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Gem knows that she’s going to die today. She knows it as Scott hands her the last of his valuable items, and bites his lip to be quiet as she slices his head off. It’s merciful, she thinks, that she doesn’t have to stay and watch as the blood trickles down from where his head and neck used to be attached.
And yet, she can hear it as she walks through the abandoned server. There’s only three of them left.
She’s going to win. She has to. For Scott, for Impulse, for the bloodlust in her veins that reflects in her eyes.
Despite it being daytime, she can feel the stars that lurk over her shoulder. She can feel the sun watching over her. She can feel so much. She can somehow hear the trickling of the water over stones near her base, despite being nowhere near.
The stars are rooting for her. The sun doesn't care, but gives his blessing to the earth. The water seeks chaos.
She doesn’t understand what any of those beings were.
And she could sense that they awaited the moon to return to them. And something else.
Fresh blood, the voice of the Secret Keeper whispered in her ear.
That’s right. She’s going to die today. It doesn’t matter if she wins. She’s not staying a moment longer in this hellscape than she needs to.
Win. Win. Win. The voices chanting in her ears made it a little more difficult to focus on finding Scar and Pearl, but she manages.
When they all find each other, Scar and Pearl team up against her. And sure, she thought that maybe she and Pearl had something, maybe some kind of truce, but she supposes not.
The lava burns her skin. She watches as hearts trickle down off of her skin, knowing she’s not getting them back.
She can hear Scott’s blood dripping from his neck onto the grass. She feels the burning sun on her back, the stars watching silently from the sky, the absent hostility of the moon, and hears the rushing of the water, almost rooting for more bloodshed. She can feel the unwelcome eyes of the Secret Keeper staring at her, almost like it suspects that she’s going to fail her task.
Gem knows that she’s going to die today. It just turns out that she’s not going to win in the process.
“Disgusting,” she scoffs. She knows she’s going to die, with both Scar and Pearl against her at once.
And just like she knew all along, she died that day.