Work Text:
There had been a shrine built in Evbo’s honor on the Noob Layer.
Quite frankly, it wasn’t much of a surprise. The original Parkour God had been an incredibly absent one, and even he had had his fair share of shrines. So to see a shrine for the new Parkour God was not a surprise.
What had surprised Evbo, however, was the offerings that came with it.
Every day, players from all layers would travel down to give up any random assortment of items in hopes of pleasing him. Evbo made it clear very quickly that offerings were not a requirement for anyone, even if they wished to ask a favor of him, but they showed up anyway. Gems and clothing of all kinds, trinkets and even little toys. Things of great sentimental value, he was sure, but it didn’t stop people from giving them up.
Over time, Evbo gave up trying to stop it at all. Instead, he started to display the gifts, especially the ones that felt the most personal. Some were placed on shelves or counters, others displayed in the temple itself, and the rest typically made their homes in the arenas. Little things to show his presence even when he was not there. It gave him a sort of warm and fuzzy feeling, that people were so willing to gift him things simply out of thanks.
And it wasn’t just Evbo to receive these tithes either. Things would show up meant for EMF and Seawatt, and surprisingly even a few for Boey. People knew that the best way to their God’s heart was through his family.
For Seawatt, it was typically gifts of clothing and fabrics. They were things from across all the layers, but after something had shown up once with an origin in the Fighter Layer and Seawatt had lit up in a way Evbo had never seen, the godling had been more than happy to let the information quietly spread of his preferences. Silks and cotton became more common than wool and leather, and it seemed as though Seawatt was wearing a different outfit every day.
EMF typically received jewels and precious metals of all kinds. Emeralds, amethysts, and gold were a given, but meticulously crafted lockets of redstone and lapis pendants weren’t uncommon either. There was a pro that had become incredibly skilled in crafting with obsidian and as such offered up a selection of bracelets and armor pieces crafted with the volcanic glass.
For the items meant for Boey, it wasn’t rare to see pieces of armor and decorative swords. At first, he had been incredibly confused by the receiving of such gifts, and perhaps he found some comfort in the knowledge that it was another form of worship to their god (and not a worship of him). Eventually, though, he started to wear them with pride. For a civilization with no use for swords, there were surprisingly a select few that had genuine skill in creating them.
There was definitely some overlap between them. Seawatt would receive a handful of precious gemstones or EMF would be given an obsidian sword that matched his chestplate or someone would offer Boey a scarf, but there was one thing that was reserved for the Parkour God alone. One thing considered too holy for anyone without netherite boots.
Food.
All kinds of food would show up every single day, always the freshest carrots from someone’s garden or the juiciest beef or freshly baked bread, still warm from the furnace. Cakes and pies and pork and steak and everything in between.
Quite frankly, it was a bit overwhelming. Extremely overwhelming. It had been years since Evbo had worn leather boots, but he couldn’t help but feel a twinge deep in his chest at the sight of so much food given so freely to him.
There had been a time, not too long ago all things considered, when he had starved every single night. When he only had one chance to eat a day, with that single chance always marked by a threat to his life. When he would look between the choice of raw chicken or raw beef and he would salivate uncontrollably at the thought of sinking his teeth into something that wouldn’t make him violently ill afterwards.
There had been nights when the only thing that would calm his aching stomach was sleep, but the ache would cause sleep to evade him. Nights when he had prayed fervently for just a single morsel of food. A single rotten carrot or half-eaten beetroot, he didn’t care. And every single night, his prayers went unanswered. Had their god abandoned them? Had he ever really existed?
(As it turned out, he did. He had existed, and he had seen how the Noobs starved and starved and died , and he had simply let it happen. He never stepped in. He never listened.)
These were the same people that once let him starve. The same Pros that had seen their frail, emaciated bodies and never once showed mercy. The same Masters that lived in the lap of luxury without ever once thinking about whose suffering it was built on. The same players that would avoid the villages at all costs when illness broke out, but never questioned why there were never any bodies of the dead.
Evbo wondered if they thought they had thrown them into the void. It would have been a waste.
Now, though, he had all the food he could want at his fingertips. He could create it from thin air if he wanted or choose from any variety offered to him any day of the week. Meat that had once been so filling that a single steak would cause him to vomit all night now settled in his stomach like a comfort. A comfort that had been denied to him for so long.
And there was something different about this food. It wasn’t the food itself that sustained Evbo, not anymore. He really didn’t need to eat at all, but doing so kept his body physically healthy. He might have been a god, but he was still using a mortal form most of the time.
So it wasn’t the food. Instead, it was the devotion . When he would bite into a loaf of bread that had been baked the same day, his mouth flooded with the rich taste of the care and worship that had gone into creating it. It was a feeling more than a taste, but it reminded him distinctly of honey. It warmed his entire body and filled his stomach more than anything else. Perhaps it was the reason he never tried to share the food he was given- the others wouldn’t understand. It didn’t matter if they ate a steak they had cooked themselves or one prepared by a god, it all tasted the same. Devotion was a taste only a god could stomach.
It had been one day, chasing the hunger, that Evbo found something at the shrine that he hadn’t been expecting.
A player was standing there. Not praying, not setting something down, simply waiting for the godling to appear.
Something in his chest tightened at the sight of this player. They couldn’t harm him, obviously. Based on their boots, they were only a Pro, and he, their god. Evbo touched down onto the floor, smiling despite the ugly writhing in his stomach. “Hey!” He called, pulling the player’s attention towards him. “What’s up?”
And the Pro… they smiled, and from their inventory they pulled out two objects. Ones that caused Evbo to flinch back violently and nearly trip over his own feet. Sensations he had almost forgotten about entirely welled up in his chest as he stared blankly forward.
“Chicken or beef?”
Evbo swallowed hard. Both cuts of meat were raw. Undoubtedly cold and fatty, just based on their appearance alone. His mouth felt impossibly dry as he managed out a confused: “...what?”
“I know what you are at heart,” the Pro said slowly. Evbo honestly didn’t think he recognized them at all, but his days as a Noob were a blur in his memories. This could have been any number of Pros assigned to feed them at any point in his life. “And it can’t feel right eating like this. Feasts of cooked food. It’s not natural. So.” They tipped their head. “Chicken. Or beef?”
…
…
It was cold. Uncooked and slimy. It smelled just a bit on the rancid side as if it had been left to sit out without proper care. His fingers made unpleasant squelching sounds as they dug into the sides of it.
It tasted awful going down.
It tasted so, so good .
…
The next day, the player was not there, but they had left another offering. It stood out in the midst of fresh meat and pastries.
Raw chicken.
Evbo felt guilty. From the time he had become Champion, EMF had been helping him with the issues he had around food. Being consistently full with the diamond boots on had been a terrible feeling, one marked by constant nausea no matter what he did. It had only been because of EMF that he had been able to get used to different foods in the first place. And now, here he was, all the way back at the beginning, scarfing down the slimy, raw meat as if someone would try to take it away again. As if he was just a Noob at the bottom level, tearing into his only meal of the day like a wild animal. The juices stained his hands and dripped onto his hoodie. No matter how fast he ate, it was like there wasn’t enough. Like he would forever be stuck at three food bars.
Too weak to sprint. Too weak to level up.
It felt good, almost. For the first time in so long , Evbo felt like he was exactly where he should be. Doing exactly what he should be doing.
The others- they couldn’t know about this. The progress they had made with him- what would EMF think if he saw this relapse? If Seawatt realized just how voracious his appetite had been? If Boey learned exactly how he learned what it felt like to starve?
Seawatt’s computer had never stopped marking him as a Noob. He probably could’ve changed it at any point, or even just demolished the building altogether. He never did either. He always wondered why.
It had been difficult to bite through the bones when he was a Noob. His teeth had been damaged from long standing illness and it was more jaw strength that he really could expend. Now, though, he indulged. Outer layers of bone cracked beneath his teeth, exposing the impossibly delicious bone marrow inside. The tough bands of ligaments were difficult to get through, but he didn’t plan on letting any of it go to waste.
(The cooked food remained untouched. Wasted.)
…
Evbo didn’t explain to any of his family why he suddenly fell ill. Years of immunity had faded with time, and now he was right back to suffering from the effects of uncooked food. They didn’t even ask. Sometimes, people just get sick.
Instead, EMF sat by his side and gently wiped his sweaty bangs from his face, murmuring soft words of comfort every time his stomach twisted and convulsed, and Seawatt kept checking his temperature and laying cold rags on his head and cooking warm, light broths to try to convince Evbo to eat something. Boey had stood nearby, watching with horror in his eyes as he repeatedly asked the others if Evbo was going to be alright, he’s going to survive, right?
And the entire time, he felt awful. The guilt was eating him alive, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell them that he had made himself sick because he was weak. Because he was offered raw meat one time and he immediately fell right back into the habit of taking it, even when there were other things at his disposal. Things made with so much love and care that it was an insult to not take them.
In Parkour Civilization, nobody jumped for the beef. Even if the beef was perfectly cooked and seasoned and there weren't any jumps to make.
It was safer to go for the raw chicken.
It was safer to make his family think that he had simply caught something while out in the Fighter Layer, something that the other layers had lost immunity to.
The soups and stews and broths that Seawatt made and tried to coax him to eat didn’t stay down. It wasn’t because there was anything wrong with them, but because there was something horribly wrong with Evbo.
They dripped with devotion, with love, with care.
He couldn’t stop wishing it was raw.
…
Then one day, there was an offering of an entirely different kind at the base of the shrine. The air reeked with iron from excessive splatterings of blood desecrating the holy place. It was a grisly sight, one that caught Evbo so off guard he froze entirely.
There was a murdered player by the shrine.
The entire temple was coated in blood and gore. Innards strewn about and blood caking the floors and walls. The player was missing their boots, so Evbo couldn’t identify exactly where they came from, but it was the least of his worries. Someone had murdered another player. Someone had murdered another player and left their body by the shrine.
Someone had murdered another player and left their body as an offering.
The taste of devotion was strong in the air. It hung on every molecule of oxygen, dripped invisibly from the statues and lanterns, painted the entire temple in golden hues.
Raw chicken had been one thing. He had eaten it for so long, it should have been expected for him to still crave it every once in a while. But this- this wasn’t normal. He hadn’t felt this in years , not since long before he had become a Pro. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t okay.
He was salivating.
When disease ran rampant, the Pros hid from the Noobs. They left their rations by the Parkour Temple, but it was far enough away that it would waste more hunger than it was worth to take it.
Noobs were not good at a lot of things.
Noobs excelled at surviving.
The longer a Noob lived, the better they would get at their one skill. They learned to sing to take their minds off of the hunger. They learned to chew on pieces of wood to trick their minds into thinking there was something edible there. They learned that leather was edible, and if you were careful about it, you could even spare enough of your boots to prevent going to Parkour Prison.
Many, many learned that player meat tasted like beef.
It had been a long time since Evbo had eaten raw beef.
…
Boey was worried about Evbo.
He had been acting strange lately. Leaning a bit on the manic side with grins too wide and a voice too fast. It didn’t make sense for the godling to act in such a way, but… Boey recognized it. And that was the part that scared him the most.
The worst part was that he had no idea what could have caused such a slow burning meltdown from his godly counterpart. Everything had been going wonderfully lately! Seawatt had finally learned how to do a 360! EMF had told him the other day that he was pretty sure they were almost finished repairing the Fighter Layer after all this time! No matter how hard Boey tried to figure it out, he couldn’t understand why Evbo was acting like this.
He had already shared his concerns with EMF and Seawatt, to which they had both admitted that they had noticed the behavior, too. No amount of nagging, though, had convinced Evbo to explain what was going on. He always gave them all that too-wide grin, said something about being fine, and then vanished before they could ask any follow up questions.
And now, Evbo had been missing for a few hours and was not responding to any of their prayers.
Something was very, very wrong.
They had split up in search of their god, each searching a different layer to cover as much ground as possible. Boey still wasn’t quite as good at the two and three block jumps needed to traverse the Pro or Master level with ease, so he had started searching the Noob Level.
He had asked the Noobs, but none of them had seen Evbo. There wasn’t even a trace of him. The last place Boey went to check was the temple.
It was always… awkward going into the temple. There was something comforting about it, true, but something also always put an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. Maybe it was just the concept of worship. It was… difficult, sometimes, to come to terms with receiving gifts and offerings after what his past had looked like.
Unfortunately, it was in the temple that he found Evbo.
Given, Boey didn’t recognize him at first. The greens of his hoodie were soaked with vibrant red blood, mixing into a strange, murky brown color. The blood wasn’t just on his hoodie, though, it was everywhere . Smeared across the quartz floors, caught in the godling’s fingernails, desecrating the shrine to the Parkour God, staining his teeth. He crouched in the middle of it, back hunched.
And at first, who could blame Boey for immediately thinking he was injured? He couldn’t see any wounds immediately, but the way it dripped from his mouth and stained his chin- Boey knew all too well what internal bleeding looked like. If he had been given the opportunity to think he probably would have given more hesitance, but all he saw was the person who had saved and protected and defended him for three years in a vulnerable position and horribly injured.
Who had been here? Who had managed to hurt the Parkour God so terribly?
Tallymarks carved in a wall.
“Evbo!” Boey cried as he shot forward. His heart was pounding, the smell of blood and gore was dizzying. His shoes squeaked as blood stuck to the bottoms. It was all too familiar. It was-
Evbo suddenly turned his head, just enough to look Boey directly in the face. His eyes glinted unnaturally in the light of the lanterns. Despite the immense amount of blood loss, his face was still full of color, his eyes still vibrant. It wasn’t right.
And it was only then that Boey realized that Evbo wasn’t bleeding. There were no open wounds or paling or shaking betraying internal bleeding. Blood stained his lips, but instead of wiping it away with an arm he licked his chops. His eyes were the same color and the same shape as they always were, but there was something unnatural twisting them into something else. There was something crazed and wild on his face. The expression of a predator that had been hungry for so long. A carnivore forced to survive off of grass and dirt finally being given his first meal. The Parkour God looked starved .
He hadn’t been crouching because he couldn’t stand straight. He was crouching over what looked like…
A body .
Boey felt sick to his stomach. Worse than that. He felt like he was about to puke. He stepped back, physically paling as he tried not to attract any more of Evbo’s attention. Rusty instincts came back to him slowly, of what to do when you were the prey. Of how to be quiet and compliant. There was no longer any question about where the blood came from.
Boey flinched when Evbo stood back to his full height. Given, he wasn’t tall in this form by any means, but Boey was still an inch or so shorter. Right now, it felt like he was towering over him.
Then, Evbo blinked. He licked his lips again and something seemed to register in his mind. When he rubbed his eyes, Boey couldn’t help but see what looked like flesh stuck under his fingernails.
“...Boey…?” Evbo said after a long, long moment. Boey clamped his mouth shut. Who knew what had flipped this switch in someone normally so calm? Who knew what could flip it back?
There was a bit of commotion behind them, although Boey barely registered it as he stared down his godly counterpart. Evbo’s eyes slid to something just over his shoulder. Boey swallowed back bile and spoke firmly to whoever had appeared behind him. “Get EMF and Seawatt.”
Whether they actually cared about his demands or they were just too used to following Evbo’s, it appeared as though they had listened, because there was silence once more. Evbo’s chest heaved as he looked down at his hands, then back at Boey. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.
“Wait,” Evbo rasped. His voice sounded rough. “Why… what…?” He looked back down at his hands, eyes skipping along the stuck bits of flesh and the ragged nails. He raised a hand to his mouth, shuddering horribly as he touched the blood that was starting to dry by the corners of his lips. “I didn’t-” He jerked forward as if to get closer, but Boey immediately matched it with a step back. Evbo cringed away. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He whispered.
Boey shook his head. Though, quite frankly, he would’ve done that even if Evbo had hurt him. Evbo physically relaxed at the confirmation that Boey was okay, but his shoulders stiffened again when the young adult shakily pointed at the space near the shrine. At the body of a player that looked as though it had been ripped apart by hands and teeth. No matter how badly Evbo’s body protested it, the godling still followed where Boey was staring, and…
Evbo physically gagged, though nothing came up. He stumbled backwards, wheezing breaths echoing through the quartz temple. “No, wait. I- I didn’t-” He covered his mouth with one hand and turned away as he retched again. To Boey, it looked as though he was trying to make himself throw up.
Seawatt had been searching the Pro Level, so it wasn’t a surprise that he was the first to appear. Still, Boey nearly jumped out of his skin at the frantic shout of “Evbo! ” That sounded like it was screamed directly in his ear.
Seawatt pushed past Boey immediately and didn’t stop until he was directly at Evbo’s side. He immediately grabbed the godling’s arms and started rapidly scanning them, trying to determine where he had been injured.
“I’m okay,” Evbo whispered as Seawatt continued his search. He scoffed in disbelief.
“You’re covered in blood! You’re not okay! What happened? Did someone-”
“It’s not mine.”
And don’t blame Seawatt for having neglected to take in the full scene the first time either. You could claim all that you want that nobody would want to hurt the Parkour God, but Seawatt knew better than anyone that anyone with a deep enough grudge didn’t care if the old one had stepped down. Evbo’s status coming immediately after the god that had watched hundreds, thousands of players suffer meant there were a lot of possible threats to his life.
It was more believable than this. More believable than the full scene.
Seawatt had to swallow back his own terror as the implications of what he was seeing had started to sink in.
A furred hand rested on Seawatt’s shoulder as EMF came to join them. Instead of appearing horrified or shocked like the others, the Champion had a somber look on his face. One of pity and deep, deep sadness.
“Let’s get you out of here,” EMF said quietly. His voice rumbled soothingly in Seawatt’s chest, the only reason he was able to finally take in the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.
“...but… what about…?” Boey started meekly. Evbo nodded slowly, knees trembling as he waved his hand. In only a few seconds, any trace of blood or gore or death had vanished from the ground. Evbo himself was still covered in it.
EMF sighed softly. “Boey, please tell everyone who was searching that Evbo’s okay. We don’t want to worry anyone.”
The young warrior swallowed hard, but he did give a nod of agreement. There was an intense conflict showing on his face- both the wish to stay by his family’s side while also being entirely unwilling to get too close. It couldn’t have been easy to find this scene for anyone, but Seawatt found himself realizing that it must have been even harder for Boey. It was impressive that he had managed to stand as strong as he had.
It would have been easier returning home if Evbo had been more aware of his surroundings. There was a silent agreement between Seawatt and EMF to not say a word about this. Instead, they gently herded him along the jumps, through the Noob layer and past the others until they were able to get him safely home. None of them said a word.
Evbo was still shaking, eyes wide and unfocused, by the time EMF was coaxing him out of his blood-soaked hoodie and Seawatt was running the water. There was so, so much that needed to be talked about. A terrible silence hung in the air as Seawatt drowned in his own thoughts.
EMF had… once briefly mentioned something that Evbo had told him before Seawatt had been revived. About the desperate things Noobs had had to do to survive. Seawatt had… attempted to keep a straight face, but as soon as he was able to have time to himself he couldn’t help but sob .
Seawatt hadn’t been the Evil Champion. He wasn’t the one that kept Noobs just on the edge of starvation. He wasn’t one of the Pros that shrugged off the responsibility of keeping them fed. He wasn’t the one that made it literally impossible for Noobs to leave their slowly decaying world.
But Seawatt was the one that made Noobs.
It had been his job to assign players to their position in life, from the second they spawned in. He remembered when Evbo spawned in. He had barely thought a thing of it, just another player. The only reason he remembered Evbo in particular was because the dumbass had failed the first jump after attempting to do a 360.
But he did have a distinct memory of putting those four letters next to his name.
Evbo_: NOOB
And Seawatt had to live with that for the rest of his life. It was because of him that Evbo had spent so many nights starving. It was because of him that Evbo would sneak raw meat into his meals when the others weren’t looking. It was because of him that Evbo had spent the first several weeks as a Pro and a Master being violently ill as his body protested the feeling of having food again.
It was because of him that Evbo had been so starved, so desperate, that he had been forced to seek out any source of sustenance, even if it scarred him so deeply it never fully went away.
It was because of him that Evbo, his wonderful, beautiful, forgiving god, had been forced into the ground and been dragged to such depths that he had to rip apart the meat of his fellow players just to survive.
It was because of him that Evbo sat here now, shaking so hard that his teeth were chattering and soaked head to toe in the blood of another player.
Another player that he had eaten .
Evbo had just eaten another player.
They couldn’t think about that right now.
By this point, Evbo was entirely topless. EMF hadn’t even bothered to try to spare the clothes- they were beyond ruined, and it wasn’t as though there was a shortage of fresh outfits in the closet.
Even after years of being the Parkour God with boots that never let his hunger dip beneath full and a feast waiting for him any moment of the day, Evbo never fully grew out of the body of a Noob. He didn’t look to be on the brink of starvation anymore, but even though his ribs faded they never fully disappeared from view, and his stomach still curved inwards after all this time.
The water was warm enough now. Seawatt nudged Evbo until the godling reacted, just slightly. Evbo allowed Seawatt to maneuver his upper body until his hair was in a better position to be cleaned. Evbo hummed quietly as Seawatt started to work shampoo into the thin, blond strands stuck with drying blood. There was more than he originally thought. It went all the way down to his roots.
It had been a long, long time since Evbo had relapsed. Since before Boey appeared, definitely. Even then, though, it hadn’t been anything like this. It hadn’t been this bad.
“I… don’t think it was something he enjoyed doing,” EMF had said quietly. “He just… they had to. To survive. They weren’t even fed sometimes, Seawatt. They were starving. ”
But Evbo wasn’t starving anymore. He hadn’t been starving for a long time. He hadn’t starved since he had been a Noob, and he was so far removed from that life that many couldn’t even tell he had ever been anything other than a god.
EMF took some of the currently clear water from Seawatt’s basin into one of his own. With Evbo acting so pliant in their hands, he gave EMF no trouble as he took a rag and gently wiped away the blood staining Evbo’s hands and face. The Parkour God opened his mouth as if to say something, but EMF hushed him immediately.
Seawatt tipped Evbo’s head back fully until his hair was floating in the basin. A few stray drops of water speckled across his forehead as Seawatt rinsed the muck away. A pattern of red swirls began to form as he teased out sticky clumps of drying blood and gore. It was going to take awhile for the water to run clear.
“What happened, Evbo?” EMF finally asked. “It’s been… some time since something like this occurred.”
“I’m sorry,” the godling said instead of an answer. “I… I don’t know what…”
“You’ve been acting strange for a bit now. Even Boey has noticed,” Seawatt said. Immediately, Evbo tried to sit up. Seawatt had to grab his shoulders to keep him from dripping watered down blood everywhere.
“Oh god, I didn’t- is he okay? He saw that-”
“Don’t worry about Boey right now,” EMF said harshly with a meaningful look at Seawatt. Seawatt would’ve rolled his eyes, but he was paying more attention to adding the second lather of shampoo to Evbo’s hair. “We’re worried about you .”
Evbo let out a shaky breath. “You shouldn’t be. Even after all this time… I just- I’m still just a Noob that can’t distinguish right from wrong.”
“On the contrary,” Seawatt spoke up. “I think every single citizen in Parkour Civilization would say the opposite.”
Evbo’s fingers twitched, and they both knew him well enough to recognize how much he wanted to grab for his hair. Fortunately, his hands were taken by EMF and Seawatt already had his hair in a much gentler fashion than he would’ve. “They- they don’t know . They don’t know what they worship.”
For a moment, Seawatt paused in the methodical washing of his partner’s hair and moved his hand down just a bit, to lightly scratch at the nape of his neck. Evbo leaned into the touch with another wobbly sigh.
“We have done much worse than you,” EMF murmured gently. He turned the rag in his hand until a clean spot faced outwards, then used it to gently scrub at the corner of Evbo’s lips.
“Do you know how many lives I doomed?” Seawatt said, and he couldn’t keep the crack out of his voice.
Had he known that the Noobs had it as bad as they did? No.
Would he have sent them to their own personal hells if he had known?
…that Seawatt was a very different person. Still bitter and angry. Filled with hatred for what had happened to his family, his layer, the few who had remembered the lives they once lived. He hadn’t cared what anyone else was going through because all that had mattered was what he had gone through.
It wasn’t until he opened his eyes, gasping for bloody breaths as life slammed into him with all the grace of a boulder to see Evbo staring down at him, tears in his glimmering green eyes and a sob on his lips, that he had suddenly understood.
How Evbo had ever made it out of there was a mystery. A miracle. An act of the Parkour God himself.
But here was the Parkour God now. His eyes were welling up again, though not with the joy of seeing a soul pulled back from the ether, but with the pain of someone who had made a jump he hadn’t wanted to survive.
Evbo never asked to be the Parkour God.
But now he was, someone who had been born and raised a Noob and learned how to survive in the most cutthroat environment possible. Three, four, five, ten years didn’t matter. He had spawned into Parkour Civilization as a child younger than even Boey had been when he came to them. Still bright-eyed and cheerful and enthusiastic. He had been one of the youngest Seawatt had seen spawn in- a whopping twelve years old. He had learned to survive by himself without parents, cursed to stand by and watch how the older Noobs survived.
How many cannibalisations had he witnessed at such a young age? How long did it take before he started to associate the act of eating his fellow Noobs as a necessity or even a comfort? How many had he been forced to eat just to survive?
Twelve years he had lived as a Noob. Twelve years of pavlovian training was not something that could be shrugged off after just a few years of consistent, healthy, filling food.
Seawatt himself had been much younger at the time, barely seventeen when he had first filled that role under the Evil Champion’s rule, and he had already grown so cold that he didn’t even care that he was sentencing another child to death.
The water was definitely running red after the second rinse. Seawatt dumped it out and replaced it without a word. Most of the blood stuck to the ends of Evbo’s hair had been washed away, but there was still some caked deeply around the roots. Seawatt didn’t want to know how he managed to do that.
“Can you tell us what happened leading up to this, Evbo?” EMF questioned. By this point, Evbo’s cheeks had been scrubbed pink, but he continued trying to remove the remaining stubborn flecks. “You don’t just… do things like this without a trigger. That’s not like you.”
“I… I don’t even know. I guess I started just feeling… awful. There was this Pro…”
On either side of Evbo, EMF and Seawatt immediately stiffened. There had been a person to trigger this episode? There was no verbal communication, both parties were fully aware that the other was planning bloody murder.
“They just… they made sense . That it wasn’t… natural. For me to have so much food to choose from.”
“Evbo…”
“They were right, though!” He exclaimed, shooting up so fast that Seawatt nearly scratched his partner’s scalp. Water sprayed everywhere with the movement of his hair. “It’s- it’s not natural for someone like me. I wasn’t… I wasn’t made to have all these… steaks and pies. It just… it felt right. Eating the raw chicken. It felt good .”
“I remember you being sick a couple of weeks ago,” Seawatt murmured. It had scared him far more than he wanted to admit, seeing Evbo in such a terrible state. He had wondered what could make the Parkour God so ill while leaving them untouched. “Was that… did you…?”
Evbo dropped his head and refused to meet their eyes.
“So they… started leaving more. And I couldn’t stop myself. It just… it just made more sense. The devotion, it tastes so good but it makes me feel wrong . It’s not meant for me, it’s meant for the Parkour God! And I… I can’t be Him and myself at the same time, and I’m so scared to become Him, so I just… I couldn’t stomach it.
“And today…” Evbo’s breath hitched. “Someone… someone left a body at the shrine, and I just couldn’t-”
It sounded like they had some players to hunt down and brutally murder, quite frankly. Seawatt gritted his teeth as he finally managed to tug Evbo back into the position he had been in originally. The godling was trembling violently under his touch.
“Okay,” EMF said after a minute. He had set aside the rag some time ago and had instead started gently massaging Evbo’s hands with his thumb. Seawatt pulled Evbo’s hair back into the water and pulled out a comb to carefully work the rest of the tangles out. “So there are some things we can do to prevent this from happening again, right?”
“There needs to be more security apparently,” Seawatt growled. “If someone can just get in and drop a body in the middle of the temple with no one noticing…”
“I’m pretty sure that body was the security,” EMF responded. “But you’re right. We’ll make sure this won’t happen again.”
“I’m sorry,” Evbo whispered.
“Don’t say that,” Seawatt said as he dropped his voice down to something more soothing. It was difficult with the anger roiling in his gut, but Evbo needed this right now. He needed him . “This isn’t your fault.”
“I scared you guys,” the godling mumbled. His eyes had drifted closed at this point. Seawatt set the comb aside and let his fingers run through Evbo’s hair, curling it around his pointer finger and letting it drift in the water.
“You did,” EMF agreed. “Because we were worried about you. We thought someone had hurt you.”
Evbo tipped his head further back until he was able to look at Seawatt through eyes open only a crack. “I scared Boey.”
“That too.” Seawatt nodded. “But he knows just as much as we do that this isn’t something that happened because you wanted it to. I’m pretty sure he is also more worried about you than anything else.”
“Do you think they’ll hate me when I bring them back?”
Quite frankly, most players would probably be honored to be eaten by their god. Seawatt was not going to be the person to tell him that.
“Nobody is going to hate you,” EMF said with a wince. “I promise.”
Evbo only hummed quietly in response. Was he falling asleep? It certainly seemed like he was falling asleep at this point. Seawatt couldn’t help but smile at the gradually smoothing lines on his partner’s face.
“...I love you guys,” Evbo said, softly, before officially falling completely asleep.
And even though he was definitely asleep, they both still smiled back at him and murmured their own “I love you, too”s.
“You good to finish here?” Seawatt asked EMF quietly. EMF blinked up at him and nodded.
“Yeah. Where are you going?”
Seawatt had already turned away, wiping his damp hands on his top before quickly sorting through his inventory to make note of which blocks he had at the moment. This was going to be fun. “Gonna go murder a Pro.”