Chapter Text
Scar had a bad feeling when he saw the HEP hounds kill the last of the sheep; he had a bad feeling when they sheared all the cows, he when he began replacing the mycelium with the grass. But Scar ignored it, in favour of what exactly? The hermits’ trust? The hermits’ happiness? Because of his pride?
Perhaps, but The Resistance had been quiet for 3 weeks, ever since they got rid of all the sheep and they hadn’t seen them at all, their stores stopped stocking up, their builds were in such a state of stillness that it looked wrong to the hermit’s eyes, and not once had they messaged them in chat or died.
Except for a panicked message from Etho, that slowly descended into nonsense the more he typed but back then they ignored it, thinking it was about the sheep they had slaughtered.
Nonetheless, Cub had taken the initiative and commanded the HEP agency to look for the Resistance HQ. They had too much information on HEP, and yet they knew nothing about them, they set off.
They split off into groups Keralis, Xisuma, and Scar on one team and Bdubs, False, and Cub on the other, Tango offered to stay behind just in case, and they dug, they kept digging and digging, until hours of work later Scar's team dropped to what seemed like a different world.
The room was dark with the only light coming from the bioluminescent mushrooms that came up to their knees. It was overgrown with mycelium and vines overtaking what was once a white, brightly lit room, the meeting table was overrun with small mushrooms, and spores kept puffing out from seemingly random places on the floor.
The foliage rustled with an unknown creature and they pulled their swords and torches out.
Cub had been contacted, and the team was ordered to look around, see if they could find any secrets or anything they could use against the Resistance as the others meet up at the entrance.
They carefully waded their way through the foliage, destroying the mushrooms with their heavy steps and slashes of swords, whimpers, wails, and growls could be heard echoing off the walls, and the three members of HEP froze until they died down. Something was definitely in there with them.
Scar gulped and gestured for the others to keep moving, something dropped in water, and Xisuma swivelled to see a small pond with a layer of moss covering it just at the entrance of one of the hallways.
He edged the water and flinched back when something from beyond the depths moved.
“What is this?” Keralis whispered, “what have they been doing?” Scar was beginning to think that this goes beyond their little turf war, “X, do you think something happened to them? Etho was trying to tell us something I’m sure of it.”
X hesitated, which didn’t mean well, he was the admin, he was supposed to know the going on in the server, he was supposed to protect them from harm, and yet something had harmed his hermits, “I’m beginning to think that too.”
They weaved through more of the foliage and whimpers started echoing along the walls again, low growls and hisses were among them, it wasn’t until Keralis tripped over that they found out what exactly was in there with them.
Before it could escape, Xisuma pinned it down with a sword, with a single glance X could tell that it was humanoid and familiar, but it had dog ears and tail as well as mushrooms growing from his skin, and its eyes were glowing white. But he didn’t have time to fully understand what he was looking at before it let out an ear-piercing wail and spores puffed out from the creature. Xisuma was tackled to the ground by a larger animal; its claws dug into his shoulder as it roared in a fury, scratching and biting at Xisuma’s netherite armour.
“X” Scar yelled and sliced at the monster, only for it to jump away and run on all fours towards the creature that Xisuma pinned. It picked it up before jumping up to one of the taller mushrooms, in the light of the mushrooms glow X could see that the full of its eyes shone the colour of mycelium, it had wings, and a lion's tail with feathers at the end instead of fur. Like the other creature, it was humanoid and familiar. It emitted a high-pitched screech at the three members of the HEP agency before gliding away with the smaller one in his grasp.
Disappearing into the dark of the base.
X let out a breath he didn’t know he was keeping as Scar helped him up, although X noticed how pale the mayor was as he kept staring at the direction the figure headed towards, “Was that Grian?” Scar whispered, and Xisuma paled.
That was Grian.
Looking back, the smaller creature could also be one of the Resistance members. Ren if he had to guess.
The words don't seem to register in his brain,
The images don't register in his brain.
Nothing was registering in his brain other than the messages Etho had sent to them, Grian's roaring screeching figure as he interpreted Xisuma as a threat, and Ren's wails of fear as he was pinned to the ground by X's sword.
Footsteps, whines, and hisses echoed through the overgrown base, as Cub, False, and Bdubs crowded around them and started asking question after question. "What happened?" False asked.
"Did you find anything?" Cub.
"Where's the Resistance?" Bdubs.
They couldn't answer, they were still processing what had happened, Keralis started shaking, and tears flowed down Scar's cheeks. X starred in the distance, frozen and pale.
Why hadn't he noticed?