Chapter Text
"Oh my gosh," Violet whispered, her voice trembling, falling backwards and away from the portal as the two siblings fell in, and disappeared. The portal started to glow brighter, and Violet grabbed a hand offered to help her up from David, who backed away and pulled her away from the portal.
"Okay, it's okay," Jellie said, although she seemed to be trying to convince herself of that more than anyone. "We'll find them- we just need to get help first. It's daytime on Hermitcraft, people will be awake. Joel should be awake..."
There was another tremble, and both Violet and David fell forward, almost as if being pulled forward by it. She knew her nails were digging into his hand, but she didn't let go as they fell through the portal.
They fell from a good height into shallow water, a few blocks away from each other. "Oh my gosh- okay- Dave, are you alright? Nothing broken?"
"I don't think so- I think we're in some sort of town," he said, getting up.
Someone called out to them, from a nearby dock. "Are you two alright? I saw you fall- did a teleport glitch out?"
"We're alright," Violet called back, wings flapping slightly as she stood up, and groaned internally as water dripped from them. It was always a right pain to get water out of scales, and she shuddered to think about the hour it would take to dry them fully. "Do you know where we are? We fell through this portal and now... well, we're here."
"You're in Orchidea, on the Misadventures server," he said. "I'm Mateo, how about I grab you both some towels and see if I can get Watcher Riven down, he might be able to figure out what happened."
Well, at least they weren't on some anarchy server, it could have been much worse. "That would be appreciated- I don't suppose people fall in here a lot?"
"They do, it's... an issue. I keep a lot of towels, just wait on the dock, I'll be a minute," he said with a tired smiled, and turned to go inside of a fishing hut.
Violet quickly made her way over to a ladder, and pulled herself up and out of the water, looking around. It was late evening, and lights were on in most houses, people getting ready for bed and the like, no doubt. She helped pull David out of the lake, and knew that they would both be having a right time of it getting dry. While he wasn't all that mechanical, drying copper-hair was just as painful as getting water out of scales.
Lava baths weren't terribly unpopular among many Players for a reason.
Violet sat at the edge, dangling her legs down into the air that separated wood from water, and kicking them slowly. David joined her, and she took his hand slowly, and he spoke after a while, hesitant, "do you think Hermes and Tom are alright?"
"I don't know," she said, tears gathering in her eyes. "I'm sorry Davey. I'm sorry."
"Hey- hey, you couldn't have known that they'd fall in- that there'd be another earthquake. Letty, none of us could have known that something would have happened, my Dad always says that hindsight is 20/20. We'll find them though, we're a group- we always find each other."
"I know- I know that. But fuck, it's just- it's so hard. I'm scared- I've just turned 18. Oh God- I've just turned 18 and- and now we're who the fuck knows where!"
"When did you get so vulgar Letty?" he tried to joke, but even he didn't have the usual joy to it, and pulled up his legs to rest his available arm on them. "Gods, this is such a fucking disaster isn't it? What can we even do? What if we can't get home? The only reason that the Hermits were able to return to their server was because of Grum and the rift being on their server, we don't even know if this world has an adjacent rift. With the Hub in shambles... who knows."
It had been nearly two decades since the Hub had last been safely traveled, it hadn't been safe to go through since the Watchers and Listeners had stopped its upkeep. The war between them had caused more damage than people had realised it would at first. Void-ship travel was rather popular.
There was a knock on wood nearby, Violet turned her head to see Mateo, holding two thick towels, and two mugs of what seemed to be hot chocolate. "I figured you two might want something hot- no food issues I hope?"
Another man was standing next to Mateo, with red-hair and light-brown eyes, wearing some sort of uniform. They both shook their heads, David grabbing the towels and Violet taking the mugs as the guard-like figure spoke, "hello, I'm Watcher Riven, Mateo's told me you just appeared here from a portal. Did something happen in the Hub recently? I haven't been in a few weeks, but it was just fine to get through.
They were both confused, however, which led to Violet asking the mutual question, "sorry- did you mean you were in the Hub-Void? As far as I'm aware, there hasn't really been a proper physical Hub since- since I was... maybe 6 or 7? I mean, there are station-points and gas stations and all that, but... hell, David's too young to remember the physical Hub."
Mateo took out a fishing rod from his tool belt, and sat down nearby to start fishing while Riven sat down on the pier to talk to them. "How far out are you from? I know it gets unstable far out, but... you'd probably have to be getting close to the Farlands for it to be that unstable."
"No- that's not right," David murmured. "We were in the third ring, that's only about 50k out, we live far out, but it's not- it's not a new server far. I think there's some newer ones in the sixth ring by now, and that's like- at the very least week by the hyperlink. If your lucky with traffic, and are breaking a bunch of speeding laws, at least. Remember when Ren and Doc got stuck for two weeks trying to get out of the second ring?"
Violet snickered a bit. "Didn't uncle Sloy read out their call logs of them just bitching about traffic during the weekly recap? Doccy was so happy when he found out that he'd be staying with uncle Scar and Jellie until they got back. I guess it's a good thing that he wasn't with us for the camping trip, though."
"Is..." Riven trailed off, trying to think of how to re-word what he was trying to ask, Violet and David exchanging worried looks. "What year is it for you two?"
"Well it's 1013, June 1st. Or, well, just about anyways. Hub Time might be a day or two different," David said, taking a drink of his hot chocolate as an excuse to stop talking. It was rather good, really, nice and smooth.
"Right now it's 1005, May 31st. I'm... I'm sorry. But- the Hub never went down here, so clearly there's more discrepancies here with here and where you two are from. Maybe try calling some numbers you know? If we're lucky, you're just in some... I guess alternate timeline of your world rather than a completely other world?"
"But if this is an alternate timeline we might not exist entirely," Violet pointed out, putting her mug down. "Or be completely different people. There's no way to know yet- put your comm down, David."
"Sorry," the fifteen-year-old murmured, sheepishly flipping it shut with a click. "You have a point- plus we're lucky enough to be on a calm world in the first place. Imagine if we were on an anarchy server- we aren't, right?"
The fisherman snorted at the question. "If you were, then you wouldn't have made it onto the dock. The Watchmaster and watchers keep the place safe, so there's no need to really worry all that much about crime around here, either. Really, the creators are more of a hazard than anything."
"Eh, creators always are," Violet said, putting down her now empty mug, and shook her head slightly. "Our parents were pretty calm on that end of things, though. Is there anywhere we could stay the night?"
Riven nodded. "We have some emergency housing, most people use it when they get caught out by nightfall or storms. Are you both dry enough now?"
David was finishing up his own hot chocolate and looked over at Violet before nodding. "Thank you for the help, Mateo."
The older man smiled as he spoke. "I help anyone who ends up in the lake, it's nothing personal."
"That doesn't mean you shouldn't be thanked for doing so," Violet said, getting up, and grabbing the towels and mugs, balancing them.
"You can put that on a barrel," he gestured vaguely towards the fishing hut, where there was an area of barrels. "You'll be welcome on the server, there's not many young folks around, we could use a bit of liveliness, I think."
"Thank you, Mateo," she murmured, and looked over to where David was still sat, although not for much longer as Watcher Riven was getting up himself. "And thank you, Watcher Riven. We appreciate the help."
"It's my job to help folks and keep the place safe. Keeping people off the street typically does that, in my experience. Or at least, it keeps people from sleeping in the dungeons because they passed out while running them."
"Can you tell us about these dungeons?" David asked, a glint of excitement in his eyes, which just made Violet sigh.
"Of course."