#orphan's path

[Image 1: A greying Technoblade as The Blood of the Covenant, snarling and holding a sword dripping with stardust. Philza, veiled, as the Angel of Death. One wing is outstretched, pitch black except where it is filled with stars, a flock of crows melting out of it.

Image 2: Technoblade as the reborn priest. His golden brand encircles his skull. In one hand he thumbs his prayer bells and in the other he holds the Axe of Peace. Philza Minecraft as the long-lived hardcore elytron, wings partially extended. He smiles gaily as he holds a water bucket.

Sally Soot’s fate is sealed the day she looks up from a fountain and meets the wide-eyed gaze of a lanky elytron.

The staring was nothing out of the ordinary. Everyone else around her was also looking on in shock as she squirreled away coins into her inventory. But this elytron is looking at her from their seat outside a cafe with something skirting awe in their eyes.

Sally Soot’s fate is sealed the day that elytron pulls out a guitar and plucks out the first notes of a song she knows, one she loves, as if destiny had put the two of them in this exact spot.

Even the cops finally showing up to chase her down for the coins can’t ruin her mood that day.

Like a string of fate she follows that boy, follows the glint in his wine-red eyes and the smell of divinity wreathing him. Joins him following Schlatt to Halfmoon and lets her new friends surround her and realizes this is what it’s like to not be lonely, this is community and this is joy and this is love-

Sally Soot’s fate is sealed the day she realizes she’s in love. The day that falsely confident, too-pretty-for-his-own-good, ridiculous elytron boy trembles under her paws as they brush through baby-soft down on undergrown wings. When both of them can drop the pretense of being normal players and just exist.

You love him. Your wordsmith, your riot-starter, your trailblazer. You love him with all your heart.

It’s going to be the death of you.

Sally Soot’s fate is sealed the day she gets in that caravan to the Dreamlands. The day Wilbur Sam-seong Craft tells her about the train stations for the undead and how he’s going to die with her last name. Sally Soot’s fate is sealed the day she knows everything there is to know about Wilbur and still stays.

When every day feels like a weight that only gets heavier and you just want to sleep and Theo is shooed away when she tugs on your blankets with her little paws and you hear her screaming in her sleep sometimes and you never see Schlatt anymore because Wilbur thinks visitors will stress you out and Phil just looks at you like you’re already gone-

You can tell it’s going to end soon.

Things feel safer when you’re curled up tightly now, snout buried in your tails.

If I never get better, Angel, will you give me your mercy?

Sally Soot’s fate is sealed the day she finds herself looming over Wilbur laying in their bed, bleeding slowly into his hair, his wings, the sheets. Sally Soot’s fate is sealed the day she finds herself looming over a body streaked with glowing blue. Sally’s fate is sealed the day she finds herself looming over a bleeding animal. A kitsune’s fate is sealed the day it attacks the creature next to it.

You never could be just a player, could you?

Sally’s tasted smoke before, from cooking and campfires and crowded spaces full of people with pipes. It burns in the back of her throat and she never quite gets used to it.

This smoke crackles in her throat like it’s still sparking. Stifles all her senses as her body shrinks down to a narrow-faced fox choking on ozone, her thrashing getting weaker as the smoke and two arms close in around her.

The burn of starfire subsides to a muffled water pressing in on all sides, and Sally is dimly aware of her lack of senses. All the breath has left her now. The overwhelming adrenaline is gone. Everything is gone.

Nothing could have changed this.

You were always going to die here.