Chapter Text
Phil can still hear the baby zombie, can feel its teeth sinking into his leg. It broke through his armor, sank deep into his leg, and sent agony shooting through him. He tried to kick it off, he swung at it with his sword, but his swings were wide and panicked. His heart pounded in his chest, his breath came fast, and he realized he had to run.
He turned, and a spider leapt at him. He felt the spider dig its fangs into his neck, and then he felt nothing at all.
Code was suffocating. It was everywhere around him, weighing down on his chest. It choked the air out of his lungs and invaded his head, so all he knew was ones and zeroes. He had always known the risk of hardcore, yet they meant nothing to him. A man who had been orphaned by war, who was haunted by visions of his own war that had long since passed, had no one who would mourn his death. In hardcore, he could be alone. In hardcore, there was risk. In hardcore… the things he did actually had weight.
But now, it was all gone. As he fell through the code, he could feel his progress slipping away from his fingertips. And his life, but he didn't care about that if he was being totally honest. His builds. His homes. His city in the sky. It was all fading away, just like him. He was fading away.
Until he wasn't.
A hand burst through the code and grabbed at his collar. The code ate at the hand's skin, but the skin just grew back, right over the greedy code. And the hand tugged, and pulled, and it yanked him from the code. The air around him opened up as he was pulled from the suffocating, tightly packed code that had clung to him like parasites, into a vast and open white void.
He felt like he was being weighed down by anvils. He couldn't lift his head, or even his arms. He was as limp as wet seaweed as he was pulled into a strong hold, held bridal style in muscular arms. His head rolled over their forearm, which pushed up against the back of his head, propping it up slightly. He peeled his eyes open and through the blur, he saw two, glowing white eyes staring back down at him.
"Breathe."
The voice was booming. It echoed in his head and made his teeth chatter. He wasn't breathing, he realized. His chest felt too tight. It felt like something was weighing him down, like he would never find the strength to breathe again. Darkness played at the corners of his visions, like tendrils of shadows hungry to devour him. The glowing eyes narrowed.
"Breathe."
Phil did what he always did, when he felt helpless and cornered. Phil fought. At the repeated command, he felt a rush of energy when it was originally sapping away. And with that energy, he fought. He fought against the shadows, pushed at the weight on his chest. His fingers twitched, and suddenly, he took in a deep, gasping breath, drinking in air like it was water and he was dying in a desert. His head rolled to the side and the glowing eyes blurred out of his vision as he coughed and gasped, eyes fluttering shut. He won. And when Phil won, he rested.
He slipped off into a black void that didn't have a single line of code as his savior stood up, still holding him in his arms. Phil's head fell back over his forearm, which was pressed to the underside of his neck. Phil looked as pale as a ghast, but he would live.
Herobrine would make sure of it.
Mobs, both Nether and Overworld born, watched as their King walked down the hall. Cradled in his arms like he was the most precious player to ever walk the servers was Philza himself. Herobrine's glowing eyes were pointed forward, ignoring the mobs he passed by, who watched him pass by with silent turns of their head. A young Piglin reached for Phil's sunshine gold hair as Herobrine passed by, only to be promptly stopped by an older Piglin with a firm hand around their wrist.
From the moment that spider had sunk its fangs into Phil's neck, they all knew better than to mess with the player again. Lest they meet their King's rage and be turned into a dust of code.
But Herobrine paid them no mind, ignored their respectful fear, ignored their eyes that stared. He was more focused on getting Phil to a bed, and a healer at his side. No one was ever entirely okay arter being pulled from a hardcore death.
He knew that from experience.