Work Text:
Step 1.
Ignore the sinking feeling in your stomach. It isn’t real. Spend hours bracing your hands against the cold leather of the shovel and the pickaxe, digging deeper and deeper and deeper until you can’t see the day anymore. Stone flecks and scraps of dirt line your fingertips.
Trust: in Ash, in the Mafia, in knowing that you are doing the correct thing. The greater good and the spikes of dripstone so tall they brush the bottom of your chin are here in front of you. Now, bow your head and pray.
Step 2.
When the trap is set, build the set around it. A small house, ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. Coal and coarse grey stone line the walls, pale yellow sandstone within, contrary in every way to how a home should look. It’s all sorts of wrong. You’re all sorts of wrong.
Silver liquid burns a line of fire down your gullet; watch as it takes your skin, hair, eyes, until there is nothing left but Netherite armour and the defining golden inlay.
Step 3.
Observe. Premature grief will approach you from behind. Its hand is cold and heavy on your shoulder. Watch as the girl and her brother chatter like songbirds, aimless and free; there’s a world of things you’d give to be like that again. Realise that you are going to do this. Realise, as you breathe in and out and in and out, back braced against the outer wall of their house like you will fall into pieces without its weight, that you need to do this. The greater good, you said. He said.
Press your knees to your chest.
Correction: first, dislodge the sheath of your sword from where it hangs on your belt, its covered blade digging into your ribs when you curl into yourself. After it is moved out of the way, then, press your knees to your chest.
Step 4.
Every word that spills from your lips is a curse. Watch as the girl—as Rose—backs away, shuffling her feet against the oak planks of her own home, retreating away from you. She doesn’t even know what you look like, who you are, and yet she can already see what you are. Press forward. This is for the server’s sake.
“It’s really nice to meet you,” Rose says, while standing on the foot of her roof. Out of options, it seems. Stammering, she asks, “What’s your name?”
Step 5.
Think.
“You can call me, uh—”
Think harder.
A name for a liar; a murderer. Not yours, because you are not those things. You, Spoke, are better than him.
“You can call me Jamato,” you say, finally. “J, for short.”
Feel the nails of your fingers, clawed, begin to cut your palms. When the ache is sustained for thirty-three seconds or longer, you may proceed.
Step 6.
Lead her, over the rolling hills and through tall grass that scratches at your ankles, to her death. When Rose sees the house, the corner of her mouth will hike up in a suppressed laugh, her eyes wide with humour and slight pity— at your building skills. Mapicc made the same face once. Resist the urge to join her. Resist the urge to make a friend out of her.
Remember that you do not deserve this grief.
Step 7.
When she walks away, your heart may jump into your throat. But she will come back, unaware, carrying a carefully picked yellow daisy in the palm of her hand like a gift.
“Wh—” you start, before pausing.
“I was gonna plant some flowers near the front!” she smiles.
Remember that you do not deserve this grief.
“Maybe that would spruce it up a little bit,” Rose continues.
She crouches down and instructs you to dig. The hole is smaller than the first one, barely half a block in volume. You’re the one who dug it out, after all. The flowers are placed gently inside, before she smoothes the mound over with her own hands. Dirt stains the bottom of her white skirt. Why would she do that for a stranger? What does she mean by this?
When you come back to yourself, she’s talking about her little brother. Something to do with cornflowers.
Step 8.
Walk inside the ‘house’ when you realise that you cannot bear to hear any more. She will follow.
Step 9.
Breathe in.
Step 10.
Breathe out.
Step 11.
“So the mineshaft, it’s down that way,” you say, and point to the corner of the room.
Rose turns her back to you and walks towards it. Unarmoured and unafraid. She mustn’t have been on this server for long to be able to harness that sort of blind trust. The bottom of her dirt–stained skirt follows her, trailing in the sand.
Using obsidian blocks, the jagged edges slicing tiny lines into your hands, seal the exit.
“Oh, it’s kinda dark, actually,” she says, hesitant, turning back. You cannot move. She shrugs and proceeds down towards the ‘mineshaft’ again. Soon she will realise with more clarity what you are. Soon you will have to take action.
Will she forgive you for this?
Step 12.
Perhaps not. Perhaps it does not matter whether you have her forgiveness or not. Perhaps you will never deserve anything like that anyway, so you better buck up and accept this. She better accept this.
“D’you have any torches?” Rose asks you.
Step 13.
Her eyes widen again when you seal off the cave. Then, circling the blocks around her. Every wall black as void. She has a wooden pickaxe in her hands, white–knuckling the oak grip.
Even with this weapon, her eyes are on the floor, ceiling, walls. Not at you.
Ask yourself, why won’t she attack? It’ll make it easier.
Step 14.
From here on, you will be given a selection of options. Choose one or more from the list below:
a) Apologise, and apologise, and apologise some more. She’s trembling, unable to look at you or the sharp weapons in your hands, hanging from your belt, back against the wall. Like you were. Just like you were.
b) Listen to her beg. Following this, option a) is a guaranteed selection.
c) Profess your guilt to her. With a hint of sorrow, say this: “I don’t usually like to kill innocent people.” Watch how it makes the situation exponentially worse.
d) Remember that you do not deserve this grief.
e) Profess your innocence to her. “This is not my fault,” you may choose to say. The only thing worse than the dog who kills the rabbit is the dog who kills and pretends he didn’t, even when there is red ringing his maw, running down his throat and paws. The only thing is, you are worse than a dog. Accept that fact and move on.
f) All of the above.
Step 15.
She’s crying now. She throws a wooden shovel at you; it lands at your feet.
At what point did you decide that you had to do this?
There was a time, before, when this wouldn’t have even been an option.
What the hell are you doing?
What the hell?
What is wrong with you?
Step 16.
“I want to—” she’s sobbing, “I wanna stay with my brother.”
Say, “This is bigger than me and you. This is bigger than us.”
You do not have to mean it. But you will say it.
Step 17.
Watch as she glances up, directly into your eyes.
No, wait, that—
That’s not right, how—
Step 18.
“Spoke?” She says, confused.
Step 19.
“Who are you?”
Step 20.
There isn’t even time for her to scream.
Ringing through the ground is the sick, dull sound of skin and bones against the impossible edge of a dripstone’s blade. A single, quiet, punched–out exhale (or is that just the sound a punctured lung makes?) escapes her mouth, before she is gone for good.
When you find yourself outside, retch into the grass until there’s nothing left. Lungs burning, the cornflower clutched in your fist, there is something stinging your eyes and stealing the breath out from between your ribs.
Step 21.
And again: “Who are you?” The little boy will shout, after you hand him the flower. The petals are half ripped off, already wilted and drooping.
Not for the last time, you marvel at just how young he is. How could somebody so little make it out there all alone? Who could do such a thing to a kid like that?
“Who— where’s my sister?” Becky demands. His voice breaks here, in the way that little kids’ voices tend to. “Where is she? Tell me!”
Step 22.
Remember that you do not deserve this grief.
And then (as you fly away, the smoke of fireworks burning into the corners of your eyes): you are done.
The recipe will produce a single serving, given that you have correctly followed the above instructions.
You have, haven’t you? You’re the best at following orders, aren’t you?
Good job, Spoke. Ash will be proud.