Chapter Text
Lizzie didn’t have any nightmares this time. She woke up on a cloudy morning, well-rested and no nightmares of any sort bothering her.
She hummed at the incoming sign of rain. She had a love-hate relationship with it. On one hand, her Piglin instincts found rain to be very uncomfortable, not used to the weird wet substance. On the OTHER hand, rain was something Lizzie hadn’t seen for all her life when she was in the Nether, and usually not even on Hypixel, since there the admins coded it so it would always be sunny unless they wanted otherwise.
Perhaps she could spend some time in the Nether? When she did manage to find Techno again, she wanted to give him something, at the very least. She knew he’d like that, he’d always liked gold. Both of them did.
So she got out of bed and got ready for a trip to the Nether. She packed herself a few supplies, put on some armor with a little bit of gold just in case, and went off through her portal.
The Nether was a welcome warmth, one she could never get sick of. She hopped off of the crimson tree the portal had formed on and fought off a few Hoglins. She didn’t mind it, she actually needed the free pork! One could only survive off of berries for so long, after all.
She trotted through the crimson forest, respectfully acknowledging the Piglins there, but not speaking to any of them unless they approached her first.
None of them did.
Her eye caught a vein of gold ore, and, after making sure no other Piglin was around to kill her for it, she took it, prying it out of the ground and into her inventory.
Gold gold gold gold gold! Her instincts sang. She tried to ignore it.
She actually found a Nether Fortress in her travels! But she immediately ran from it, since she wasn’t very equipped to take on any blazes or wither skeletons today. She didn’t even have a shield.
In spite of that, a few wither skeletons decided to follow her as she fled the fortress. She fought them all off, but she managed to get hit at some point, causing the skin there to begin to darken and rot, causing immense pain and hindering her fighting immensely. She managed to get away, but not after picking up a skull one of the wither skeletons had dropped.
While Lizzie had been suppressing her instincts, she was still a Piglin hybrid. Apparently, some Piglins had had encounters with wither skeletons in the past, so their biology had evolved to be able to naturally heal from a withering wound left by one of the skeletons. However, they were still typically a hindrance to them, so potions were still used to help speed up the process.
… Yeah, she’d probably just have to wait and heal. But she couldn’t just sit in her house and do nothing! She still had to pick up some gold to make Techno some stuff. Even if the best, most finest gold was still in that nether fortress…
If asked, Lizzie would look the person who asked in the eye and swear on Techno’s Orphan Obliterator that she did not, under any circumstances, go into that nether fortress and fight hundreds of blazes and wither skeletons to get gold for Techno.
L izzie hummed as she crafted an anvil for the new metalworking part of her home, made out of warped and crimson wood. It was hard to make them look nice together and not horribly crashing to the eye, but she pulled it off!
The room had some lava in it to keep the temperature nice and hot while she worked, and she already had multiple things set up to begin working. Now, what should she make for Techno? She had a stack and a half of gold to work with now.
Hm… gold was useless as a weapon, too soft and breakable. Lizzie was sure that Techno already had hundreds of golden accessories with him if he hadn’t done the same stupid thing as her and unintentionally repressed his instincts. So Lizzie would have to get creative in her jewelry choices.
Oh! What if she made him a Panjas bracelet? Those were always a rarity to see, mostly because of how difficult they were to forge. But what other gem would Lizzie put in it…?
Rose quartz! She’d use rose quartz. It was the same color as her hair, after all. Oh, and she didn’t have to use just ONE gemstone! Perhaps she could sneak some amethyst and emerald in as well! Phil always liked emeralds, didn’t he? And Techno did like wearing stuff with emeralds and amethyst in it to represent Lizzie and Phil.
With new enthusiasm, Lizzie got to work on the bracelet, delicately adding in the gemstones when necessary. Soon, she was done with her masterpiece, and she proudly set it down on a tray to cool while she got to work with the next gift. Perhaps this one could be a circlet? Ooooh, that sounded cool! Maybe with a few golden chains hanging off of it with jewels bordered with more gold at the end! Yes, yes, it sounded excellent!
Before she even knew it, she’d worked the day away by making countless gifts for Techno. Soon she had 5 gifts ready and sitting on the tray: the Panjas bracelet, the circlet, a ring with amethyst, emerald, and rose quartz embedded into it, a golden candle holder with amethyst shard protruding out of it, and two smooth golden cuffs for Techno’s hooves.
Lizzie, admittedly, had a very hard time working with the gold for two reasons. She hadn’t worked with gold in a long time, so she was a bit rusty and made some mistakes, which forced her to start over because she wasn’t about to give Techno shoddy work. And the constant buzz of gold-gold-gold in the back of her mind really didn’t help with her concentration. She thought if she put a piece of gold on it’d help, but no, it just made the chanting worse.
So she had to hide any signs of gold in the workshop that wasn’t the gift she was working on.
Soon, though, she was done with the gold gifts. She had one more gift she wanted to make, something a little more sentimental.
So, she grabbed some red, white, and pink wool, along with some leftover gemstones that weren’t gold, and got to work.
She slowly began to stick together the fabric to make a cape. A long, flowy, fluffy cape. The white wool was used to make the fluff on top of the cape, and the red wool was used to make the outside of the cape. The pink wool was used for the inner part of the cape, and Lizzie stitched patterns of roses into the fabric with some slightly darker pink thread. She snuggled a few gemstones into the fluffy white wool of the cape, securing them with some thread.
Soon she was done, and hung up her masterpiece on an armor stand. She smiled at her work, and noted how sore her hands were. She then winced and held her arm as she remembered the wither skeleton wound she got, and had just wrapped it up in some tight bandaged with some gauze. She really regretted deciding to just let it heal on its own. She should’ve gotten some blaze rods when she could’ve…
Wait. She realized. I was in that fortress getting gold for Techno, and I fought loads and loads of blazes…
… DID I SERIOUSLY FORGET TO PICK UP THE BLAZE RODS THEY DROPPED?