Chapter Text
It’s cold.
It’s so cold.
Xisuma doesn’t know when it started, but the chill he feels in his bones has only gotten stronger and stronger in the past few days.
It was fine, at first. He liked coming up with a design for a new cozy fireplace. He liked collecting wood to burn at night, sitting close to the fire and warming up, even though he’s settled in the jungle biome. Even though he used to have to cool down after a long day of work.
He’s just... cold, all the time. He’s cold as he wakes up next to the remains of a warm fire, and decides that, before he’ll continue work on his newest farm, he’ll collect a few more logs for tonight.
Xisuma passes his Nether portal on his way out, and is it just him, or are the noises it makes a lot louder than before?
He shrugs it off and walks away, but then he begins to feel this, this pull.
Come, it tells him. It’s warm in here. You belong in here.
Xisuma ignores it as best he can, focussing on chopping trees and working out how much he’ll need to spend at the Redzone shop for his new project. He doesn’t even look at his portal when he arrives back home, instead heading straight for his fireplace.
Once the fire is roaring comfortably, Xisuma leans back in his chair. This gives him some time to think. He hasn’t used the Nether in a while, has he? The space underneath the roof of the Nether, that is. None of the hermits have. It wasn’t until Joe mentioned something about the landscape changing, warping, that Xisuma started to worry.
So, he tries to stay out of there as much as possible. Sure, it’s a hassle and a waste of rockets to fly everywhere, and repairing it so often in the absolutely freezing temperature of the End isn’t something he’d call a favourite pastime, but it’s better than the uneasy feeling the purple swirling portals give him.
He bears the constant shivering. The cold that chills him to his very bones, which doesn’t seem to drain away as time goes on. He bears it all, even if he doesn’t know the consequences. It’s nothing, he keeps telling himself. He’s just cold, there’s nothing wrong with that!
Still, one day it just... slips his mind. Maybe he fell back into an old habit, maybe the cold finally got the better of him, he doesn’t know. But before his conscious mind could react, he had stepped into his portal, and ended up in the other dimension.
And for the first time since this all began, he feels like he can breathe.
The usually hot and humid air feels surprisingly calming, and the pleasant temperature warms him deeper than any fire could. He stays there for what feels like only a short moment, just basking in the comfortable silence on top of the Nether roof.
Until the hermits start to get worried and come looking for him.
Only once the cold overworld air hits his face again does he come back to his senses. How long were you down there? What were you doing? You told us not to go to the Nether, so why were you just standing there? Xisuma shivers as he tries to answer everybody’s questions, but it’s late and he wants to go home and curl up by his fireplace.
Distractedly, he tells the hermits that the Nether is off-limits from now on. Something is happening to him, and to the Nether, and he doesn’t know what. So until he does know, everybody is to stay out. No exceptions.
Once he’s back home (thanks to Tango and his amazing flying expertise), Xisuma settles down and tries to figure out what’s going on. He pulls up his admin screens and gets to work, but even as he’s sat next to what would normally be an almost dangerously big fire, the cold biting at his skin becomes more and more intense.
Blanket after blanket he steals from various different beds, but nothing helps. Xisuma shifts uncomfortably and tries to focus on the task at hand, but the cold only gets worse and starts to affect him so much that he can’t focus anymore. The letters and numbers on his screens start to blend together, the soft light they give off burning his eyes.
Xisuma closes his screens and crawls closer to the fire, breathing out small puffs of air as he falls asleep.
What are you doing up there? You’re going to die. You don’t want to die, do you? You belong here. Come home.
The following morning the chat is filled with many concerning messages. That is, Xisuma knows they should worry him, but... it’s like the gravity of it all won’t settle in his mind.
He supposes the hermits all must feel a little uneasy with everything that’s happened yesterday, and the fact that they’re reporting an uneasy feeling, a pull of some sorts coming from their own Nether portals is quite unsettling.
Xisuma knows that this is bad, and yet... something tells him that it’s all going to be fine. It was always meant to go this way. If all the hermits feel it, then they can live together down there, right? Is that really a problem? No. Then why is he resisting it so badly?
He stays holed up inside his base for the rest of the day. The messages in chat don’t faze him anymore. Xisuma tries to do something, anything else other than burn wood and stare into the fire, but he finds multitasking to be quite... exhausting. Mentally taxing.
Night falls before he knows it, and the swirling sounds of the portal outside are calling for him once again, now completely flooding his thoughts.
It’s unbearable. The noise, the worry, the biting cold...
It’ll all be better once you step inside, you know.
Xisuma swoops down and walks up to his giant portal. Its call seems... happier, somehow. Welcoming, even.
Hoping, praying that the hermits won’t come looking for him a second time, Xisuma slips into the portal.
It’s warm. It’s quiet. His worrying thoughts dissipate.
Finally, he stops shivering.