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His snail could be anywhere. Scar had already died too many times by it in the early days, and bringing them back when everyone was either red or turning soon was a clear sign of the end times. His pulse quickened as he paced around the cliffside. Grian had left him a while ago and he was growing impatient. The rollercoaster (or what was meant to be one originally) was laying unattended as he circled his plans in his head. He had to kill people before he went — that’s what the rollercoaster was for, after all, but he also had to wait for Grian and be aware of his snail at all costs, and– oh, no, that was a trivia bot going towards him. Weighing his options, Scar approached it with trepidation. It was bad enough having just one snail following him everywhere. It would be worse if it were two. He just had to hope it would be quick.
His life ended in a second, as soon as he lowered his guard.
The promises broken took root in him. All the projects he had been building up to, his teammates he’d left without one last goodbye.
Scar yelled. He screamed, heartbroken, disappointed, as his vision got blurry, darker. It was always harder to see when you were dead.
“Nooo! Nooo, Scar, noo! No, Scar, my bamboozler!”
“No! Scar, no! One bamboozler down…”
Jimmy was nowhere to be found, Lizzie was so close but not enough. And yet, their broken yells bounced in his mind in an endless loop. They’d had so many plans, so much to do, but the time wasn’t enough. It never was.
There was little reason to stick around any longer. Scar’s faded form was barely holding onto the material plane.
Maybe, one last time… Maybe if I wait… I could see them again.
But even as those thoughts developed, Scar knew. He didn’t want to see his friends die.
Besides, he felt the pull of a tether. A beckoning call to disappear from the world and reform somewhere else.
Following the instinct was effortless. Closing his eyes one last time, the pull swallowed him whole.
When he reopened his eyes, sunflowers danced in his vision, mocking him. Scar sighed and dropped his shoulders. He should’ve waited until Jimmy and Lizzie died. At least then he’d be able to laugh along with them before the universe pulled him back here. He still remembered how even death couldn’t separate him from Cleo and Bdubs, a few games back. They had met in the air and hugged each other in the only way incorporeal beings could. They’d floated around the map, followed Etho and even talked to him through unspoken whispers, and he talked back. Jimmy and Lizzie were surely dead by now — he loved his friends, but he knew how easy it was for them to pass. He looked to the sky with a wry smile. Hopefully they went out with a bang. Hopefully their death was consequential and they left a mark where they stood.
His smile disappeared. Hopefully they didn’t go out with a literal bang. Now that would be upsetting.
Scar sighed and adjusted his cape. The flowers felt heavy, interlinked with the thread. For the first time since his entrapment, he considered throwing it off.
The squish and slide across the grass reached his ears. A sound he was already very used to — too accustomed to hear before he passed, but completely foreign in this realm.
“What in the world!” Scar yelled and rolled out of the way.
The snail looked up at him expectantly, its little stalk eyes bouncing around.
“No…” His heart sank and started racing. Sweat began accumulating on his forehead and anywhere his heavy cape weighed. “No! Get away from me, you!”
He got into a fighting stance, holding out his sword with both hands. Short and deep breaths, his mind started revolving. How did the snail get there? Why would the snail come with him? There was no reason any of that would happen. Each world was meant to be its own. Same people, sure, but the things… the mobs…
Why had the snail followed him here? Why couldn’t it have left him alone.
He was expecting to be left alone.
But the snail didn’t move. It was still standing there, looking up at Scar a few blocks away. Too close for comfort, but not close enough to cause him harm. It wasn’t moving.
Scar looked down at his sword.
“Is this it?” he said, victorious. “You fear my sword? Of all things, that’s what you fear?”
The snail didn’t respond.
“I can’t even hit you with it! No one can! We’ve tried!”
Still silence. Scar didn’t know what he was trying to do. Trying to convince the snail to kill him? Trying to get it to move around and actually do something?
… Trying to convince himself that his death hadn’t been in vain, and that there was nothing he could’ve done about it?
Scar let go of the sword, never breaking eye contact with the slimy beast that shared his skin.
“Go ahead. Do it.” He challenged it, eyes steely with determination. It would be a gift, anyway, being let go of this purgatory once and for all.
But if he believed that, why had he not tried getting rid of all his hearts.
Why had he chosen to stay, even beyond doing repairs around the server, even beyond trying to bring it back to its former glory?
Why did he decide to stay if he didn’t even want to be there in the first place?
ESCARgo was a stray pebble, for all he knew, with how still it laid there. Scar let out a long breath and laughed. He laughed and laughed like he was with company, running around the server causing chaos for their own amusement. He laughed like there was a meaning to it. Like laughing would resolve all his problems.
But the snail stayed there, unmoving, unfeeling.
It would soon turn to night. Not like that mattered with the amount of hearts he had from all the times he tried pressing the ‘success’ button, trying to get a different outcome by doing the same thing, over and over again.
He may have gotten a bit overboard.
Maybe that’s why he never tried to end his run, in all that time. Maybe that was it. It would’ve been too tedious to go down in health. Little heart marks covered his entire chest, from one wrist to the other, a twist around his arms, then through his entire back — they had even started to loop around his neck, up his throat, snaking up to his face. Constricting.
He never liked undressing anymore. He could wash himself as he washed his clothes.
There was always the option to go back to the end and fall the way Lizzie had gone.
Lizzie… there was a chance they could’ve teamed up in this world too, but fate had different plans. The Keeper had different plans.
Or was it him who created the rift?
But how long would he be floating there in the void, waiting for Infinity to curl around his figure and pluck one by one each and every one of his hearts?
He didn’t want to go down slowly, painfully.
He visited the Keeper often to regain lost health. Why did he do that? What was he trying to achieve with it?
“Come on, you- gasto- Gastop- Gastropod! I’m not scared of you, no I’m not! You think you can take me in my own home? Come right ahead! I’m waiting!”
For a moment, Scar believed the snail would stay as still as it had been all this time. But for the first time since he took notice of it, it started moving.
Its slide was slow, like it always was at close proximity. A persistence hunter, tailing its prey at a consistent pace once it was just close enough. Waiting for its prey to forget it was even there and lower its guards.
In this world, mortality wasn’t a thing he had to worry about. He was there, ever-present, always in control of everything to a boring degree. Survival was thrown to the wayside, adrenaline was nonexistent, and he always knew what came next.
Seeing the snail was exhilarating.
It being here… was wrong. His mortality given flesh with the only purpose being his own destruction. A distraction! A threat. A purpose. Imminent death. An escape.
The snail slowly approached him, and he never let go of his posture, trying not to break under pressure and let it know he was bluffing. He had to seem like he wasn’t bluffing. Was he bluffing?
What was he trying to achieve with that? He didn’t want to die, or did he? No, no he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to-
The snail touched him.
Its slimy body made contact with him, and for the first time, Scar could feel it. The slime stuck to his clothes where the creature pressed against him, but not much else.
He was alive.
Tension broke from within him. He was alive. He didn’t die. He was fine.
And somehow, the snail seemed unimpressed, unsurprised, looking up at him. Like it knew all along this was going to happen.
“You… you knew, didn’t you?” A valve opened in his chest and all the compressed air inside him escaped until he was left empty inside. The valve closed without breathing in. “You knew I wouldn’t die.”
The snail wiggled its stalks at him, half its body up his leg. Scar let in shallow breaths.
“So why are you… here?”
The breeze made the sunflowers around them dance. That was the only sound as the snail and him made direct eye contact.
“Why… did you come here?”
He hesitated for a moment, then reclined against the backrest of his wheelchair and looked up to the sky. The snail took the hint, and Scar could feel the pressure against his legs as it made its way upwards, leaving a trail of slime where it crawled.
He would have to clean off the slime later.
The snail was a familiar weight on his lap, the perfect size for a cat. Instinctively, Scar reached down to pet soft fur, but was met by a hardened shell. He looked down in near shock, straightening up.
The snail’s stalks reached up, higher than they had before, nearly touching his chin.
Was it saying hi? Sorry? Making peace with him?
Or was it just curious? Despite following him around everywhere, Escargo had never had the time to look at him properly. Was that it?
Now that they could both exist without the threat of destruction, was it trying to know who it would be spending its eternity with?
Scar gingerly touched the top of the snail’s head. At the contact, its stalks shrunk away, and his hand jumped from the sudden reaction.
There was a brief moment where the world stayed quiet… Scar’s hand in the air, the snail’s eyes close to its head.
Then the snail reached up again. Scar slowly lowered his hand, and when his fingers met its head at last…
It nudged against it like a cat, asking for more.
Warmth grew in Scar’s chest and broke its way out through a smile.
His fingers traced the slimy neck of the critter as it followed his every caress. It crawled closer, salivating even over parts of his shirt now. He let go of the animal for just a moment and removed his cape, letting it fall against the grass. One less item to clean by hand.
His too many hearts were partially visible now without his cape, but for once, it didn’t matter.
Escargo crawled up closer, and stayed on his chest.
“So, we’re staying here, little guy?” he said fondly as he caressed the side of its head.
Its small whiskers wriggled in response.