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3rd Life has been a fun little experiment in Etho's opinion. It's had it's ups and downs, don't get him wrong, but overall being able to focus on something outside of redstone tinkering on Hermitcraft, or wandering around on his personal world was doing great things for him.
Plus, it was a great way to spend time with friends and get to truly know people he had simply been acquinatances with. Such as Skizz. His name was mentioned quite a bit by Zed, Impulse, and Tango on hermitcraft, but Etho had never been on a real server with him yet.
That didn't mean that there weren't periods of inaction. It always left Etho feeling restless, like he needed to get up and do something, and as a green life, there wasn't exactly much to do. So he made up for the restlessness, the boredom, by towing the line. Planning and making traps across the server, even though green lifes weren't technically supposed to kill for themselves. He also keeps himself in the know, talking to as many members of the server as he can, making a mental map of where everyone is, both physically, and in supplies and gear.
The newly enchanted feather falling on his boots gave him a good advantage in the long run, and had also given him a fun little chance to scare and one up Bdubs, which was something he was never going to skip on doing. The only problem was the boredom that gradually seeped back into his bones after that conversation. The way that he started to get more unfocused when he wasn't fidgeting or running around.
Boredom was never a good thing on a server where they were fighting to the death. It offered recklessness, it took its time to chip away at the awareness of the players, and left them off-guard. If Etho wanted to survive, wanted to win, he could not be vulnerable for any given reason.
Which was a big part of the reason he was gathering up his redstone and crafting some TNT, and was making his was to Joel's mountain. Bdubs was the easiest person to target, because Etho knew him well. He didn't know Cleo as well, but he knew that she was more calm, more collected than Bdubs, and she would not hold this mostly playful scheme against him.
'Mostly' because he wouldn't mind if the missle he intended to launch accidently did kill them. It'd be less competition, and he could already imagine Bdubs screams of anger. He hadn't really changed since mindcrack or UHC, all that time ago.
The entire concept of 3rd Life actually reminded him of Mindcrack's UHC. Your and your friends are thrown onto a server, there's teams, and the goal is to survive. A part of Etho thought that he had a head start compared to the others. Maybe if Doc or Beef were there too, then it would be more balanced, not that Bdubs had been particulary bad at surviving.
It almost felt like he'd returned to an old home of his, outside of the redstone and personal projects he'd ammassed on his personal server and Hermitcraft, like something he'd said goodbye to once, and had never been expecting to see again.
There was no point in reminiscing over things long past, and Etho refocused himself on the short journey to Joel's. It wasn't too long of a trek, and finding Joel's base wasn't too hard when it was basically a straight line between them. He just had to keep walking, or in some places, swimming, and he'd end up exactly where he wanted to be.
He double checked his inventory for all of the supplies he'd need before he left. No point in walking all the way there, just to realize he'd forgotten a redstone block or something. He didn't really need to double check though. Working with redstone for so long had him constantly hyperfocused on how much he had. The amount in his chests, the amount in his inventory. He'd even begun mentally keeping track of Tango and Impulse's redstone, and on the things they'd used redstone in.
The dead bush hill was quiet when Etho got there, but Etho could tell that Joel was home from the footsteps coming from inside. It took him a second to realize how he could hear them, before he realized that Joel still hadn't repaired the hole in his window. Luckily for Joel, Etho just so happened to have brought some glass with him. He and Joel saw each other at about the same time, and he watched curiously as Joel schooled his startled impression mere seconds after it had first appeared on his face.
"Gosh, Etho, you scared me." He looked around sheepishly as he approached the open window.
Etho titled his head, and pur[posefully spoke louder than he usually would have. Joel was one of the people he didn't interact with outside of 3rd Life, so he wasn't sure if he could hear him through the mask, like most of the Hermits had gotten used too. "You still haven't replaced this window? I can do it for you if you can't-"
He'd already brought out the glass on his hotbar, and was raising it to place a pane between the two of them, but Joel started waving his hands in a 'no' before he could place it down.
"No! This is here for a reason, not-" He squinted at the light grey stained glass in Etho's hands. "Wait a second. Was it you who was putting the glass in my chests?" Joel leveled a reasonable glare at him.
It was Etho's turn to look sheepish now, lowering the glass panes and switching back to his pickaxe and shield while he looked away. Before he could defend himself though, the shriek of an angry enderman startled both of them, and he turned around, raising his shield to defend himself from the agressive mob, even though he was sure he hadn't looked at one.
He relaxed a little when he realized it was just the enderman that Joel had trapped in the boat. He wasn't sure why Joel kept it around, but he was much more interested in why it was angry, it's jaw unhinged and staring off towards the desert. Etho turned his head around to look at Joel, while he raised his hand and gestured the mod's way with a thumb.
Instead of just answering through the window, Joel made his way through the house and through the door before he made his way to Etho's side. "It's my security measure. I'll be completely honest, I don't remember who it's angry at right now." He grinned towards Etho as though that was meant to be reasurring.
Etho shook off the temporary fear that came with the threat of being attacked. It actually was reassuring in a way, seeing as if Joel was explaining it to him now, then he probably had never even had the chance to look at it.
He and Joel continued with their small talk for a little while, eventually coming to a near end of the conversation, before Etho remembered he had come here with a goal.
"Oh, Joel! I almost forgot, can I use your mountain for something?"
He tacked on a sincere smile at the end, in an attempt to show that he genuinely didn't mean anything bad, before he remembered that Joel couldn't just see through his mask.
Joel squinted at him anyways. "Depends. What do you want to use it for?"
Etho brought up his inventory and pulled out his redstone blocks and observers, and brandished them in front of him to show Joel. "I want to shoot a missle towards Bdubs and Cleo's base." He pulled his arms back a little bit just in case Joel wanted to take his redstone for any particular reason. He wasn't sure of Joel was someone who would find redstone useful.
Joel barely glanced at the items in his hands before he'd already come to a decision. "Oh, Please do."
For the most part he let Joel go about his own business while he worked on the machine. Before he'd begun working on it, he'd asked Joel if he'd care about Etho digging around. He didn't want it to be visible to Cleo and Bdubs, in the case that they would come up the hill to destroy it early.
After getting the go ahead for that, he settled down into the newly dug area, which had the distinct smell of somewhat moist dirt when it's jsut been revealed to open air, and began piecing all the components together.
He'd done this so, so many times, it was easy to let himself get lost in the rhythm of it all. Grabbing a redstone block, reorientating himself, rubbing the excess dust from the block off on black pants, and then placing the observers next.
He wasn't able to lose himself fully in the moment, as he was still talking to Joel while working on it. he wasn't sure if he could've anyways because of the constant teleporting sounds of the enderman, which had him slightly paranoid even though he knew realistically, there were no enderman he'd looked at.
Everything was going normal, until the communicator on his hip buzzed with a few simultaneous messages. His eyes darted over the death messages in surprise, something that he could tell was shared by Joel just a few feet away. Despite everything in 3rd Life thusfar, it hadn't occured to him that any of them would be willing to take such extreme measures just to end the lives of another player.
He'd learn later that it had been Grian who had done it. Grian, who had bent the rules they had put together, just so that he could feel the rush of adrenaline that came with the blood that now metaphorically stained his hands. He hadn't been close enough to the explosion for it to be physical, but everyone would know it'd been him.
In the moment, though, he and Joel had moved on. He'd finished working on the missle, had placed the tnt down and set it in motion, while he and Joel raced down the mountain in an attempt to distract the residents of the Crastle, from the bomb that was gradually approaching the build.
There came a certain point to working with redstone, especially in one sitting, where rubbing ones hands off on cloth would start to become ineffective, because the cloth would get overrun by the red of the redstone, and would just start to rub off the red color it'd collected back onto the hands of the person using it.
Joel offered his bucket of water to Etho, for him to dip his hands in, but Etho just shook his head. He'd worked with redstone for long enough to know it didn't come out that easy.
— — ♡ — —
Last Life was proving to be very different from 3rd Life.
Between the randomization of hearts, the new teams, and the boogeyman curse, it seemed like Last Life was geared up to be more difficult. Planned in a way that'd make some of the more cautious or level headed take action. They can't just sit idly by and try and survive in the background when they risked going from dark green to red just for refusing one singular kill.
Etho's mind was strangely empty while he was working out the deal with Scar.
In Etho's experience, all conversations with Scar could fall into one of two categories. The first was the normal, or rather, the average everyday scar interactions. These were the ones he experienced on Hermitcraft, or what he'd heard of from friends who talked to him outside of Hermitcraft.
The second category, the one that was for the most part exclusive to the life series, was mental chess.
Etho wasn't really sure what it was, but making deals with Scar was always a certain degree of threatening. In 3rd Life, it was trying to convince Scar for things that you wanted or needed, or information, or even just trying to convince him not to sic Grian onto them. Now, it was trying to convince Scar to give Bdubs a heart without agreeing to unfair terms.
Scar was amazingly good at writing the fine print. Therefore, Etho had to be careful with ever single sentence in their negotiation. A game of chess, and the winner would only be decided by who was indebt to who in the end.
Etho didn't actually think that either of them were going to end up in any kind of debt. Scar was good at getting what he wanted, but Etho could tell he wasn't really trying. He wanted things, but he wasn't going to swindle his way to get them.
He was more lonely than anything else.
"Alright. Go ahead and break the crystal, and I'll give Mr. B-Double-O's his new heart!."
Etho hesitated before he went through with breaking it. He wasn't sure what he was hesitating for. He really did want Bdubs to have a life back, to bring him back from the brink of permanently being gone, and to take down the fences seperating their shared base, while finally not having to worry about Bdub's burying an axe into his back.
When he looked back on the moment, his best guess was that he was accounting for whether he could fulfill his curse before he broke that crystal.
The clink sound echoed around the small room, and Scar let our a happy little sound, before pressing enter on his communicator.
"Done!" Scar cheered, and the empty feeling that been tormenting Etho gradually filled back up, and Etho genuinely smiled as he followed Scar down the stairs and out the front door, to oversee the large taiga forest. he gasped and pulled out his communiator, talking to Etho as he did: "Shoot, we need to message him! Do you know where he is?"
Etho looked out over the trees as Scar messaged Bdubs in the general chat. "I think he's with Cleo, right now, so he'd better run fast."
He laughed along with Scar at the comment, and they both watched as the distant figure making their way towards them gradually morphed into Bdubs, until he burst out of the treeline and made his way up the steeper side of the hill as fast he could.
"Scar! Etho!"
Etho made his way over to where Bdubs had hunched over out of breath. "Are you okay, Bdubs?"
His teammate raised a thumbs up, and took some time to get his breath back before he responded. "Yeah, yeah. I'm fine! Cleo tried to chase me, but I made it. Did you get me a life?"
"I did!" Etho smiled and patted Bdubs on the back, and took a few steps away from his friend as Scar made his way forward.
Scar pulled the contract book out of his inventory with a flourish, and thrust the book in Scar's direction. "Etho and I bargained for you to get a heart, and now all you need to do is sign this book."
Bdub's squinted at the book in Scar's hand, and made a quick glance towards Etho. Etho nodded and Bdubs carefully picked the book up out of Scars hands and opened it. "I'm reading this first," He stated, and Etho thought about whether or not he meant to sound so much like a petulant kid as he said it.
It was as Bdub's started reading out the book that the emptiness came back again. It was jarring, and Etho shivered for a second from the sheer discomfort the feeling brought with it. Only this time, the emptiness wasn't at the forefront of his mind for long before the bloodlust was.
It takes him a second to reorient himself. The boogeyman curse at it's fullest in his veins, driving him to kill and cure. A part of him wondered if this was how it felt like for Bdubs, back on day one. When he'd travelled all around with Etho, how they'd agreed to stay with eahc other for the season, and then he'd ended up killing Grian to cure himself.
Bdubs had so many chances to kill him during that entire session, and yet he'd been loyal to Etho. Maybe the bloodlust wasn't as bad for him, maybe it got worse for the players the deeper into the game they got, but still, that didn't mean nothing.
Bdub's was now on yellow, his second to last life. If Etho killed him, then he'd be red. All it would take was one wrong move for him to be out of the game. Less competition, which could be helpful for Etho in the end, considering he wanted to win. But again, they were on a team together.Bdub's trusted him, and Etho knew what Bdubs was like when he had a reason spite or hate.
Scar, on the other hand, was dark green. He had life to spare, and Etho was sure that if Scar had ever felt the bloodlust, he would understand. Scar wouldn't hold a grudge as impactful or dangerous as Bdub's would. Killing Scar here would guarantee Bdub's gets to stay on Yellow, while also reducing Scar of some of his longevity.
It took him seconds to make the mental comparison between the two and come to a decision, all of those seconds in which he was already placing blocks below his feet to tower up into the air. He off handedly called down to them that he was trying to get a good vantage point to look around the server.
Bdubs nodded along, but Scar was too busy talking about the deal to give Etho any kind of acknowledgement. Good, Etho thought. It was surprisingly easy to get Scar focused on something trivial or something that he was passionate about, and Scar was easy to fight when he was distracted.
Etho waited for a bit, pulling out his fishing rod as he watched the two of them below him, and he waited until the scribble of a pen on paper sounded as Bdubs signed his name to cast the line and watch as it latched itself into Scar's cloak. He took a deep breath, rested his hand on the reel, and pulled as hard as he could while reeling the line in.
Scar let out a panicked series of shouts as he was hoisted off of the ground, flailing around in the air in an attempt to get himself back on solid land. Etho didn't manage to pull him all of the way up the dirt pillar he had made, and missed his axe swing becasue of it, but the ticks of fall damage scar took as he plummeted back to the hillside still brought Scar's heart count down.
He jumped off of the pillar he'd made himself, braced for the impact on his legs, and let the electiricity of the moment lead to him smiling and shouting: "I am the boogey!" He chased Scar down the hill with his diamond axe, until Scar's being poofed out of existence below him.
And all of the sudden, all of the bloodlust that'd been puppeting his every thought was simply gone. It took him a second to process what he had just done and the cacophony of messages from the main chat. Bdubs let out a baffled kind of laugh as he made his way down to Etho's side, collecting some of the items that Scar had dropped. "What- Were you really the boogey? Wha- Okay. Okay. We should probably leave before he comes back." He stuttered over his words, eyes darting between where Scar had been, all of the items now scattered across the ground, and Etho. "I'll make him a chest for his stuff."
Bdub's was quick to making the chest, and Etho joined him in gathering up the stuff. He brushed his hands off on the stone nearby first, noticing a few drops of blood or red stains that had landed on them and the hilt of his axe. He felt guilty about the death, he really did, but something about the heat of the moment, the way the adrenline rushed, the way all of it had come together had Etho looking forwards to being able to do that again.
Scar found them before they left, and Etho was sheepish in admitting his intentions and motivations, but after signing another contract to make up for the death, he and Bdubs were allowed to go on their merry way, leaving Bdubs back on Yellow, and leaving Etho to deal with how his views of killing the other players had changed.
— — ♡ — —
Double Life was originally something that Etho wasn't sure he would like. All of the games had been fun, but when Grian had pitched the idea of being tied to another player, Etho had been reasonably hesistant. After Last Life, he wanted the opportunity to let lose, to have fun and hunt instead of simply playing the safe game.
Being linked to another player would mean that all of his actions were going to have consequences on them too. He'd have to hold back to keep him teammate from being caught up in his actions.
Or at least, that was how he viewed it until he'd ended up teamed with Joel.
Joel had been crazed last season, going after everyone and winning, taking lives left and right, and he'd been smart while doing it. He knew how to fight well, and he had no problems with causing chaos and starting fights even if it'd get people on his bad side.
Needless to say, all of Etho's worries went out the window.
Of course, as green lives they had no intentions to get on people's bad side, or chase the remaining bloodlust from the last season. The point of the game was to survive, not to aimlessly hunt and kill. So for the first session, the plan was just to get settled, to gather armour and tools so they wouldn't be left flailing around trying to get the items they needed later.
By the end of the day they'd already died once and were left to figure out where they wanted to make their base, while still having to get armour.
That was the beginning of Double Life.
Now, in session 5, they didn't have to worry about armour or safety, or playing the right cards. They were red lives, on a server of mostly red lives, and they had bigger fish to fry. Such as, Grian and Scar, still on green. Before the servers resident red lives could attack and take them down a life or two, they managed to trap themselves, falling into a pit thatRen and Bigb had apparently made, where they'd been collected zombies to let lose on the server.
The success of that trap inspired Joel and Etho to make one of their own.
"Do you have the tnt?" Joel asked, rumaging through their chests to pull out the skulk censor and offer it to Etho. Etho took it from him and nodded.
"I do!" He thought about how they were going to pull off the trap for a bit. "Do you have a place in mind for us to do this, or?" He drew out the 'or' for a little bit before waiting for Joel's response.
Joel made his his way through more of their chests, looking any extra sand or gravel, or just any tnt they may have had lying around. "I'm thinking we put it near Cleo's. Surely someone will be curious enough to try and just grab free tnt, right? And plenty of people live around that area."
Etho nodded. He waited until Joel was looking through the last of the chests and made his way up the ladder to the deck of their ship, waiting for Joel and double checking his inventory, a habit he still hadn't grown out of, and the two of them started to make their way to the area they'd chosen.
They took a little bit to figure out exactly where they wanted to put the pile of tnt, but it didn't take long. Etho took the tnt out of his inventory and split it into two smaller stacks, handing one to Joel. Togetehr they managed to make a somewhat normal pile of tnt, albiet it was a little more molded on one side than the other. They'd had an odd amount, so it wasn't exactly symmetrical, though maybe it wouldn't have been anywasy with the hole in the middle.
"I'll be real, Joel," Etho glanced towards Joel, a little worried, "I don't know how these work."
He hadn't had the chance to work with skulk sensors yet. This was his first real opportunity to venture down into the deep dark after it had been added into the world generation seeds. He wasn't sure exactly how it worked, only that the deep dark had begun to pop up in some world seeds, and then gradually appeared in them all. Like the universe had evolved yet again to bestow upon them something new.
Etho had been on servers long enough to see the Universe make many changes.
Joel looked down towards the sensor in his hand, the little tendrils of which were gradually trying to latch themselves to the appendage holding them. "Just- Just place it in the middle of the stack, and it should do the job."
Etho followed Joel's eyes down to his hands with his own, and shook his hand so the tendrils wouldn't get stuck to him. He sighed and took a few steps closer to the pile, shocking Joel out of his focus enough for him to take a few careful steps back himself. "Surely nothing will go wrong," Etho muttered, and gently placed the skulk down inthe middle of the pile.
He waited a few seconds in case the tnt went off immediately and he just couldn't tell, but once he was sure he hadn't activated it just yet, he crouched and started to slowly sneak his way towards where Joel was standing by the door to Cleo's house.
Every footstep felt like it was the difference between life and death. He thought about comparing the moment to walking a minefield, something Scar had talked about once while ranting about soem zombie apocalypse server, but the comparison felt too accurate. Having to watch every single step, avoiding any sticks lying around, lest the sensor hear, and set of the explosives they'd placed around it.
He stopped a few times to breathe, aware of his rapidly rising heartbeat, but ultimately he made it to the door in one piece, reaching out towards Joel who pulled him further away from the pile. Thye both stared for another second, two, before they both turned and bolted towards their horses lounging near the world border.
"Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh-"
"Joel we need to go!"
"Across the bridge, Etho!"
Etho was a little surprised to see people had already started collecting on the bridge, Bigb and Ren staring wide eyed at the pile of tnt, and Martyn, also on a horse, just stalling towards the edge. Cleo was a ways behind them, but Etho could tell she already knew what they were doing.
"What's going on here?" Martyn's distinctly accented voice echoed over the cliffs between the bases, and Joel and Etho shared a sheepish look, slowing their horses to a slow trot across the bridge so they could oversee the trap they had just left.
"Nothing," Joel spoke for the two of them, "We had some extra tnt that we didn't want anymore so we just left it there. You can go get it if you'd like." Compared to how Joel normally sounded when he was a red life, Etho thought that he sounded rather normal.
The four other occupants on the bridge collectively looked back towards the pile.
"Not sure I exactly trust that," Bigb muttered, squinting at it.
It didn't take too long before Ren leaned over the edge of bridge and pointed down to where Martyn had built his bleeding heart. "There's someone digging over to the tnt. All of them collected to the edge to peer down to where Scar was building a one by one block bridge across the gap, making his way towards Etho and Joel's trap.
Etho heart skipped a few beats in his chest. Surely it wasn't that easy.
Bigb, Ren, and Cleo marvelled over what Scar was doing, and Etho was sure he and Joel both had on the same expression of surprise.
Martyn rushed over to his horse, getting one foot in the stirrup and throwing his weight over so he was resting in the saddle, rushing back across the bridge and making his way down the hill across from Scar to 'get a better view'.
"Is this the memorial?" A voice called out form behind them, and he and Cleo both turned to Scott who had joined them on the bridge.
"No," Cleo sighed, pointing to Etho beside her, "Scar's trying to grab some tnt that these guys left in my house." Down the bridge, Ren and Bigb had started to make their way closer to Cleo's house, stepping off of the bridge to get a closer look, and Joel followed after them.
Scott and Cleo continued talking, and Etho turned to watch the movements of the man in the ravine.
"I don't really know if Scar is-"
Cleo didn't make it through half of her sentence before the first explosion sounded, and Etho watched in wonder as the pile of shoot out in every possible direction, exploding like fireworks one right after the other.
His communicator buzzed at his side, but Joel was faster, whipping it up in his hand to look at the message, and turning to Etho with a wide grin.
"It worked!" He cackled, and Scott and Cleo both laughed in disbelief behind him. "I can't belief- Etho, it actually worked!"
Etho stared at the damage that'd been left behind, actaully baffled. "It worked," He parroted Joel, "It actually worked!" He snapped the reins on his horse, following Joel towards where Scar had been just moments earlier, cheering in celebration all the way.
A part of him had really not been expecting the simple trap to work, but it had, and it had been effective. There was now only 2 pairs of yellow lives on the server. He thought about getting another skulk sensor from the deep dark, but he figured he wouldn't need it. He hadn't used any redstone on this trap,
Etho smiled, knowing they still had more to do before the session ended, and the feeling of his red life was still thrumming under his veins. The drive to destroy, which only seemed to get more intense the more Etho tried to put it off.
He and Joel would have something to stave the red life bloodlust off later, the unintended consequences of the kill they'd just pulled off, but for now the two of them laughed over their kill, and made their way to Scar and Grian to give them their stuff back, and figure out why Scar would go for the obvious bait.
— — ♡ — —
Limited Life was proving to be much more stressful than any of the past games they had played. Adding a time gimick instead of a life limit gave them all a lot more to work with, the chance to fail without too much worry in the start, but they learned very quickly that one death could make a big difference.
This was going to be the last session, he knew. No yellow's in the board, the sound of lightning already reverberating across the server a few times. The clock was ticking, people were dying left and right, and the server was at the pinacle of anarchy.
he turned back around to look at where Impulse had taken a different path from them, mindful of his footsteps even though he wasn't exactly looking at where he was stepping. He'd seen something else on the way down from the higher skynet and had seperated from their group to go for it instead.
The strand of cobble that he, Tango, and Martyn were walking on wasn't exactly safe. The entire skynet lacked lighting, which was already pretty dangerous considering the nighttime air around them, but the entire platform was only one block in width. One mis-step and any of them could fall to their death.
Etho took stopped for a little bit to wrap his coat tighter around himself, watching Tango and Martyn walk ahead of him on the thin strip of cobblestone above the world. When Skizz had originally brought up the idea of the skynet and the four of them had started to work on it, He hadn't accounted for the much colder air in the sky.
The Team TIES base had more blankets than most other bases on the server. Tango had batch made a ton to help them warm up from the cold heights. Etho wasn't sure if Joel and Grian had felt it too when they'd created their own sky bridge. He wasn't sure if the Bad Boys had also gone out there way to make comfort from the cold, considering there was a lack of wool on the server. He wouldn't have been surprised if they had, seeing as there base was higher up in the sky than most others, above even all the towers built across the server.
Martn stopped and turned back to look at Etho, tilting his head. Etho sighed, letting go of his jacket and started walking again. Martyn waited until he had gotten close enough to hear him before he himself kept walking.
"You doing good, Etho?" He'd asked, and Etho had barely managed to make it out over the roaring wind.
Skizz's skynet had been a great idea until Joel had replicated it and made it more dangerous. Everyday Etho was hyper aware of the threat of a cart being dropped from the sky. Being out in the open was a death sentence if anyone that wasn't a teammate was above them, but being on the overarching build itself wasn't any better. It had been the cause of Jimmy's death, the cause of a few too many falls.
"Yeah. Just a bit chilly." Etho answered. If Martyn felt it too, he had no intent to let Etho know. They weren't on a team together, merely working together against a common enemy. Tango stopped ahead of the two of them, finally widening the bridge that they had been precariously traversing. he waved Martyn and Etho to both go past him, and Etho grabbed his shoulder in a quick display of reassurance.
The Frog Tower was silent when they reached it. Etho would have assumed that their was no one inside the actual build, judging from the people he could see fighting far far below them, but they'd seen Grian bridging off of the top just a few minutes earlier. Something about the way he'd been acting had made Etho think he was running low on time.
He wouldn't mind getting a kill on Grian, after he had gotten the quad-kill on his team. Not to mention everything else that Grian had done on the skynet, dropping bomb after bomb, and leaving every else to pick up the pieces. Etho could respect the game, after all, his team had done the same, but the constant time they were recieving was placing a target on their back. Not to mention how he'd stolen the skynet idea from Skizz.
Etho thought back to the axe he'd buried in Skizz's back. He owed Skizz a kill on Grian. Avenging his honour, as Skizz may have said, if he were still there.
He glanced at his own timer, just breaking the one hour mark. The extra time Skizz had given him was running out. They were all running out, making choices on the fly becasue they couldn't worry about planning anymore. The clock ticking started reverberating through his ears. Another thing he assumed everyone shared, just another reminder that they were running out of time, and if they wanted to win, they needed a kill.
He whispered to martyn now that they were standing still. "I'm at an hour. I'll drop the minecarts."
Martyn just nodded, a steely look on his face. Etho mentally shrugged. What Martyn was thinking didn't really matter if he wasn't going to argue against Etho on this. He was calm when he palced down the railing. In Last Life, he'd have been worried about the amount of iron they had left, would've asked Tango if making the carts that would end up taking his life was worth it. Now in Limited Life, he could care less about the resources.
He'd reflected on his life over the past four seasons when he'd been a yellow life, when Bdubs had brought it up with him and Cleo. He hadn't changed too much over the seasons, he thought. After the boogeyman had originally been implemented in Last Life, he'd gotten much more kill hungry, and it crossed over into Double Life, but for the majority of this season, up until standing here in the sky, he hadn't really felt it.
A break was in order, Etho thought.
After, he won, of course.
Martyn took a few steps away, as much as he could safely manage without falling, as Etho placed down the minecart. They locked eyes for a few seconds, and then Etho pushed.
He watched it fall, not too much of a distance, and he raised a hand to cover his eyes as it exploded. A shrill shriek sounded from inside of the structure, and Etho smirked.
"Hey, Grian!" Tango yelled, and Martyn laughed alongside them. He set down a second minecart, and shoved it off of the rails, that action much more vigourous this time.
Etho watched it plumet, heard what sounded like Grian panicking, and then it was done.
He felt the time rush through him, the ticking in his ears returning to the distant ambience that had always been there, before he saw the real explosion. Grian had died on impact, a nice death, compared to the pain that could've come from burning in lava or something similar. hH swivelled around to look back at spawn, watching as Grian reformed on the stone, and immediately drew out his sword, making a mad dash towards the clocker's tower where Cleo, Scar, and Bdubs were fighting one of the other teams.
He looked up further, catching a glimpse of movement on the otherside of the skynet, and spotted Impulse making his way around the mess of pathways to meet them. It'd be a few minutes, probably more than 10, before he got to them.
He leaned back a little bit, finally regaining awareness of the three of them leaning over the edge to look at the battlefield that had become their server. Someone was shooting arrows below them, Etho assumed they were aiming for Impulse seeing the trajectory, but the arrows would never get far enough to hit him.
There was another ping from there communicators, and Etho glanced towards the death notification and interest. Grian had gotten a kill on Cleo.
"He must've been running out of time." Etho muttered, and Tango nodded bside him, a kind of sollen look replacing the bloodlust euphoria which had been there.
Tango peeked back over the edge, letting out one of his curious sounds as he pointed at something below the extended platform they'd made. "Pearl's below us right now! You might be able to pull of another one."
Etho grinned at the prospect, walking over to Tango to see where he was pointing. He could have offered the kill to Martyn or Tango, seeing as he'd just pulled on off himself, but he didn't. He didn't even really think about it, instead focusing on getting himself more time.
He gingerly placed down another rail, not checking the alignment of the rail below before he pushed it off, sending it spiraling off to the right instead of straight forward to where he had wanted it. He glanced over the edge, disappointed at the curve, and martyn voiced the same sentiment behind him.
A ways below his minecart was another minecart, which Etho very quickly guaged had been thrown by Tango.
Tango's minecart hit the ground first ina brilliant explosion if reds and oranges, followed only mere seconds later by Etho's. There was no ping from there communicators, and no rush of time flowing through his veins. Pearl had gone somewhere away from the blast, and they couldn't attempt to kill her again when they didn't know where she was. She knew they were up there anyways, so maybe it wouldn't have done much either way.
The sound of thunder cracking across the sky, preceeded just barely by a bright flash of light, warned all three of them about the new ghost among the servers inhabitants. Etho glanced at the communicator, assuming it had been Cleo upon reading the death message.
It took almost half a minute to realize it had been Bdubs instead, his realization helped along by Tango and Martyn talking about the second notifcation. Etho had been sturggling with hpow they changed the final death system this season, the bright words lasting only a few seconds before fading, instead of the final message itself.
Maybe he would've felt something in earlier seasons, but between the clock and the flurry of arrows that were starting to fly at them, there simply wasn't enough time.
"Come on," Tango gestured towards the two of them, pointing to where Impulse was much closer now, a grin spread across his face, "Let's meet Impulse halfway! We've got info to share."
Etho trailed behind them, keeping a careful eye on his clock, and on Martyn's movements in front of him. If Marytn did end up trying something, it'd end up being three on one. Etho knew Martyn wasn't stupid enough to take those chances normally, but Martyn had been carefully quiet about his time.
Etho grimaced, glancing to were Tango himself was frowning at his clock, his hands flexing where they held his axe and shield. He could see the stiffness in Tango's stance, not too different from Martyn's. He could convince himself that they would be fine, and remind himself that Martyn wouldn't attempt to kill them in a normal situation such as this one, but Etho also knew that cornered dogs were more likely to bite than bark.
A lot of the red lives reminded Etho of cornered dogs this season.