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Cub falls with a yelp buried beneath the thunderous CRACK of Scar’s firework rocket and the swirl of smoke that follows, swallowing data desition and the remnants of Cub’s items alike. Stray sparks flicker at the edges of the resulting cloud— when it thins, only a crossbow, a handful of rockets, and the thin leather armor Grian pressed into their hands before the minigame remain.
Scar pauses only long enough to holler his victory— knife-edged and bleating laughter— before heaving to bend the bowstave back once more.
It speaks to the sheer potency of his adrenaline that his fingers tremor as they reset the nut. Corded spider-silk bites between each builder’s callous on his palms, raw with sweat and fumbling the reload; with the butt of the tiller braced against his hip, Scar strains, shoulders bunching to draw back the crossbow string. Click. Readjust. Focus honed to a scalpel point, welding iron to the fervid silhouette of his scrabbling hands. Lungs shivering, embers crackling in his stomach, Scar parts his lips in a wild grin and slides another rocket into the groove.
This game is chaos, all frenzied motion and the rubberband snap of respawn, burnishing coils of bubbling potential energy that build, build, until it all bursts to kinesis. Scar’s very blood boils in his ears, pulsing lightning into each shaky, gasping limb. The world around him paints itself in kaleidoscopic whorls; when a hyena-cackle slices the air, followed by stumbling bootsteps on the abandoned roof above, Scar’s heart constricts until it squeezes right up between his teeth.
No time for a graceful retreat— mere ticks separate him from the business end of a dazzling, deathly light show. Instead, he pivots on his heel, spraying dirt in an arc and snatching the flint and steel tucked securely at his waist.
A click, a clash of firefly sparks, and the rocket’s fuse fizzles crisply to life. Scar’s weapon snaps up and around, quivering tension, as his eyes spin to meet—
Ah.
Grian.
Wings flared wide behind him, Grian skids just shy of tumbling off the oaken roof, lips peeled back and hands clutched in claws around his own crossbow. Caught in candent amber, the sun spirals in ribbons past his plumage, dying the ground below with muddied red. The twin pits of obsidian that pass for Grian’s eyes— still half-stranger, half-blossoming friend— polish into the keen sweep of an axe, carving him down to marrow as their gazes collide.
Pinned beneath it, Scar stiffens, elbows locked and pulse a rabbit-quick rattle within his veins. Even that subtle stop-start motion tunes Grian’s head to him, a crane of his neck as his wings stretch, bristle, gather stormclouds beneath them. Kissed by resplendence and wreathed in honeyed godrays, Grian’s spine tautens, muscles coiling in deep shadows beneath his skin.
A hunter, poised to strike. Ravenous.
Lethal.
It coagulates in a cold, molasses pit at the bottom of Scar’s stomach. Pull the trigger. C’mon, do it!
He can’t. Sure as needle to frozen butterfly, Grian’s skewered him in place.
The flick of Grian’s flint and steel strikes a match against the fuse of his own rocket, crossbow plunging to aim square-center at Scar’s chest. Later, when the fugue has volatilized from his body and Scar lies tucked in the longest bath of his life, he’ll wheel through each slivered snapshot where their scant cords had burned as one, licking the edges of this resin-snared tableau.
Grian’s porcelain teeth drag forward to glint in blinding midday. Scar’s rocket sizzles. He does not draw breath.
He burns—
“Revenge!” Cub’s lackadaisical voice, abrupt and too close for comfort, heralds itself by the sharp, shrill twang of a bowstring—
— and Scar’s rocket detonates in its tiller.
Scar’s squawk shatters as the abandoned village around him spins out into a thousand composite pieces, flattening down to make way for void. Deep within his code, down to its very structure, something also cracks— death, splitting him open like the hull of a nut, burrowing in, threatening to scatter. Distant threads of song weave around him, pluck their chords through him, sew him back to coalescence….
Scar respawns in a veil of cold water, washing out the void and slipping shards of crystalline clarity down his spine— he sucks in a breath, hands spasming on the bedsheets as he lists forward, eyes trained to the searing, cerulean sky.
Huh.
Few secrets exist within his own heart that he’s not already gleaned, but the lucence rolling underneath his tongue now carries the soft, fragile vellum of a newborn epiphany, still reeling at the glint of void-borne eyes. Scar presses a shaking hand against his sternum, blinking rapid; Grian’s smile has always contained the depth of oceans in it, and now it drags him under, a seeking riptide that tumbles his gut and bubbles into his aching throat. Scar blinks again, helpless, and glides his tongue along the dried-out seam of his lips.
Then he releases the mattress, smooths out the rumpled sheets, and makes his quaking way back to the site of his latest death.
“—stealing my kill?” Grian’s shrieking as Scar stumbles forward past the final building, flurrying to the ground in a hail of sun-kissed feathers. Scar sways, nails digging into the house’s terracotta corner; he sweeps the length of each vane without permission before pulling his legs up from where they’ve rooted to the earth.
Not so fearsome, here on the ground— Grian sinks to the midway point between playful and petulant as he wrinkles his nose at Cub’s unruffled, cat-lazy grin. “I can’t believe this,” he complains at large, flexing his wings until they fold in neat, straight lines along his back. “I had him right there and you blew him up right out from under me.”
“Hey, you know what they say about war,” Cub says, lifting soot-stained palms. His crossbow lies discarded in a heap of items at his feet— Scar spots his own meagre armor abandoned in the mix.
“Gentleman,” Scar says, once he’s two blocks away and counting. “I think that scared the actual pants off of me.”
Indeed, the wobbling in his legs promises to buckle him; Scar braces a hand to his knee, rubbing out the white-hot flitters. Without ceremony, Cub bends over to rummage for his cane.
“That’s what they call game over, three to one, baby!” he crows as he passes it over. “Let’s go!”
“Good game, Cubbie, very good game.” Scar brings his hands together in a brief, clumsy round of applause, then pitches his cane into the dirt like a war pennant. That star-bright halation of adrenaline has drained, hollowing out and scraping him raw from the inside— but traces of it still linger, billowing through the back of Scar’s mind as he turns to grace Grian with the buttery flash of a crooked smile.
“Jeez, that was intense! Feel like I just ran three loops in Ace Race with an extra side of Rocket Spleef.” And an extra-extra side of blowing yourself up, sheesh. “We gotta do this again.”
“What— like— like now?” Grian asks, brows rocketing to incredulous new heights.
“Oh— oh, jeez, no,” Scar chuckles, “I-I’m gosh-darn beat, mister, you went and put me through my paces!” He stretches out to clasp Grian on the shoulder with his free hand, sinking fingers into plush, piled fabric. “But man, that was fun. Sometime soon, right, Cub?”
“It was pretty great, man, yeah. Good job.” Cub tosses him a thumbs up.
Two high points of colour seep into Grian’s cheeks— a lustre Scar hasn’t glimpsed before. He wears it well: in the loosening of his limbs, the lowered slopes of his shoulders, the restless shuffle of his foot in the dirt. Lantern to beckoning moth, Grian rocks back on his heels, the corners of his mouth quirking wryly.
“Y’know what, I’ll take it,” he says, decisive. Then, on a ringing, aureate laugh: “That was pretty fun, wasn’t it?”
The well of Scar’s mouth floods with sweet water, thick and rushing across his tongue. He swallows— retracts his hand from Grian’s sweater at last, thumb snagging over stray thread.
“Why, that’s not even a question.” C’mon, do it. Pull the trigger. Cautious, Scar ventures: “Until next time, next minigame?”
When Grian catches his eye, Scar holds it, tucks it between his lungs and beams through the bubbles still sparking underneath his chest. Enigma as he is, Grian overflows with gravity, an event horizon that compels Scar to tip past open air and plummet to whatever labyrinth hides at its center. Why not continue exploring it through games?
“Sure,” Grian says at last— slow, calculating, the tone of a puzzle presented and a piece finally slotting into place. “I’ll give you a shout next time I come up with something. Or—” and here, his eyes crinkle at the corners— “y’know, next time you feel like exploding into confetti.”
“That sounds like a great idea to me,” Scar replies with a wink, and seals their futures in a florid, enthusiastic bow.