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“Parrot, parrot—listen to me for a second!”
Parrot looks up from his stack of paperwork to see a very frazzled Theo with Reina in tow. “Yeah, what’s up?”
Theo starts pacing the length of the room, wings twitching in the way Parrot has come to know as panic. “Do you have any idea how cooked we are? Cindercrest is coming in less than a fu—sorry, a day. Twenty four hours. By now it’s probably only a few!” At that, he stops to fix Parrot with a stare. His sclera is bloodshot. Have you been sleeping well, Parrot almost asks, but the answer is already sunken into the skin beneath Theo’s eyes.
“Theo, have you seen the troops?”
“Of course I have!” Theo says. “Sure, we have a lot of people, but Cindercrest has—they’re—it’s full of old players. They’re stacked and actually good at PvP. Flamefrags is with them! The combat master!”
Parrot stifles a sigh. Theo is his best friend, that’s not up for debate, but he’s still stubbornly difficult. No one ever understands nor trusts Parrot and his plans—does Theo not believe in him? Doesn’t he think Parrot worries enough already? The only difference between their worrying is that Parrot still does work and he still pushes through despite it because he understands that final results are worth some sacrifice. Why can’t Theo recognize that too? “We’ll be fine,” he says flatly. “Have some faith.”
“I do, Parrot,” Theo says, some vague indignance in his voice, “but faith isn’t enough. Even if we do win somehow, have you even thought about how many people would die? You know I try to be optimistic but I really—I can’t right now.”
“What do you want me to do, then?” Parrot says nicely. “You said it yourself. Cindercrest is coming too soon for us to make any more preparations.”
A sticky, elastic silence stretches over the room, like the staticky buzzing in the air before a storm. Theo throws his arms up and walks out after a brief pause, eyebrows drawn taut and lips pressed thinly against each other. He looks so upset that Parrot almost regrets not offering more support.
After a few seconds, Reina leaves too, shuffling in the direction Theo had gone. There are so many people like her in this world—helpless civilians who want nothing more than peace with their friends, who just long for a safe space to have fun, who then have their lives ruined by the spite of those more powerful. New players with no crimes to their names being hunted and killed by the veterans. As king, it’s Parrot’s responsibility to deal with them, and if sacrifice is necessary for such a cause then so be it. Why can’t Theo understand? Why can’t he see that a pyrrhic victory is still a victory, above all else? If it means the world will remain stable and peaceful another day, it will have been worth it.
Parrot looks down, wanting to resume work on all the papers he has to review, but instead finds a trail of ink leading to a quill snapped in half between his fingers. He swallows a noise of irritation and awkwardly sets it aside before wiping the spill with a napkin and finding a replacement.
—
Night comes faster than Parrot anticipated. By the time he’s finished with all his work, the sun has already set. Even still, spawn is bustling with soldiers armed in diamond gear, conversation underlined with tension. It all instills a sense of pride in him, to have so many people following his cause—the right cause. How could anyone question their victory?
He leaves the cobblestone room, carrying the broken quill, to find his shared bedroom with Theo.
Voices extend from behind the oak door, recognizably Theo and Reina’s. Parrot stops. Normally, he wouldn’t eavesdrop—especially on friends—but something about what Theo had said to him earlier in the day urges him to crouch and press an ear against the wood.
“You weren’t around when the whole thing happened with Lettuce, right?” Theo says.
“No. Or, I mean, I wasn’t aware of it at the time, at least, but I’ve heard about it now.”
“Well, to be honest,” a pause, “I think Parrot’s becoming more like him.”
Parrot sucks in a breath.
“Our army—they don’t even know they’re basically throwing their lives away. They’ve just joined the server and probably haven’t heard of Cindercrest at all. Personally, I don’t really mind doing the dirty work,” Theo’s voice drops low, “but like, we took a guy hostage and blew up an army.”
Reina makes some sound of acknowledgment.
“I didn’t think that’s what he wanted.”
“Me neither,” Reina says. “I thought he wanted peace.”
Theo mumbles his next sentence; “I’m just scared for him.”
The conversation moves on to other topics afterwards: food, building, Zoe, Shoebilly—things about Theo’s time with him that he’s never even told Parrot, which kind of hurts, but he can’t bring himself to care too much when he’s still processing everything from earlier.
His legs start aching eventually and he doesn’t want to crouch anymore, so he opts for taking a walk instead of going inside the room. The quill is still his hand, staining his skin black with residual ink, feathers clumping with how tight he clenches his fist.
He’s not becoming Lettuce, not in the slightest. How could Theo ever think that?
Any sacrifice he makes is necessary for the good of the whole and to protect the weak. Any sacrifice Lettuce had ever made had been for his own good, to paint himself as a saint and vilify those he disagreed with.
Parrot rolls his shoulders. It’s a stupid thought, one that doesn’t deserve space inside his head with war on the brink of breaking out.
He really shouldn’t think about it.
He heads back not too long after, though by then his perception of time has stalled, and knocks on the door before slipping inside to Theo and Reina’s greetings.
“How’s it going?” he says. “Are you feeling better?”
“A bit.” Theo shrugs. “Not really, actually. I think I’m just slowly accepting our fate.”
Parrot nods and sits down on the bed next to him. The room is filled with a mellow, comfortable silence as conversation tapers out.
“Parrot,” Theo eventually says, “can we talk?”
Parrot has a feeling he knows what this is about. “Maybe later.”
Thankfully, Theo doesn’t push the topic and returns to silence.
—
Cindercrest comes fast.
The three of them had decided to climb into a watchtower to scout—mostly after Theo claimed the room was too small—and it didn’t take long for a thin strip of black and red to appear on the horizon. It’s almost hard to make out the ground troops against the dark of night, but the redstone-powered bomber jet sticks out like a sore thumb.
Parrot can hear the pistons pushing and retracting all the way from where they stand now. There’s no time for hesitation, so he whips out his goat horn and blows into it three times, letting the sound ring across spawn. Theo looks at him in some weird way for this, but his lips remain sealed.
Then it’s a matter of organization; everyone is still standing in loosely the same place as their formation, so Parrot leads Theo and Reina on top of a platform by the gate and readies himself. Most importantly, he first tells Theo to gather a group of stronger soldiers and pillar up to destroy the plane.
“Be safe,” he says quietly. It’s almost drowned out by all the nervous chatter from the soldiers below them.
“You be safe,” is Theo’s reply, though he melts into the crowd of diamond armor before Parrot can get another word in. He only realizes he’s reached out an arm, as if to catch Theo before he’s gone, when he retracts it to adjust his crown.
He should give a speech. He’s prepared a speech for this already, he just has to go through the motions.
He keeps thinking about Lettuce and about Theo, wonders where he might’ve left that broken quill because he doesn’t remember taking it back.
“People of Unstable,” he begins, and the army settles into their positions before stilling, “we don’t have much time.”
And they really don’t, so he keeps the speech short, ends it quickly and takes a moment to revel in the cheers—but the sensation of it is off. It’s almost like he’s above everyone and these soldiers, these people, aren’t with him at all but below him, and that plants a seed of disquiet in his gut.
They’re going to die for him, for a cause they don’t even know.
And it’s worth it, he thinks, it’s worth it because sacrifices are necessary for good to prevail.
But for the first time in a very long time, by himself atop a platform fit for a king, Parrot feels alone.