Lionhearts ||Skephalo||

15

A faint clatter breaks the silence of the cell, a faintly purple spark flaring in the darkness for an instant. For that instant, Bad can see an elegant box and a letter.
He opens the box, almost hungrily, and searches the contents.

A handful of dark teal marbles or something. A tightly packaged box of food, a bottle of water that seems slightly purple. A tiny dagger more suited to lockpicking than to stabbing.
A strange, larger, marble that looks like an eye, like his eyes in a weird way. He leaves it in the box, unnerved, and begins to read the letter, the faintly glowing ink providing just enough light to pick out letters.

"Darryl!" It begins, "I don't know how soon this will reach you, but I hope to all deities you're still alive and able to read by the time it does. I know you've been in a bad situation while I've been being nursed to health and that you probably don't want to hear about my cute rescuer, so I'll make this quick.
Those little marbles are Ender pearls, I'm sure you've seen them before."

Bad stares at them, and recollection dawns. There's maybe sixteen of them altogether.

"Put them in the little pouch in the bottom of the box. If you throw one, it will teleport you to where it breaks, right? Be careful, for fuck's sake, but if opportunity knocks, use them. Dream insisted we give you an Eye of Ender, but he told me to say that it's for later and to hold onto it. Darryl, we'll find you. I'll get Dream to send every soldier he has to you if I need to.
Just hold on, please.

George."

Bad draws in a gasp. He can feel the burn of his rising tears, and hastily tries to suffocate them in his knees.
Someone knew.
Someone was able to contact him. Someone human, someone real.

He wasn't abandoned to this- despite knowing Skeppy would take a sword through his chest to save Bad, some part of Bad feared that his friend's easygoing nature around his new acquaintances meant that he was forgetting.

It was paranoia, induced by the constant loneliness, heightened by his lessened food and water intake.
He lives in fear and yet anticipation of being taken out of the cell. Surely they couldn't keep him in here forever, right?

But he remembers the bodies, and his throat tightens.

...he isn't safe. He won't be safe until he's dead. He's never going to be able to walk down a street without being afraid that he'll be jumped and dragged away to a dungeon.

Bad closes his eyes, hugging the letter close, and then begins to ritualistically shred it into smaller and smaller pieces, until he can wedge them under a loose brick in the wall, filling the crevice with paper.
How long has it been? Two days? Three? Somehow, he doubts it's even been that long, but it feels like so much longer. The stench of the cell, the scent of excrement and the corpses, is so strong that he's lost sensitivity to it, or it would make his head spin constantly.

There's been nothing from the piglin. It did what it could and then went dark, for its safety. Bad can't blame it. There's only so much that a single golden watch can buy after all.
He leans against the wall, having tucked the box away with his other supplies.

The brick is cool against his face, and he's a still little surprised that it is- he thought it was all hot.
They have to have some colder areas I suppose...and going beneath the lava is a smarter move, since those layers of ash and stuff would insulate against the heat...

His own rationality confuses him, but he embraces it. After all, it's not like having some rational thought in his head would hurt him.
He tucks the pearls into the bag, hiding it and the dagger under one of the bodies with the box.

The secrets concealed, he lays on his back, on the circle of clear, safe ground he's made for himself, staring at the ceiling. He's so out of it sometimes that he can see eyes of something not there, something that he's imagining.