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masked-disciple · 3 years ago

Note

I mean I’d be down for reading that plot bunny if yours. :)

Oh, wonderful. :p

So like, fl0wer_game is a setting I've had on and off for a very long time and it's never been fully fleshed out, but it does go through incarnations every now and then and I learn a little bit more about it, and eventually after enough incarnations I will learn what it actually is and what it wants to be. Our latest incarnation is a MCYT / Last Life / Hermitcraft rendition, following the Flight Rising, Vocaloid, and RuneScape renditions.

Content warnings are for cannibalism, mentions of sex, unhealthy relationships, brainwashing, death / murder, and Scar's tits.

I'm not super happy with what's below the cut, I think it needs another few major adjustments, but it's closer than it was before to what fl0wer_game is. Hope you like it, though. :p

We start on a sleepy high school / college town near the holidays: everything is decked out in gold and silver, they're nestled between the highway and a mountain, there's snow everywhere and tinsel wrapped around the pine trees. Young high school senior Grian, 17, signs up to stay the holidays at school so he doesn't have to go home to an empty house he never wants to think about again - a father who vanished when he was an infant, the ghost of an older brother who went missing on a drive a few years prior and whose car was never found, and a mother who died of grief shortly after. He doesn't want to go to a house that's technically in his name but he can't sell due to being too young, and he's depressed and lonely and all his friends are leaving.

The last day of classes before the holidays begins, there's not many left but a few stragglers catching late night flights home and those who are staying over the holidays - most students have skipped class to get home early. Tensions are high in his chemistry class and you can almost taste the hatred, and worse of all, his high school also doubles as a community centre (or rather, the school and community centre are two parts of the same building, and the elementary school is also the same building but that doesn't come into play so we don't care), so he gets to run into most of the cast as they also go through their various holiday prep.

The teacher - one Ren the Dog in particular, a chill guy in his mid-thirties who everyone's reasonably sure uses his chemistry degree to make some killer weed but nobody can prove it - leaves them alone at the start of the class due to someone in the community centre accidentally creating chlorine gas again and needing some help. He tells them to finish their homework and when he gets back, he'll double check it and they can play some games before the holidays.

He leaves and everyone hates this and everyone's bored. Or rather, the four people there are pretty bored. Grian glares at Martyn - a hotshot jock who spends his time either hitting on the cheer girls, sniping rude comments in the quieter students' directions, or writing bad poetry he clearly thinks is hot shit - for making another snide comment at him, and then Martyn cons the other two students (currently unidentified, am taking suggestions) into helping him get as many pencils in the ceiling tiles as possible.

Well, Ren gets back and is rather irritated at the dozen or so pencils in the ceiling, so Martyn grabs the easiest thing to climb that he can - an ancient writing desk stuffed in the corner that's never been used - and pulls it towards the centre of the room so he can remove the pencils lest he be served holiday homework.

The writing desk moves, and behind it is a hole in the wall. Martyn looks at it. Grian looks at it. Ren looks at it. The other two students I don't care about look at it. And then the part of wall below the hole where the desk's legs were up against slides down, until there is a mildly-short doorway in one wall of the classroom. One can see about two feet into the darkness, just enough to make out a short hallway and then a staircase.

By all rights, this is impossible: their classroom wall directly faces another, and they know exactly what is on the other side of the wall that now contains a hallway and staircase. By all rights, this has to be a strange painting of some kind. Grian steps forward to investigate. The moment he places a foot across the threshold, the wind picks up outside, and a blizzard materializes in a matter of seconds, bad enough to ensure that the planes out of town will be grounded for three days by the end of the hour.

Once he has one foot past the threshold, he can almost feel the darkness of the short hallway reach out and grab him around the shoulders. He can feel it grab, and he lets it take him willingly. He doesn't hear the others yell after him, but he's gone, and the door closes behind him.

He wakes in a murky stone cellar, not quite wet but definitely a bit damp, lichen and moss growing around rusted iron bars. There's some barrels and sacks, but there's nothing in anything, and only one way out. So he rises and goes exploring, seeing by the light of infrequent torches that burn blue and strange, glowing plants he's never seen before but look reasonably normal.

He explores for hours, and can hear a chanting in the distance, but whenever he tries to make out words or its direction, it sounds more like a heartbeat.

He's entered now into the fl0wer_game proper: a maze of stony tunnels, with a subterranean river that will prevent him from reaching the heart of the dungeon. He'll find various items that help him survive: a skinning knife, flint and steel, bits of food (but never more than two mouthfuls at once), and various magical reagents he can combine into various potions. He'll need those, later.

On the surface, his class searches for him, and word spreads quickly. Some people find other entrances to the fl0wer_game, but only one person ever goes in at once: two people try at the same time, and only one gets taken in, the other is pushed out and the door closes between them. Some people see the doors and run away, terrified of where the darkness leads. Some see opportunity, and willingly walk in. Some are dragged in by the doors themselves.

For each member of our cast - they all get a bit of POV to themselves for it - they enter the game through varying circumstances, but the only ones whose motivations are clear at first are the ones who are dragged in against their will.

Our main cast is Grian, Scar, Ren, Martyn, Impulse, Mumbo, Joel, Etho, Bdubs, Welsknight, and Stress. There are likely others, but those are the ones who I know for a fact are there. (Pearl exists, but she does not really have much more than a cameo: she is walking with her boyfriend Impulse outside a cafe, windowshopping, when a door opens and drags him inside. He screams her name, she screams his. It shuts before she can stop him.)

The only ones who were pulled in against their will are Mumbo, and Impulse. Everyone else enters willingly. It is not made clear why, and their motivations are revealed one by one as the story goes on.

They do meet up with each other in the maze, and much like Third and Last Life, alliances are made, enemies are found, and the death games begin with an accident. They do not know how cruel this maze will be to them. All they know is that there must be a way out, and that there is a distant chanting, but if they try to listen closely, it becomes a heartbeat.

Scar, 28, is the first person to find the river, which he deducts is preventing him from reaching the centre of the maze. He's an insurance agent by day, wheeling and dealing and cutting with his ability to screw people over. By night he's a magician, ignoring the way that his magic was greater as a child, and has been fading since he turned eighteen. He is also the first person whose motivations are revealed: he understands that the doors lead somewhere impossible, and that means magic is involved, and for magic to be involved, there has to be a source of magic. He's here out of simple greed: he wants his magic back, and he wants a change of pace. It's also made clear very early on that he figured out in about five seconds that there are no consequences outside of the maze. What happens here stays here, and will never reach the light of day. With no laws against it and no way to stop him, he's perfectly willing to abandon the pretense of morality and do what it takes to claim the magic for himself.

Grian teams with Ren and Welsknight early on: Ren, his chemistry teacher, and Welsknight, a history student who gets bullied but has a heart of gold. (Welsknight is also, in this AU, half of a DID system with Helsknight. They are endogenic and worked well as a team beforehand, and the trauma of the game early on forces them to fall apart and lose communication with each other. Believing that the other abandoned him and left him alone in the body, they gain a nasty case of dissociative identity disorder. This is based on what might happen if my& system fell apart due to trauma, and how that works psychologically. I&'ll be playing with it a little.)

It turns out, however, that the maze has a drawback that they didn't know about: sometimes areas gain a poisonous, magic miasma, and lingering within it can cause... unfortunate effects to happen. Ren gains a tail and wolf legs almost immediately, because his staircase dropped him in the miasma and he spent his first two hours running to get out of it as best he can. He fails.

The first bloodshed comes between Scar and Bdubs: Scar finds Bdubs close to the river before he's crossed it yet, and given that Bdubs has found himself a godapple, cuts his arm off at the elbow for it using a spell. He takes the apple and Bdubs' arm falls in the river, and then he doubles back to find another way that might lead him across.

Etho finds Bdubs after and learns of Scar's treachery. Etho, 25, is a florist who wears a gas mas halfway for aesthetic and halfway for asthma issues: Bdubs is one of Grian's classmates, recently turned 19 but was held back a grade and finishing late. Etho tends to his wounds and impressively MacGuyvering a means of stopping the bloodflow and making him a sling, both of which he does via plant magic using some reagents Bdubs found and didn't know how to use. He helps Bdubs up, and they find a place to rest together, understanding it's safer to team up. Bdubs climbs inside Etho's overly large hoodie for warmth. It is exactly as adorable as you think it should be.

Mumbo, 27, and Stress, 23, both college students working part-time at the same Starbucks, were dragged in almost together, Stress storming in after him about five minutes later, giving up on desperately trying to do both of their jobs at once. They face off several times in the early days over resources, coworkers who tolerated each other only because outright hatred would be less tolerable, although it doesn't come to bloodshed yet.

Joel, 21 and Impulse, 22, have found each other, and are grateful to see someone they know. They team up, and find Martyn shortly after Ren gets split up from Grian and Welsknight and in a fit of miasma, almost bites Martyn's leg off. They try to help him, but the miasma is coming up on them too. Given that he can't walk and his shin is broken, they elect to leave him behind lest all three of them die. Impulse feels horrible about it, Joel is focused on keeping them moving and is clearly shoving down his emotions until he's out of this place.

They run into Grian shortly after. Grian has obtained a gun and a few reagents, but an encounter with the miasma has him sprouting feathers on his face. Faced with low resources but also guilt over Martyn (who they do not mention to Grian after he asks if they've seen him), the three team up and keep running for a way out.

Martyn's beginning is shown after this, in a flashback as he's laying there bleeding to death: plagued by strange dreams for years and being on meds after meds for his insomnia, he finally chose to face them head on and walks into the doorway that has appeared for years in his dreams, and finds himself in the game and no closer to answers.

Ren comes upon him, halfway to a wolf but human enough for garbled speech. He lays a bloody cloth on his stomach - part of Mumbo's jacket, stained red - and whispers, "Somewhere else, I think I loved you, once." Martyn blinks awake at the noise, looking up at him. He remarks inwardly that he's sure their positions were reversed, once. It's the last thing he thinks before the miasma seeps into the room. He feels a split second of agonizing pain. Ren shrieks in agony, but can't fight the miasma, and devours Martyn alive.

And so eleven is down to ten.

Stress runs into Helsknight, angry that Wels abandoned him here and wracked by episodes of utter terror that leave him incapable of moving for several minutes. She doesn't know what to do with him, but recognizes he needs help. When the miasma comes, he's frozen in place with fear he can't deal with, and she picks him up and runs like hell. Later, when they find what seems to be a safe place by the river, they find a few bones (implied to be the remains of Bdubs' arm and hand), and they comment on how deeply Fucked Up this place is. Helsknight studies the bones a little closer and remarks that they're unnervingly fresh, and there's a few tooth marks on them. They agree to team until they have any other options.

Etho and Bdubs run into Grian, Joel, and Impulse at the river. Joel accuses Etho of poisoning his sister at her wedding. Bdubs is terrified, and hides behind Etho. Grian tries to calm them down, nobody listens to him and Impulse reassures him that it'll be fine. Etho snipes back at Joel. Joel pulls a knife, Etho pulls a sword. Joel threatens to hurt Bdubs further, and asks if he can buy flowers for the person who cut his arm off, baiting Etho into charging him.

Joel sidesteps and shoves Etho into the river, and then books it away from them all. Bdubs screams after Etho. Grian sees the miasma sweep from the other shore towards them, and grabs both him and Impulse and runs, not caring where he's going.

And so ten becomes nine. (Etho's motivations for going in are never made clear: that's for everyone else to debate, but through the course of the story Bdubs has flashbacks to the few days they spent together and what Etho said to him, it's implied he knows how Etho got in but he never at any point outright says why in his narration.)

Mumbo, meanwhile, meets up with Scar, who's puzzling his way across the river. He's sure he needs to get across it: he's mapped out most of the maze and is certain that the river is more of a churning moat, circular and preventing access to the centre. The centre is where the heartbeat is coming from, and that's where he needs to be. Mumbo agrees to help him, and they gather reagents and engineer a way across.

While out hunting for more, they run into everyone else still alive, marking the first true conflict of the story between the cast. Impulse and Scar make enemies immediately. Grian tries to get them to stop. Impulse reassures him that it's all right (clearly trying to be caring, and readers between the lines will notice that Grian thinks he can shove it), Scar mocks Grian openly for being such a child about it. Stress tells Mumbo he can hang, and manages to fire off a proper spell in his direction. He's wounded, but standing.

Welsknight, unsure of where Stress came from but glad she's been helping him for the past few hours, pulls a knife and shoves Stress behind him in hopes of protecting her. And then Ren comes in, halfway a wolf, with Joel's arm in his jaws and the rest of Joel trying very hard to escape.

Everyone promptly goes "oh shitbuckets" and runs like hell, save for Welsknight and Stress. Wels switches with Hels, who has no idea how he got here but sees himself with a knife in between a wolfguy, that wolfguy's victim, and Stress who saved him, and promptly charges Ren.

Between his knife and Joel's magic, Ren is sent staggering back, and the three of them run for it.

Bdubs stays with Impulse and Grian, and cries a lot about Etho. Grian admits he knows a lot about losing people, and talks about his missing brother. Impulse says he'll stand on watch, and the two of them can get some sleep. They talk for a while, but do get some rest.

Mumbo and Scar stagger back to the river, Mumbo held up by using Scar's wheelchair as a walker and pushing him. They discuss strategy and Scar tells him about the magical source at the centre of the maze, and they theorize why everyone was pulled in. Mumbo remarks that it was accidental, Scar notes that he doubts it.

He says rather abruptly that everyone is here for a reason, and the maze seems to be unlocking the darkness inside them for a purpose. He does not explain his reasoning, though Mumbo asks. They try again at the river, and Scar notes that the lanterns above the hall that lead across the river might be something someone could swing across, something like monkey-bars but vertical, but due to his disability there's no way he could.

Cutting back to Joel, Wels/Hels and Stress, Wels and Stress argue about Hels fighting Ren - Stress thinks he shouldn't have done it and also that he's lying to her about not remembering doing that, and Wels has no idea what's going on - but they run straight into miasma and have to double back. Stress gains monstrous hands, black-furred and deeply clawed. Joel is largely silent through this exchange, somehow uninjured from Ren's bites.

When they find a room inexplicably filled with nothing but a burning cauldron full of warm soup, they settle down to eat it and stop arguing. They make a few waterskins-of-sorts from some leather they've found on the way, and fill them up with soup, trusting the miasma will make them leave eventually.

Bdubs, Grian, and Impulse meanwhile are methodically finding resources and working well together as a team, keeping Bdubs' arm washed with what little freshwater they can spare and doing surprisingly well. They bicker like friends, but it's always in jest. Impulse keeps thinking about Scar, and how much he wants to punch him in the face. Bdubs is still rattled from Etho's death, but managing. Sparks are flying between Impulse and Grian, and Bdubs notes this, but doesn't say anything to them.

Ren, meanwhile, is on his own, trying to remember the difference between human and wolf. He fails. When Joel, Hels, and Stress run into him, Scar and Mumbo 'save' them by a joint spell that apparently kills him. Horrified, they run away, Stress grabbing Hels before he can challenge the two of them to a fight with his trusty knife.

Mumbo argues with Scar on whether Ren needed to die. Scar dismisses him, and says he's one less rabid beast running around. They leave, and Ren shifts, bleeding to death.

Ren's beginning is played out in a foggy flashback: looking for Martyn and Grian, hoping his students were safe and hoping he could help. With his last thoughts, knowing he's killed Martyn, he wishes for Grian to be able to settle the score.

Grian wakes up screaming, and Impulse reassures him. Grian accidentally hits him in the chest with a violet spell, but it doesn't hurt him overly much, and Impulse soothes him until he calms down. Bdubs runs in from where he was keeping watch just outside the door. Now that they're both awake, he confirms that Joel ran by a while ago, and relays the news of Ren's death to them. Impulse dismisses Scar and Mumbo as murderers. Bdubs mentions quietly that Mumbo was always kind to him given his allergies (implied to be celiac probably) and how he can't believe this.

Joel returns to Helsknight and Stress with a godapple he mugged from Mumbo, although he's badly injured from the miasma and the fight. He confirms that Bdubs, Impulse, and Grian are still alive, but he's not sure how long Bdubs will last with his injuries. Stress considers the godapple, but tells him to double back and give it to Bdubs, it may help him survive. Helsknight disagrees with this - they may need it themselves - but Joel pockets it for now, saying it's dangerous out and they should move together. They agree to this, and leave the now-empty cauldron behind.

Scar and Mumbo, meanwhile, finally figure out how to cross the river. They've learned from Etho and Bdubs' arm that the river has fish in it that will eat them, so swimming is beyond a terrible idea. They did a test run with a boat that they held a rope to, and the fish ate that too. But the second boat they'd tried to send across got significantly farther before the fish ate it, reasoning that if they fed the fish enough, they'd be able to sail across.

Before they get that far, they're interrupted by the other two parties. Scar snarls that they're all in his way. Grian desperately tries to reason with him and fails, Bdubs tries to hold Grian back and Impulse puts them both behind him. Mumbo fires a spell at Stress, angered by her continued ability to survive and also tell him how much he sucks at making lattes. Joel jumps in front of it to shove her out of the way, taking the blast. It mutates him instead, being a miasmic spell, and he launches himself at Mumbo. Scar watches them both tumble into the river, and laughs about how that takes care of everything. He casts a wall of fire between himself and the survivors, and crosses the river alone.

Just as the fires die down, they can see him safely on the other side, wheeling himself up towards the centre of the maze. He doesn't turn, but after him, they can see Joel stagger up onto the other shore, missing some chunks of flesh but bloody and alive. He turns to look at them with a mad smile on his face, raises his knife, and goes after Scar.

Joel's beginnings are told in a series of sentences between paragraphs as he follows Scar and narrates what he's seeing. Wanting recognition for what he can do. Disliking his classmates and his professors more and more with every day. Hearing the doorways calling him for days and murmuring that he could unlock their power, if he tried.

Scar notices him, but leads him further into the maze anyway. They're so close. The chorus is roaring in his ears, and he won't stop now.

Welsknight and Stress team up with Bdubs, Grian, and Impulse, figuring they only have one common enemy now: Scar. Stress and Impulse talk as they're resting, Welsknight asleep on Stress' lap and Grian curled up with Bdubs in hopes they both stay warm. Impulse talks about his girlfriend, Pearl, and about how he once gave up on everything and followed his father, hoping for an understanding between them, and finding nothing. About starting over and being in pain, about how he misses his little sister but knowing the only thing he can bring her is heartbreak.

Stress agrees, and talks about how worried she is for Welsknight and how they'll never get out, how she hated Mumbo and told him she wanted him dead but didn't quite mean it like this. They laugh a little and hit it off rather well, but the entire time, she strokes Welsknight's hair in his sleep.

Grian wakes up in the night with a certainty that something is about to go wrong. He can hear the chorus now, briefly but clearly, and unbeknownst to everyone including himself, and between blinks, sees how the maze is put together. He realizes to himself what Scar is after, and doesn't narrate what that is. He turns around and studies Wels/Hels, and smiles to himself. He whispers an incantation and the two's body briefly glows lavender, murmurs that now he can't be what Scar needs, and goes back to sleep.

What nobody expects is for Mumbo to show up in the night, clothes ruined and soaked with gore and riverwater. He picks Grian up and wakes up Helsknight, who dives after him but succeeds only in waking up Stress when Mumbo carries Grian through a wall and disappears.

She asks him what's going on. He says he doesn't know, but tells her Grian's gone. She's worried, and he smiles, and kisses her before handing her Joel's godapple that he stole and tells her to use it only for herself. He runs off after Grian, sure he can find him and bring him back.

In the morning, the three follow Helsknight's tracks, as best they can guess. They meet at a large circular room, split in half with the river running between it. It's thinner here, easier to jump across but not quite. The miasma has driven them this way, at this point. What they don't expect is for Scar to stroll up in his wheelchair, Joel and Grian at his side, Joel holding Grian, both bound and gagged.

He asks them what they're willing to trade for one of the two: only one, because he won't trade both. Impulse immediately tries to offer himself for Grian. Joel takes offense, Grian says nothing. Scar smiles, and asks Grian to show him what he thinks of that offer.

Grian, black wings bursting from his back the same shade as the miasma, tosses Joel in the river without a second thought. Something is wrong with his eyes, glowing golden from one side to the other. Stress, apologizing to Helsknight (who she thinks is Welsknight because the two have not explained nor understood jackshit), throws Grian the godapple. He takes it in victory and takes a bite. The gold fades from his eyes and he stares at it, confusedly.

Scar wheels over to him, and mutters that he always has to do everything himself. "No matter what you do," he says to the others, voice soft and terrifying and almost merry, "I'm going to win. You can't stop me." He reaches for Grian, sparks flying from his fingers, Grian screams, and there is a sharp cut to black. It's not made clear what he does to Grian, but it can be assumed to be deeply painful.

Grian waking up in the centre of the maze. Scar is relaxed, staring down at what appears to be a nuclear reactor, live with energy. There is a chorus in the air, and they can both hear it like a song. "Look at this, pretty little bird," Scar says, and he's smug like he's won. Grian blinks up at him, and thinks that Scar winning is the best possible outcome.

Scar explains what he knows: the magic is here, it's a university thesis gone wrong and it drew them in so it could feed off their energy. The only people drawn into the maze are the people with darkness in their hearts that it could unlock and feast upon. The miasma was what it considered a price worth paying to drive them to feed their darkness themselves, so it could take in more. He's sure he can control it. He's sure he can use it to bring back his own magic, or replace it with something better.

Grian's internal narration thinks this is great, and spends a depressing amount of time studying Scar's tits. This is not condemned in any way, but to readers it would be semi-clear that something is deeply wrong here because he's acting really off. Scar invites Grian up onto the platform where he is and Grian settles in a normal chair beside him, and then leans over to put his head on his shoulder. Scar runs a hand through his hair and is very smug about this.

Scar whispers into his ear that he needs Grian to do him a small favour. Grian perks up at this, and Scar tells him something - Grian describes his voice, but not what he says, and then remarks that before he goes the least Scar can do is give him some attention. They make out (and are implied to have sex) and then Grian heads off to go do what Scar asked. The implications are that either a) something's wrong with Grian, or b) he's a double agent who's been working for Scar for a while.

(At this point, I& casually take a hiatus for a month just to leave it on that cliffhanger, like a jerk. :p )

The others are trying to figure out a plan of action, given that Grian's gone rogue and Wels/Hels are gone, probably never to be seen again given Scar's track record. Stress can't stop crying, Impulse tries to reassure her but he's clearly shaken up. Bdubs asks Impulse what he thinks, and he says he doesn't know - he's quite taken with Grian, but doesn't know what's wrong with him and is very conflicted about it.

Bdubs moves back to his corner and tries to treat his arm a little bit, and thinks about Etho. Bdubs' motives are finally revealed: he walked in because he felt like it, and because nobody would miss him if he were gone. He's still wearing Etho's oversized hoodie, and wishes that the only man who loved him was still around. (At some point it's implied they also fucked during the three days they knew each other. Bdubs is not a very reliable narrator, and it's really hard to tell.)

The miasma starts to cloud the room, and the three get up and run. Bdubs staggers and Impulse, thinking of Martyn, doubles back for him. Stress stands there instead of running, torn between saving herself and hoping to help Impulse and Bdubs. The three of them escape, but Bdubs gains some scales across his remaining arm, and horns sprout from his head. They keep running, and when they find a safe spot, they rest for a while.

They don't get to much resting, because Grian walks in, wings black and eyes golden, and says he's here to make Scar happy. Impulse stands and tries to convince him to stop, that Scar's a murderer, that Impulse knows Grian would never do this, that he can be better than this. Grian ignores him, and fires a spell at Bdubs. It stops in midair, and Welsknight drops from the ceiling, torn by miasma but clearly alive and clearly terrified. He's wounded from some unknown fight, but there's a magic about him. He and Grian start to duel. Stress, seeing no other option, grabs Impulse and runs for the river.

Impulse sees the lanterns and holds onto Stress like his life depends on it: swings her forward and she catches the lantern's chain, swinging him with the rest of the momentum until he can grab the next one. It's perilous and they almost die, but they make it across the river. Exhausted, they collapse together. Stress starts crying, and bitterly wishes she didn't have to leave Welsknight behind. Impulse slams his fist on the ground, and demands to know to no one in particular what Scar really did to Grian. He also admits he loves him, which is to absolutely nobody's surprise but himself.

Welsknight and Grian face off in a horrifying battle that destroys half the maze. Bdubs dies somewhere in the battle, but neither notice for now. Eventually Grian is overpowered and makes his leave, promising to ruin Welsknight's life when he gets back. Welsknight finally sees Bdubs and runs to him, only to discover that he's pretty dead and has been for a good few minutes. He apologizes for not saving him, but takes his hoodie that he knew was important to him, not knowing it was Etho's, and moves to follow Stress and Impulse.

Wels' and Hels' beginning is told by one of them (it's never made clear which one) talking to himself as he walks. "We were stupid, you know," he says, and it's clear that whichever one it is, he's talking to the other. "We saw this thing take Martyn and we wanted an adventure. It looked fun, it looked only mildly harmful. We were sure the consequences wouldn't be more than a single scar or two. But here I am, and you ditched me the moment you were in over our head. I always knew you were weak, but not... not like this. I don't think I can ever forgive you. But even if you do come back, I'm not sharing Stress, and I'll get us out of here. Without you. I'll leave you here if I have to."

It's not clear at all who's at front, but he walks anyway and keeps seeing eyes in the stones. There are no eyes in the stones. He eventually makes it to a different part of the river. "This stupid river," he says. "Everywhere I go, it shows up again. I'm getting tired of this."

And he sits down to figure out what his next move is, seeing Grian's discarded godapple on the other side of the river. He's not impressed with this, but he knows where Stress just was, and she's fine. He runs the numbers in his head, and determines that they're down to the final five.

He thinks about what might happen if Scar finds Stress and Impulse again. He snarls in anger and when he rises, wings burst from his back. He hasn't at any point noticed that the room is full of miasma. The room is absolutely full of miasma. But he has wings now, and he uses them to get across the river. When he turns back to look, miasma has trapped him on the inner side of the river. There's no turning back now.

The last battle before Scar takes place just outside the reaction room. The chorus is so loud. Impulse and Stress walk hand in hand, and there is Grian, munching on an apple, clearly waiting for them. He smiles and asks them if they're here to congratulate Scar on his win. Impulse tries to get Grian to see straight.

Helsknight walks in with a discarded godapple, sees this situation, and figures since he has no other weapon (he does not know where Wels put his knife and figured he lost it, as he does not know Wels is there), he throws the apple at Grian's head. It bonks him and he catches it, discarding the normal apple for this one. It clears the gold from his eyes, but his disposition doesn't change.

"I bet you thought the brainwashing would make me different," he says, and he sounds smug and soft and happy. "I bet you thought you could save me. I hate you. I hate you and your friends can die with you. Do you think I didn't notice you? Did you think I'd forget?!"

Grian's voice rises with his anger. Impulse tries to deflect, and calls him by a name that no one says in narration but clearly upsets Grian. Stress glances at him. "Your sister?"

"Me," Grian returns, flatly. "I never got to tell my brother that he didn't have a sister, because he left before I could. He abandoned me, and I'm going to kill him for it. At least Scar doesn't treat me like a toy!"

"Big fucking deal," Helsknight cuts in, and when he walks up, it's with nothing but magic in his hands. "My own best friend and systemmate abandoned me, and you don't see me killing people over it. I've been with him since I was born. I'll kill you, though, if you don't mind. I'm tired of listening to you."

Helsknight doesn't die in this last fight, but Impulse and Stress take the opportunity to get past them, and they aren't fast enough. Stress goes down from a misfired spell and it isn't clear who cast it, and it doesn't matter. Helsknight's scream for her is enough to stop Grian in his tracks.

Impulse continues on, alone. He moves into the reactor room, and sees Scar observing it, waiting. "You're not Grian," he remarks. "A shame. He really was good to me, in the end."

"You broke him," Impulse answers, and his voice is dull. He's been down here maybe two weeks, and he's about ready to be done forever.

"Sure did. It wasn't even worth it, in the end... I thought he had the power I wanted. He didn't."

Grian and Helsknight walk into the room, hand in hand, equally bloody and equally distraught. "No, I gave it away," Grian says, and then says nothing more. Helsknight is quiet, and wishing Wels was with him to steady their legs.

Impulse and Scar turn, and when Scar brightens, distracted by Grian, Impulse shoves him into the reactor.

Helsknight stays put. Grian moves, and catches Scar hand in hand, barely holding him from falling into it.

Helsknight speaks, but he does so with a cadence unlike his usual, and no one realizes that it's Welsknight at all: "No more. The way out is here."

"No more," Grian says, and pulls Scar back up, saving him from the reactor. But he's on the edge himself, and the weight of Scar unbalances him, and he stumbles.

No one is fast enough to save him, and he falls, Scar and Impulse both reaching for him and too late to do anything but watch him go.

The reactor turns black, and then red, and then blue, and then yellow. The four remaining flowers blink, and they are standing in Ren's chemistry classroom, the writing desk back in place.

They disperse immediately. Impulse calls Grian's phone on the walk home, hoping to hear his voice in his voicemail one last time. Grian picks up, informs him to never speak to him again, and then hangs up on him.

When he gets home, it's to find Joel and Pearl, talking like the old friends they are. Joel's every wound he remembers is now a scar, fresh but healing. He calls around in the next few days, verifying that everyone else made it out alive, despite watching most of them die.

He never asks how they survived. But he gets an invitation to Bdubs' and Etho's wedding six months later, and attends. Somehow, Scar and Grian are there. Scar winks at him, slips a rose with a note in his pocket ('we survived because Grian is more powerful than anything we could ever be, I hope we get to play again someday') and sometime in the next ten years, the nightmares fade a little.

Impulse moves towns not long after the wedding. Grian graduates highschool, and promptly signs up for therapy. He recommends it to Welsknight, who finds out that Helsknight was also there the entire time, and they inform Stress, whose place they've been crashing at for the past four months.

She brings Mumbo an apology cake, complete with terrible icing ('sorry I watched you die and didn't do anything, please get a different job') and he accepts this, and promptly finds a job with Etho at the florist's.

Martyn shows up at Ren's place before the game is even over for the rest of them. He died, and he woke up in his bed, scarred but alive and healing. When Ren dies, Martyn is there, and they play chess for six hours instead of talking about it. Ren doesn't ask for forgiveness. Martyn, whose dreams he finds in a book on Ren's shelves, gives it to him anyway.

#asks #fl0wer_game au #jadespeedster17 #dead dove do not eat #5 #hermitcraft #shouldn't show up in the tags now and should do organizational stuff

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