Chapter Text
There was a man off in the distance.
He was stomping around the woods, kicking up leaves and twigs, and chattering on about something. There was a small satchel hanging off of one shoulder, a bow and quiver strapped to his back, and a flaming torch in his off-hand. He spun around in the golden leaves and almost tripped on his own two feet in the process, cussing about his folly. The man hadn’t noticed that he was being watched yet.
Unbeknownst to him, with every step he took, he was getting closer and closer to a very familiar and yet alien danger. It wasn’t a part of the plan to intervene, but just this once, maybe he would leave a sign to deter the player away from the darker woods as warning. Maybe.
At that moment, the man froze in place, stock still. He looked up towards his watcher, eyes locked on a patch of woods directly next to where he was standing. Perfect timing.
Jay held his breath for a solid ten seconds before letting it all out in a rush, adrenaline coursing through his veins. “Ya dickhead,” he muttered as he adjusted his gaze to stare the creepy bastard in his white eyes. In a flurry of purple and the slight aftertaste of ender-dust in his throat, the fucker teleported right in front of him, his vision darkening a bit from the nausea that Herobrine always brought with him. “Fuck off, yeah? I’m tryna get somewhere,” he waved his hand dismissively in the guy’s face before wandering off in a vaguely similar direction to where he was headed. “Can ya mind your business for two seconds?”
Jay could almost feel the weirdo’s unblinking stare follow him as he hurriedly shuffled along.
Thud.
….
Now he wouldn’t tell anyone this, except maybe Tom, but he would be lying if he said the sound of a block being placed down near him didn’t scare the absolute shit out of him.
“If I turn around and you’re still there, I’m gonna bash you up,” he lied. As he slowly turned back around to look at what Herobrine had placed, he couldn’t help but feel a little bit of relief seeing the sign where the cryptic mob had been before.
“‘No.’” Jay looked back up and around hoping to spot the corrupted Steve again. “No?” he scoffed mockingly. “What are you, 12? Fuck off.”
Thud.
Another sign directly next to the first one.
No.
“No you’re not 12 or no you’re not fucking off?” He yanked both signs out of the ground before continuing his hike. “Make up your miiiind, brev.” As he walked, he decided to tear both signs apart and use them for sticks and scraps in case he needed them for building anything later down the road. Sure, he could get wood from any of the surrounding trees, but this way was easier and would definitely piss off dear old ‘brine. Briney boy. Briney brew. He snickered at his own thoughts as he shoved the sticks and wood into his bag. “I’m gonna call you Briney brew from here on out, yeah?”
Thud.
NO.
“Ok Briney.”
Jay continued hiking for another hour or so before he came across the edge of a dark wood biome. Had it been a regular patch of oak woods, he would have kept pushing despite how sore his feet were getting now, and especially when it was still this bright out. The only problem was that the dark woods were called that for a reason. The leaves and branches were so unnaturally thick and intertwined that it was nearly as dark as any of the caves that he and Tom had explored. And hostile mobs really like spawning in caves. Therefore they would absolutely love the dark woods too.
He sucked his teeth and made a few contemplative clicking noises as to what to do next. What to do next… what to do next… what to do, to do, to do do do dodododododododo- and then he was off beat boxing to the dirty beat he just made up in his head.
Thud.
STOP.
Jay regarded the sign with about as much respect as he would a grain of sand. “You’re just jealous you got no sense of rhythm,” he snarked. “All ya fuckin’ do is stare at people from a distance. Ya ever think you might have a prob- a lotta problems?” He kicked the sign down without picking it up this time. “Don’t ya got anything better to do besides stalking me? How about Tom, why don’t you go bother him?”
He walked along the edge of the woods, looking for a path of some sort that local villagers might have carved out. Last thing he wanted was to have to jump in head first with nothing but a bow and a torch. And a couple of passive aggressive signs. “Been looking for him, ya know? I’ll bet he’s got himself holed up in a cave somewhere, or lost.” He kicked a pebble across the dirt, watching it skirt into the the edge of the dark woods. “Ya know I’ll bet a stack of diamonds that you know where he is too, seeing how you’re always findin’ me.”
Thud.
Jay’s neck damn near snapped from the double take when he walked past the sign.
Yes.
He wasn’t sure how he felt. He probably should have felt relieved that Herobrine knew where his best friend was, but somehow, it made him feel worse. Like he knew there was a reason he wasn’t haunting Tom right now. It made his skin cold and his stomach twist into knots.
“You gonna tell me where he is?” he asked tentatively, looking from the sign back to the forest.
Thud.
GO BACK.
Ignoring Briney’s very obvious avoidance of the question, Jay looked back at the very nice acacia biome he just came from, doubting Tom would have gone exploring there since there was such a lack of open caves there. Just a couple of potholes and dead ended tunnels. Was he in a cave system far below the ground? Was Briney just screwing with his head for shits and giggles? Probably. But when he looked back at the thicket right before him, a tiny little voice that sounded eerily like Tom said otherwise. “S’he there?”
Thud.
You don’t want to know.
He wagged the torch at the sign like he was scolding it. “Nah nah nananananah hold on a minute, you know where he is?” He kicked the sign down and yelled into the air. “Where is the fuck is Tom?!”
Jay was only met with silence.
Frustratedly, he stomped on the sign, snapping it in half, before glaring angrily at the woods he had yet to brave.
If Herobrine was trying to keep him from going in there, then that was probably his strongest lead right now. So with a deep, chest-aching breath, Jay readjusted his bag, held up his torch, and crossed the threshold between light and dark as he entered one of the most dangerous biomes in the world to find his best friend.
His stupid.
Daft.
Fucking MENTAL friend. Tom, the cat.
And bring him home.
Why was it so fucking dark.
He really expected there to be at least some daylight in the dark forest. At the very least in larger patches than the shifting flickers the size of his own hand. The illusion made everything look almost alive, like everything in this place was breathing as one massive being. Creepy.
His torch helped solidify the ground beneath his feet though, and lit up the darker places where the rare light could reach. Maybe if Tom were here exploring with him, he’d almost find this setting peaceful. Almost.
It was too quiet. He couldn’t even hear the gargling breath of any nearby zombies, or the clacking of bones from skeletons, nothing. The ground was too soft with peat to even crunch underneath his feet. This place felt so dead despite being filled with life: berry bushes, glowing lichen, mushrooms, and even some apples poking through the tightly packed canopy that Jay happily snatched and stored in his bag. He would definitely need these for later if he couldn’t happen upon a village anytime soon.
“It’s bare dead in here,” he muttered to himself just to stay sane in the silence. “Tom, I swear to god if you’re in here I’m going to kill you and then drag your ass back, I swear to fuckin’ god.”
He ducked last minute under a branch that was growing at a weird angle out of the original trunk. At least, he thought that was the original trunk. Everything was so twisted and compacted that if it weren’t for the force of gravity, he might’ve not known which way was up or down. Which way was he even going? He couldn’t tell where he came from anymore. He probably should have put down a breadcrumb trail of sorts, like maybe using the scraps he snagged from Briney’s signs that he was leaving everywhere. Then again, it was so damn dark that Jay wasn’t even sure that he could have followed it back without getting one trail of sticks confused with all the other sticks on the ground. He just needed to find a path that some villagers- or even pillagers at this rate, he was getting so desperate- would have carved into the woods, all set up with lanterns and a nice, cobbled road.
Until he hopefully happened to stumble across a road, Jay tried to stay out of the thickest areas where the trees were so dense that they formed a living wall. Sometimes he would refuge underneath the giant mushrooms to get some breathing space and shake off some of the claustrophobia that was creeping up in the back of his mind.
He was catching his breath underneath one of these gigantic fungi when he noticed that the dark wasn’t just a result of the dense woods, but that the shifting shadows were actually beginning to fade away.
Nightfall was approaching. And fast.
“Shit, I really don’t wanna spend the night in here.” He quickly stood up again, ready to keep pushing forward when a dull, red glow just caught his eye off to the side at the last second. Lanterns? At long, fucking last! He hoisted his bag over his shoulder and sprinted towards the source, waving his torch in front of him so as to not hit his head on any low branches. He tripped over his own shoe and switched his footing, hopping on the opposite foot to keep balance. “Shit fuck shit shitty shit-“
Thud.
Damn. He really hoped he wouldn’t hear that sound again. Upon balancing himself again and finding the source of the light, he was met with a red stone torch, and one, oak wood sign next to what looked to be the remnants of some cobbled ruins.
This is your last chance.
Turn back.
“Or what, you tell my mum?” He leaned forward to grab the free torch. “Y’know you’re not scary, right? You haven’t done a single thing the entire time I’ve been in ‘ere, and you expect one sign is gonna deter me fro-“ Thmp, thmp, thmp, thmp thmp thmp thmpthmpthmpthmp-
Jay whipped around just as a sudden blast of wind blew out the light of the torch in his hand and engulfed him in complete darkness. His heart was hammering at light speed as he stood there, stock-still, staring directly at what just rushed him.
Though his vision was grainy from how dark it was, he knew what he was looking at. He knew exactly what it was. The shade cast a dark shadow over the angel’s face, covering where the eyes and lower lip would be. There was a pickax embedded into the statue’s head and several chunks looking to be “picked” right out of its torso and arms. Arms that were frozen in time, reaching for him, a mere hair-width from his face.
He let out the breath that he was holding in and slowly slid out of the way of the angel’s reach, reaching around behind him blindly for the red stone torch that was still in the ground. “Ok, maybe you’re a bit scary,” he chuckled nervously.
He switched the redstone torch into his offhand as he blindly reached around for the pickaxe attached to his bag. Upon grabbing it, he, quite cockily he would admit, tossed it once in the air and caught it. “Aight mate, see ya in hell”.
With one solid swing, he knocked half of the statue’s face clean off, little bits of marble crumbling off. He struck again and again until there was no head left, and the rest of its body crumbled into gravel. Though dead, Jay didn’t want to risk being teleported elsewhere, so he carefully stepped over its remains before continuing on in the direction that Briney was trying to deter him from.
He didn’t notice the “cobbled ruins” wriggling out of the ground when he wasn’t looking directly at them.