His Hatred

The hardest part about the last world, was waking up to know that he hated me.

We hadn't known each other for very long, and had almost nothing in common. Rivals on almost every front and yet.. he was always on my mind.

The first day I met him, when we walked through the portal and he stood there waiting like he knew we were coming, I didn't think anything of him, just wanted to get started collecting things to survive the first night. But when I eventually met my maker, drowned in my own base, what a cruel fate, there he was for me.

He found me, back in enough time to find that he had saved my things and was waiting for my safe return. That was the first time I really noticed him.

I was soaking wet, ice cold and feeling alone, so when I came back to the hole I called home, I was anything but.We talked all night.I guess since that day, the man in the red sweater was always on my mind.When he formed an alliance, the Architects, and plotted a company in their image, my heart grew heavy. Some nights, I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling wondering why I had to be put into a situation like this.It was a war between my job, the company I had been running through worlds with my best friend, Cub, and this winged newcomer.We were rivals. Enemies.The first of many things that made my head spin with terror at the possibly that he hated me.The war was Hell. I watched, safe from the sky, as Grian suffered. I watched him die and I couldn't do a thing about it. I couldn't return the favor with a warm blanket and snacks, watching the sun rise from the ocean front like he had done.It hurt my heart to watch.My hand reached for the string of a rocket, ready to run and jump, save him from pain but Cub held me back."He will be okay," he told me, confidence infused into every syllable. "You don't have to worry."And slowly, it felt like it was coming back to normal, but I couldn't shake the feeling that he regretted saving me that first week.The war ended. G-Team won and everything calmed down. Xisuma announced that we had to leave the town we all knew and loved, head for a new world and wait it out until things got fixed.I remember picking a house across the street but not staying in it much. Eventually, due to the rocket that crashed into it, chaos ensued.The houses grew larger and larger, turning into another war.Another fight that I couldn't help him win. One where I was a rival.I lost.My house, though huge and intimidating, with a giant mutant plant residing inside, was just a bit shorter than that of Grian and his co-worker Iskall.It may or may not have been on purpose.We agreed to stop when the oxygen at the top of the buildings was too thin to keep going. A complete draw between the three of us, but in my book he was the winner. I was just a loser, pining for a man who was clearly sick of me.When the building competition ended, another battle started. I stupidly joined in with Doc. Ren had stolen and I felt that I was on the right side of history, but when another person, now clad in a new flower crown every few days, joined the wolf man, it all fell around me again. I spied on them, rummaged through their things in the night and tried not to quit to be with Grian.The peace loving men on the other end of the forested hill thought it was so much worse than it really was. All we had planned was an amusement park, but they treated us like villains.Sometimes, I can still see the look on his face when he chased Doc and I from their camp. The look told me all I needed to know.I tried anything I could think of to just..make it so he didn't hate me. I lowered the prices of things for him, bought things from him in greater bulk, joined his game of death..Maybe, joining in Demise was the straw that broke the camel's back for the winged Hermit. I died pretty soon, being clumsy and oblivious, and he avoided me like the plague.I can't much blame him for that, after all the dead were out to end the living and at that time, he was still alive.No matter how much I tried and Grimdog tried to convince me to, I couldn't trap or try to kill the Dragon man.But no matter how hard my efforts, he didn't win. He was blown up. One of the most painful ways to die.I reached out, asking if he wanted any help with anything, and was denied. He had a funeral attended only by warm-blooded Dragon Bros and the Demised False. He all but ignored me, so I reached out again. We trapped an alive Hermit, one who wasn't half Dragon, and made a bet.I won. He lost 100 diamonds to me. The look that his perfect purple eyes showed had so much pain in them.Damn it, I told myself I wouldn't get emotional just reading this back from inside my mind, but here I was with tears on my recently recolored cheeks. I was awful to him and he has already started making plans to leave the world, a week before everyone else had the same idea.I wiped my face and looked into the cursed portal near one of the many places that I received his hatred. The purple aura the diamond blocks radiated was just a little too familiar for comfort and I closed my eyes before stepping inside."Grian, in this world, please don't hate me," I spoke with a voice crack, greeted by the small island I woke up on in the middle of the jungle. The seventh world. Full of new possibilities.Maybe I will be lucky enough to be forgiven for the past