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It doesn’t feel good. Grian thought it might, when he considered it in the eerie space between the rush of battle–during his underground respawn in the scuffle of the Red Desert, where his ears still rang from the bombs and the adrenaline ran like a drug through his veins, trapping him in a horrible bloodlust. In this crevice of the world, his hands still sticky from the phantom of bloodshed, Grian thought to himself, It’ll feel good to win. Proud and destructive. Arrogant, but not stupid. He knew what he was capable of. And that mindset stuck with him throughout his trek back through the Red Desert–truly red now, as wet blood had stained the sand into a crimson mudfield. His boots sunk into the ground and he imagined another man’s blood pooling beneath them. He was tunnel-visioned, even through the loss of his yellow life and the death of Bdubs. A hungry determination. His win was almost tangible, and he imagined it would feel great.
But now, as he stands facing the eastern border, Scar’s blood soiling his hands–
It doesn’t feel good , Grian keeps thinking to himself. This doesn’t feel good.
“I don’t feel good,” he says aloud, his voice so tainted with misery that it sounds foreign to him. His first words spoken aloud in an empty world. They echo in his head. “I don’t feel good,” he repeats, even though his mouth feels wet with blood, if only in an attempt to get the words out of his damn brain. He listens to the way they echo in the air around him. In his mind, he sees the sound vibrations as they float through the sky, traveling far, far, into the reaches of this empty world, undisturbed, undoubtedly, by the lack of life. He imagines the way they echo off the body behind him.
He doesn’t look back.
Instead, Grian looks out into the distance, fruitlessly trying to catch his breath. The desert he sees is unfamiliar. Destroyed. His eyes latch onto the crater in the distance. In his mind, his breaths travel across the air, too, echoing in the crater from side to side, sliding down the ridges of the destruction, a scar on their land that recalls the lives they lost.
A thought crosses his mind, almost like it’s someone else’s: One more life to go. It startles him, and he turns it over in his mind. He starts to wonder if he thought it or heard it.
Wind blows from the west, gently pushing into him from behind. Almost like it’s egging him on–or, more accurately, forward.
Chills race up his spine. The air whistles, and another light gust kicks up some sand around him. Grian closes his eyes, and he hears it once more: a voice, he’s sure this time, almost like the world itself is talking to him. Jump, it whispers–the grains of sand as they shuffle on the ground, blown by the whistling wind. The world’s noises blend together, and suddenly through them the universe is speaking. Jump. Grian has half a mind to think it sounds familiar.
He opens his eyes and he’s facing downward. The cliff drops off and slopes back to meet the desert floor–his eyes follow the distance from himself to the ground below, and he thinks he might be sick.
His vision swims. He steadies himself on the grave of Pizza to his right…
“Oh, Scar,” he whispers aloud, like he’s testing to see if he can still speak. If he’s still alive. If the voice in his head is really his own. If Scar is really…
One more life to go, the world whispers to him, drowning out his thoughts–the ghosts of his enemies working alongside a greater force than he can ever imagine, demanding his blood. He staggers under the weight of its power. The world crushes in on him, and he knows what he must do.
Oh, Scar. He turns around one last time to sneak a glimpse–
And before he knows it, before his brain can catch up with his heart’s decision, his legs are hitting the ground below with a crunch, then his arms, his chest, his head, and then he’s gone.
… But Grian doesn’t even feel the darkness of death. Instead, he immediately comes to once more, standing in… an oak forest? He blinks and turns in place.
Yup. An oak forest. Grass, and trees, and flowers, and even a distant sheep. “Um,” Grian says aloud, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He turns around again. Just a normal oak forest. What about the desert? What about…
He feels lightheaded. He walks over and steadies himself with his arm against a tree. Grass crunches under his feet, and all he can think about is the warm sand, and Scar’s cold, dead body, and where they meet in blood.
Grian’s knuckles hurt. But when he looks at them… they’re clean, healed back together like they never split on his best friend’s skull. His sweater is clean of blood, and his skin is pale again, nothing like the tan he gained under the desert sun.
He remembers the way Scar’s body twisted as it fell to the ground.
His mind is brought away from the desert heat by a tingling feeling on the inside of his left arm, right below his wrist. He takes his right arm away from the tree, instead leaning on his shoulder, and pulls back his sleeve to look.
Two yellow hearts. His eyes freeze on their bright outline against his skin.
And, oh. Grian suddenly knows what’s going on, like this is exactly what was meant to happen. Like the anticipation is coded into his very being. The hearts pulse in his wrist, in time with the beating of his own, and it feels natural.
He races to take out his comm from his pocket, and when he hits the player tab, he sees a list of multicolored names. That’s new. But the dread in his stomach tells him it’s something he knows all too well.
<SolidarityGaming> 2 lives????!?.!,
<Smallishbeans> imagine omegalul couldn’t be me
And his mind races. Because Grian helped Scott carry Jimmy’s lifeless body out from the rubble of the bunker after the battle of the Red Desert, and he remembers the way Jimmy’s limbs sagged in his arms and the painfully dull look in Jim’s eyes that haunted his nightmares for days. But Jimmy’s here. So are the rest of them. And a nagging voice in Grian’s head is shouting at him that he died in that desert, too.
But it’s the start of a new game. The realization sits in Grian’s mind as a fact, like it was always meant to be this way. A new game has started. And Grian knows that he must fight.
And fight he does—like hell. If there’s anything Grian knows how to do, it’s fighting like he’s got nothing to lose. He’s done it before, and he can do it again.
His heart stops beating when he sees Scar. He can’t believe it for a moment, but there Scar is, eyes glowing a bright emerald-green, a stark contrast to his usual dark red. Grian wants to run to him, but another part of him wants to run away, into the other direction and far, far away from this game, and hide in a corner of the server where no one will ever find him. So he stands in place. Scar just blinks.
“Oh, hello!” Scar says, and he seems… completely normal. Unaffected. Grian wants to shake him by the shoulders, to slap him in the face, to hug him, but Scar–
Scar doesn’t act at all like he’s just died. He’s more chipper than ever. But as Grian looks at him, all he can see is his dead, lifeless eyes, and his fists falling to his sides as his body hit the ground, and…
It’s the same pattern as Grian runs into everyone else. Anger bubbles in his chest when he catches a glimpse of the Red King, but the other man just smiles and waves. It’s like back when he was Ren. And when Grian speaks to a shockingly alive Jimmy, he finds there’s no wedding band on his finger. Scott is the same way. Grian watches him trample a poppy while he walks, and when he catches up to him with the flower in hand (disguised as a joke, but really, a hopeful test), Scott looks at him like he’s crazy.
No one remembers, Grian slowly accepts. No one remembers, but he still must fight.
It comes down to an all-out brawl, similar to last time. Him and Joel had tried to bait a group of them into a trap, but Grian ignited the TNT at just the wrong time (a failed trap; achingly familiar). When he emerged from the trap, the fighting really began, and now Grian knows it’s endgame once more. But this time, he is without the upper hand. And before he knows it, he’s low on health, being chased down by Smajor (his ally a life ago–but why would Scott remember that?).
“Not like this!” Grian shouts pathetically, and as the sword digs into his back for the last time, he finally knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end.
For the few seconds before the world goes black, Grian, cheek touching the cold grass, stares at the empty hearts on his wrist and hears shouting fade away behind him. He feels himself entering the darkness, as the world quiets and his eyes shut–
But he doesn’t feel death’s embrace. Instead, he is thrust onto his feet once more.
He blinks. His eyes adjust. A… forest? What? Tentatively, he turns his head, slowly taking in the scenery.
He stands in a forest, with a mix of oak and birch trees nearby. He hears people talking in the distance; their laughter rings in his ears.
… But he was meant to be the only one left. And–and where is the desert?
He tries to make sense of it all, but all he can think of is Scar–Scar’s dead body on the sand, mouth pried open, lifeless red eyes looking back up at him. Scar’s blood on his hands.
His knees feel weak. He sits down gently, and the grass feels wrong. His legs feel all wrong. Last he remembered, they were crushed under his weight when he…
His stomach curls. He should be dead on the desert floor.
He slowly realizes what’s going on. His heart feels a tug, and it’s suddenly painfully obvious that he has a soulmate. Like it was always meant for this to happen. He has a soulmate, and there’s another game, and he must fight. So he does.
And when he runs into Scar again, he definitely doesn’t freak out. Because he freezes in place when he sees him–he’s alive, everyone is alive, how?--but Scar just treats their interaction like any other day. He waves, and smiles, and asks Grian if he’s found his soulmate yet, and Grian can’t even form a response. He’s too busy picturing him dead on the sand.
Grian realizes that none of them remember the game when he runs into Rendog, who, eyes shining with green, greets Grian with a friendly, “Hey, dude, what’s up?” Grian almost has faith when he notices Scott is acting jittery as well, but when he hands him a poppy and he doesn’t react, he knows he was wrong.
And Grian definitely doesn’t freak out when he learns that Scar is his soulmate.
Scar’s exactly the same. Oblivious. And Grian–who had plans of ignoring him, due to not quite being able to look him in the eyes–is forced to chase him down and tell him himself. He positions Scar underneath a tree, hangs a stalactite from the branches above, and lets it fall down onto Scar’s head.
Grian feels the pain like it’s his own. He looks Scar in the eyes as they both take damage, outwardly begging him to realize they’re soulmates–but on the inside, he pleads, Remember the desert.
Scar’s eyes go wide. “Oh my gosh,” he says.
And for a split second, Grian thinks his silent prayers have been answered. But Scar just laughs, and says, “All this time, you were my soulmate!” and Grian is forced to laugh alongside him.
The game ends anticlimactically. Grian has been trying to bring wardens to the surface, and it only takes one misstep for the whole operation to become fatal. He takes a wrong turn in his escape route, and that gives the warden he’s attempting to wrangle just enough time to spot him through the cave walls and deal a deadly sonic blow. This time, as his ears are shot out and his body is flung into the wall, his last second is spent feeling sorry that he took out Scar again. Everything goes black.
Except… except it doesn’t. He doesn’t die. Again, he’s back on those damned feet, facing a brand new world, and phantom desert heat burns the back of his eyelids.
He freaks out at the dark oak forest he spawns in (where is Monopoly Mountain?). He freaks out at the player list (how are they alive?). He freaks out when he sees Scar (and he’s so sorry, he really is).
And he learns that there’s an objective–24 hours to live, 24 hours to win–and suddenly, everything is natural. Everything is planned. He must fight.
Even when no one else remembers. (Martyn greets him with a wave with zero malice behind it, and Grian can’t even form a response.) (Scott is acting paranoid, though, but when Grian tests him by mentioning the Pufferish of Peace, Scott responds with a blank stare. Pearl, too, but she’s new this game, so she couldn’t possibly remember. Guess they’re thinking of something else.)
The game ends like this: Grian’s running across a terrible, cobbled-together structure in the sky, dropping TNT to get some endgame kills, when he slips off the side. He looks down as the ground rushes in to meet him. The sound of his legs crunching under his weight is sickeningly familiar.
Death doesn’t give him comfort. Why would it? Instead, it puts him on his feet and sends him straight back in.
Another respawn, a new world, and all Grian remembers is the war-torn desert. His head spins until he learns the rules. A game of tasks. Complete them and you win. He complies with the rules like second nature. Scar is here, but their desert isn’t. And some people act jittery like Grian does–Scott, Pearl, and Martyn, as he’s noticed–but they don’t seem to remember the game that plagues Grian’s nightmares.
He must fight, and that he does. He dies cornered in a fight, with Scott (he doesn’t remember, Grian reminds himself) dealing one of the final blows.
But Grian never has the comfort of death. Again, he’s sent back into the game. Again, he wakes, and the last thing he remembers is jumping.
A new game starts and ends. Dead again, but never resting. Always fighting. He always must fight. Grian plays the game again, for the second time, over and over.
And in the split second before he repeats the cycle, right after his not-death and right before he’s thrust back onto his heat-blistered feet—a moment so short, blink and you’d miss it—Grian could almost swear he hears the universe itself once more, that whispering voice cutting through a deep void-like stillness, cooing out to him: You must fight.