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“If you’re in on the plan, then why are you telling me this? What do you want?”
The player in front of them has an annoying habit of enunciating every other word he speaks. Probably something to do with the inflated ego of being Champion—then again, if what Seawatt says is true, Evbo was just born this annoying.
Then again, Ally’s not quite in a mood to trust what Seawatt says ever again.
“Let’s just say I don’t really like how the plan ends,” Ally decides to tell him.
Their words still come out in this godawful rasp, and they are so glad that Evbo is self-centered enough to not ask what’s wrong with their voice. Parkour Hell, he hasn’t even asked their name. Ally would wonder aloud if he was raised by savages, but the fact that Evbo had come from the Noob layer answers their own question.
“So I’m hoping that by telling you this, you find a way to win. And in repayment, you can take me back to Parkour Civilization.”
Of course, he questions if he can trust them—the smartest words that have come out of his mouth all day, they’d have done the same—and while he doesn’t seem to immediately buy their explanation of amethyst parkour and Seawatt’s plan, they know he’ll see Seawatt’s bluffing for what it is when he questions him about exactly where Seawatt got those disks.
Well, know is a strong word. Evbo seems as perceptive as a chunk of sandstone, and holds a weirdly strong trust in Seawatt given that Evbo knows the other man faked his memories of their entire friendship. But Ally has to believe in him. Their fate is out of their hands, again, and they can only hope that they’ve ferried it to the lesser of two evils.
I don’t really like how the plan ends. It’s true enough, they suppose, and it was what’d get Evbo off their case the fastest. (Worked like a charm, in that sense.) Enough of their old life as a medic bleeds through to them now, even after months of cold desert winds have eroded most of their empathy. The old champion—the Parkour Villain, they suppose they should call it—would kill, and kill indiscriminately, and Ally does not want anyone else to die.
Mostly.
Life in the Fighter layer was, in Ally’s opinion, harder than that in the Master layer. They’ve never been outside their home layer, of course, but spent a lot of time in the library as a kid. (Damn, they wonder how that old woman’s doing. Been a while since they checked on her—but in their defense, it’s hard to keep not one but two plots against Seawatt’s gang on the down-low. They’ll check on her while Evbo’s at the legends’ course, maybe. Keep their mind off things.)
According to the books they read as a kid, the Master layer has not one but two Parkour courses to rank up. Then, you must battle the current Champion. Well, how about you try five courses and four battles, each battle that of a former Champion? As kids, arguing for fun, Seawatt had always claimed that of course the current champion would be more difficult to beat, as they’d beaten the most experienced Legend (who was stronger than the previous one, and so on), but Ally countered that four battles in a row was more difficult—you’d just get tired.
Additionally, subdividing their three-block grid, the Master level has Parkour Highways, with the platform between each gap three blocks (two solids, a pane on either side) in width. Talk about relaxing! Meanwhile, the Fighter level gets nothin’ but regular three-block jumps. And don’t even get them started on the Outskirts. Water parkour? Give them a break.
The only thing they can even begrudgingly accept the Master layer for having one up on them in difficulty is its verticality. Ally’s perfectly fine with a flat world, with a missed jump meaning certain death. Keeps ‘em on their toes, right? According to the Parkour Library, Masters are all but required to always have a water bucket on-hand, to make “clutch” jumps from high to low elevation. Including to enter their houses. Still, it’d probably be easy to get used to, especially with Masters being allowed Totems of Undying. (What Ally would give for one to call their own… then again, it wouldn’t save them on the Fighter layer outside of battle, and even in battle, only grant them a few more minutes to live. In potion parkour, getting hit once by a smart opponent meant you were good as dead.)
So, of course Ally would hold a bit of resentment for the unachievable luxury of the Masters, because like hell were they gonna rank up. Any Fighter kid, or kid who ended up a Fighter, did. But as they grew, they took pride in their home layer’s rough-and-tumble life. Cut their own gloves of leather so amethyst wouldn’t cut them. Who needed to rank up, to grow content and old with heavy golden boots? Ally and their friend Seawatt were born for the lightness of chainmail.
And despite being called the “Fighter” layer, it was really more of a community than anywhere else. When food was scarce, Fighters talented with potion parkour could “attack” with Saturation to keep bellies fed. (It was a weird feeling, but better than starving to death.) Opponents sparring would attack each other with Regeneration before any ten-heart-duel to avoid killing each other. Ally in particular had catlike reflexes that led to them being trained to master an almost-forgotten potion effect, Levitation. As long as they had a second’s notice, they could pull people out of the void. Bring them back from what was functionally the dead.
Levitation, however, wouldn’t save them in a parkour battle. In fact, it did about as much good for Ally as giving their opponents Jump Boost. No matter how deep Ally could pull someone from the void, even if it took a half-minute for them to return to life, it seemed that the effect would wear off seconds after their target rose above y-zero. The luckiest they’d ever gotten was dealing a heart and a half of fall damage—immediately retaliated against with a combo far more complex. Thankfully, it had been a spar against Seawatt, who had promised not to tell anyone that Ally was just bluffing when they said they could drop from temple-height anyone who dared attack them.
They wonder if that’s the one promise the man hasn’t broken.
They knew they couldn’t follow Seawatt where he was going. They were a Fighter, but they weren’t built to fight. Crafty Seawatt, with his newly mastered combination of nausea and blindness, would easily defeat the Legends and ascend to the Master level.
He told them he would destroy the Champion for what he was doing, for punishing an entire layer for the crimes of a single individual. They gave him their blessing, and splashed him with Resistance so he’d remember his promise to Ally, to his parents, to his home.
And so he was gone, and so began the slow end of the world.
It would have taken two Fighters with mastery of Saturation to keep the layer alive and fed indefinitely, since only one Fighter with that knowledge could not attack, and thus feed, herself. But the void did not wait for starvation to claim her. As she travelled to an enclave in the Ice to find a hopeful protege, a block shattered beneath her feet. She was only a few dozens of blocks from the town.
(Ally should have been there, they had once thought. Ally thinks now, bitterly, that her survival would only have delayed the inevitable.)
It seemed that when the Champion had forgotten them, the Parkour God had too. Sandstorms would come and go, leaving chips and cracks in the once-spotless Parkour Temple. Even Ally’s home in the relatively nonvolatile Amethyst biome wasn’t safe: the crystal bud a jump in front of their front door vanished in the night, and they thanked… whatever they believed in now, they supposed… that they didn’t jump for it.
Mushroom stew had been a sort of tonic, something to quell the inherent nausea of Saturation on an empty stomach. Now it became a necessity. Ally and their neighbors spent their days waiting for fungus to claim their houses so they could go to bed on slightly more than an empty stomach.
It was only a matter of time until the residents of the Fighter layer began to live up to their names.
A group from the central Sandstone—although there were a few Glass and Neos among them, Ally recognized—raided the row of Amethyst houses in the middle of the night. Blinking, starving Fighters were forced to their doorsteps in front of a crowd of cold and sneering eyes.
Ally wasn’t stupid. The presence of Glass and Neo Fighters, but just a few of their most capable, could only mean one thing. The mob before them would ask each Amethyst Fighter for their abilities and take the ones they deemed useful. This would end in their neighbors’ surrender, or their death. They didn’t know their neighbors very well, reluctant to form attachments with those whose deaths were whens and not ifs, but damn it—they were a medic—they wouldn’t let anyone they could prevent die on their watch.
They jumped around the hole in front of their house to a solid block. Eyes turned to meet them. “I’ll join you,” they croaked, voice hurting from raising it. “I know Levitation, I can keep you alive. Just don’t—don’t kill them.”
They could hear their neighbors behind them murmuring apprehensively. Just yesterday, Ally had saved one of them from the void. Sure, their departure would be one less extra mouth to feed, but would that balance the loss of their skill of “revival”?
“Just what we were looking for!” crowed the leader. He jumped to a block adjacent to Ally and waved his fingers in a touch-less handshake. Ally responded in kind automatically, even as they berated themself for the courtesy. What a civil way to condemn their neighbors to a slow and painful death.
“Well, we’ve got what we need, so we’ll leave you alone now.” There was a cruel lift to the man’s voice that Ally, tired and hungry, would only notice the next time they would parkour across these blocks.
Ally wasn’t stupid, but they were naïve.
They were fifty blocks away, escorted at the front of the pack, when the leader gave the order to leave no survivors. So that floaty bitch won’t be tempted to defect from us.
Surrounded by Fighters, with nowhere to place a second brewing stand, they could only watch as their neighbors were slaughtered. A few jumped into the void. One made eye contact with them, as if begging Ally to lift them from death one last time.
“We don’t have all night,” came a warning voice.
They did not look behind them, even when the sun rose to blind them as dawn broke.
Their dangerous reputation from childhood must have preceded them, or else the Fighters are wary of breaking their new tool, so while Ally is shown the room under Seawatt’s childhood home, they are not imprisoned there—a dignity, they feel at that moment, that they do not deserve.
A list of effects is placed in front of them, and they answer what they could inflict truthfully. There is no reason for Ally to lie, here. Any information they keep to themself will be used to throw them away when Levitation is no longer useful enough. Anything they lie about will have them killed as soon as they are found out.
Levitation, diamond proficiency. Nausea, iron proficiency. Regeneration, gold proficiency. Resistance, gold proficiency. Slow falling, wood proficiency. Slowness, wood proficiency. Weakness, iron proficiency. Is that correct?
…All in all, a fairly useless array as self-defence goes. These were old Fighter terms, benchmarks of the mastery of potion parkour, and Ally feels a distant ache for their old life as they stare dully at the paper. Wood proficiency meant the Slowness they could inflict isn’t even enough to last a whole round of a Parkour battle. Maybe they should’ve kept Slow Falling secret. Could’ve given it to their executioner as a send-off when they’re inevitably disposed of.
The days come and go. The numbness doesn’t. Ally didn’t know they’d cared so much for their neighbors until they were gone. Or maybe they’re simply mourning their freedom, their life before the end.
They demonstrate their reflexes and Levitation when a scrawny teen—obviously the runt of the group—is shoved into the void next to them on their first day. For the rest of the day, they’re made to spar, showcasing their other potion parkour skills. Rusty on Slowness, the only one that’d be useful in a fight. Evidently, they’re not deemed a threat.
Ally could’ve told them that. Then again, Ally telling their captors anything seems to result in a few hearts’ loss, or maybe some Poison or Nausea from a particularly sadistic potion-trained Fighter. Doesn’t take long for them to learn their place: sit down and shut the hell up.
A few days after their capture, Ally’s let out to defend a foraging expedition. The camp lost a Fighter to the void on the last one, and so Ally is sent out though they clearly aren’t trusted yet, as it’s a three-versus one and Ally is given no blocks but a pair of brewing stands. Without the ability to chain it to a combo, even diamond-proficiency Slowness wouldn’t matter: their opponent would be able to build any even slightly-harder jump and negate the effect.
Their destination is a house near the Outskirts, and damn, Ally sees why they’re needed here. Sandstone blocks have eroded to slabs and slopes, and a few precarious jumps are on sand: while a player could land on sand without “updating” it, any block placed nearby would send the sand and the player into the void. If a rogue Fighter were to appear from behind a building and challenge one of their party to a battle, it’d spell death.
So, Ally supposes that the other two Fighters are insurance to make them stay loyal instead of joining forces with their attacker. Fair enough. They don’t like being outsmarted, but well played.
As it stands, they aren’t needed at all. They stiffly accompany the lookout, something tall and strong that could probably snap Ally in half without a Strength buff, as he paces around the house while the two other Fighters pilfer it. All that for a few loaves of moldy bread, and that’s supposed to feed the whole camp? Hell, Parkour Noobs probably get more sustenance.
The Fighter holding the bread tears pieces off one of the loaves and tosses it to the other two. Not Ally. Their stomach growls at the smell of old yeast. They cross their arms to try and muffle it, but the Fighter next to them obviously heard, because he leers at them and takes a slow bite.
“Float-bitch,” and Parkour God—no, uh, whatever deity hasn’t yet abandoned me, from a short list growing shorter by the day—is that going to be Ally’s nickname, “you know, if you want some, you can just ask.”
They have been lightheaded this whole journey. Their head spins from the exertion. Parkour Hell, they’ll get on their knees and beg if that’s what it takes. They throttle their dignity and open their mouth, but are interrupted:
“Thinks it’s too good for that, I bet,” drawls the one who found the bread, popping a piece in his own mouth.
“Maybe it just doesn’t talk,” offers the third in a quiet voice, like she’s trying to win approval by demeaning Ally. “Is there even a mouth under that scarf?” The other two share a short laugh at that, and the third appears shocked they found it funny. Ally doesn’t know why they’re even paying attention. Their captors aren’t the friendly sort, and there are so many of them that even befriending one wouldn’t help them escape (if that’s even still possible, with how these Fighters seem to control the whole layer), and their abrasive personality won’t do them any favours if they do speak up. So they keep silent.
Their dignity, revitalised, reminds them: they’ll be given some of the scraps at dinner, at least. Enough to survive. They don’t need this.
“Maybe it’s thinking of ratting on us.” The second Fighter finishes his bread and squints at Ally, looking them up and down.
They look down at their boots and shake their head. Not like anyone would believe me.
“Like anyone would believe it over us!” cackles the first, echoing their thoughts. “Still…” he looks at Ally, eyes narrowing, and his voice goes cold. “I’ll say this once, float-bitch. If. You. Say a single goddamn thing. About us taking some off the top.” He smiles, and Ally suppresses a shiver. “Next time we’re on the same mission, I’ll say you missed your footing. Can’t save yourself with potion parkour, after all.”
Ally doesn’t know if the Fighter’s bluffing or just too stupid to realise that Ally’s only alive because their leader wants them, and that letting them die would probably warrant more punishment than a few extra bites of bread. But they don’t plan on testing that. So they swallow through their mouth dry as bones, and nod, to which the Fighter gives a wicked grin. Words are spoken, but Ally doesn’t process them.
On the way home, the third Fighter, the one who didn’t say much, passes directly behind Ally, then jumps to the block they’re on. They rebalance, preparing for a shove—this is it, this is where I die—but instead she presses a morsel of bread into their hand. It must have been from her own share.
“Sorry,” she whispers, just before they jump to the next block of sandstone.
The weeks pass, and Ally is no longer regarded as a flight risk. Really, they are just as eager to escape as they were on the first day. The only difference is that now, their hope of there being somewhere to escape to is gone. The only survivors, as far as Ally’s aware, are their group in the Sandstone.
Food is tight now, to the point where to save on hunger bars, only one player, alongside Ally to protect hard-won supplies from falling, is sent foraging. Foraging. Ally doesn’t know when they stopped calling it pillaging. Maybe when they accepted that no-one else was alive.
They haven’t made any moves to endear themself to the rest of the camp—though it’s not as if they get the downtime to socialise. They speak one word a day, and it is a begrudging thanks at dinner when they are given a meal that would not be enough for a person half their size. They suppose that it’s their fault that most of the time, their partner does not see them as a person, and so they watch, mouth too dry to even drool, when half of the loot is stashed away in the inventory, or increasingly more frequently, the mouth, of whomever they are accompanying.
Ally moves on autopilot, jumping when they are told to jump and stopping when they are told to stop. They answer to float-bitch because no one’s asked their name. Every so often, they save someone from the void and don’t get so much as a thanks. Hunger consumes their every waking thought. Some days, they don’t know if they’ll even be able to react in time if their partner falls. They wonder, idly, what would become of them if they let it happen. They would be killed as soon as they stepped foot in the Fighters’ encampment without their partner, and if they did not return by nightfall, a party would be sent out to find them—and, well, then kill them. Would they even need to be found? At this point, Ally doesn’t know if they would move from the spot without someone telling them to do so.
Sandstorms don’t have silver linings, but the only time Ally doesn’t feel like utter shit is when that girl from their first expedition is their foraging partner. She’s the silent type, but it is a companionable silence. One between equals, they think, rather than the deafening isolation of Ally being ignored, seen as a tool and not a person.
She feeds them, too, which is nice. They can make the spoils from a journey with her last four days if they ration it. (Ally can’t get themself to eat any less, to make it last longer. Their body won’t allow them.)
They’re surprised they aren’t the first one to die.
The player is skin and bones when he doesn’t wake up. It turns out he’d been giving half his rations to his girlfriend, who confesses as much in wails and sobs before running up to the roof and jumping off and repeating until she joins him. Ally, running on instinct, attacks her once with Slow Falling before someone restrains them. They are told, in the moment, not to make her suffer any longer. They are told, over the first proper dinner in weeks, to be grateful that she didn’t jump into the void and waste her boyfriend’s sacrifice.
(She would not have wasted it. Ally would have had to drag her out if she tried.)
And so they supervise a journey to the Ice quarter, and Ally catches a Fighter who falls, unused to the slipperiness after so long, and they find a single loaf of bread in a house as their patrol gathers cold and insulating blocks. They are sure another Fighter sees them ferret it away, but perhaps he is sympathetic. Perhaps they have finally earned their keep. Perhaps he sees no reason to fight Ally over moldy, stale carbohydrates when something much more filling waits for him at home.
The Parkour Library awaits them in the distance.
A few weeks ago, the girl—the one nice to them—had deviated from their expedition, and ventured instead into the Outskirts. They’d followed without complaint. She led them to a structure they had not seen since childhood. Hadn’t thought about in months.
The old librarian was inside—alive!—kept alive by a single plot of wheat up top. The girl had pretended to loot the Parkour Library as one of her first solo patrols, she told Ally. The old woman had been able to grow just enough for herself to survive, the girl told Ally, but now the rain was coming less and less frequently. The girl had to bring water, collected as a water-block from the Outskirts, once a month, as the lady was too old to parkour. Ally, hardly listening, sank into the comfort of an ancient, cracked leather couch. For a few hours, as the girl collected water, they could pretend they were a child again. They were taking a nap after reading a book, and when they woke up, Seawatt would ask them to spar, and the librarian (surely not that old, they remember) would shoo them out, and so they would run to the closest arena, and then he would attack them with an effect that would have been debilitating if he’d managed to actually land on the damn brewing stand, and then Ally would counter with a blip of Regeneration, and then…
Two bodies could only last so long.
Now, the Fighters knew there was hope. If not for the group, then for the individual. They only had to be the second-weakest person, they only had to live the second-longest, and they would survive. No matter that next month, the second-weakest would now be on the chopping block. They would survive, and then…
Ally couldn’t run, was the thing. If it was their life alone, maybe they’d take their chances, but there was the chance the group would search the Library for them, and they could not live with the death of another on their hands.
Another. It had been long enough ago that their time in the Amethyst enclave felt like a former life—let alone the world before the Fighter Layer’s removal from Parkour Civilization, which could have been a particularly cruel dream—and while they hadn’t forgiven themself for those long-ago deaths, Ally had thrown up a sort of shield around the space they occupied in their mind. As if they were encased in opaque blue ice, Ally’s touch simply glossed past those memories when they tried to access them.
So that was not what they meant.
The girl—the kind one, the one who had kept them alive until now—had confided in Ally that she knew she would be the next. She had given too much to others and kept none for herself. Her body was hot and cold to the touch all at once. But now, she laughed, now at the end she would be selfish. She did not want to die. She was preparing to die.
She said she was probably delirious, and to forget whatever she was telling Ally. She told Ally to let her body fall to the void, as punishment to the rest of the Fighters for unlearning compassion. She told Ally she wasn’t real, and her flesh wouldn’t nourish, only open a gaping void inside the stomach that could never be filled. She told Ally the void had already been opened. She told Ally she was definitely delirious, because she saw within their dark frame a burning light. The hand of the Parkour God was reaching out to her, she laughed, and he was made of cookies! She blinked, and her eyes became piercing and clear, and she told Ally in a tone sonorous as amethyst that they should let her go out on her own terms. Shouldn’t let her body be defiled, here at the end of the world.
Ally told her to forgive them, but they were so damn hungry. It wasn’t her fault. She’d given them more than they deserved, and it still wasn’t enough. It was as many words as Ally has spoken since saying goodbye to Seawatt.
She told them with a sad smile that she knew they wouldn’t save her, but it was worth trying. She laughed again, and then her eyes closed as she let herself slip off the edge of the cot.
Ally brought her back. What else could they do?
She was still breathing as the other Fighters carried her away.
It’s been a month, and the last of her taste lingers in Ally’s mouth. They hate that, despite how horribly-prepared as the jerky is, they still drool for the thought of more. They think of her words, of the void in their stomach.
Before she died, she passed them an empty bucket. They hold it now, full.
They could not live with the death of another on their hands. She was a promise they could not keep. They’re glad they never promised.
So, the Parkour Library awaits them in the distance.
They are hungry. They are so damn hungry. They cannot be so stupid as to think the next death will save them. She is gone, so Ally must be next.
They ask for an audience with the leader, and tell him that the Amethyst enclave they had lived in had mushrooms. He laughs and tells Ally they’d looted the whole lot the night they found Ally. Found, they think. It doesn’t even register as bitter, simply odd.
They ask him if they can check to see if there’s anything left at all. He tells them go ahead, as long as someone’s watching them to make sure they don’t take it all for themself. All of nothing, he says, laughing.
Evidently, he isn’t a born Fighter. Mushrooms regrow, as long as you leave at least some of the undergrowth. Ally believes the man when he says he took them all, but hopefully in the dark of night they’d left something. Just some strands in a corner would be enough, now that it’s been months….
Well, we’ve got what we need, so we’ll leave you alone now.
They end up on their hands and knees, watching what little they’d had for breakfast disappear into the void. The Fighter sent as their escort is laughing. Shards of ice dance around their brain, everything they had repressed now barreling through their mind like a sandstorm.
Evidently, Ally had forgotten why it had taken so long for them to return to this place.
I know Levitation, I can keep you alive. Just don’t—don’t kill them.
They do not recognize their own voice. They think they used to, a lifetime ago. An amethyst pendant once hung around their neck before they cast it into the void for fear of someone using it to strangle them as they slept. It was a Fighter tradition, to keep the words of someone close to you. Ally doesn’t remember what they said, or even whose words they were.
Their room is empty as the day they left it. Emptier, in fact. Practically spotless, without a single hypha on their stone wall.
They know without checking that the rest will be the same. They—they don’t know, really. But they know they won’t be able to step on the amethyst outside a single one of the neighboring houses without pitching themself into the void.
There is a change in the atmosphere, one assuming morning after a sandstorm. It could have been days or weeks or months since Ally’s only friend died. The group is a fraction of its former self. Ally does not know how they are alive. Perhaps everyone has forgotten that they are a prisoner and not an equal. Perhaps, even though no patrols are sent with practically the entire layer looted, Ally’s importance is engraved in their minds, and nobody is lucid enough to question it.
But this morning, the leader is adamant. The remaining Fighters are to train, and Ally is to heal them. They are rusty on their Regeneration, and lose a few hearts as punishment. You’ll have to feed me to heal that, they want to snap. Decide against it, as is now their life.
“Why are we even doing this?” a young, headstrong Fighter complains after meagre dinner, a sand-bitten throaty growl echoing around sandstone walls into the dormitory as Ally bundles their shemagh around their ears and tries to catch up on sleep. “It’s a waste of energy to practice parkour when we’re so low on food.” Why indeed, they think, and perk their head half-up because maybe that Fighter will get an answer when Ally obviously won’t.
“Seawatt’s been sending messages,” the leader announces with a tinkling that signals an amethyst shard, and oh if that name doesn’t set Ally’s nerves alight. They silently drop their headscarf and sit up, cupping a hand around an ear like they’re a kid eavesdropping again. “He’s coming back soon, just needs to set up some breadcrumbs. The new Champion’s an airhead, but damn good at Parkour. Seawatt wants us ready n’ able to subdue him should the need arise.”
Ally has forgotten Seawatt and his promise for revenge. Ally has forgotten the world outside the desert. While they have been living in stasis, keeping their head down to keep eating and breathing, the world has continued to spin. There is a new Champion who is not the Old Man. Seawatt is alive.
Ally stares at the ceiling and tries to think about what “revenge” even looks like. The Masters, fat and happy in their concrete towers… the Pros, guaranteed two cooked steak a day… even the Noobs in their dirt shacks get fed, and their ground doesn’t collapse under them, and they can always rank up if they’re unhappy.
What does revenge even look like? Seawatt will unleash the Parkour Villain, and it will kill everyone, and that will be that. The thought makes them vaguely ill, though maybe that’s the hunger. They suppose there’s a reason that Seawatt was the one to escape, and not them. Surely his plan will satisfy their desires, if there is any part of Ally left that still desires.
(And then what?)
Seawatt sends food after the first messages. Ally warns of refeeding syndrome, common and deadly after periods of famine even with Saturation-trained Fighters, but it still nearly claims about half of their camp before people begin listening to them. They administer Nausea and Regeneration and Resistance and are goddamn exhausted after the first patient but at least they have a golden carrot to take agonisingly small bites of between three-block brewing stand jumps.
At least their use is cemented enough that they earn food at all. Ally seems to be the only surviving potion-trained Fighter who knows anything medicinally inclined. Technically, they are able to teach Regeneration and Resistance and lighten their workload, but it is beneficial to their survival that they keep a white-knuckled grip on their niche.
Time seems to have stopped passing, as opposed to how it’s been slipping from them for as long as they’ve been clinging to life. Every morning is a journey to the Outskirts, where either food or an amethyst awaits them. Even now, even as they eat at the same table as the rest of the Fighters, their origins long forgotten, Ally is not allowed to hold the precious items, their presence only an insurance policy, a single get-out-of-Parkour-Prison-free card in case of the worst danger. If Ally themself fell, their loss would be mourned only as far as whoever and whatever their absence made irrecoverable.
That is, until Seawatt returns.
There are dark circles under his eyes, and his cheeks are thin, but his body is not emaciated like the Fighters he left behind, belying only a recent stress. The chest peeking from under the toga is full, not a single rib showing, and on a golden necklace rests a Totem of Undying. In fact, he seems to have traded all his formerly chain-jewelry for gold.
Ally wonders, for a brief moment, whether Seawatt is not the one Ally should be taking revenge on, instead. The Fighters had suffered, and he had forgotten about them as easily as trading one pair of boots for another. The Fighters had starved, and he had dined on golden carrots for three meals a day. The Fighters had killed each other, eaten each other, and Seawatt—
Seawatt rushes forward and crushes Ally in a hug.
They freeze. They haven’t been touched since… since…
He pulls away before they can remember, and then it is down to business.
Evidently, it hasn’t been that long on the outside. Or perhaps time has just lost its meaning, here, where beyond the edges of Parkour Civilization they have been isolated from even the seasons. Each death hits Seawatt with a wave of grief as fresh as if it’d happened yesterday. Ally watches, uncomfortably close to their childhood friend. They are still unused to having a seat at the table.
They’d thought that his return would save them, somehow, that he’d bring vengeance for them. That he’d wreak havoc on Ally’s captors, those who ate the Fighter layer from within. The layer had survived worse, could have survived this, if only the Fighters had not turned on each other—Fighters that weep crocodile tears to match Seawatt’s real ones, as if they hadn’t killed Ally’s neighbors just to keep them on a leash.
(…Come to think of it, before they’d blurred into some faceless, deindividuated mob in Ally’s mind, hadn’t they recognised some of the other Fighters as being from enclaves such as theirs? Glass, Neo, Ice… Had their homes all been slaughtered, like Ally’s? Or had they joined willingly, seeing this as their best option?
And regardless—had socialising offered to them a path to initiation? If Ally had been more accepting of their new life—had they given up their inhibitions, their disgust, their rage—had they seen themself as something more than a captive tool to be unwillingly used by the Fighters, could they have been more as a result?
Could their friend, not needing to slip them food were they given full portions, have survived?
They shake their head to clear it. Had they given up their humanity any earlier, she wouldn’t have befriended them at all. They could very well have been the one holding the knife in her final moments.
They have to stop thinking like this.)
So despite their misgivings and shoulders raised in tension, Ally sits late into the night, and listens, and tries to steel their stomach into something fit for vengeance. Tries to believe their friend is still here to avenge them, rather than something that had died long ago. Seawatt regales the Fighters with tales of the Masters’ opulence, the Pros’ laziness, the Noobs’ unfitness to live. The arrogance of Evbo, the new champion, and his cowardly friend who doesn’t deserve to be a Master. How all of Parkour Civilization deserves to be razed and rebuilt, the Fighters leading it anew.
And all Ally can think is, but you’re still wearing gold.
They should be glad that their part in the plan isn’t to die for it. At least Seawatt still holds that much affection for them, even if they are slowly realising they cannot feel the same. Some Fighters all but volunteer, eager to lay down their lives to be remembered for bringing in the new world. Others raise their hands hollowly. Ally thinks of a void in their stomachs metastasized to their hearts. They’re not sure they’ll be able to live with themself either, when all’s said and done.
He takes them to their old house in Amethyst. Somehow, miraculously, their path avoids the crystals that hold the memories of the worst night in Ally’s life. Or maybe they’ve crumbled and fallen into the void, too.
Or maybe they’d imagined the last stage of their life, because now Seawatt was here and buddy-buddy with the group’s former leader like he hadn’t personally ordered the deaths of a third of the Fighter level. What if he hadn’t? Maybe this was another false-memory scheme, like the one Seawatt had created under the previous Champion that he’d so excitedly explained last night. Maybe all of this was to sow distrust into Ally, so they’d be more willing to… to what, exactly?
They have to stop thinking like this.
They sit on the edge of their own bed for the first time in they don’t know how long. They’d forced themself to tune out when Seawatt was saying anything about the passage of time. Because what if it had only been a few months? What if all it had taken for Ally to forget their humanity was sixty days?
They hit their head against the amethyst floor as soon as they wake up until the ringing drowns out their thoughts. They don’t want to remember their dreams.
It takes a few days for Evbo to show up, probably delayed by a sandstorm stranding him in the Sandstone. They have enough time to collect their thoughts.
They realise, as they roll around sleeplessly in their bed, pace the surrounding area, and desperately avoid any block that could hold a voice from that night, that Seawatt’s plan as they understand it doesn’t exactly ensure the survival of Ally. Or any other Fighter, for that matter. (Probably does for Seawatt, though. Crafty bastard.)
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t seem too bothered about sending so many Fighters to their deaths in battle against Evbo. Not like plus-or-minus a week matters when the end of the line’s in sight. Ally would be sickened at Seawatt’s disregard for life if they themself hadn’t secretly been hoping that they’d wake up the following morning with everyone around them dead for the past few months.
(When had that happened?
They’ve both changed, then.)
Ally doesn’t have a plan, save for blindly trusting Evbo, but they’ve been reading between Seawatt’s lines for their whole life and it’s not as though he’d learned to bluff in however long or short he’d spent away from them. Fact of the matter was, Evbo had outsmarted Seawatt multiple times. Foiled his plans.
A confident pattern of footsteps that they don’t recognize. Sneakers slap dully on amethyst outside. So it’s showtime.
Ally can only hope that he’ll manage it again.