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A sword thrusts into his ribcage. He chokes on his own blood, spitting some of it out - bright scarlet against pure white. His totem explodes in a flurry of green and gold as his boots break from the heavy swing of a netherite axe, and that’s when he knows he needs to retreat. He fumbles in his inventory with numb fingers, searching blindly for the familiar wooden handle of a fishing rod. There it is. Brings it out, swings it in the air. The fishing bobber hovers in the snow for a moment, then disappears with a click.
Spoke’s white eyes narrow into a crescent for a moment, void light spilling out from the edges. Leo doesn’t have time to wonder on it before he’s in a deepslate room. He barely has time to heave a sigh before Spoke is there next to him (oh my god he must have rigged my pearl-) and he’s falling, falling, falling. His hand shoots out and tries to grab the ledge, but it’s already far too late. Maybe he signed his own death warrant when he started hunting Spoke.
Spoke’s head appears from the rim of the dark oak trapdoor. He smiles again, white eyes shifting into a crescent shape. Uncanny, destroyed from too many exploits. He says something, and Leo thinks he can hear the words Bye, Leo through the rushing of the cold void wind.
The void is a hungry, starved monster, and now it leaps at him. Invisible claws unsheathed, darkness bouncing off of it like the stars twinkling below him. Void wind rushing through his ears, the foul breath of the monster; easy to hear even above the ringing. He can see the moon, he realizes with a hysterical laugh. The sound swept away like a wilted leaf in a stream. Really, his life is so insignificant now, within the grasp of death.
He thinks he sees Nufuli’s goggles in a constellation. Jumper’s fake bunny ears in the moon.
It’s full like the night before everything went to hell. Look, Nufuli says, gazing out at the stars, isn’t that the Hunter? Jumper, sprawled out on the pink picnic blanket, nods sleepily. Y’know, Nufuli murmurs, I heard once that the souls of the dead go into stars and look down at their loved ones.
“That sounds nice,” Jumper agrees, trying her best to keep her eyes open.
“Leo?” Nufuli pokes his gray sweater - no suit, not with his best friend, his teammates.
“Yes, Nuf?” Leo mumbles.
“Leo, stay awake,” Nufuli grins. “Look, those are the touching stars Parrot pointed out to me yesterday.”
“Mmhmmm…” Leo glances at the avian, curled up on the corner of the blanket, taking a nap.
“They’re the only two touching stars in the entire night sky.” Dreamy, like he’s somewhere Leo can’t reach. “If we die, Leo, we can go into those two stars and we can be next door to each other.”
Leo giggles a little. It’s an unguarded noise, not something he would usually make, but he’s too out of it and too happy to care. “Okay, Nuf, whatever you say.”
Leow0ok dies alone, in one sense, but surrounded by his friends in another.
Leow0ok didn’t want to live in the same world as SpokeIsHere
Leow0ok left the game