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It was kind of a downer, returning to Chainhaven after the failed manhunt. Personally, Burney really couldn’t give more or less of a fuck.
Like, yeah it sucked that they got away, so everyone still had to fear for their lives at every waking moment, but it was whatever. ‘We’ll get ‘em next time!—’ and all that.
Though it was pretty clear that not everyone in the server-wide hunting party shared that sentiment with Burney.
He kept Sidefall back from the group, making use of their chain to keep him on a short leash, while pretending it was sheer ignorance of the situation leaving the links wrapped double around his wrist.
Burney watched him with a careful side eye, while he did his best to uphold his nonchalant air and tap away at his comm with the thumb of his free hand.
[To SaltySurvivalist: where have you been this whole time LMAO] he wrote, sending the message off with a click.
Salty was always a nosy gossip, even if he didn’t act like it. He’d want the juicy details of everything that went down, Burney knew. And besides, Burney was a little curious where the fuck he and Cynikka had been, avoiding the whole Green Massacre that’d been happening.
Whatever Salty was up to, he evidently wasn’t looking at his comm, because no quick response arrived.
Tucking his comm back into his inner coat pocket, Burney returned his attention to the group still gathered around his destroyed farm. It was the most disgruntled of the bunch, frustrated at the loss of a solid victory.
“—almost had them!” Lingulini was loudly testifying to the crowd, still brandishing his axe in one hand.
Ender was right there in the mix, standing right alongside Saps and nodding with him. He couldn’t quite tell what game Ender was playing at, getting wrapped up with a guy who Burney thought might actually be possessed. Or just straight-up evil.
Whatever, he wasn’t Ender’s mom, the guy could go and throw his lot into whatever pot he wanted.
There was another jerk at his wrist, Sidefall was unintentionally pulling at it again as he paced. He was agitated, but Burney suspected it was for a different reason than the rest of the mob.
Sitting in the peanut gallery got old quick, and the appearance of a new group of figures on the far wall signaled it was about time to wrap up this little afterparty.
He stepped closer to Sidefall, hissing to him, “We’ve gotta move— all the Reds are moving in. Back up— back up!”
Burney had caught Sidefall off guard, but his partner quickly jumped to attention, spotting the group moving in over the wall. The rest of the gathered Yellows quickly caught on, the whole group scattering like bugs out from under a rock.
Sidefall and Burney split off to the back, and Burney’s wrist only got a little yanked out of its socket by his unpredictable partner’s movements.
They made it over the hill, with Sidefall prattling on about some probably fake hunch that Saps and Ender were the boogeymen. Burney only rolled his eyes and ran along.
If they were the boogeymen, something would have already happened. Saps was too sly and too much of a schemer to have let the opportunity of such a large gathering pass him by, rules of spawn be damned. Burney would be willing to bet on that.
Once the two of them hit the forest at the foot of the spawn hills, they finally slowed their pace when it was clear no one was pursuing them. Burney glanced around anyways, he could have sworn he heard footsteps that weren’t from either of them.
Whatever. If it was that damn ghost, then they could keep up their freaky little poltergeist act. There were bigger threats, with actual kill counts still sulking around the server.
He and Sidefall kept going, skirting another encounter with Ender and his garishly white companion, just in case Sidefall was right for once.
Having fled Untitled Mountain, Burney’s first instinct would have been to head due north, but Sidefall’s jumpy paranoia instead detoured them eastward, towards the better cover provided by the forests there.
Burney was on the scout for an interview location. While he had been joking about killing himself if it went poorly, that didn’t mean he couldn’t bitch about it if he failed his goal, just because his partner was too paranoid to sit still.
They were walking through another one of the forests, near the otherworldly, impenetrable border marking the arena everyone was trapped in, when they stumbled across the blood.
Or rather, Sidefall did, since Burney was too preoccupied with pitching tentative questions in his mind.
The younger man jerked to a complete halt, and Burney almost tripped as their chain went suddenly taunt. He snapped back to look at Sidefall, about to berate him, when Sidefall called out to him, “Holy shit— Burney, look.”
He pointed down at their feet.
Burney looked down, and oh, yeah. Holy shit.
Almost hidden in the dense leaf cover, was a large, messy trail of blood. Like something big was dragged through the area.
He glanced back up at Sidefall. He’d drawn his sword out, leveling a determined look at Burney. The image of the courageous warrior was ruined a bit by the fact Sidefall was still in full bee costume, pompom antennae bouncing stupidly as he furrowed his brow.
“Dude. We’ve gotta follow it,” he said.
Okay. That was kind of the last thing Burney wanted to do right now. Following the big fuck-off blood trail in the forest seemed like a great way to get killed. But Sidefall seemed dead-set on it, and Burney didn’t have much to lose at that point.
Well. Besides his next two lives.
“Y’know.. this is probably an awful idea,” he told Sidefall, like it would help change the outcome at all.
The idiot only nodded, “Yeah, which is why we’ll be careful,” before heading off in the direction of the broken foliage.
Burney only could sigh, closing his eyes behind his mask for a second before being pulled along.
The blood trail kept going, slightly away from the border and into the denser part of the forest. Until finally it snaked into the narrow mouth of a cave almost hidden between the tree trunks.
Oh, cool. This was looking more and more like the set-up to some cheap horror movie with every passing moment. The kind where two stupid shmucks get killed before the opening credits even rolled.
Sidefall only paused at the cave entrance long enough to glance back at Burney, like he could have somehow miraculously slipped their magic chains and turned tail to run. Burney would have loved if that was the case, that really would have been great.
Sorry, Sidefall.
But today wasn’t the day for the gods to give Burney a break. Willing or not, he’d be dragged along either way.
They were going into a ominous blood-stained cave to follow either some fucked up monster or a fellow player. Burney wasn’t sure what would be worse.
Either way, they were definitely about to be supermurdered in there.
He sighed again, and pulled out a torch to light. At least they’d be able to see whatever killed them as it happened.
They descended, following the drag of blood that had only gotten clearer against wet stone rather than foliage. In a couple of the smears Burney could almost make out a handprint.
Awesome. Right about now, a ragebaiting ghost sounded so much better.
It was quiet for a minute or so. The only noise being their footsteps as Sidefall led, tightly gripping his diamond sword at the ready, Burney at his shoulder with the torch held aloft.
Then, a voice suddenly echoed out from the dark. “Hello? I can hear you— Who’s there? Stay— Stay back!”
Fuck.
Burney knew who that voice belonged to.
“Zam? Is that you?” Sidefall called back, confirming his suspicions. Lowering his sword out of its guard position, he crept further, dragging Burney along with him.
Oh, hell no. Burney wanted to dig the heels of his boots in, to protest, but it’d be no use against the damp rock and a hell-bent Sidefall. But for fucks sake, the guy could have at least kept his sword up.
Out of everything they could have found at the end of this cave, it just had to be the scourges of the server, who no one had been able to catch a single trace of after they’d somehow slipped a twelve-man kill squad.
Though maybe, based on the bloody path that had led him and Sidefall here, their escape was far from unscathed.
Unable to leave him, and not wanting to get pulled face-first into the ground, Burney cautiously followed behind Sidefall, preparing to draw his axe if needed.
They rounded the last bend in the cave and there they were, Prince Zam and Awobbuffet.
Burney’s free hand twitched for his weapon.
Like this, it was clear the pair were on their last legs. Both of them were crumpled into the end of the cave, blood still wet and shining on their armor, even in the dim light from Burney’s torch.
It’d be easy to finish them off right now.
Burney couldn’t help himself but chuckle. “Well, well, well. Wow. How the mighty have fallen,” he drawled.
“Burney!” Sidefall hissed.
Zam scrambled back into the wall slightly, shuffling with his grip on the trident he had planted defensively in front of them, crying, “Stay back!” again.
His left hand slid on the staff, slick from all the blood coating the turquoise weapon.
Sidefall moved between them, putting himself right within spearing distance and holding his hands up placatingly. He’d fully put away his sword, the dumbass.
“Wait, Zam— We’re friends— Friends! We’re not going to hurt you!”
He could speak for himself, Burney thought with a scoff. Whatever little ‘friendship’ Sidefall thought they had going probably didn’t mean much to Zam, someone he’d heard through the grapevine had been slaughtering players for way less. Not to mention Wobb, who was—
Actually, Burney wasn’t even sure if Wobb was conscious. The guy was completely slumped against the cave’s stone wall, and hadn’t moved once since they’d come into view.
If Zam looked rough, his partner looked worse.
The golden-haired player still had his trident crossed in front of Wobb, like they’d have to go through him first. But at Sidefall’s words he paused, eyes slowly losing some of their crazed, vicious gleam.
“Are you actually? This isn’t like, a trick or anything, is it?”
Sidefall shook his head. “It’s not— we promise. Right?” He looked over at Burney, expectantly.
No way had Sidefall actually gotten through that easy. Burney couldn’t believe it.
He sighed, “Yeah, fine. Sure. We promise.”
Zam slowly backed down, gaze flashing between them. “Okay, um.. in that case, if you’re the good guys, we need to help Wobb. He’s kind of real bad.”
Oh, great. They’d get to play nurse to a serial killer. Was it mean of him to wish bloodloss would hurry up and get Burney out of this situation?
But he and Sidefall moved in closer anyways, as Zam shifted, letting his trident slip to the floor with a clang.
He got half-up from the ground to hover over his taller teammate, placing one hand on Wobbuffet’s shoulder and shaking him around a little bit.
“Hey, hey— Wobb! Awobbuffet! Wake up! We need to get your armor off— There’s people here to help.”
Wobb’s head lolled to the side, but his dark eyes cracked open, blearily looking around, “Wha— who— Who is it?”
“Not enemies! It’s Sidefall and, uh—“ Zam looked over at them.
“And Burney,” Sidefall whispered back.
“Oh, yeah— and Lord Burney.”
Wobb listed over in Zam’s grip. “Ugh… Fuck— Fuck those guys.”
“Fuck you too, dude,” Burney grouched. “We could still just kill you.”
“We’re not killing! No one is killing anyone here!” Sidefall interrupted loudly.
“Yeah! No killing, please. Here, okay— someone needs to help me, his shoulder’s all fucked up.”
Zam was fumbling with the buckles on Wobb’s chestplate, not getting very far since he seemed to only be using one hand, the manacle around Zam’s wrist jingling.
Wobb himself was still too out of it to do much, so Burney relented and crouched down, setting his torch on the ground and moving to assist Zam.
And yeah, Zam was right. Wobb’s shoulder was all fucked up.
The whole pauldron on his right side was mangled, a huge, messy gash through the iron that looked like the work of an axe.
Without thinking, Burney curled his fingers under the piece to pull it away, and oh, gods.
The broken pauldron did pull away, but not without a wet, visceral squelch as all the blood underneath suctioned it down. It was like shucking a shell off some slimy creature, not a piece of armor being worn by another player.
He then got a good look at what was underneath, and the sight actually got a small, sharp inhale from Burney.
“Oh gods, that’s really fucked up,” he swore.
Saying Wobb’s shoulder was injured was majorly underselling it. ‘Hanging on by a thread’ was way more accurate description.
Burney remembered then, Lingulini’s insistence from earlier that he’d been so close to killing them, and yeah, it sure looked that way. He looked over, catching Wobb’s dark eyes watching them sharply.
It was insane the guy was still conscious, when his arm was literally tendons away from falling off.
Sidefall was hovering over Burney’s shoulder, and he could hear the hiss he let out. His partner turned to Zam, “Wow. How the fuck did you drag him this far?” he asked.
Right— Zam had to be affected by this too. Even though injuries reflected by the chain bond didn’t debilitate the partner as much as the originator, this was nothing to sneeze at.
Looking back at Zam as well, Burney put together why he’d been only using his left hand. This whole time, his right arm had been hanging limply— it was unlikely Zam had any movement in it.
But the guy only shrugged with his good shoulder, “Oh, you know. I’ve had some experience in this department. Arms being fucked up, not working. That sort of thing.”
Then he cocked his head, looking at Wobb, “It’d help if this kid didn’t let his arm fall off— I like having a flesh hand again!”
“Oh— sorry,” Wobb bitched back, before weakly coughing, “I was really— really concerned about how you’d feel, when I was trying not to get us axed to death.”
He coughed again, “..Besides— we don’t— we don’t even know if you’d lose yours, too.”
“Well, yeah! No one’s gotten dismembered here yet and lived!”
Burney broke into their spat, “Why don’t we, uh— cool it with the dismemberment, and focus on getting Wobb’s arm reconnected to his body.”
Sidefall spoke up, “Hold on— Wait! What do you guys think would happen to Wobb’s chain if his arm fell off?”
He only got a round of glares in return. “Hey! It was just a question! Can you blame me for being curious?” More glares.
“Fine, okay— does anyone have, like. Any sort of stuff we can use for healing?”
A look around revealed the answer to Sidefall’s second question to be No, No, No and No.
Awesome. That might be a problem. Somewhere else, this might have been an easy fix. Pop a gapple or three, or a regen pot, and Wobbuffet would be back on his feet, ready to dole out another killing spree. But with all the quirks and edits to the code Saparata had plugged into this game, those types of items were few and far between.
And even if they could get their hands on the right materials, Burney doubted any one of them would be able to brew a potion or gild an apple. The knowledge felt like it had slipped out of his code, like forgetting where he set his comm or keys even though he Literally just had them a minute ago.
Burney looked at Sidefall, “I have some stuff you can use to bandage and secure it, but that’s about it.”
Sidefall sighed and replied, “Well. It’s better than nothing. Here.” He made grabby hands towards Burney, their chain rattling with the motion.
He fished out one of the long, woven black curtains he’d been using for his interview set out of his inventory. Burney didn’t particularly want to trash his set, but it was just some wool, after all. He could always get more, if the sheep from his destroyed farm in Chainhaven hadn’t escaped or been slaughtered yet.
With the curtain in his hands, Sidefall began ripping it into smaller strips, then elbowed the other two out of the way so he could get to Wobb. Burney let him, he probably would be better at doing first aid than either him or Zam.
His partner poked a bit at Wobb’s shoulder. “Holy shit, this is really bad. It’s probably gonna take days to fully regen.”
“Yeah, and it’ll take a lot longer unless you hurry up and reattach my arm,” Wobb snarked back.
“Okay, okay! Just, uh— let me know if this hurts.”
“Dude. Whatever you do cannot hurt more than it already does.” He was fully awake now, probably due to the pain of them all jostling his injury.
“Fine! Okay, uh—“ Sidefall grimaced, then turned back to Burney. “Come help hold his arm in place for me.”
Burney moved back, looking at Wobb who gave him a pained nod. Then, holding around his elbow and upper arm, he pushed his shoulder back together, like some sort of gruesome jigsaw puzzle.
Sidefall worked quickly, winding the woolen strips around Wobb’s arm and torso, so he’d stay put together even after Burney let go.
Infection probably wouldn’t be an issue on a server like this— Saps wasn’t that mean. He’d designed his game for people to die from ripping each other to shreds, not sepsis. But the slow crawl of natural regen would still place Wobb at a huge disadvantage until he healed. For days, like Sidefall had said. If he lived that long, it’d be well into their next round of chaining.
After a minute, Sidefall nodded to Burney and he let go of the arm. Miraculously, it stayed where it was supposed to be, connected to the rest of Wobb’s body.
Wobb looked over at Burney, while Sidefall continued to fashion his arm into a sort of makeshift sling.
“If you’re done,” he said, eyeing him carefully, “Zam fucked up her side, and she hasn’t said anything.”
In the time they had been there, Wobb had regained his sharp alertness. He was no longer just bleeding out in the dark with only his partner as company, and likely didn’t trust Burney or Sidefall in the slightest. Burney didn’t blame the guy.
“Wow, okay. Snitch.”
Burney glanced back to where Zam had been watching, her good arm crossed over her chest.
“I can literally feel it! It’s my problem too, if you don’t get it fixed!”
Burney crossed the short distance across the cave, pulling out a second black curtain and another torch. The torch went on the wall, and the curtain met the same fate as the first.
“Can I look?” He asked Zam, motioning to her side, where blood had crusted his purple coat.
“Ugh, whatever, fine. It’s not even that bad, really.”
Burney was glad his mask hid the expression he was making. The information he’d been getting about what Zam considered ‘bad’ was pretty conflicting.
Zam swept back his coat from his side, and okay. He wasn’t wearing much else underneath. Just a lot of blood, and a lot of yellow skin. But honestly? Not even the weirdest getup someone on this server was wearing, in Burney’s opinion. Sidefall still had that pair of bee antennae on, for fucks sake.
Besides, the lack of shirt made Zam’s injury more easy to see. There was a slash, probably from a sword, and the entire left side of her ribs were a particularly ugly shade of purple under her golden-tinted skin.
“I can wrap your ribs, and we can wipe off some of this blood, but if they’re broken you’ll just have to let them regen like Wobb,” he told her.
Zam sighed, “That’s alright. I’ve had worse.”
Again, Burney didn’t really want to know what Zam’s ‘worse’ was.
He passed Zam a torn piece of the curtain, saying, “For your, y’know,” and gesturing to his own face.
“Oh!” Came the reply, before Zam took the offered cloth and began dabbing at the blood from her split lip and temple.
As Burney wrapped the wool around Zam’s busted ribs, he called back to where Sidefall was still helping Wobb.
“If we get unchained before we’re done here, you’d better not ditch me before I can do my interview,” he said.
Zam tilted his head a bit, interested. “Interview?”
“Yeah. I’ve been making my chain partner answer questions at the end of every session, or I kill myself out of despair,” Burney deadpanned. That earned him a little giggle from Zam.
Sidefall called back, “Well— We could just do it now, and you could do a super exclusive special episode with two more interviewees.”
Burney considered it. The setting was ass. The end of the cave was dark, damp and cramped. His set was actively being torn up into bandages. But an interview with the two people who had just slaughtered half the server and escaped, who were being uncharacteristically friendly and not stab-happy, was pretty compelling.
It would make great content.
“Right, okay,” he said. “Zam, Wobb? You good with that? I’d rather not have you sending lawyers after me when this is over.”
Zam shrugged, and told him, “Um… Sure! That sounds like fun.”
From the other end of her chain, Wobb sighed, “I can’t exactly leave, can I?”
Burney nodded, then finished tying off the last of the bandages around Zam’s chest. Pulling back, he reached into his coat for his comm. He opened it up, then clicked through the settings to start a recording. Audio now, and timestamps marking where and when this was taking place, so he could come back and capture footage once they were freed from this game.
He sat the comm up on a little cropping of stone, where it’d be able to pick everything up. Burney stretched, then shuffled around their two chains so they were a bit less twisted.
Clearing his throat, he began.
“Hello, everyone— and welcome to my unnamed show where I interview people under threat of suicide.” Burney paused for a beat, looking around.
“Uh. Yeah.” Sidefall said “That’s still a bit scary—“
“Sidefall, how was being chained with me? Did you have a good time?”
Burney always enjoyed this, steamrolling his questions one right after another, rapid fire, a bit more than he should. And Sidefall made it just too easy.
“Well, um.. You didn’t get me killed, like Jophiel did. Or kill yourself. Yet. So, uh— that’s good.”
“I see.. So, you hate Jophiel.”
“Okay— well. I don’t hate her exactly, it was kind of annoying, though.”
“Will you be planning to get revenge on her for causing you two to die?”
“I can’t really, not right now at least. Since I’m still Yellow.”
“Ah, yes, we’re Yellow. Stuck at the awkward middle child of the stoplight, yield.”
“Uh… I guess?”
“Do you miss being Green?”
“Maybe, but—“ he glanced around, looking at the other two people in the room, “I think I’m glad I was on Yellow… for this session.”
“I see, I see.”
Burney stopped again, looking over to where he’d place the camera, when he got his footage.
“Now— we’re also joined today by a pair of special guests, you probably already know them well, after their infamous killing spree that’s been filling chat with death messages all session.”
In the back, he heard Wobb, his arm now fully trussed and immobilized against his chest, whisper to Sidefall, “Who the fuck is he talking to?”
Burney tactfully ignored him.
“Please, give a very warm welcome to Prince Zam and Awobbuffet, so they don’t kill me where I stand!”
There was a little smattering of applause from Sidefall, and a soft Woohoo! from Zam. Nice. That was better than just some awkward silence.
Burney turned back to the rest of the cave’s occupants. “So tell me, how are you both doing today, on the last day of this round of chaining?”
“Bad,” came Wobb’s scoffed response, but Zam played along.
“Uh— Not great!” she said. “Pretty much everyone on the server probably wants our heads on pikes, which— maybe we kind of deserve, since we killed them all.”
“Well, that’s not good to hear. But yeah, to be fair, going around trying to eradicate an entire group of people doesn’t usually go over well. So, after that, are you worried about what’s going to happen for you the next session?”
Wobb spoke up again, “Well, it depends. Mostly on who we get chained to next time. Because right now most of the Reds are people we killed.”
“That is true. Do you think your next partner might try to kill you, or even themselves for revenge?”
Zam twisted the piece of cloth he’d wiped his face with in her hand. “Would the other people here do that? Like, actually?”
“Zam, weren’t you threatening to kill yourself when you were chained to Baablu?” Sidefall asked, shuffling slightly and crossing his legs.
“Well yeah, but everyone else here is like, so careful about living.”
Burney was about to ask what she meant by that, when Wobb jumped back in, answering Zam.
“Some of these people, they really hold a grudge. I don’t know if it’d be enough for them to take themselves out, but it’s definitely enough to backstab. I’d be more concerned about if my next partner can defend us, if their allies turned on them to get to me.”
Burney pivoted, and then instead asked Wobb, “I see. So out of everyone, who would you want to get chained to next session?”
Wobb frowned, then looked around. “Um— Someone show me the list on their comm, I can’t reach mine.”
Zam had hers out the quickest, passing it over to her partner with a couple bloody fingerprints left on the case. Wobb looked down at the screen, considering it for a second.
“Out of everyone here? Rotation— he might live if we’re jumped. Though he might hate me, for killing him and Whale.”
He paused again, before glancing down and adding quietly, “Maybe Thunder. If he’s back again.”
Zam plucked his comm out of Wobb’s hands and taking a look for herself. “For me— um… Oh! Maybe Panda or Legacy, they might not hate us, since they gave us targets to kill!”
“Huh?” Both Sidefall and Burney turned to face her.
“Yeah. Their murderers. Zapynubs and Gotoga,” Zam explained, syncopating the second name.
Behind his mask, Burney raised his eyebrows. Panda and Legacy putting a hit out, huh? He tucked that piece of information away for later.
“Ugh. I do not want to be chained with either of them,” Wobb complained. “I’d even take Jaw again, back from the dead.”
“Come on, it’s fun to make new friends, no?”
“Maybe for you.”
Zam frowned, pouting, before asking, “What about Sidefall? Lord Burney, you should ask him, too. I want to know who he’d want to get chained with.”
Burney looked over at his partner, who had been rather quiet. “Well?” he inquired.
Sidefall hesitated, before pressing his knuckles to his lips “Hm, okay…” he said, thinking, “I’m not too sure—“
“What about us?” Zam excitably cut in, “Wouldn’t you want to be chained with us? Since we’re such good friends and all.”
She tilted her head, eyes wide and questioning. Her shark smile was all teeth.
“What? I mean— we’re not Red so—“
“We could make that happen,” Wobb smirked as well, like he wasn’t down a limb and three shades too pale of a blue from blood loss.
Sidefall’s eyes shot open, and he jerked back.
“Whoah, whoah! I thought we agreed on No Killing!” Burney spoke up, more for his own sake than his partner’s. He still didn’t like how close they were to where Zam’s trident laid.
Zam sighed, dejectedly letting his smile drop. “Yeah, you’re right. We’re playing nice now. But it’d also be nice, having more Reds who don’t hate us.”
He picked at the bloodstained hem of his coat, the chain between her and Wobb rattling with the movement. “Hey, I know you’re only helping us because you felt sorry and all, but can we still be friends next time, even if you two are still Yellow?”
Sidefall’s expression softened, still trying to make friends even when he’d just had his life point-blank threatened.
“It could be like a— a secret thing,” he said, “you don’t attack us, and we don’t go after you?”
Zam sighed, “Sure, okay. I still wish we had some more real allies. Baablu is kind of my ally, but really, I don’t know how much he’d stick his neck out for me.”
“Well, maybe Thomas would be chill with you guys,” Sidefall offered in return. “He kept talking about how he wanted to find who killed Micro. And you guys did kill Kagl and Bizzy twice. That’s kind of avenging his death, right?”
Burney remembered how everyone had decidedly not said anything to Thomas earlier, when Kagl and Bizzy had been right in front of them.
“Oh— they actually killed them?” Wobb had curled up in the corner, wrapping his good arm over his other elbow. “Honestly… when Thomas asked us to find out, I thought it was more likely they died from their own stupidity.”
Huh. Had the whole server just secretly been using Wobb and Zam as their personal hitmen? Did the Yellow mob even know that half of their ‘random’ deaths had actually been targeted grudge fulfillments? There was an interesting plot unfurling before Burney, and he didn’t quite know what to make of it.
Across from him, Zam gave an indignant huff. “Well, it wasn’t really avenging his death— more like they stole killing Micro from me!”
Her face shifted, that same shark-sharp grin from earlier returned, with a hungry, poisonous edge to her next snarl, “Maybe we should kill them again. And ban them off the server forever.”
After she said that, Zam clearly had caught sight of their alarm, all in various states of recoil, because she immediately backpedaled.
“Sorry, sorry! I don’t mean that actually. …See? Everyone here is so careful.”
He sighed again, before suddenly wailing like a banshee, “I miss Microooooo!”
Burney was once again glad for his mask. He hated the idea of being read like a book with every loop this conversation was throwing at him.
Clearing his throat, he asked Zam, “Uh. Didn’t you hate him? I mean, I kind of remember a lot of yelling about ending his bloodline.”
Zam cocked his head.
“Well, yeah. But it was a lot of fun. Micro was fun, and he listened to my stories.” The wail returned. “And now he’s dead foreverrrrr! And I didn’t get to kill him even once!”
Burney shifted, folding his arms. “Hold on, explain this to me. I feel like I’m missing a step here. Did you not actually hate him?”
The dark eyes watching him lit up. “Oh, I did! I do! With every fiber of my being. It’s like…”
Zam paused, bringing a pondering finger up to his lips as he thought.
“...It’s like when you hate someone, more than anything else in the world, and your only wish is to see them dead and a bloody, ugly corpse. And it has to be your hands that do it too, or it doesn’t even count at all! Chopping them apart into little tiny pieces and ripping their guts out. Holding their still beating heart in your hands.”
Looking at Zam’s predator grin, Burney was struck with the sudden horror of what might happen if Zam ever got her hands on his organs.
“It’s worse here,” Zam continued, “more than anything I’ve ever felt— like an itch you keep scratching over and over and over until you’ve clawed yourself right into shreds, like a beautiful flower of blood blooming open.”
Even with the shield of his mask, Burney’s shock at the… colorful… description Zam had just painted must have been evident in his silence. Across the cave, Sidefall looked a little green around the gills.
At their lack of response, Zam’s face fell, and she curled the fingers on her free hand, tilting her cheek into her palm.
“You don’t get it,” she said. “But that’s okay. You’ll understand when you’re Red, I think.”
“Is… Is that another threat?” Burney carefully asked.
“No. Just a fact.”
Burney looked over to Wobb, like he could confirm or deny how much of that was true.
The asshole only shrugged and grinned, saying, “Everyone on this server’ll be Red, eventually.”
So maybe there was some truth to Zam’s words, to the rumors of an unquenchable bloodlust when they hit their last life. Another fun little surprise Saparata had folded into this world’s code for them. Fucking great. Burney absolutely couldn’t wait.
There was a little chirp from his comm, that echoed through the other three devices in the cave. None of them needed to check their screens’ readout to know what the sound meant.
It was their last warning, that the time before the unchaining was drawing near.
“Right,” Burney declared, clapping his hands together with the air of finality, “and there’s the bell. Thank you all again, for joining me for my show on this.. eventful session.”
His interview had pretty much derailed itself, like a minecart skipping the tracks and taking on a life of its own. But with each passing day, it seemed more and more like that was just how things around here went. Honestly, Burney didn’t know what he expected.
It was fine. He could edit it all in post, anyways.
He glanced around at the other inhabitants of their cave, their faces cast in long shadows as his torches burned low. “Look, this really has been lovely, but personally, I’m not planning on making this a sleepover. Sidefall?”
At the other end of his chain, the other man blinked a bit, shaking his head at being addressed.
“Wha—? Oh. Yeah, okay, we can go.” Sidefall looked at the other pair. “Are you two staying here?”
Zam considered it for a second, before shaking her head. “It’s gonna really suck to move, but we definitely can’t stay here. This cave is completely undefendable, if anyone else found us like you did, we’re screwed.”
“Do you have somewhere to go?” Sidefall asked her. “I have to go back to me and Ymi’s house, and I don’t know about Burney.”
“I’ll probably go back to spawn,” Burney shrugged, when Sidefall turned to him.
There wasn’t exactly a house waiting for him there, but he would do what he’d done the last two rounds of chaining, and find where the rest of Chainhaven had set up camp. Granted, that was if the site was still in one piece, after all the new Reds had ran through the place.
Sidefall hummed, “Yeah, okay. That’s no good either, since all of the other Yellows are still looking for you guys.”
Hold on. Had Sidefall been planning on inviting the two Reds over to Burney’s place, if he’d had one? This fucking guy—
“No, that’s really okay!” Zam exclaimed, “I have a base that I was trying to get us back to, but it’s kind of far.”
“Yeah? How far?” Burney asked.
Zam slyly raised one eyebrow. “Wow, asking for my base coords already,” she joked. “Hm. You’re lucky I like you. But if I tell you, you have to promise not to leak my base location, okay?”
“It’s in that snow biome to the east.” Wobb interjected.
“Awobbuffet!” Zam squawked.
It was the first thing Wobb had said in a while. He’d fallen silent again, towards the end of Burney’s interview. But his current half-lidded gaze was likely now from simple exhaustion, rather than life threatening blood loss.
Burney thought over the map he’d formed in his mind of their arena. The snow biome wasn’t that far away, yet at the same time was just far enough to be annoying.
Gods, what was he thinking? This definitely wasn’t how he was planning to end his session. All of this was kind of ruining his image of being the guy who didn’t give a fuck. Hell, Burney himself had been one of the ones rallying for the initial manhunt for the two people he and Sidefall were now aiding.
Oh well. What was done was done. Burney was already knee-deep in this plot, he might as well go full send while they were here.
“We can go with you, for part of the way,” he offered. “It’d be safer.”
The looks both of the Reds gave him after saying that didn’t escape Burney’s notice.
“Not that I think you couldn’t get there, but we did just spend the last good chunk of our session patching you guys up, so you’d live for next time. It’s kind of a waste if you end up getting jumped right at the buzzer,” he finished, punctuating with a shrug.
Wobb rolled his eyes, “Wow Burney, I’m glad you care about us so much.”
From the safety of his mask, Burney rolled his eyes right back, ignoring the snide comment.
“We’re south of spawn right now,” he continued, “so the best way for us to go would be—”
“—Curving around, and cutting through the valley,” Sidefall finished with a nod, picking up on what Burney was putting down. It was a clever move, anyone patrolling might not expect the pair of Reds to return to the scene of their near death.
Sidefall looked over at Burney, then at the other two. “I’m good with that, if both of you are.”
“You said the rest of the server is still hunting us down?” Zam asked him, to which Sidefall nodded again.
Zam turned to his partner, and they exchanged a quick series of looks with one another, before returning Sidefall’s gaze.
“Yeah, that works for us,” Zam replied with a nod.
“Okay— then let’s go. I don’t know about you, but this cave really sucks ass.”
With chain links rattling, the four of them hastily picked up, more than eager to get the hell out of this tiny, bloodstained hole in the ground.
Zam had retrieved his trident, and had moved on to re-equipping his diamond chestplate, pulling it over her bloody coat and bandaged ribs. In the burnt-down torchlight, the chipped blue material dully shimmered.
Wobb, on the other hand, left the discarded pieces of his chestplate on the cave floor as he shakily climbed to his feet. Even if the armor hadn’t been hacked into irreparable scrap, there’d be no way he would have been able to fit it over his busted shoulder and arm.
Glancing up from his comm screen, where he had been checking his recording, Burney watched as he pulled down on the brim of his hat, sinking into the high collar of his coat. With the game’s ban on helmets, that left him down a grand total of not one, but two full pieces of armor. Wobb looked painfully aware of how vulnerable he’d be if they encountered anyone, and Zam had picked up on it too.
Between him, and the yellow-gold blaze of Zam’s untamed curls, a giant red arrow pointed down at them saying Hey! Free kill on these guys right here! would have been more subtle.
Tucking his comm back in its pocket, Burney pulled out another two black curtains, and gave them to the pair. His set was all but demolished at this point, but it would just give him a goal for next time. Better than walking around for an entire day doing fuck all. It wouldn’t make up for Wobb’s lack of armor, but it’d grant them some anonymity, and a bit of camouflage as they moved through the night.
The other two understood his intent, and Zam began helping Wobb position the curtain over his shoulders, a makeshift cloak and hood that hid his bandaged right side in the material’s dark shadows. Once he was set, she pulled her own on.
Burney noticed as she moved, that Zam had regained some movement in her right arm. However, the limb was still clumsy and weak as she gripped the curtain closed around her.
A tug on their chain got the attention of Burney’s partner. Looking over the top of his comm, Sidefall snapped the device shut after finishing sending a message to gods knew who, replacing it with his drawn sword in hand.
And then they were out.
The sun was setting, slashing the sky into an orange bloodbath that slowly bled from purple to pitch-dark as they left the cave.
For a while, their trip through the birch woods went smoothly enough. Burney taking the lead and Sidefall taking the rear guard, Zam and Wobb sandwiched tightly between their length of chain like they were the npcs for some rage-inducing escort quest. The only noises made were their footsteps through the leaves littering the forest floor.
Forgoing torches for fear of detection, navigating became an ever increasing challenge as the sky grew darker.
Burney didn’t need to look behind him to know Sidefall was also on high alert. After both of their first lives had been taken by mob-related incidents, every unknown sound in the bushes could very well be another skeleton or creeper lying in wait.
The four of them pressed on, racing against the clock ticking down to the hour of the unchaining.
They’d just gotten past the first line of dark oaks, when a light began moving in on their group from the direction of spawn, the sound of voices accompanying it.
“Hey!” Came a loud shout. “Who’s out there?”
Burney’s shoulders rose, as he stopped in his tracks. Fucking great. The worst case scenario had just come true.
Their luck until this point now seemed like the precursor to a joke, with them as the punchline. That far away, and with so many people in the game, Burney couldn’t tell who it was. But from the amount of noise being made, it was easily an entire group of people.
He was brought back to the memory of his and Sidefall’s earlier encounter with Ender and Saps, still clearly on the prowl for something, and the fervency the other Yellows at spawn had spoken with after their failed hunt.
“It’s them—” came Zam’s voice, from behind him, “the enemies.”
Burney looked over his shoulder. She’d moved in front of Wobbuffet, trident raised at a sharp, defensive angle, a mirror of the way he and Sidefall had first found them in the cave.
Things were rapidly shaping into a comical parody of the hunting party from earlier, and Burney wasn’t looking forward to being discovered on the side of the foxes.
They’d already been noticed. There was zero chance that trying to escape wouldn’t immediately raise every suspicious red flag in the book. But each passing second, just standing here and doing nothing only closed their window to act.
He looked over at Zam, hackles still raised and looking ready to pounce, and Wobb, singlehandedly holding his axe despite looking like a stiff breeze might end his run for good.
Then he caught Sidefall’s gaze, and the look of understanding that passed between them like the length of their chain. For all his reputation as a chaotic hothead, Sidefall had a hidden, surprisingly tactical sense when the moment demanded it.
Burney nodded, then turned back to the other two.
“Well,” he said, draping his words in the best nonchalance he could muster, “it looks like this is where we part ways.”
“You guys run, and we’ll cut them off,” Sidefall tagged on, with a nod of his own.
The pair of Reds hesitated, but only for a second. Zam spared them one final smile, and then they were gone. Wordlessly, between one blink and the next, Wobb and Zam had disappeared into the shadows, with just the echo of metal links shaking to ever indicate their presence.
Then, with the approaching light drawing in on their location, Burney drew himself up, ironing out the line of tension he held and schooling his concealed expression like it would betray the treachery they’d just committed.
“Hello!” he coolly called out to their unknown company, “Who goes there?”
= – = – =
Zam didn’t think she’d live to see this place again. Her ‘base’ was just as barebones as she remembered.
Maybe even more than she remembered— a lot had happened between abandoning it days ago and now.
But having a shitty base was better than no base at all. Buried deep in the earth, Zam felt secure despite having little more than some dye-smeared signs and a couple furnaces to her name. Especially while they were trapped in this time between the chainings, limbs left too lethargic and heavy by the world to do much more than sleep.
She fed another lump of coal into the furnace beside her. The couple measly potatoes that had grown in their absence were almost done cooking, skin crisping nicely in the heat. She’d give them to Wobb when he woke up. If his arm was going to heal, he’d need to stay full, and they couldn’t guarantee his next partner would be willing to share any sort of food.
In the low light cast by the burning hearth, Zam shifted the long piece of wool Lord Burney had given him closer around her shoulders. She’d been surprised by his show of thoughtful generosity. The pieces of cloth had done their job well, obscuring her and Wobbuffet in the dark, and now they’d make for good bedding.
Wobb had taken the cave’s single bed, the one with the yellow sheets. Unconsciousness had hit him like a sack of bricks not even a moment after lying down.
Zam had basically expected that. Even before getting his arm near chopped off, Wobb had taken the final watch the last time they’d caught a moment to sleep. It would’ve been Zam’s turn next, but everyone had shown up, and then she almost wasn’t around to take it.
Thinking back, Zam couldn’t put a count to how many hours ago that had been. How long ago since he’d slept.
His potatoes had finished cooking.
Before they could burn, Zam quickly slid them out, and lined them up on top of the furnace to cool. With his final task done, he laid down, curling up in the nest of woolen fabric.
There wasn’t enough to make a second bed, but this was still leagues above sleeping straight on the floor of her base. With her back to the bed and partially hidden by the small potato farm, Zam would have a perfect line of sight to the cave’s entrance, should any of their enemies stumble across it.
But he doubted it. While double-checking that her trident was still in arm’s reach, Zam thought about what she knew of this game’s players. As much as they’d all clearly wanted her and Wobb dead, none of them seemed relentless enough to painstakingly comb the underworld, digging for their location.
Lord Burney and Sidefall didn’t seem to understand what she meant, when she said that they were all so careful. What seemed foreign to Zam must have been just second nature to them.
They were all so focused on building something that could last, on upholding the facade of peace. To them, death was something preceded by lots of deliberation, instead of a quick, callous fight where whoever struck first had the better chance to live.
This was a Game to the Death, and to Zam, the instructions were clear. You threw everything you had into living, into playing the game. Until someone came along who outclassed you, in strength or in wit. And then you died, over and over, until you were gone forever.
Wobb had understood that, that there was little point in building houses or communities at the end of the day. Or at least he knew what it was like to be a weapon in a world where it came down to who had the sharpest sword. It’s why they had made such an effective, brutal duo.
It didn’t matter if they liked it or not.
Baablu had understood too, but Zam knew that also meant he’d always weigh his own life over risking it for another. Zam couldn’t blame him— it was only smart.
Maybe there were others here, like them, who understood as well. Though if there were, Zam hadn’t met them.
However, if there was one thing he’d learned was that the people here kept a long, slow score.
He thought back to the idea Lord Burney had sparked, during his little interview he’d had them do. Zam idly wondered if anyone’s grudge against him and Wobb really was so great they’d be willing to end themselves for sake of revenge.
A vengeful self-destructing supernova. That was a pretty picture to imagine.
On the floor beside her head, Zam traced a figure with her finger. She missed Micro. She still hated that she hadn’t been the one to rip into him for the final time.
He had never killed himself to get back at her, he was just that big of a klutz. He was too nice and forgiving, even after all of their back and forth.
Zam remembered what Micro had said, after she’d shared the stories of her past misfortunes under the paper-thin guise of hypotheticals. His solutions had been laughably simple. He made forgiveness sound laughably simple.
It was a simplicity, a softness, that wasn’t cut out for a game like this. Look where his softness had gotten him. He’d asked her to say something nice to him, then because of it they’d gone Red. And now he was dead.
Zam drew another shape. Maybe it was better that he was dead. Being Red hadn’t suited Micro, not the way it did him or Wobbuffett.
He couldn’t imagine Micro like this. Body and mind humming with the need for violent action, even on the verge of exhaustion. With the same bloodlust that thrummed in time with the beating of the final heart in her chest.
It felt so strange. Zam was used to the exact inverse, to feeling weak and fragile this close to her last death. It felt like two pieces of a puzzle she knew, yet refused to fit together.
The only way she’d found to smooth out those bumps, to ease that feeling, was to chase another kill, another fight. Getting lost in the beautiful frenzy of combat, where everything narrowed down who could tear into who, until they couldn't be torn anymore. It made that itching, burning drive go away for a little while.
Yet Zam knew from experience that the thrum could never be satiated.
She closed her eyes. It wasn’t worth thinking too deeply about. In the face of the goal, all the little pieces that bridged the way there meant nothing.
The morning would bring a new dawn, a new chaining. A new round in this game. And Zam would be there to play, no matter if they wanted it or not.