hello what when did this get to 3.9k reads
(yeah i don't have a good title)

you remember the fic i warned you about last time? yep, this is it.

oh also side note i watched what if yesterday and it felt like a fanfic, which is probably because most fanfic can basically be simplified to "what if..." so yeah.

this one is VERY dark so read the TWs and skip it if you don't feel comfortable reading. when i say VERY dark i mean i made myself cry twice which never happens while writing things, and if you're reading this you know how angsty my other stuff is so you know that this is saying something

TWs: Blood, violence injury, gore (all EXTREME), suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, telling someone to kill themselves, extreme physical abuse, emotional abuse, graphic torture, death, conditioning, starvation, branding, wing torture, knives, drowning, whatever it's called when you fall in lava but survive, pain, heavy angst.

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Scott was never going to survive this fight.

That he knew from the moment he saw his sibling standing atop a newly grown tentacle of corruption facing him, mouth upturned in a wide, maniacal smile.

Whatever happened, Scott had to die to kill them. Neither could die while the other survived, and the world would never be safe while Xornoth lived.

"My brother! How nice to see you," Xornoth said, grinning down at him.

Scott glared at him. "What are you doing here?"

"We both know exactly what I'm doing here," they replied. "I'm here to destroy the weak humans you call friends." Xornoth smirked smugly and Scott lunged at him. It wasn't a great idea, but no one got to talk about his friends like that.

He pulled his sword from its sheath as he jumped, sending it whirling around towards their side. "Don't you dare talk about them like that! Humans are-"

They parried it easily and flashed it around towards Scott. He easily deflected the hit and they slipped into an old dance, trading words and blows.

"Weak. Why do you protect them so fiercely?" Block. Duck. Stab.

"They are stronger than you'll ever know." Slice. Spin. Jab.

"What does it matter when they'll all be dead soon anyways?" Leap. Strike. Dodge.

"They won't," Scott replied confidently. No matter who won this fight, Xornoth would be dead by the end of this. So would he, but that wasn't important.

"Why fight me? You know you'll lose in the end," Xornoth asked. They clearly meant it as a taunt, but... why? If he was going to die anyway, did it matter? Why was he fighting a pointless battle?

That brief moment of hesitation was all they needed. Scott let out a gasp as Xornoth's fist suddenly hit him straight in the stomach. He flew backwards, wings extending to catch him and landing him on his feet. The exhaustion was beginning to get to him now, but Xornoth didn't seem affected. They kept grinning at him, taunting him, jeering, "Tired, brother?"

Scott refused to give in, gritting his teeth against the slowly building ache in every part of his body. He sent a spike of ice shooting after them in another effort to stop them, but they sidestepped it with ease. "Is that all you can do, really?"

Before Scott had even opened his mouth to give a snarky reply, a scarlet tendril was shooting through the air towards him. This time, however, Scott was just a moment too slow. The tendril caught him by the ankle as he tried to take off and yanked him back down to the ground. He bit back a cry of pain at the hard landing, refusing to give them the satisfaction.

Scott slashed at the vine, successfully hacking it to pieces and freeing himself. But before he could fly away, Xornoth grabbed his throat. He kicked at them desperately, swinging his sword towards their throat, but Xornoth tore it easily out of his grasp with another tendril of corruption. He struggled in Xornoth's grip, trying to escape, but they simply tightened their grip.

Scott quickly realized trying to get out of their grasp was pointless. They were stronger than him (they always had been, even when the two of them were just kids playing). Their eyes quickly found the Rune Blade and Scott knew what they were thinking.

A hot hand reached down and grabbed the hilt of the Rune Blade, pulling it out of where it sat unused in its scabbard on Scott's hip. Xornoth swung it above their head, the blade glowing menacingly in their grasp. The runes seemed more red than blue, as if it was adapting to whoever held it.

Scott lowered his head in defeat. Xornoth had no hesitation as they plunged the sword straight into his chest. Scott let out a slight gasp and Xornoth laughed, their face the last thing Scott saw before the world went dark.

It wasn't for long, as they reappeared a moment later. The pain from the sword was gone, but Scott doubted whatever afterlife he'd been sent to would be nice.

Xornoth grinned, not saying a word as they grabbed his wing by its joint. Scott snarled at them, smacking the other one as hard as he could into them to knock them off him. They didn't seem to care, grabbing the other wing. Scott paused. "You wouldn't dare," he told them.

"Really, brother?" This Xornoth shook their head. "You should really learn not to be so arrogant."

"I am not-" pain. Worse than anything Scott had ever felt. Hot agony burned in his wing. His body was numb with pain, his world narrowed to simply his wing and the fire pulsing from it. Then suddenly, mercifully, it lessened, and Scott was left to drop onto the ground. His body shook with the aftereffects of shock and pain.

Xornoth laughed. "Look at your wing, brother."

Scott glanced over and blanched. The sight would have made him vomit if he hadn't been so disbelieving. He gasped, wincing at how his throat was now raw from screaming.

There in his wing sat a black antler, the size of a plate. The area around it was red and black, the feathers charred off and skin red and numb. Everything was numb.

Scott shuddered and snapped at Xornoth. "How dare-"

They cut him off with a punch to the nose. Scott's wings snapped outwards behind him as he tumbled to the ground.

He panted heavily, trembling. Was this... was this really his afterlife? A merciless Xornoth and no one else? It would make sense, but-

Scott yelped in pain as a gold-toed boot hit his stomach, leaving a rough gash that instantly welled up with blood. Then again, and again, until the only thing Scott could feel was agony. He shivered in pain, curling up in a feeble attempt to protect himself, too disoriented to protest. Xornoth just laughed, the sound filling Scott's ears, the only thing he could hear. Finally the strikes stopped, leaving him lying on the ground whimpering, trying to cry out, just wishing everything would stop.

Xornoth grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him along. Scott let himself drift away, trying to escape the pain.

He came back to himself in a dark room, Xornoth lounging against a wall, spinning a dagger on their finger and watching him menacingly. He stumbled to his feet, gritting his teeth stubbornly. "I'm not making this that easy for you."

Xornoth laughed again. "You think you can do anything to me?"

Scott hesitated. Could he? He focused his attention on ice, cold, and snow, envisioning Xornoth encased in an icicle. It did nothing. He didn't have his magic!?

Xornoth grabbed the dagger and threw it at Scott. He ducked, but the dagger found a target on his wing, slicing through it and sending blood seeping out and coating the white feathers. Scott glared at them, searching for some sort of weapon, but there were none anywhere, except- the Rune Blade? Scott turned towards it, but Xornoth took that opportunity as he looked away from them.

Pain dug into his side and he fell to the ground, glancing over to see a large, open gash. Xornoth grinned, raising the dagger again. Scott yelped. "Stop!"

It didn't seem to do anything but make them more vengeful, stabbing the dagger downwards. Scott thrust his arm up in an instinctive attempt to protect himself, but that just let the dagger slice it open instead of killing him.

Scott cried out in pain at that and Xornoth frowned. "I want you to be quiet," they told him.

"No," Scott snarled. No matter what they did, he wasn't going to give in to them- no, no, no, ow, pain, OW- Scott screamed as the blade dug into his other arm. The pressure released as Xornoth pulled the knife away.

"Quiet," they hissed. Scott growled at them, but that resulted in another cut. "Learned your lesson?" Scott opened his mouth to reply, but the red gleam of their eyes reflected off of the knife and he shut it, flinching backwards. "Good," they hissed, turning and striding back to the wall to watch him.

If this was going to be his afterlife, he didn't want it. He didn't- he couldn't endure this agony for eternity. Scott crawled along the floor, his open wounds dragging along the floor and burning agonizingly as they did. His hand grasped the heavy hilt of the Rune Blade lying against the wall and he gritted his teeth, trying to summon the strength to pull himself upwards and grasp the sword. Xornoth snorted in amusement and scoffed at him. "Not even strong enough to kill yourself." Scott glared at him, and with an inhuman burst of strength he grabbed the sword, picked it up, and stabbed it straight through his chest.

Xornoth simply raised an eyebrow. "You think you can escape?"

Scott crumpled to the floor, his chest feeling like ice. Xornoth just watched as the sword fell out of the wound and it frosted over with swirls of ice. Scott moved his head around to look at it and felt his stomach drop as he realized he couldn't escape. He was trapped here in this hell for eternity, cursed. Always in pain.

He couldn't even die. He couldn't even have the mercy of getting out of this. He'd be trapped here forever, just Xornoth's toy to abuse.

He wasn't even allowed to curl up in a ball on the floor after that. Xornoth grabbed his wing again and dragged him out and along a hallway. Scott screamed as both ice and fire burned him from various wounds, sobbing for mercy. Xornoth lasted less than a minute before they whirled around, dropping Scott, who gasped for breath as the pressure on his neck was released. "Shut up!" they snarled. Scott, still gasping for air, snapped his mouth shut. Anything to stop more pain from coming.

The next days? nights? were a blur of agony as Xornoth experimented with every method of torture they could think of. Scott's life- was it even a life if he was already dead? He couldn't die, so was he truly alive?- became an endless cycle of pain. The time blended into a blur of icy water doused over his cuts and knives digging into his skin. They reached a turning point when they began experimenting with death.

It had begun with Scott lying alone on the ground, abandoned by Xornoth for a merciful second. Hunger gnawed at him, eating away constantly. He was just prey now, for fire and ice and the beast that was hunger and Xornoth.

He shuddered as a hunger spasm wracked his body, biting his lip to stop himself from crying out. Crying out meant Xornoth would come back. He didn't want Xornoth to come back. Another spasm. Tears slipped out of his eyes, a familiar feeling now. He was crying more often than not. The feeling of ice sprouted in his gut, spreading through his chest. Another "death." But he couldn't die, couldn't escape-

But then Xornoth strode into the room and Scott went absolutely still, his breath catching in terror. Xornoth grabbed his too-thin arm and yanked him along with them. Scott knew by now not to make a sound, unless he wanted them to hurt him even more.

They took him to a new room, one with lava and water covering each half, meeting in a stark black line of obsidian in the middle.

Scott could feel his breathing speed up, because he knew where this was going. With the last shred of fight he had left, he managed to ask, "What is this?" But it came out weak and scared, and just made Xornoth more gleeful.

"You'll love this," they smirked, pushing him out onto the obsidian. Scott's arms flared out to catch himself, his wings long since made useless. He looked back at Xornoth a final time in panic.

"Please-" Scott whimpered out, shaking in terror of what they could do. But they didn't punish him, they just laughed and snapped their fingers. The obsidian vanished and Scott fell down. Freezing cold washed over him, rushing into every open cut. Everything was so cold, everything burned, he wanted it to stop, please, he couldn't breathe, he just wanted to escape- please- then it was hot, scalding lava and everything was burning everything hurt so much it was agony and please-

And then the bright light of the lava was gone and it was dark. Everything was scalded, every part of him screaming in pain, hot and cold, everything hurt please stop he just wanted it to stop hurting, please-

Xornoth towered over Scott and he tried to stop his terrified trembling at the sight of their figure. They reached out a cautious finger and Scott flinched violently as their hand brushed his skin. The contact hurt- his skin was scalded and it hurt so badly-

Xornoth hummed. "Interesting." They walked out of the room, leaving Scott shaking on the ground, every part of him burning and freezing, barely able to speak, too scared to make a sound or even cry out in pain.

Far away in another world, another god's chosen one clutched a cyan candle and wept for a lost friend, and made a hopeless vow to someday save him if he could.

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This is a fake version of Xornoth who has absolutely no mercy. Xornoth (the one who killed Scott with the rune blade and sent him to the afterlife) specifically wished for the other version of themself to torture Scott for all eternity.Scott can't ever die or be healed by magic, and Xornoth won't let him be anyway, so Scott has to keep every wound he gets forever.