Chapter 1: Alone In The Darkness
Chapter Text
David recognized every corpse he walked past.
A 20-year-old college student lay buried beneath the remains of an apartment complex, an ocean of red seeping from the rubble. A mother of two sat charred and unmoving in the burning wreck of a car, still aflame after all these years. An office worker just shy of retirement was impaled on a spike tall as a streetlight. Each time he passed by, they would rise from the dead and follow behind David as a crowd of zombies—never attacking, never speaking, only watching. The many apologies he gave them had no effect.
David walked through the ruined city of Robloxia, more corpses joining him as he did. The crowd had become a small army—hundreds of people trailing behind him. Hundreds of lives that had been cut short by his actions. The destruction only grew worse the farther he went, with spikes protruding from every surface and entire buildings being corroded by red energy. Those unlucky enough to touch the corruption were either horribly scarred or completely melted. David bitterly noted how he had indirectly destroyed the city he had sworn to protect.
Eventually, he saw his destination in the distance—and then, without realizing how, he was suddenly there, standing on the lawn of the Doe household. The modest house was the only untouched part of the city, a perfect picture of the ideal home: white picket fence, a porch built by hand, and a small collection of pink roses planted in the front. It would have been perfect—if not for the dead man slumped on the porch.
John Doe sat motionless in one of the two chairs, eyes closed, hands folded in his lap. This wasn’t the feral, corrupted beast he had become on that day; he was simply a man with a kindly face and glasses, wearing the standard issue Roblox employee uniform. There was no blood, no wounds. David could have mistaken him for being asleep, had he not been the one to kill him. Jane Doe sat in the chair next to her husband, holding his hand and looking content. She looked at David, and for a moment he thought this dream might go differently, that she might forgive him. Then her face contorted in anger, and he felt silly for ever thinking so.
“You did this,” she said, her voice piercing through his skull like a knife.
“I know,” David said, but no sound came out.
“You killed him.” Tears streamed from her eyes, flowing upward into the sky, though David barely registered this.
“I’m sorry.” He spoke again to no avail. He took a step forward—to comfort her, to make things right, to do anything. The instant he moved, the army of corpses reached out and stopped him, hundreds of cold, dead hands holding him still with impossible strength.
“ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS LISTEN!” Jane screamed. Her voice was loud enough to send cracks spider-webbing across the ground, stopping just before David’s feet. “It should have been you,” she added quietly, and he could only nod in response.
A hand burst from one of the cracks—clawed, long, and razor-sharp, its surface rough like obsidian. A second hand followed, and John Doe pulled himself out of the ground. This wasn’t the man on the porch but the monster he had become that day: larger than life and towering over the bound David. The black corruption had spread through his body like an infection, turning his veins black and coating both his arms from the elbows down. Part of his face was consumed as well, and his right eye glowed red with malice.
David lowered his head beneath his helmet, unable to look at the creature he had created. The beast fixed its horrible gaze upon him, and the silence that followed was almost worse than any injury it could inflict. Finally, in what felt like an act of mercy, the creature lifted David with one hand and thrust its claws through his chest with the other. The pain only lasted a few moments before giving way to sweet, merciful nothingness.
Chapter 2: All Washed Out
Chapter Text
Shedlesky woke up with his heart pounding, drenched in sweat from terror rather than heat. His breathing was ragged, visions of the corpses, the house, the monster appearing every time he closed his eyes. He frantically grabbed his chest and was relieved to find that there were no wounds there. For several long moments, Shedlesky simply lay in bed, begging the dream to leave his mind, to no avail.
After a few minutes, Shedlesky found himself calm enough to sit up and untangle himself from his silk sheets. The fear had subsided, but the guilt remained like always. The good dreams—the ones of his wife, his friends, of his life before everything went to hell—were becoming rarer, and the ones where his mind chose to torture him with his past actions seemed like a regular occurrence now. He glanced over at the other side of the bed and saw that BrightEyes was gone, and conflicting feelings went through him: relief that his wife wasn’t there to see him like this, and disappointment that she wasn’t there to comfort him.
Like the rest of his house, Shedlesky’s bedroom was irritatingly perfect. It featured a queen-sized bed, floor to ceiling curtains, and shelves that proudly displayed a multitude of sword fighting trophies from both Shedlesky and BrightEyes; a remnant of a years long rivalry that ended when Shedlesky gave up sword fighting.
Shedlesky got up from the bed and shuffled towards the bathroom, where he splashed his face with cold water, as if he could wash away the memories. The man in the mirror was a far cry from who he had once been, the tired eyes and unkempt beard nothing like the confident, good-looking man that BrightEyes had fallen in love with. Once his hands stopped shaking, Shedlesky was able to shave his face and tame the wild curls on his head, and although he couldn’t erase the dark circles under his eyes, he nevertheless thought his wife would appreciate it when she came back.
Once that was done, Shedlesky got himself dressed and went downstairs. BrightEyes had been gone on a business trip for a few days now, and although the house was in an acceptable state, it certainly wouldn’t hurt if she came back to see it spick and span. He started vacuuming in the living room, under the couch and loveseat. The swords displayed on the mantle needed polishing, and he found it amusing how little they resembled the real things. They might fool someone else, but Shedlesky knew that the real Firebrand was always warm to the touch, that Darkheart practically sucked in all the light around it, that the Illumina was so bright it was almost painful to look at. Their power simply couldn’t be faked or replicated.
Shedlesky found himself going down memory lane while dusting off the pictures. Most showed younger versions of him and BrightEyes, holding swords or trophies or just each other, the spark of newfound love still burning bright. Others were of his old coworkers, Matt and Doom and Builderman, grinning with the exuberance of young men who thought they could change the world. How long had it been since he checked on any of them? Doom had long since gone rogue, but Matt and Builderman were only a drive or phone call away. Shedlesky resolved to do so after BrightEyes came back.
Someone knocked on the door.