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A lone droplet of water made its way down the wall. Slipping in between the carefully crafted cracks in between panels, only to perish before reaching the floor. It must have lost its track somewhere close to its resting place, perhaps having just by accident fallen into a tiny opening and split off into a couple of separate segments; one division was truly all it took for it to fade from perception.
Such was the fate of everything on this forsaken server. Even nature seemed to know it — if whatever this terrain could even be considered such, or just a mere mimicry. It rained while it hadn't. A deceptive labirynth of deepslate walls three blocks thick, with nothing in sight as above as it was below, somewhere deep within the Farlands; although, that wasn't really the Farlands anymore. It stopped pretending to be them a long time ago. Maybe Mapicc hadn't noticed. Likely Jumper hadn't, either. But Spoke knew, that what they had been wandering was but a mimicry. A cruel one.
And so had to be this one; an extension of what they'd already seen, molded to disorient and confuse. Break. But no, Spoke wasn't one to get broken like that, as terrified as he might have been. It was just some walls. And more walls. And walls, and walls, and walls. Mapicc might have been gone, and Jumper captured, and all the people they'd seen on the way doomed by their hands, but none of it mattered because he was still standing, albeit hardly, so he could still fix it. On his own, if it so required, even if he'd always been surrounded by people, and people, and people. And Mapicc.
That same Mapicc who'd held a sword to his throat just minutes before; or hours, or days. Whatever it was, it didn't matter, because Mapicc was gone and it left him with nothing either way. No Mapicc, no sword, not even food. Just Spoke. That rain. And walls. So many walls.
So he wandered, lone and hurting, still. There had to have been a crack somewhere in his ribs, even if he hadn't known where at all; only that it was there. Deep, deep within. Every next step he took with his left foot shifted the pain onto his right side, just as every step with the right shifted it onto the left. It couldn't remain still. Not when it wasn't as simple as a rib. Not one. Maybe not even a rib; but something in his chest. Something embedded into it, binded by a chain of his own making. Something that hated him, more than he ever could hate it back. Something he was the one to have kept so close for so long. He had to.
It hurt. It hurt. And it hurt again. And again. And again.
Ever since the beginning. It only hurt. But it hadn't.
It once hadn't. And that's what hurt the most.
There used to be a time it hadn't. But there was none.
So he wandered, lonelier and hurting, more than before. He stumbled, every next step; be it from the pain or losing the balance he'd still tried to upkeep. Or, perhaps it was one and the same; the former leading directly to the latter. His chest hurt. His head hurt. Blood was still dripping down his shoulder, where Mapicc's sword embedded into the flesh. It felt as if it had just taken a slice, as if from a velvet cake, careful not to ruin its perfect shape, before sliding out to swing once again.
Spoke remembered it as well as he didn't. Because the wound burned, split open to the mercy of the dry Farlands air. It had been burning, ever since he got it; back when it was not on fire. Just a spark. And a spark. And a spark.
Enough of sparks for his hand to hold onto a flint and ignite a flame — a small thing. Tiny, diminishing at the smallest of breezes; which, there were none. Not with the walls providing an ounce of shelter, however cruel it might have been; it was shelter nonetheless. Alongside it, the flame, burning for seconds before its light faded. But seconds were seconds nonetheless, and he would much rather spend his with a trace of illumination, rather than the darkness.
He'd never found himself in the darkness. Whatever it was, it hadn't been a place of his own more than a distrustful maze, with lies hiding behind every next turn. It didn't matter if he went left, or right, or forward — all led to the same place. It's difficult to tell the right direction with no vision for assistance. A lone mind is prone to getting lost; just as he did. Over, and over, and over again. From void he was born and to void he didn't want to return.
He stumbled once more, trembling against the nearest wall. Its texture was rough, and he wanted nothing more than to push away from it, to prevent his hand from slipping deeper into the blackstone, somewhere in between the cracks as they kept opening up and closing at nobody's will. Dark, as everything around. He couldn't let it go.
It wasn't disgust at the harshness of the surface, nor was it frustration at own incompetence with a task as simple as walking. It should have been, and it would have been one of them, were it not for the darkness. Void, he hated it, and the dread creeping up his spine whenever he'd found himself within such predicament. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was, but it had never mattered before, because he had Mapicc by his side, and Mapicc's hand in his own, just not to get lost, and he would even take Mapicc's knife driving itself into his shoulder again and again just to feel a sense of direction of where he was.
A knife or a sword, whatever it was, it didn't matter. A blade was a blade at the end of the day; an end Spoke was not expecting to see anytime soon, just as he'd missed its beginning.
A blade was not much different from a hand to grab onto.
But either of them was better than the unforgiving, stone wall. And the wall was better than nothing, grounding in the complete darkness which threatened to swallow everything whole.
The moment he let go of that wall he would cease to exist. The moment he stepped to the side he would have been free. The moment he straightened up the pain in his chest would return tenfold, causing him to fall back into the wall as he was before. Alongside every impact of his foot hitting the floor, he ended up clinging to that wall, like he used to cling to Mapicc. Still did, except Mapicc was nowhere to be found this time. His friend, his anchor, his shoulder to lean on. A crack in his rib instead of a warm pat on the back. That same warmth with which Mapicc dug a sword into his shoulder.
But Mapicc would have never done that. It couldn't have been Mapicc, back then. It couldn't have been Spoke in front of him, either. No, that was some Null soldier, with neither a name, individuality, nor a mind to think on his own, blindly following empty to him orders. When it was said to strike, so he did; when to step in line, he did so without questioning. It was just by unfortunate coincidence Mapicc was so near-sighted to see Spoke where he stood.
It wasn't Mapicc.
Once Spoke would find him in this hell of a labirynth, they would run up to each other as they always did, arms wrapping around an intertwined silhouette with the boundary between red and black blurring into something in between; alike both, yet reflecting neither. Tears in their eyes losing meaning, because, oh, he'd been crying, and he hadn't even noticed. The walls were gone, all of a sudden, air more spacious as the darkness opened up.
"Dude, where the hell have you been?" Mapicc would say, because that's what he always said. It didn't matter that it was actually Spoke who did so.
And Spoke would take a deep breath, air filling his lungs for the first time since Mapicc's sword first struck his armor.
"A bit… here and there," he muttered, voice still hoarse and tears still lingering in his eyes, unwilling to disappear as they should have already. "Been, uh… worried."
"For me? Come on, man, you know I can handle myself," there he was. There was Mapicc, with his confident tone and the hand resting against Spoke's arm where blood still dripped down. "Better than you at least, for sure. You know, I've chased after this Null guy for like, a good thousand blocks before I finally got him cornered. And then, one totem pop was all it took. Boom! And he's gone. You should've seen it."
And Spoke didn't interrupt him. Not once, when he was hearing exactly what he's been wanting to hear for so long; all the minutes, hours, days spent within the corridors he'd been wandering his whole life.
"Yeah. Yeah, I bet I should have."
"Really, man. He was trash; there I thought Null guys were supposed to be good. Funny," at last pulling away from where they stood together, Mapicc's eyes ran over Spoke's form, or lack thereof. "You sure you're good there?"
And yes, he was, because Mapicc was there, and his hand still clung to Spoke's shivering form, squeezing that shoulder so gently as if he'd stabbed it all over again, but it didn't really hurt anymore. And he might have been starving and exhausted, but Mapicc was there, still oblivious to all the lies, and they were just as they had always been. Back in the castle, back in the Mafia, back in the lava-cast home.
He nodded. The sun still shone through the small opening of the wooden door, illuminating the room as it always did at this time of day. Golden sunrays falling onto any surface they could latch onto, instead bouncing back into the air with a faint glow.
There was Mapicc, still, right as they had always been; just the two of them.
"Man, I can't believe how long this took," he sighed, turning around to rummage through their chests, looking for something between stacks of items with no texture. "I hope we don't have to run this back ever again."
Spoke smiled at the thought; he could do it all over again as long as they still ended up in the same place.
"Yeah, it's… It was tough," he mumbled, still sounding out quiet and pained, as tears kept running down his cheeks. Why was he still crying? The maze was long gone behind him, and he was still crying. The blood kept dripping down onto the floor, staining its pristine stone with red. Or black, wasn't it?
"Yep," Mapicc affirmed, brushing the dust fallen from the items he'd been searching through from his hands. It appeared he hadn't found what he wanted.
At last, he looked up, and back at his friend.
"Hey man, where'd you get that?" He mentioned, pointing at the hole in Spoke's shoulder. "Looks pretty bad."
And Spoke wanted to say that it was nothing, that he'd just stumbled into a blade in the middle of a fight, but that wouldn't have been true. He'd always had that wound. Mapicc just never noticed. Just like he didn't know of the pain in his ribs, still stinging with every step. Spreading like the rot growing within his bones.
"Oh, I don't— I don't know, actually," he shrugged. "It doesn't really matter."
"I mean, you do you, but I think it's going to look better if we just…" Mapicc reached somewhere behind his head, turning and twisting something around until his headband fell loose into his hands. He brought it towards the bleeding wound, and wrapped around the delicate skin. He tugged harshly at the edges, but it didn't hurt when it was his hands that did it.
The fierce, red fabric slowly took in the blood. But it hadn't stopped; it hadn't really done anything but hide it out of sight, out of mind. It wasn't stitched, it wasn't soothed.
"Yeah, that will do," he decided, giving a nod of approval at his work. Another droplet trickled down onto the floor.
"…Thanks," Spoke forced a smile which had come so naturally to him.
Mapicc sighed, once again, albeit with none of the exasperation directed at his friend.
"I think I've had enough of these farms for a lifetime," he complained, as he turned around to walk up towards the direction of the back of the room.
Except there had not been any farms in the Farlands; nothing remarkable, as far as Spoke's memory went. They hadn't gone to a farm. They hadn't gone to a farm at all.
"Hey, what's—" he lifted his head, only to find Mapicc nowhere nearby. He'd wandered further away, figure blurring somewhere behind the familiar wall of the house. "Mapicc—"
He took a step forward, ignoring the scorching pain still snaking around his body. Then another, and another, because Mapicc's back was right at the edge of his fingertips, just a blink out of reach, and if only he'd gotten a little closer he could place a hand on his shoulder to gain his attention again. Just a little. Just an inch.
Mapicc would have been right there, in the dark. But he wasn't, and Spoke hit the deepslate wall in front of him, sliding down to the ground at the impact.
It was still dark. And it still hurt.
The headband draped over his shoulder was only his own. Maybe that was why it hurt so much; it hadn't been hands other than his own that tied it. There wouldn't be other hands to tie it, ever, as he laid motionless on the stone, cheek pressed into the cold, uneven rock.
The rain kept going, as the open surface remained dry. Drop after drop it ran down his face, mixing with fresh blood before getting to melt into the ground. It muffled the sobs that shook his body whenever he tried to inhale some air into his contracted lungs. It felt as if his own body wanted to keep him from taking another breath, to get him to rest.
He shouldn't have landed in that water. He should have missed. Yet it seemed defying the righteous course of the universe had truly been all he was good for.
So he weeped into the ground, in the darkness, with no flames to lean on anymore. He'd dropped the flint and steel sometime earlier, the temporary light source leaving him just like Mapicc did. It wouldn't have protected him from whatever was lurking within the deep dark, regardless of how it burned his own fingers.
He still remembered all the times he held it as a weapon, back when he walked alongside Leowook. And those lives of the spies he'd taken. And the hunts he'd escaped. In the end, it was him standing above the void hole; a miserable grave equal to the best he was capable of doing. All the while his true faults laid untouched, kept from Jumper up until the last seconds — even then, she hadn't gotten to find out.
The only person who did was long gone; Spoke had made sure of that. Anything to evade the responsibility for his own actions.
He smiled to himself, despite the tears. He would've taken it back now, if it meant Mapicc would be back at his side. As long as it changed a thing in how things were meant to go, he would've taken it all back. Maybe he would've forgiven Leo, for whatever it was he's done. He used to be so angry, so spiteful towards that man, and somehow he'd ended up having none of that left; all the hatred meant nothing in the long run. It was futile, when neither of them had made it out alive.
But Spoke wasn't dead yet, either. No, his heart was still beating, and the blood was still oozing, and he might have stopped living ages before without meeting death even once. He'd been cradling his own corpse, pointlessly carrying it around wherever he went.
He didn't want to die; but maybe he should have, whenever the chance arose. Had he stopped resisting just a moment before he stepped into that beautiful cave, maybe he'd still get a grave. A pretty one, ornamented with stone carefully polished by Mapicc's loving hands — those same which held the sword — with his name still carved into its surface. He wasn't so sure whether he had a name anymore. Perhaps that, too, got lost among the lies.
There was no use in making a coffin out of the labirynth floor, he'd realized soon after. It wouldn't let him rest, the cruel thing.
Besides, there was still a crack in his ribs, kept so close to his heart.
His hand found the edge of the wall again as he propped himself up on it. Whatever disgust he might have felt for it earlier had left, considering it made for his last desperate attempt at survival. The pain came flooding back, but it didn't matter, because he was standing and that was progress. He tried not to think of how he used to take down empires while now struggling to keep himself upright.
A step, and then another. Then a corner, at last, a safe abode to lean on for a minute or two.
It was no use sulking over a situation he had no power over anymore. He would keep going forward, until his mind sorted itself out in the darkness; that's what he deserved. He wouldn't get to die beforehand.
Then, an exit. Had this been it? The end to his punishment, brought with light shining through the gateway?
No. No, it hadn't been. Because Mapicc was there, right there in the other direction, just as he'd last seen him. This was Mapicc, his Mapicc, the one who knew what he had done, who'd witnessed and heard all the ways Jamato was right about him. The Mapicc whose sword clashed with his own. The Mapicc who hadn't worried about where he'd been.
He said something, face scrunching with disdain at the sight of Spoke at the other end of the corridor. But it was fine, it was all fine, because then he took out brand new armor, and a spear, and a sword, and they fought again, on uneven ground.
It was fine.
That wound in his shoulder was still bleeding. He'd hit the stone, whether of the walls or the floor, a couple times too many. He was losing, with no way of defense, and it was fine.
Then Mapicc's sword drove itself into his chest, shattering the last piece of armor he held dear to his heart, and the persistent ache in his ribs stopped.