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The communicator on his wrist lit up.
iMajesticRose was impaled on a stalagmite. iMajesticRose left the game.
He watched in the dim, fading light as the silhouette of the limp body disappeared; as if nothing had ever happened. Spoke could almost believe it—if it weren’t for the blood that still stained the dripstone spikes, the pained words that still echoed in his head.
Who are you, Spoke?
He stared into the hole he’d made in the ground, the one he’d lured her into standing over.
He’d just killed someone.
Spoke tore his eyes away from the trap, releasing an unsteady sigh. The room suddenly looked suffocatingly small. He pulled out his pickaxe—the same one he’d used to break the sandstone beneath her—and hit it against the wall, faster with each swing.
“Rose!” called out a whimpering voice once Spoke had reached the surface. “Rose, is this a prank? Where did you go?”
He made eye contact with the boy from across the hill. Spoke immediately backed down and covered the opening he’d made with cobblestone, swearing under his breath.
“Hey!” Becky’s muffled words grew louder. “Who are you? Show yourself!”
Spoke heard the noise of stone breaking, and his heart battered against his ribs as he took a step back into the shadows. Becky climbed into the room.
“Who are you?” Becky repeated, arms wrapped around himself. “Who are you, and what’s your— where’s my sister?”
Spoke couldn’t find his voice. He swallowed, thick and heavy, then pulled out the cornflower.
Becky’s eyebrows lifted higher as he took the blue petals between his fingers, then looked at Spoke, and glanced at the hole in the ground behind him.
The young player’s eyes glistened.
He screeched, “How dare you!”
Spoke winced, but no sound managed to escape him. He tried to reach out to Becky, to offer any semblance of comfort he could muster after committing the irreversible act, but the little boy lunged at him first.
Becky’s hands shoved into his gold-trimmed chestplate, and Spoke stumbled. He blinked, then found himself at the bottom of the hole, pain erupting at once all over his body.
Jagged spikes pierced through his armor and dug into his skin, sinking deeper into his flesh with each passing second. Spoke tried screaming, but only searing hot blood coughed out of his throat. He gasped, over and over, shuddering and shallow, unable to fill his burning lungs, trapped by the dripstone he’d placed with his own two hands.
The corners of his vision started to blur, but he could still make out Becky’s retreating figure far above. Muted sobs followed the boy’s departing footsteps.
Alone.
Spoke attempted lifting his left arm—it hurt less than the other one—to reach for his elytra, to search for food, to check his communicator, to do something.He watched his blood trickle down the spike lodged through his forearm, slowly releasing it from its grasp, then sucked in a sharp breath as his arm dropped back down midway, hand falling limp on his chest. His eyes stung with tears.
Is this how she’d felt?
Her death must’ve been quicker, less painful. Spoke hadn’t calculated exactly how deep the trap had to be, but he’d assumed 20 blocks would be enough to take out a player with nothing but an iron helmet for armor.
Now, when he could barely make out the trembling string of tiny gray hearts on his communicator, he wished he’d dug just a single block more. Just one more.
I wouldn’t be feeling any pain right now, he thought. I wouldn’t be feeling anything at all.
His eyelids dropped for longer each time he forced them open. They yearned to seal closed, but there’d be no use; he’d wake up again in the same pit, immobile, unable to put an end to his suffering.
If Mapicc were there, he’d roll his crimson eyes and say something like, ‘You made your own bed, bro. Now you gotta lie in it.’
Then he’d pull him out, throw him gapples, and giggle alongside him at the horrible, almost insensitive joke.
Spoke’s rapid, shaky breathing reverberated off the dark stone surrounding him.
Mapicc’s not here.
They’d had a fight. Mapicc had told him not to do it, that it wouldn’t be worth taking a life. Spoke had argued that they’d be one step closer to taking Ash down—then he’d left. He should’ve listened.
Spoke grit his teeth. He’d killed her; an innocent player.
For what?
He could see her watery purple eyes, her shaking voice as he’d taken the bright blue flower from her hands and promised to deliver it to her little brother.
If Spoke didn’t get out of there, she’d have died for nothing.
He’d sworn that he’d get back at the person who’d made him do it. In the near-darkness he could see Ash’s pointed grin, fishing rod clasped in his gloved fingers.
If he didn’t get out of there, nobody would stop Ash.
He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his left hand and threw it upward. Scalding pain shot through his nerves, and he let out a choked cry—but he held his fist in the air. He refused to let it fall again onto the spikes.
Shivering, Spoke bit down hard on his lower lip as he grasped his elytra.
I have to get up to put them on, he realized—and nearly dropped them.
His vision shook as he observed his legs; imprisoned by the stalagmites that stabbed through the netherite on his right thigh, his left knee. Boiling hot tears slipped down the sides of his face as he raised each of them slowly, too slowly, and pressed the soles of his worn-out boots against the wall, his breaths stuttering.
The dripstone spiked deeper into his back when he moved his right arm, and he shrieked, eyesight momentarily vanishing, limbs almost sliding back down, before he drew in a long, harrowing inhale and finally, with his hands and feet planted on the rough gray stone, hoisted himself off the trap.
Spoke scuffled with the clasps of his elytra, securing them on his shoulders while the gentle patter of blood hitting the spikes below filled his ears.
His fingers quivered as he grabbed a firework, lightheaded as his eyes squinted at the single-block-wide hole above. He’d either time it right and land on the platform overhead, or he’d crash into the obsidian and die.
Heart hammering, he lit the rocket. A loud bang jolted through his bones and drowned out the sound of blood rushing in his ears as he flew out of the trap.
He nearly collapsed then and there on the sandstone floor, but he dragged his arms and his legs to the opening that revealed the starry sky.
Spoke crawled out of the obsidian cage, drinking in the fresh, dewy nighttime air by the gallons, netherite boots at long last crunching against solid ground.
He scanned the horizon—the sight of zombies marching through the plains had never been so welcoming—and promptly crumbled face-first into the grass, coughing and heaving.
I need food.
Moonlight illuminated the blood on his dark-gray fingertips as he fumbled through his inventory: 2 more fireworks, 20 blocks of obsidian, a few stacks of cobblestone, his netherite tools, 9 potions of invis, other junk; he tried not to let his eyes linger on the leftover dripstone. He’d left his ender chest somewhere.
He let out a sigh.
No food.
He rolled over, arms crossed over his stomach. The stars seemed to swirl together in the darkness of the night sky.
Spoke let out a snort. It hurt. Everything hurt.
He chuckled—it came out broken and weak and bloody.
Soon he’d curled into himself, hugging his knees to his chest as he laughed.
The trees in the distance danced in his hazy vision, tremors shook through his body, his head screamed in agony, his lungs threatened to surrender, but Spoke just laughed.
He laughed and he laughed and he laughed. Even as his voice came out ragged and cracked. Even as the pain numbed his limbs. Even as the entire world faded away.