Mort

Nothing to note

[mortismars]

The first time Scott felt l heartbreak was a moment he couldn’t really recall now. It was locked away in his mind, in a past life he only remembered through the hazy fog of dreams, fragments that smelled of freshly-tilled soil and gunpowder, along with a crown of blood-soaked poppies. The dreams that held those hidden memories always ended with a sharp pain in his throat, from the sorrow of his heart breaking or an arrow in his neck he could never quite remember upon it startling him awake. Perhaps it was both, he considered once, but it never did to dwell on heartbreak. So he didn’t.

In the end, his reward for the ignorance he invited was the ability to keep his memories at the end of the next Game. After his victory, and what a reward it had been, he would sometimes think sourly, he had to continue to possess so many memories of panic and betrayal and desperation while all others were permitted to live as blissful fools. Some more unaware than others, he’d think wistfully, watching the canary of their Games in his happy nervous cheer; he was clueless of the events that had occurred before and how lucky he was for it, though Scott would never say he *envied* someone who so invited death. At least Scott had never felt the disconnected gaping wound that the breaking of a heart left behind in the series he had won, and privately he doubted he would have been able to live with the memories of such a feeling, though some part of him still wondered if he could. Wondered if knowing would make waking up from those dreams that felt of heartbreak, spectral and lighter than it should be, any easier.

In their newest Game, still underway as he lay in bed pondering heartbreak after waking up from another dream with the ghost of the feeling, his heart wrenches in his chest in that same way it had only hours before, misty and foggy and disconnected. Painful. It was heartbreak, once again, but it wasn’t his own. He’d felt pangs of sorrow and fury from Pearl through their bond. Feelings of betrayal, he thought, though not without stamping them out. She’d betrayed him first, it didn’t matter if she had meant to or not, he resolved. But this feeling, it wasn’t sharp in the way that those directed at him through their bond were. It felt like a wail, not a scream. It left him feeling like he’d been drenched in ice water, and he shook as he sat up, his dog scrambling onto his bed and nosing his side, aware of Pearl’s pain reflected into his own mind. His shaking hands reached mutedly with slow careful movements to his dog who whines with concern until Scott presses his face into her fur for comfort. He needed to find out what had happened to Pearl, a small part of himself he thought he’d long banished urged. Address this feeling that made him so unable to process anything going on around him so late at night, when his focus was usually so sharp. He heard the scrape of paws from the worried pup on the door as he locked it behind him.

Pearl was furious when he found her standing on a hill with the moon at a glorious midnight high, turned red by a rare lunar eclipse. She wasn’t furious at him though, or rather she was, but not pointedly in the way she was frustrated with herself. When her words came spilling out, Scott dismissed them as per usual and didn’t pay them any mind until, “and then Tilly *died*!” That feeling returned in full force for a moment, that heartbreak, before giving way to numb smothering sorrow. Tilly, her dog, oh of course, Scott realized. There’s no one else for her, she lost…she’d lost the only one to stay by her side. “You do have my condolences for that,” he managed through it. The emotions that were his own felt soft and warm and unusual, not sharp-edged pity like he had felt upon learning of Tango taking Jimmy down with him, or smug ice-cold superiority when Etho and Joel fell. Pearl had lost her dog, and Scott felt sympathy. His own pet at home, probably curled up on his bed with no one there to stop her. She’d be keeping herself awake with worry until he returned, and Tilly was dead, and Scott held Pearl’s shoulders for a moment and they both sat in their shared feeling of heartbreak.

[mortismars]

The soulmates should be random, Grian thought to himself while finalizing everything for the new Life season. The mini mangrove swamp was in place, the pillager tower had been brought over from a world nobody was using, and he’d risen the Deep Dark out of the void below the world’s bedrock. He initiated the randomization and set about bringing the participants into the world while it ran in the background.

It would be random. It would be random, if Grian had the apathy that was expected of Watchers. Because worlds will bend themselves to the will of their makers, it was how Grian could make more goats appear when there had only been a few before. It was how an enchanted formed itself in the Deep Dark, because he desired one to be there.

Grian wouldn’t have these powers as a player, but in the moments before he resigned his Watcher form to become a player in the world he had made his memories and fondness for his fellow lifers compelled their bonds.

He recalled previous seasons of these games, winning alongside Scar the first time they were held. Scott winning with Pearl the next. Bonds forged from his fond recall of their separate victories unknowingly.

And the two who had been opposed to the victors last season though separately as they were, Ren who had been a member of the Fairy Fort with Lizzie, and BigB, and Cleo who had been betrayed; Martyn had come in third, had worked with the remains of the Shadows and the members of the Scottage briefly, with Cleo, and Pearl, and Scott, and Ren, and Etho.

He wondered how Ren had felt learning of BigB’s betrayal of Cleo. Cleo who had a sharp dry wit and knew how to use the stroke of an even sharper, drier match to destroy, the way Martyn knew when he made traps that worked unlike Grian’s own, his jabs and jokes sillier than Cleo’s were sharp. He wondered who they’d each be paired with, but the world had already Listened and knew.

Joel had played on his side for a bit this past time. He didn’t seek out connection, he never did, but he wasn’t a loner the way he’d been the first time around. And he had killed Etho, who was similar in his distance, though he only seemed to possess the same disconnected nature Joel had on the surface.

Etho would have won if he had used a shield, Grian knew it as well as the world did, and the world paired him with the other who knew as much in response, the one he’d died to without one.

Grian wondered if Tango would have a game for them all to play this season like he had in the last two. Games that came with risk, intertwined with death. The first had killed Joel and Jimmy, the second granting victory to Lizzie after Joel quickly turned red. Tango’s games always seemed to involve Joel’s death, he noted, and briefly he wondered if they’d be paired as the world hummed it’s distaste and refused to split Joel from his existing bond.

Tango and Jimmy had the same bright supportive energy, the same spark that lit matches that made them burn out. Jimmy always burned out quickly, while last series Tango had accidentally ignited the cause of his final demise.

Everything always moved quickly in these series, and for the pettiest of reasons. Things that wouldn’t matter in any other world. Cows, sheep, or a clock. Impulse had died over a clock. One Bdubs had wanted. What a silly way to go.

And as time tucked closer to the beginning of their stage being set, and a clock chimes on an hour the final pair was formed out of the ticking of redstone encased by a body of gold.

They’d all just have to wait and see who the pair would be. It would be random after all, Grian reasoned as the world Listened and disobeyed. The soul bonds would be left up to chance, and the would be. They would have been. If Grian had been as apathetic as Watchers were meant to be.

[mortismars]

Pairing from a random soulmate swap with Jimmy and pink-haired Ren