Chapter Text
Impulse rushed to help as soon as he saw Joel's death message. He had no idea how much he could trust him or Jimmy or Grian. The message "Smallishbeans was slain by Yaldabaoth" should have been evidence enough that it wasn't a prank. But h e didn't want to pick fights by himself like this , not knowing what he was getting into , but it didn't matter right now. He decided that, even if coming to fight was pointless, he didn't have much to lose. He couldn't just leave this looming thing alone knowing that he could've prevented more catastrophes.
The Rogue of Blood had carefully chosen his loyalties up to this point. But he decided that his help was needed, regardless of who or what was a threat.
Luckily, he happened to have been spending quite a bit of his time gearing up, with the help of a few friendly chameleon villagers. The paths in his labyrinthine land had never led to anything too interesting - it was all chests with lore tablets and materials and grist. Or maybe he just hadn't found his way to the good stuff yet, but he doubted it would be possible to navigate to any more areas than he already had.
But, as unsatisfying as the materials were alone, holy shit could they make some cool items- m ost of which was now tucked away in Impulse's inventory as he headed to Joel's land.
Honestly, it was pretty awkward, marching up there silently by himself. Especially because he ... didn't know the specific location where Joel had been killed within his land . He took the route through Bdubs and Cleo's land, just in case he could run into his trusty friends, but they were nowhere in sight.
Any fear that he would be unable to find the fight in time vanished before he even crossed over from Cleo's place. He could already begin to hear the angry, garbled sounds the denizen made.
The noises led him directly to... "Holy crap."
Joel really hadn't been kidding.
Yaldabaoth, the denizen of the shattered lands, was a red snake of astronomical size: as wide as a house and taller than a skyscraper. He slithered around, biting and hissing at the two men that flew around him. Occasionally, he would attack by shooting the beams of light that obscured his face.
This guy could slay the Ender Dragon in seconds. He meant business.
And the only people between him and total destruction right now were two lone gods in pink and green, hundreds of feet in the air.
The green one - probably Grian , judging by his shorter stature and skilled flying - stayed back to avoid being hit by the slithering body. He gathered orbs of black smoke between his palms, sinking them under the denizen's skin , only to rip his hands apart, causing the denizen to flinch in pain.
The pink one, meanwhile, attempted to cling onto the snake's back for dear life , charging it with some magic colorful glow that sank beneath his scales. The denizen thrashed around wildly, throwing the person against the solid rock far below.
"Oh my God!" Impulse cried, rushing towards the person.
He recognized them. It was Solidarity- Jimmy, he remembered. Jimmy was out cold.
No... worse than that. He wasn't even breathing. " Oh my God! "
Yaldabaoth made an angry noise that sounded akin to a verbalized keysmash.
Impulse spun around, pulling out one of the f irebombs that he'd packed . Another body had fallen. He had to try and stop this now .
Before he could panic and start throwing himself against a brick wall unprepared, however, a sound came from back behind him.
"Urrrgh..."
That sounded like a zombie. Were there zombies on the server now?
Oh, Jimmy was making that noise. Impulse was pretty sure that players weren't supposed to be able to be zombified, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility here.
"That sucked," Jimmy groaned , sluggishly pushing himself off the ground.
Impulse put that thought away, slightly embarassed that he would jump to that conclusion. "Thank goodness," he exclaimed. "I thought you were dead there for a second!"
Jimmy rubbed his arm. " Well, uh, I was . But it wasn't 'heroic' or 'just', so I just got revived again." He made air quotes while saying this.
"It works like that?"
"Only for Grian and I." Jimmy pointed to the doom-encircled figure above that was now struggling to hold off the beast alone. "And Scar, I guess. You have to die and reach the god tier. But doing that... really stinks ."
"Has Skizz , uh, reached the 'god tier' ? Since he's died twice like you have ?"
Jimmy considered this. "Prolly not. Someone else would h ave to do a whole thing with the body , and I don't think anyone's thought to do it with him . Also, he would be murdering people by now."
Impulse's face fell. "Oh."
"We can try it after this is over," Jimmy promised, reminding him once again of the giant fucking monster behind him.
"Wait. Hold on for a second," Impulse said, pulling out his phone.
impulseSV: okay this snake thing is a really huge threat!! everyone get the hell up here
He snapped it shut.
“Right. Are you ready to go?" Jimmy gestured towards the towering denizen.
Impulse raised his eyebrows. "Are YOU?" he shot back.
"Yeah. But..." Jimmy squinted at the denizen's glowing face. "I might need to change tactics."
He shot up into the air, floating at the monster's eye level. He pulled out a long sword and drew it back, then looked down at Impulse, s creaming, "GO!"
He dashed past Grian right up to the monster and swung furiously in the blink of an eye, slicing a large gash through Yaldabaoth's scales.
The beast roared and knocked him back again, but this time, he was prepared and caught himself in midair before he could fall.
Jimmy charged again and swung his blade, but the snake dodged it. He expected this attack now, but Jimmy continued to dash ahead from different angles and try to get close enough for an attack.
Impulse took that as a cue to join the fight. He stepped closer to the denizen- jumping back when it lurched a little too far forward.
He grabbed his fire bomb again , running his fingers along the etched metal . He hadn't used these before, which was a little scary, but they were sure to do a lot of damage to the boss. He aimed each one with caution to make sure that his materials wouldn't be wasted.
Light, aim, throw.
He didn't like using this many of them .
It was fine, he told himself. He had plenty. And he had an axe for when he ran out of ammo now.
Yeah, it was time to pull out the big gun.
Impulse drew the legendary machine gun Arms of Antoinette and rained bullets on the ugly snake.
Above, he could still see the two magic people doing their things, albeit a bit more slowly after this long .
He'd only tested th is weapon a couple times, and he was glad to see it work , though he would constantly have to watch where he aimed.
The bullets hit their marks, but Yaldabaoth barely flinched as blood leaked from tiny segments of his body.
Impulse kept firing, trying to stay on target as his arms weakened, but one step too close and-
"OOF."
The tail knocked him back and sent him flying through the air. He braced himself for a hard fall, which he received. " Owwwwww ." He fell flat on his back , feeling like he'd been punched in about ten different places .
He lay there for a minute, exhausted. His chest heaved. He'd gotten the wind knocked out of him. He needed to rest for a little bit.
When he blinked back to awareness , Bdubs was peering down at him. "Hi, Impulse!"
"Hi there," Cleo said.
They'd come here at this exact moment , just to watch him get punched in the face by a giant snake. This was kind of embarassing.
Cleo held out a hand to lift him up, which he gladly took. "Sorry for taking a bit. I think I can handle this from here." They spun into action, whipping out two giant razor blades, which they used to hack away at the monster ferociously. They had a focused look on their face, mouth pressed into a firm line and eyes narrowed. Determined, maybe. To save the wretched server they inhabited, or maybe just to make sure they could take pride in their handiwork.
Bdubs jumped into the fight as well, flying up with an odd-looking sword in hand. He immediately plunged it between the solid scales before ripping it out harshly and jumping back, shouting, "HA!" He grinned wildly and went back for another round.
Cleo was taking another angle now, gaining advantage from Bdubs' distraction. Her arms were a metallic blur tearing through flesh and blood with no hesitation. She scared Impulse a little sometimes with how quick she was to start stabbing things.
The two of them went back and forth, becoming more synced and well-timed. The Bard began to predict where Cleo would strike, giving him the perfect chance to move closer and go for a harder blow.
It was like a dance, the two of them rhythmically moving in near perfect tandem. Hack. Slash. Stab. A never-ending well of violence.
The denizen dove for Bdubs, who dashed just out of his mouth's reach and laughed, half triumphant and half panicked.
Yaldabaoth made a gurgly noise, the light around his head beginning to intensify and expand. He was doing something that Impulse didn't like.
"Get back!" Impulse called. Cleo ran away, but the others didn't hear him. The denizen was about to fire some sort of light attack. "Oh shoot, oh shoot, oh sh-"
Before the beast could finish charging, however, a fiery explosion made it rear back. It screamed, and the glow faded.
"What the hell?" Cleo shouted.
Impulse swiveled around. Etho was standing off in the distance now with a catapult and a bunch of TNT. "Hey!" He waved at the group, then lit another stick to launch. "Watch out," he called, pulling the catapult back and firing.
Impulse watched the TNT fly above his head. It hit its mark, exploding on the snake from midair.
He heard a faint "Yesss" from Etho's direction. He sounded pleased with himself.
There were six people fighting now. Five, ten, twenty rounds of TNT were lobbed at the denizen. But with all the wounds and magic and explosions, Yaldabaoth wasn't slowing down too much.
They weren't doing enough. The players began to wear out, taking longer to recover when they were knocked down. Dealing damage a bit more slowly.
Impulse saw, out of the corner of his eye, another blast of light being prepared. The glow was expanding again.
"Get back! Get out of the way!" he screamed at the others, stepping hopefully far back enough to be out of reach.
The other players scrambled away as well, besides Etho, who was scrambling to light a TNT stick and launch it. "I can make it, I can make it," he repeated to himself quietly.
The glow was still getting brighter.
Etho set it in the launcher, aiming carefully.
Impulse started to panic. "C'mon!"
Etho looked up at the light, freezing as he realized that he was out of time.
Rays of light blasted him as Yaldabaoth roared with fury. Impulse was blinded, but he heard something fall to the ground. Then a loud BOOM. Embers escaped the field of brightness, stinging his eyes.
"Wait, what just happ..." Bdubs trailed off as the light faded. " Oh, no. "
Yep. That was one dead Etho.
Impulse still half anticipated the body to disappear and poof into a pile of objects, waiting for their owner to collect them as they respawned.
This whole... thing had never felt fully real. The countdown to Armageddon, the maze filled with fake sunlight, all of it. Like half of a dream blended with reality to become both at once. But Impulse knew that you couldn't feel your heart ache in those sorts of dreams. Not like right now.
He knew Etho would probably come back alive and well, but it still hurt all the same. Especially when that still wasn't certain.
Yaldabaoth made another garbled noise, reminding the players of why they were here. Bdubs screamed angrily and sprinted up , spurred by the loss of his friend ; however, most of the others stayed behind to catch their breath for a minute.
Bdubs' arms were a blur, plunging his sword in and out without thought - not pausing and realizing what he was doing until he started to get blood on his hands.
Scott joined in the fight , coming from the north . One quick glance and a nod from Jimmy after he entered the battlefield, and he was swinging his axe and jumping around right alongside Bdubs. They whittled down the monster's HP while the rest of the members sat and watched.
Where had Scott been, anyway? Impulse thought Jimmy usually stuck with him. Had he been taking a nap or something?
The battle picked up pace from there. Yaldabaoth was proving to be dangerous again, and no one wanted to stop any time soon.
The fight only grew with each player that arrived to join it. Ren and Martyn from the south, then Joel from Derse, then...
...Scar?
That looked like Scar in the purple, watching from behind a white column that had yet to crumble, but Impulse couldn't be sure.
He did his best to ignore the person and keep firing, but five minutes passed and he still hadn't moved.
"Uh... guys?" he called, pointing to the purple guy. "What's t hat guy's deal over there?"
Martyn turned to look and cursed.
Jimmy backed up to see what Impulse was talking about. The violet person stepped forward, catching his eye. Jimmy pressed his lips together, clenching his fists nervously, and dove straight for them, dodging the denizen's snakey movement and tackling the person to the ground.
Impulse paused his attack and stepped towards Jimmy curiously.
Jimmy was gritting his teeth, awkwardly attempting to keep Scar's arms pinned while Scar firmly held a crappy-looking pirate sword in one hand.
" Just s tay," he grunted. " S tay down."
Scar smiled and jabbed the sword upward- for some reason, Jimmy had pinned his forearms, not his wrists.
Jimmy did not do this for any reason besides being relatively inexperienced in combat. This was an objectively idiotic mistake.
While Jimmy tried to avoid the pointy blade, Impulse could see Scar's other hand, hidden from Jimmy's view, begn to glow purple. Strings forming from it. Guided to a certain Heart player's raging anger and fear.
Oh God.
The threads started to attach themselves to Jimmy's skin and sun k under. Whatever he was doing, Impulse couldn't let it happen.
He took a deep breath, heaved his gun over his shoulder, ran forward, and slammed the butt into Scar's head, knocking him over.
"Ack!" The strings snapped as Scar lost concentration. His head hit the ground , making Scar lose consciousness .
Jimmy blinked, processing his near succumbing to mind control. "Oh. Wow, thanks, Impulse."
He pressed his hand to Scar's chest, hesitating - just for a moment - before a pinkish glow engulfed Scar. He closed his eyes, concentrating on something.
Impulse realized that he probably didn't need to be helping Jimmy anymore, and left the two alone to rejoin the fight.
Grian was having a hard time now. "Fuck!" He swerved, trying to dodge all of the attacks. Yaldabaoth didn't have a second god to focus on now.
" I'll help you !" Bdubs exclaimed i mpulsively . He rushed towards where Grian floated, only to immediately get knocked back by the snake's body slamming into him.
Ah, shit.
"You might wanna hurry up!" Impulse called back to Jimmy.
"I'm trying!"
Joel glanced towards Jimmy . "Oh, is that the thing you w ouldn't tell me about? Looks stupid."
"Shut up!"
Yaldabaoth swung his tail, knocking Joel to the ground with force. "Ow- HEY!" Joel coughed.
Impulse readjusted and tried to focus. It was getting harder to aim with this many people flying around.
Something clicked inside the gun. Fuck. He was out of ammunition.
He glanced back again. Scar was sitting up, talking to Jimmy about something.
" Guys !" he yelled nervously. "Are you done yet?"
Grian screamed, panicking.
Scar stood up, pausing to say something else to Jimmy , then lifting himself off the ground . He flew up calmly and met Yaldabaoth at eye level. The denizen froze.
"Yeah, hi there. " Scar shifted, doing a little dance to loosen up. " You're a big g uy, but you don't look that hard to beat. Not with the power of the great Witch, Scar, I mean. "
The denizen snarled, snapping at him. The light surrounding his face intensified with anger.
"You know, this thing I have here is a lot scarier than it looks." Scar tapped the point of his crimson sword. "I'm absolutely sure I could find your glowy eyes through that light . The Cherry Cutlass is just that powerful."
"What the hell is he doing ?" Impulse whispered.
"He said he 's going to be a distraction so the rest of us can fight," Jimmy replied , leaning towards him . "He's using his superpower, I guess. Even the giant snake can't ignore him."
"Well, he's always been very good at that," Impulse conceded
The denizen tried to bite Scar again, only for him to dart back and laugh. " Oh, should we make it a game?" he teased, sword in hand.
Yaldabaoth made a booming roar and slithered around wildly, trying to catch Scar.
The players took their chance and resumed fighting. Before he pulled out the axe, though, Impulse made sure to message the chat again. Serial killers were no longer a threat, he told them. This encouraged Tango to join in, and Etho came back from Prospit, lobbing TNT in his pajamas like he had never stopped.
There were twelve players there now, all pummeling the lands' denizen with as much force as they could give. It was a fight for survival from every end of the server, and they were n 't giving in. They could die. They could all die. They were the last remnants of life in the universe, whether they knew it or not. Even if this would wipe out the rest of them, they would rather go down fighting than give in.
Yaldabaoth kept slowing down, more blood oozing from his skin. Slowly but surely. Impulse imagined the boss meter ticking down in his mind's eye, and that kept him moving.
He hacked away steadily with his heavy axe, moving in tandem with Scott. Stab after stab after stab.
The wounds he made were barely pinpricks for a mo nster of this size. Impulse had to keep reminding himself: Everything hurts him a little. He can't heal if he's still being attacked . It's not a lot. But it'll add up if I keep going for this .
He didn't know how long it took from there for Yaldabaoth to fall. It must have been a while; as soon as he realized he could stopped moving, his muscles suddenly felt like rubber.
The denizen collapsed to the ground, shaking the earth. The light around its face faded away as it stopped writhing.
All that Impulse could hear now was the loud, heavy breathing of twelve e xhausted players .
"Is-" Tango gasped for air. "Is it dead yet?"
"Let me check," Joel responded. " Uh, does anyone have a sword or something?"
Scott held out his axe for Joel to snatch away. "You better not break it," he warned.
Joel smirked. Then he plunged the axe as deep as he could into Yaldabaoth's neck, right below his head, and - " Ungh " - dragged it all the way dow to the ground, creating a huge gash across the monster's neck.
Blood spurted from the wound, covering him in icky monster gore and splattering it on a few nearby players.
"Ugh, gross !" Cleo exclaimed with disgust.
"Well, I can't do the rest. Scott, your sword is really shit at chopping giant monster heads off." Joel wiped the blood off his face and put his hands on his hips. "I'm pretty sure it's dead now, though."
“That was completely unnecessary," Scott grumbled.
"Well, it's not gonna stand up and eat me again, is it?" Joel said.
Impulse shivered upon imagining this, reminded of the Derse dreamer's limited mortality. This server wasn't safe. It never had been.
Etho hummed. " Uh, so... what do we do now, guys?"
"I think we should hold a feast in my honor," Joel suggested sarcastically .
"No, like... has anyone not finished a side quest? Because I think we need to find a way off this world. I could die again pretty easily, and..."
"Yeah." Jimmy stared at the ground.
"I could help you guys with that ," a new voice s poke .
It was Big B. He must have just arrived.
He stepped closer, holding some kind of bucket in his arms. "Did I miss the whole thing? Tango told me there was something going on in this area . It looks like it's over."
"Yeah, it's..." Grian faltered. "Bee, what are you holding?"
"Oh." Big B walked up, holding out the bucket for the players to look inside. "I've been working on this for a few days."
The bucket was half full of water. A little frog tadpole was swimming inside, shimmering in every color of the rainbow.
"What is that?" Bdubs asked.
Big B paused, then replied: "I think it might be a fresh start ."
The next few hours were a blur of activity and confusion and well-deserved naps.
Scott explained that, while he'd been asleep, he'd finished a plan that Ren had started after dying by convincing the Horrorterrors to spit up "dream bubbles" for the ghosts of the land to enter. Scott, in turn, had entered one and finally met the meteors' victims.
Friends. Rivals. Strangers. They were all there, he said, waiting for the arrival of the new Genesis Frog.
Etho returned to his land of forests to set up a machine that he'd found tucked away amongst the trees. A "grist rig" to collect the materials hidden under the earth that the denizen had been guarding. The machine would gather the grist and release it all into Skaia to fertilize it for the new universe.
The place had always felt a little funny, he said. Like it wasn't supposed to be disturbed. Not so much a forest as an empty, silent field of trees. He didn't mind the loneliness itself; the fact that he was alone in there at all was what had unnerved him.
Jimmy traveled with Impulse and Tango to revive Skizzleman as safely as they could. Impulse, being unable to fly, awkwardly held onto Tango's hand as he was dragged to Ren's base and then to Skizz's quest bed. Skizz ascended and was healed fairly uneventfully, completing the head count as the risen Knight of Blood.
It had felt like he'd waited as a ghost for ages , he said . He'd felt pretty f reaking stupid for dying at all , but the cool costume and blood powers were worth it . Well, it's not like he would use them, but it was a cool thing to brag about.
Bee returned to his misty land and finally retrieved his phone. From there, once he made sure all the preparations were complete, he put the tadpole into the giant volcano in his land, the Forge , to be released.
He was still nervous. He didn't want this to all be a false promise, he said. It might be their only way out after everything they' d gone through, and he didn't know if or how this would even work.
And Grian?
Presently, he stood atop a lily pad with a house icon structure on top, floating through space. Waiting. Same as always.
Scar was here, too, but Grian felt too awkward to speak to him after... everything. He didn't know how to start talking about it.
Like, "So you know how we were kind of mind controlled and rampaging across the server, murdering everyone in sight two days ago? A m I the only one who's still thinking about that ?"
Yeah, he was okay with just sitting here in silence for the time.
Something colorful caught his eye from a while away. It looked like Jimmy and Bdubs were carrying Scott and Big B to the lily pad.
"Finally," he said. "Is everything ready?"
"Um, I think so," Bee told him. "The volcano was already lit when we got there. I think killing the denizen triggers that. I just had to throw the tadpole in, and, uh... I hope that didn't kill it."
"That would be awful," Bdubs agreed, unceremoniously dumping Big B on the floor.
" Hey! "
"Sorry!"
More players arrived on the lily pad. Scott counted heads, making sure all fourteen were there .
Grian squinted at the big, cloudy blue orb that was Skaia. "Is anything... supposed to happen now?"
“Well..." Big B said. "From what the salamander's drawing showed, it'll be pretty hard to miss."
"Oh! Over there!" Tango pointed towards a faint glow erupting from the world below.
The volcano had erupted, sending the tadpole flying through the air right towards the center of Skaia.
As it shot through space, the tadpole stretched and morphed, growing larger. Developing right before the players' eyes.
It dove beneath the clouds of Skaia, only to emerge seconds later in its full form. The clouds burst with light, transforming into a colorful pond for the Genesis Frog to rest in. The size of the sun from here, and surely the size of a universe when looking up close. The frog surfaced, resting peacefully atop its new habitat. Its skin shimmered with bright colors from across the spectrum. All kinds of life . Surely not the same as the universe that Grian had known, but one all the same. Full of possibilities.
As the frog lay atop Skaia, the house logo flipped, revealing a door to enter.
The doorknob wasn't what Grian expected. It looked like it held the entirety of the new universe within its glass, ready to live in. It crackled with electricity. Grian felt his hand reaching towards it magnetically, without thought, and he didn't resist it. He was ready to move on.
As his hand was about to touch the plasma-ball-like object, he recoiled, flooded with guilt.
He'd been responsible for this entire thing. Unfathomable murder and destruction. The Maid of Doom didn't deserve to be the one to open the new universe.
Grian turned to face his friends. "D oes anyone want to go first ?"
Scar gave him an encouraging double thumbs-up.
"It really doesn't matter , Grian ," Scott told him. " It's just -"
"Wait, no." Grian closed his eyes. He'd changed his mind- remembered something comforting. He still thought he'd been the one to cause all of the bloodshed in the past weeks, but this was his chance to put it past him. A barrier to grow through .
Grian had made a long domino line of mistakes that were still cascading against one another. He couldn't undo them, but he would try to make sure they didn't define him anymore.
"I'm ready."
He reached for the orb and grabbed it with as much force as he could , determined to end this once and for all—
Sending everyone away in the blink of an eye. Scattering them across the Genesis Frog's cosmos.
A final blinding flash of light washed over the players. It wasn't unlike the moment that this story had began with, but this time, it revealed someplace entirely new.
Grian found himself in a field of grass, standing in a circle of familiar players. He knew their faces well. Bdubs and Scar and Tango and the others stood out amongst the crowd of risen dead: Zedaph, Xisuma, Cub, Mumbo, and the rest of the Hermits.
Most of the Hermits seemed confused and disoriented. It looked like the start of a new season- everyone together in an unfamiliar, untouched area. A fresh world to begin in.
Grian wasn't sure what exactly had happened to them or how they were all here, but it didn't matter. They were alive and back on Hermitcraft. Safe.
The game had been won.
And its winners could finally take a fucking break.