stumbled across became victim of the void, screaming as their bodies disappeared into a bundle of ashes and smoke, the wind taking them to their next home before they came back once more.
No stars came out during the night. They didn’t twinkle or shine anymore, opting to hide beneath the clouds and moon. They couldn’t watch and they sure weren’t going to be caught watching, fear of him coursing through whatever form they took on in the sky.
“It’s awfully dark these days huh?”
Spoke might have seemed like someone to let anything pass him but it was quite the opposite, he was observant, had a keen eye for the smallest thing. That’s just how he was, how he was made.
“Maybe, but it’s not like it matter”
If the stars could feel pain, they would be showering the skies with their bodies falling out of place, no longer serving their purpose and failing to appeal to him.
“Since when did you not care about the sky now” Spoke laughed out. It was the first he hadn’t heard Planet practically talk his ear off about the sky or whatever else he had to say that may or may not have caused him an existential crisis.
“Eh, I have other things to focus on now”
Spoke had noticed how out of touch Planet had seemed these days. How his eyes would gloss over and soon be out of focus. He knew that look all too well.
The look of greed.
He recognized the look immediately. After Planet had taken his first life, he came home with that bloodthirsty look in his eyes and a sword with crimson dripping from it.
“Yeah- um how’s the 20 hearts going?”
Spoke was much too nervous to ask. He didn’t know why he was even nervous. This was his friend, his teammate, there was no reason to be nervous.
“19”
“What?”
“I’m at 19”
God, Spoke hated this. He now had reason to be nervous. He should be happy, proud that his friend finally got his dream of being the strongest player or whatever others wanted to call it. But he knew what came after it. He knew that after he had gotten all that he wanted, he would crave more, an endless stream of power that would never be fulfilled. Betraying everyone you know and your trust starting to dwindle within the next person. The idea of power isn’t something that can be satisfied, it's ever growing, yearning more and more until its vessel is nothing more than skin and bone, no emotion or feeling of its own, just greed and the idea of its limits.
“Yeah, thats good, just one more”
He tried to joke, but deep down, he was just trying to convince himself that Planet was nothing like him, that Planet was much better than he ever could be and he could escape his own mind before it went downhill. But he knew that wouldn’t happen. It was much too late for him to intervene, much too late to try and talk sense into him. He once again kept his mouth shut, until everything would blow up in his face and every single decision that he ever made would plague his mind and haunt him for as long as he lived.
“I haven’t seen anyone around these days though, everyone is always hiding away somewhere and it's getting annoying”
Impatience. At its core it’s nothing to fear really, but in the wrong mind, in the wrong body, and in the wrong plane of time, it is nothing more than malevolence.
Spoke was scared. For once in his life he felt fear like no other. Not like before with the fear of someone being stronger than him before his reign of power, not fear of his life being in the hands of others at their very whim. This was fear of Planet becoming him. It crept under his skin, coursing through his veins and made its way in his bones, settling down and making home within his mind and body. It scared him.
Many things, Spoke was, but accepting is not what he thought he was. Every other death he had, he came back for revenge, every other person who got in his way was dealt with all too quickly, but now, he had to make amends with it. He had baited everyone else, broken their trust and sold them out, so why wouldn’t he assume that others would do the same to him. He needed to accept it, needed to drill it in his mind until it was second nature, he needed to until he had atoned for all his transgression.
.
.
.
It was dark again. No stars in sight, no milky way blessing the sky with its sight, and no moon to be seen, only its light being casted through the clouds that sat lingering over it. Planet had come back, having spent all of his time waiting for something that would never happen. No player in sight, no star in sight, and his only goal was just out of his reach, teasing him as if it were there right in front of him, mocking him for not being able to achieve higher.
Spoke had been the only other person that Planet had the chance to see over the course of the weeks that passed by. His glowing eyes matching his own in the dark of the night, the light of the lantern bouncing off his face, making his already pale skin glow around him, a natural light source, Spoke told him. Spoke stood there idly, yapping away at his next plan that he had, nothing that involved the murder or the idea of taking lives, but something simple. Something that he seemed to enjoy as it made its way on his face, etching its way on his smile lines and the wrinkles under his eyes, Planet noted.
In their moment of silence that had followed through the wind, Planet had realized that he had reached his goal, right in front of him all along and Spoke had realized that this was his end. Both would reap the consequences of their silence and their mind as they stood there.
Spoke was defenseless, no armor decorating his body and no weapon sitting in his hand like it usually would. Planet was strong enough, his ax– the same one that both of them had spent countless hours trying to enchant with the perfect books, now clutched in his hand. His back was turned to him. It would take no more than a second and all of his dreams would come true in an instant.
Spoke had heard it. He heard it when his ears perked up at the sound of Planet unsheathing his ax from the beyond and he definitely felt it when he had heard him sprinting towards him, his footsteps pattering against the wood before momentarily disappearing as the wind from behind blew gently.
This was a good way to die.
By the hands of someone you trusted. He would be evil if he had refused the chance of someone else to get their wish, not when it was so close and definitely not when he deserved it.
.
.
.
Spoke knew of the void. Of course he did, it was his own home, the place where he appeared with nothing more than glitter for hands and eyes that compared to the sun that soon blinded him when he was placed onto the earth. His void was home, no one seemed to know of it to be comforting, only a purgatory for some and a hell for most. No one liked it and they sure didn’t stop to express their hatred for the void. He couldn’t understand how they could hate on something that wasn’t even there. The void was merely a construct of what the mind made of it and since everyone made it out to be this endless reincarnation of hell itself, no one saw the beauty within like Spoke had.
No one until Planet entered had seen its beauty in all its glory. It was funny, to see the man who had made the skies and stars at his whim, being the universe itself to be so fascinated with something that didn’t compare to what he had created.
With each death that blessed Planet, Spoke would make it his own goal to make sure that Planet was not alone, in the solitude of his own mind. That he was okay in every sense and most of all, that he didn’t see the void as every other person had. It pained him to think about how Planet might hate his own home when he had loved the sky so dearly but he wasn’t obligated to. He never was so he kept planet company, even if Planet didn’t notice him.
And so it was the closest both of them could get in terms of comfort, allowing each other to stay within their presences.
Neither of them wanted to be alone and now they wouldn’t.