Chapter Text
“Why can’t I go outside, Mum?” the little boy asked, his voice a whisper as he watched the open window. It was nighttime now, so she didn’t have to worry about getting burnt. “It’s not even daylight.”
“Shh, that’s not...” His mother cut herself off as the old house creaked. It wasn’t the same one he’d been living in when he was younger. This one was on the outskirts of town, dark and damp, with holes in the walls and broken windows.
After a moment, when it was clear the creaking was just the house in the wind, she sighed. “That’s not why, Mumbo.”
“Then why not?” His mother scooped him up easily, moving to put him back in his bed, though it was more of a mat on the floor with a blanket on top that the mother had to share anyway than a bed. “Am I in trouble?”
She shook her head, not answering until after she’d tucked him in. “It’s dangerous around here.”
The little boy paused in thought. “Because it’s not like home?”
She went to open her mouth before cutting herself off and sighing again, but this time more sadly. “That... isn’t our home anymore, dear.”
“Oh.”
It was quiet for a few minutes as Mumbo stared off into the distance and the woman fidgeted with the edge of the blanket, bunching it up between her fingers before smoothing it out again.
After smoothing the blanket once more, she finally climbed in, pulling her son close before starting to hum.
He knew this one.
It was his favorite.
--
He should tell them.
He should not tell them.
Void, it felt like his mind was running in circles.
Mumbo was lying in bed, the early morning sun shining across his face from a crack in the curtain. Unlike yesterday, he wasn’t in a rush to get up and go check on his base or any of his farms. He, in fact, felt like melting into the bed and never leaving it again.
Somehow, the fact he’d actually seen Skorpi just solidified that he was here.
Oh, he’d been quite aware that Skorpi was around, but now that he could just open his door and, boom, he’d be standing there waiting for him, it solidified in his head, and now he could barely go two minutes without wondering if the guy was going to come around a corner with a sword, or perhaps he’d be more religious and stab Mumbo with a stake.
Oh, and wouldn’t that be a sight.
Skorpi stabbing him with a stake while Scar and Grian watched in horror. Gosh, he’d hate that to be the last thing they saw of him.
“Hey, Mumbs, wake up...”
The blanket of feathers lifted off him, revealing Grian, who sat up and gently caressed his face.
“You’re okay.”
Mumbo hadn’t even realised he’d been breathing unevenly.
“I’m... I’m fine.” Mumbo sat up, pulling his face away from Grian’s hands. “Did I wake you?”
Grian huffed and raised an eyebrow, his wings puffing slightly. “No, but are you okay?”
Mumbo froze for only half a second. “I-I’m fine, what do you mean...?”
Grian appeared to hesitate for a moment before looking back up at Mumbo. “But you aren’t...”
The two of them sat in silence for a minute as Mumbo tried not to just say he was fine again, since that didn’t seem like it was going to help. Scar was still, thankfully, dead asleep on Mumbo’s other side.
“I’m sorry, Mumbo, I just...” Grian tried to shrug and flatten his wings back to normal. “I... we worry about you since that guy turned up, and now I’m even more worried that you’re having nightmares.”
Mumbo stayed silent. He wasn’t technically having nightmares, more along the lines of imagination terrors, but that sounded worse than “nightmares” in his head, so Mumbo didn’t say that.
Grian let him sit in silence, only moving to hold Mumbo’s hand, making sure he didn’t hurt himself.
“It’s just hard seeing him...” Mumbo whispered before he could stop himself.
“...Can I ask why?”
The two thoughts kept circling in his head for another minute before he finally looked at Grian’s face. Mumbo only saw curiosity and worry in Grian’s eyes.
That would change soon.
Mumbo opened his mouth to say something, though he didn’t exactly know what, before he was interrupted by a series of dinging noises: his note block doorbell that he and Tango had made a while ago for fun.
Mumbo swallowed hard and moved to get up before a hand touched his shoulder, pushing him back down.
“Stay. Rest. I’ll go see who it is, okay?” Grian whispered, already moving to stand and walk down to the front door before Mumbo could even say a word.
By the time Grian got to the front door, whoever was on the other side had started rapid-firing the doorbell while also knocking loudly.
“Grian?! Mumbo, Scar! Hello?!”
That was Jimmy, but he sounded... upset.
Without wasting another second, Grian threw open the door, practically feeling his adopted brother’s distress through the blocks.
“Jimmy, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Have you seen Tango?” Jimmy grabbed Grian’s shoulders desperately. “Has he been by?”
Grian had to practically push Jimmy away to free himself from his grip. “Not for a couple of days, why?!”
Jimmy ran a hand through his hair, clearly exhausted among many other things, before Grian took hold of his hands the same way he did for Mumbo.
“Hey, hey, talk to me. What’s going on?”
It took a moment before the canary let out a breath. “Tango promised he’d come home yesterday. I just thought maybe he lost track of time again, but...”
Jimmy swallowed. “His communicator wasn’t on him...”
Grian’s wings puffed up slightly in shock.
It’s not like it’s impossible to remove a communicator, but it was, to be frank, a silly thing to do, since your communicator was required for long-distance communication, death logs, constantly broadcasting your position to players and administrator systems, as well as cross-world travel.
It was more common for people on worlds that didn’t have anyone else to not have communicators, but this was a world with always at least a dozen people. It was... well, weird was one word for it, but concerning came to Grian’s mind first.
“They found it in a lava pool...” Jimmy whispered.
Forget weird entirely. That was downright disturbing.
Communicators don’t burn when they’re attached. If it was damaged, then it wasn’t on Tango.
Grian let out a quiet inhale. “I don’t think he’s been by here at all.”
He gently helped Jimmy sit back down when he began to tremble.
“You were the last ones. No one else has seen him...” Jimmy whispered.
“Grian?”
Grian turned back into the base, seeing Mumbo and Scar standing at the end of the hall.
“Tango’s gone missing,” Grian mumbled, pausing to gently hug Jimmy when he started trembling harder.
“What...? Oh no...” Scar murmured, coming closer to try rubbing Jimmy’s back to help him calm down.
“I haven’t seen him since he asked me to come help with Scott’s door. Did anyone see him after...?”
Mumbo followed Scar down, choosing to sit beside the canary, who shook his head.
“I saw him before sunset... He said he’d come home, and when he didn’t, I just...” Jimmy let out a small, almost silent warble that Grian returned immediately.
“Xisuma messaged me saying the system had sent alerts for a damaged communicator, and then they found it-...” The canary cut himself off with a choke, trying not to panic more than he already had.
Grian looked up at Mumbo and Scar, mouthing the word “lava” so they understood.
“There haven’t been any other system alerts about him?” Mumbo asked, to which Jimmy shook his head.
“Hey, it’ll be alright. Maybe he just dropped it and didn’t notice?” Scar offered, though even he didn’t seem to fully believe it. Most people tend to notice when they get completely cut off from the rest of the world.
Jimmy took a few breaths before moving to stand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”
All three waved him off.
“It’s fine, mate.”
“I’d be in the same boat, honestly.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Jimmy took another breath before stepping back from them. “Scott’s supposed to be on today. I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell him...” he mumbled.
“You haven’t told him?” Grian asked, to which Jimmy shook his head. “I... I haven’t answered him yet. I mean, what do I tell him? That Tango’s missing?”
None of the three could properly answer that. They wouldn’t know what to say either. Grian glanced over at Mumbo, then at Scar, who met his gaze and glanced back at Mumbo too.
“C’mon, Jimmy.” Grian took his hand. “I’ll help you search for a while.”
Jimmy looked surprised but didn’t argue, simply pulling out a rocket and taking off.
“I’ll be back later,” Grian called as he flapped his wings to catch up with his sibling.
Mumbo cupped his hands around his mouth. “Call us if something happens! And be careful!”
He wasn’t sure if Grian heard all of it, and the worry made him start rubbing his hands together.
Scar gently tugged his sleeve. “Let’s go eat, and then we can go help, okay?” he suggested, to which Mumbo nodded.
Void, Tango...
Mumbo hoped the blaze man was alright...
--
The scribbling of notes in a book could be heard through the empty room.
- Water = immune, no damage taken, does require air. More experiments needed.
- Snow = causes shivering but not hypothermia. Use until better solution found
- Lava = rejuvenates. More experiments needed
Fire = burns, no long term damage
An unsteady hand wrote the notes.
“Unoriginal,” Tango bit out. “You did this already.”
Tango was... somewhere. He didn’t even know if he was still on HermitCraft. He’d lost his communicator sometime in the haze of being dragged to the somewhere.
What he did know was that he was in a cobblestone room, iron chains cold to the touch keeping his arms pinned to the wall behind him. The half of the room he was in was walled off with tinted black glass he could barely see through and half-filled with snow blocks that slowly collected from the drifting snow above, where Tango could see the open sky.
The snow was up to Tango’s waist, and he couldn’t move enough to try freeing himself, the water experiment he’d gotten earlier having tired him out.
“Quiet, hellspawn.” The voice was fuzzy in Tango’s exhaustion. “If you would cleanse yourself, you would not need this pain.”
Tango lifted his head, unable to keep his eyes steady enough to fully see the figure on the other side of the glass.
“Go take a trip to the Nether and stay there.”
The flick of redstone sounded, something Tango had heard many times in his life, and tonight it sent a slow, trickling cascade of lava from somewhere near the ceiling to slowly close in on him.
He hated this part.