A Path to a Different Happy Ending (Flower Husbands Empires Fic)

Prologue: The Watcher's Gift

Scott knocked an arrow and fired it at Ren as they duelled in the forest. Ren charged towards him. In a panic, Scott threw potions of harming and poison at his opponent. Ren threw burning hot lava at Scott, but ended up getting most of it on himself instead.

They drew their swords for melee combat. Scott landed one hit before Ren turned and started to run, crying out about the potions and fire.

"I'm sorry!" Scott cried out.

Ren doused himself in water and hid behind his shield as Scott cornered him by a tree. Ren barely managed to dodge and run, but Scott had his bow. He was willing to chase Ren all over the world to end this cruel game.

He finally caught up to him, standing on a hill, bow in hand. Ren tried to run, but Scott wasn't going to let up. He chased him, firing arrow after arrow.

He camped in a tree, firing on both Ren and Martyn, hoping to kill one so there would be less competition. A quick chase after Martyn till he got trapped in a hole, and it was down to two.

Ren found him, but Scott had a ranged weapon along with a small resupply of potions from Martyn's death, and all Ren had was his lava and sword. There was a frantic chase, then they were on a hill, Scott above Ren. Scott tossed a potion, then jumped down, hitting Ren as he did.

He drew his bow and shot at Ren, running backwards while the other man was mobbed by zombies.

A zombie struck Ren in the head, and lightning struck, brilliant and bright, signalling the end.

Scott had only taken a few heaving breaths before the earth suddenly tilted up towards him. He didn't feel like he was falling over, but that it was coming towards him. He braced himself and closed his eyes, but the ground never hit him. Opening his eyes, he discovered that he was standing in the end, where the portal out should have been. He also... wasn't, though. The air felt even thinner than normal, and the main end island just... didn't end.

In front of him stood two figures. They looked mostly human, but were too pale, and over eight feet tall. One was slightly taller than the other, and had longer hair. Their hair was snow white. They wore enveloping purple cloaks, and over their eyes they each wore a white mask, shaped like a rectangle with lines framing their lower faces from the bottom corners. The mask was emblazoned with the symbol of a broken purple rectangle.

The taller one held out her - Scott didn't know how he knew it was a her - hand. The fingers were tipped with black. "Scott Smajor." Her voice had an odd echoing, distorted quality to it, and an accent he couldn't place. "You have won Last Life. Because of this, you may have a gift. The gift is that you and the first two people you think of will have any memories bound by us freed. So... Who do you choose?'

Images of the Scottage flashed through his mind. This was easy.

"Pearl Moon." Obviously!

Scott was oddly... calm, even though this whole in-the-end-with-weird-beings-after-killing -all-his-friends-and-something-weird-about-memories thing should have been much more disturbing.

"Focus. Who is your second choice?"

That was also-

"Jimmy Solidarity."

What? Jimmy? No! Scott had wanted to pick Cleo! Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss!

The other one spoke for the first time, in an odd, musical but harsh language ".||ᔑᓭᓭ! ⎓ꖎ𝙹∴ᒷ∷ ⍑⚍ᓭʖᔑリ↸ᓭ, ᒲ|| 𝙹ℸ ̣ !¡."

The other one glared at him - once again, Scott didn't know how he knew it was a him - and spoke in the same language. "ᓭ⍑⚍ℸ ̣ ⚍!¡, ℸ ̣ 𝙹ᒲ." She turned back to Scott, and spoke in English. "Thank you. You can go home now." She flicked her wrist, and the earth twisted again.

Author's note: Y'all, the prologue has a little story that I'm sharing with you now, deal with it. The part before Scott got yeeted to the end was originally a single paragraph, and it was less than forty words long. Then my sister/editor told me to do better, so I watched Scott's final Last Life video and described it as I did. Turns out my memory of what happened and how I described what happened was wrong oopsie!