Short little fic for you today! CW for self harm: Rarg basically tries to control being passive by bruising himself every time he thinks of it.
By the way, post a fic!
And, to the prompt challenge people: wow, I'm sorry...I forgot I had a challenge until like yesterday when I went scrolling and noticed it. So...uh, yeah, I'll be finishing your prompts. Sorry!
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Rarg still felt uneasy every time the other pigmen started talking about the villagers.
Sure, he'd effectively been around it his entire life. But he'd never truly gotten used to it. There was just something jarring about it. How his friends, comrades, and brothers-in-combat could go from trusted friends to laughing, snarling, teeth-gnashing animals in seconds. Ugur could go from chatting aimlessly about baking to reminiscing about the time he snapped a villager's neck and ate it in seconds, seamlessly, and everyone laughed.
Instead, his face had gone pale and he'd excused himself to the gentlehog's washroom.
He still didn't understand it. It was like he'd missed context in a joke, and now the entire conversation didn't make sense.
What part about villagers plus killing was funny? They weren't good or satisfying to watch die, like killing a slime for food. That made sense. The death of the slime meant good food, life-sustaining food, and it was plainly evident that the slime had to die for it. He didn't mind that. Sure, it was a little disturbing to watch, but...for the greater good.
Not so much with villagers. They made disgusting, terrified noises. Some of them even screamed in common. A few times he'd seen the wither skeletons, with their strange language, refuse to kill a villager. Apparently they just thought it was too violent. Pretty rich coming from a species that he'd seen hunt baby turtles for fun, but he did see where they came from. That death noise was quite disturbing.
They acted a lot like pigmen, now that he thought of it. They paired together like pigmen did. Had many kids. Then died. And those kids, they had all the same features as a pigman child. They even had friends like pigmen, from what he could see: many times before he went into a village, he'd seen the villagers head-nodding in that peculiar way and laughing together.
Still...he didn't like the things. They were dumb. He could tell. Even stupider than a skeleton. They barely had spoken language, just a system of grunts and low, husky laughter. And, well, his countrymen, comrades, friends-in-arms...they couldn't be wrong. They were smart men, good men. He wasn't about to hold the life of a greedy, stupid creature above them.
Still, he'd never stopped being ever so slightly disturbed.
He'd seen it in other creatures. The attitude. The little side-eyes, bit lips. Even in blazes, who he hadn't even known could look like that until he'd watched one floating from the side for a minute.
They'd been either killed or kicked out once someone noticed it.
There was only one still sticking around now. A wither skeleton.
He didn't try to chat. They weren't friends. At all.
Wither skeletons and pigmen...if he was honest, he could see how a conversation would go. The skeletons were actually terrifying. Not even in a light, transient way: there was some kind of primordial fear that sparked the second other pigmen saw them. He couldn't blame his comrades. The skeletons had some creepy features.
And by that, he didn't mean anything truly seeable. They were just...scary like that. Like a enderman. They had that strange, otherworldly tang to them. Lightly distorted shadows, that subtle way their faces melted in the wrong lighting, the occasional time where he looked back at one and, for a split second, saw a young girl, or a old man, or anything between.
And did he mention the roses? Big, black roses, sprouting from behind them, bleeding into the ground, killing everything around them. He shuddered to think of what kind of things had to happen to the species for something that scary to be common for them to make. That could not be good for you, spawning all those sharp, black things for you to step on.
Maybe there was no real, huge danger: they passed out pretty fast after using their wither abilities.
Still, he didn't like talking with a creature that randomly spawned black roses and melted.
Besides, even if wither skeletons weren't so obviously creepy, it wasn't like that dude would be fine with him, anyways. He, if Rarg remembered correctly from the few times they'd talked, was pretty suspicious about other monsters. He really seemed only close with Enderstar. No clue how he'd gotten there. Enderstar had about the same respect for their scary, shifty ways as he did.
His friends kept joking.
He smiled, trying to pretend he found it funny. He doubted they were buying it.
Finally, after a few minutes more of listening, he changed the topic, and avoided the subject for another day.
Still, he knew it would come up again.
He wanted to go home, somehow.
He didn't even know why. His family was just as happy chatting about this as they were. It wasn't like he was about to escape going back there. Heck, he didn't even like his old home. He remembered it mostly as 'that place where mom and dad ask me about the stupid girlfriend I lied to them about'. It made absolutely no sense to go home.
But...he didn't really want to go home to them, he guessed. He just...wanted...difference, he supposed? A new life? New day?
All he knew was that he was getting tired of feeling like this.
He'd tried to fix it.
Sitting on his knees in the backyard as a piglet, horking down stinging mushrooms, hoping they'd fix him because of one old legend.
All that had given him was swollen lips and a few tut-tuts about how he was clearly a stupid child.
Slightly older, winding a bracelet around his arm with a spike, and pushing down every time he thought that. Like with rubber bands. Only thing was, the spike hurt slightly worse. Not enough to cut him or anything...but it did bruise.
That had just hurt and done nothing. And gotten him called dumb. This time, by his friends.
He'd tried it again, quite recently. After one particularly bad raid. He'd had a few nights after where he woke up shrieking, seeing some villager's dying face plastered over his retinas. After a few nights of that, he'd finally given in and grabbed his old bracelet.
It had worked exactly as it had the first time.
Which is to say, it hadn't.
He'd actually cried that time.
Someone cracked another joke, and he faked a smile, sweat dripping down his arms.
He'd heard of a place. Lavacrest. They supposedly were a city of similar monsters.
He didn't know how to feel about that.
Maybe they were the same as him. Maybe they'd accept him. Maybe they were awesome and he was missing out by staying.
But...he liked it here. He'd never once dared to leave the fortress. It would have been scary to him. All that outside world, nobody else to talk to...he didn't even like going on missions. He wasn't sure he'd ever walked outside of the fortress. All that cavern ceiling above him, all that glowstone...it intimidated.
So he stayed here, in a city so obviously unsuited for him.
He smiled when someone pantomimed a villager dying.
He laughed when they clapped him on the back and congratulated him on raids.
Finally, he left, feeling drained, and quietly waited until the next time it came up.
