Chapter Text
Sometimes it pays to have connections.
Lops sits at the edge of a tiny island, floating in the void of the Deep End. He wouldn’t usually come here; he’d only been once, when helping a friend who had… history with the Deep End.
And the thing about helping friends in high places?
They help you back.
Sometimes by giving you a portal to places like this.
[Two days earlier.]
–
The last thing Lops remembered before the end was the battle.
Calcifer’s sword was sharp, and he was already injured. He accidentally let down his guard, trying to kill Calcifer before she killed him, and misjudged. The sword stuck into his stomach. He knew this was it.
Death wasn’t unfamiliar to Lops, though. He’d died plenty of times - in his singleplayer worlds, where death didn’t matter; on Caduceus, where there would always be someone to revive him; in the death game, where death meant everything and there was no guarantee of getting out alive. It was always a gamble, but at least it was a familiar gamble.
This was different, though.
[He half-expected to dream of a white box; of Terra Swoop Force and Dwynwen telling him everything would be okay.]
[Instead, he dreamed of Massacre.]
After waking up from a dream that quickly slipped away from his memories, Lops’ senses returned slowly.
First was touch. He could feel a rough, hard surface below him, like cobblestone but with pits instead of protrusions.
End stone, definitely.
Next was scent and taste, both at the same time. The air tasted sterile and crisp, like a winter’s day on Caduceus, but smelled like damp. It reminded him of… something, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.
His hearing arrived next, soft vwoop s of endermen surrounding him. (It was probably good, he thought, that his sight hadn’t returned; accidentally staring straight into an enderman’s eyes would probably be a bad idea.)
But when his sight eventually returned, and Lops rolled onto his side in order to safely open his eyes, it was one thing that struck him the most:
He was home.
[Two days later.]
–
So here he is, sitting on the edge of the most dangerous place in the universe.
He knows the Void would kill him if he falls. He knows this very well.
But he also knows that the death game was supposed to kill him.
(That was why he had been sent there, after all. That was why Massacre ordered him to be killed.)
(Right?)
–
Truly believing that he would survive the fall, Lops flies into the Void.