Chapter Text
Ash. The smell of smoke. The crackle of undying flames.
Cleo had, of course, visited the ruins of Hermitcraft before. It was her home, if not for very long. It was still jarring, to appear amidst rubble and dust where once stood grand structures. Most things weren’t particularly recognizable; the moon’s debris was much, much more prevalent. She took a deep breath, lit a rocket, and shot off towards where the last meeting had been. She was mostly sure Joe had left from there, after all.
The sign was gone. That was what hit Cleo. It shouldn’t have been a surprise–it was just a plank of wood on top of a stick. People’s massive homes had been reduced to unrecognizable rubble; why would a single sign survive?
It was still a bit jarring. Silently, Cleo walked to where she remembered the sign being (though it was a bit hard to navigate around– landmarks weren’t really a thing anymore), and started flying.
A million steps, even with elytra while lighting rockets quick enough to never slow down, was a long time. Cleo had brought everything: almost a dozen pairs of the End’s false wings, bottles of enchanting in case they ran out, five shulker’s worth of rockets, a few totems just in case…she was more than ready. What she didn’t really account for was boredom. The journey wasn’t a grand quest; it was just slow, and long, and left her with far too much time to think and wonder how on earth Joe managed to get this far, and of course to worry that he wasn’t even here at all.
Eventually, after a truly miserable amount of time spent flying, Cleo landed in what seemed to be a perfectly normal field. She set up a small house to work from, knowing she’d need a place to keep her things and prepare, and–for the first time in days–went to sleep before getting started.
The first thing was to figure out if Joe had actually died here, and if so, the precise spot. Even after so long, the land wouldn’t have shifted much, if at all–especially since no one was there to see it. Cleo took the old pair of Joe’s spare glasses–he’d always made sure she had a pair on hand, in case he did anything particularly likely to end up with his face smashed into something–and started setting things up.
A simple bit of magic, to check someone’s last location. She–along with everyone else on Hermitcraft–had learned it there; it was absurdly easy to block, had a habit of breaking down if you left the world, and didn’t really like being too far away, but it’d work for her purposes. It helped to have something connected to the person you were looking for, and with someone so long-dead (probably) she needed all the edge she could get.
The spell didn’t take long. It was meant to interface with communicators, but it worked without them, and Cleo was abruptly struck with a sense of precisely where in this perfectly normal field the being known as Joe Hills could last be found.
It wasn’t quite a thousand thousand steps away from where he left from, but it was surprisingly close. Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise, knowing who she was looking for.
When she dug the few blocks down she needed to, she jumped back. It shouldn’t have been a surprise–true deaths leave bodies behind, after all–but it still was, to see a skeleton with half the bones broken from a terrible fall where her friend should be.
She steadied herself, carried her best friend’s bones out of his impromptu grave, and set them down inside her house. After uncounted years of being a zombie, she was pretty good at mending broken bones, sewing up flesh, and the like, so it didn’t take long to make sure all of Joe’s bones were in the correct place, in the correct state. Luckily, she had the supplies she’d learned to make after the third time her exposed ribs cracked; superglue wasn’t great for bones.
Cleo stared at the skeleton assembled on her table. It looked mostly average, with the oddness she’d expected already. It didn’t look like Joe. She took the old glasses she’d used to check his location, and set them on top of the skull.
She laughed. It wasn’t particularly funny, but it seemed fitting for Joe. She carried the skeleton outside, and got to work.
It took most of her glass panes–green, of course–to make an adequate circle of mirrors, and as she stepped into the odd space, placing the last mirror behind her, she took out the chains. They were nearly rusted through, which wasn’t surprising given the timescale, but they were still absolutely, exactly, Joe's. She examined the words carved into them, before carefully draping them around the skeleton’s shoulders; a tricky thing to do, given that the skeleton was still lying down.
Cleo took out a battered green ballpoint pen, utterly normal in every way, and cracked it open. The green ink spilled out, far more than the pen should’ve contained, and swirled within the circle, forming letters and phrases in the air, changing every few moments. Cleo tossed away the broken pen, took a deep breath, and got started.
The words for this magic weren’t complicated. They weren’t in Old Galactic. They weren’t stolen from a malevolent god, or found in an ancient tome of forgotten lore. They were just words.
The words weren’t the point. It was more about the speaking of them. Cleo was the only person who could’ve done so; they were her magic, after all.
The air shifted, a little. As Cleo neared the end, her eyes flicked over to the mirrors. There was a vague figure in them, crouched next to Joe’s bones, who gave her a wave. She finished. “Alright, Joe. Come back. You’re not done yet.”
The figure vanished, the chains glowed green, and the bones stopped being bones and started being Joe again. As he got up, a specter of his body formed around the bones he inhabited, a bit fuzzy and transparent, bones still visible inside, and rather more blue-tinted than usual, but entirely Joe. He waved at Cleo. “Oh. Howdy, Cleo.”
Cleo blinked. She did not, of course, have working tear ducts. “Hi there, Joe. It’s been a while.”
Joe blinked. “Has it?”
“...yes, Joe. If the fact that you’re a skeleton didn’t clue you in, yes, it has been a while.”
Joe examined his arm. “Oh! Funny that. It seems I’ve accidentally shuffled off the mortal coil. Thanks for yanking me back on.”
Cleo smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”
Joe grinned. “That it is, Cleo. That it is.” He paused for a moment. “Although, if I’ve managed to end up accidentally non-corporeal, that most likely suggests that our beloved Hermits have also been nudged into nonexistence by the unfortunate collision of our planet and its orbiting companion.”
Cleo nodded. “I wanted to get you back first, but yes. Think you can help me do some library-searching to find the rest of them?”
Joe nodded solemnly. “Cleo, there is nothing I would enjoy more.”
Cleo bared her sharp teeth in what could generously be called a smile. “Good, because I need someone to help me rob rich people.”
“...that is not entirely what I was expecting, but I am absolutely willing to help!”
Cleo laughed, and a friendship older than most civilizations reignited after an unfortunate pause. They had things to do, but first, she had some things to catch Joe up on. Then? Well, she had countless years of not threatening Joe to make up for, and even more banter saved away.
They’d get to it. After all, they had all the time in the world again.