Chapter Text
“This is stupid. This is so stupid, and dumb, and you’re stupid and dumb for making me come down here.”
Tubbo rolled his eyes, sweeping the narrow beam of his flashlight across the dusty cobbled floor in front of them. “Oh, grow up. It’s not even that dangerous! What, are you scared of the spiders?”
Yes. “No” Tommy grumbled and grabbed at the straps of his backpack, twirling one of the loose ends between his fingers. The little plastic ring at the end clicked gently against his knuckles as he swung it back and forth. “It’s illegal.”
His friend stopped, swinging his torch around to point it directly in Tommy’s face. “So when you want to break into school after hours to replace the principal’s stationary with crayons it’s ‘totally fine’ and ‘a great idea’, but the moment I want to do something illegal it becomes a problem?” The shadows on his face were stark and deep, making his eyes and cheeks seem to cave in skeletally.
Tommy cringed back, flapping his arms around. “God, would you get that bloody thing out of my eyes?” Tubbo glared but pointed the light back down to rest on his shoelaces (badly tied and trailing against the ground). “Jesus, thank you. Anyway, you’re my impulse control, you aren’t supposed to want to do illegal things, you’re supposed to try and stop me from doing them! And there’s a hell of a difference between a harmless prank and breaking into a fucking CRYPT!” His voice spiked up louder than he had meant, echoing off of the cold stone walls.
Crypt!
Crypt!
Crypt!
Tubbo smiled so innocently it had to be fake. “It’s a nice crypt, though.” The little circle of light danced up to the top of the arch that led to the next narrow passageway. “A little damp, maybe, but these arches are so architecturally interesting. Very…” he squinted “archy.”
“Oh my god,” Tommy murmured, “we’re actually going to die down here.”
Tubbo squawked, grabbing Tommy’s arm and marching him forward. “Don’t say that! It’s not like we’re lost or anything!”
“Did you bring a map?”
It was a joke, he was joking, it was supposed to be a joke because of course his best friend wouldn’t drag him down into a crypt that hadn’t been touched since the founding of L’Manburg without a map, but Tubbo hesitated.
Dread, which had been skimming the surface of his mind, sunk in like a rock. “Tubbo.”
“It’s fine, honestly, I remember the route out. We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it, man.” His voice was far too pitchy to be reassuring.
Tommy sucked in a deep breath. “HOLY SHIT YOU BRAINLESS FUCKING IDIOT! YOU DO KNOW THAT NOBODY’S EVER GONNA-”
“Tommy.”
“-FIND US DOWN HERE, RIGHT? NOPE, NOPE, FUCK THIS, WE’RE LEAVING AND I’M-”
“Tommy!”
“-NEVER LISTENING TO YOU AGAIN, CAN’T BELIEVE I ACTUALLY-”
“OH MY GOD SHUT UP TOMMY, I’VE FOUND IT!” The hand around Tommy’s arm squeezed him excitedly. “Look, look, see the inscription by the arch? It’s him!”
Tommy paused and leaned closer, gesturing for Tubbo to shine the flashlight on the little stone plaque next to the small, frankly rather underwhelming archway. The inscription was rough and shallow, as if made by someone with very little time or skill, but he could make out the words written there.
Wilbur Soot, first president of L’Manburg
Tommy snorted. “What kind of name is Wilbur Soot?" He turned to Tubbo expecting to see his friend smiling back at him, but was instead greeted by a blank stare. “Big T? You good?”
Tubbo seemed to snap back to consciousness, an unnatural grin plastered over his face. “Totally, totally, let’s go inside.”
“Oh, su- Hey, what? Go INSIDE? I thought you just wanted to find the bloody thing, not see the body!”
The shorter boy had already vanished through the small stone doorway though, taking their only light source with him. Tommy shuddered before hurrying after him. The burial chamber itself was a small room with rough stone walls that looked like they had been carved directly out of the ground. Most of the space was taken up by a large, crudely shaped granite coffin, sealed only by a thick slab of rock layed over the top. Nobody had bothered with ornamentation or even an inscription on the coffin itself. Cobwebs matted the walls and the ground was coated in a powder of dust. The whole thing was shoddy and frankly a mess.
Tubbo had set his bag down by the coffin and was rummaging through it, the torch gripped between his teeth. He glanced briefly up at Tommy and made a grabbing gesture. “Ginne.”
“What?”
Tubbo rolled his eyes and spat the torch out, the beam of light roving wildly around the walls as it rolled away and into one of the corners. “Gimme your bag, there’s stuff I need in it.”
Tommy took a hesitant step back. “Okay man, you’re seriously starting to weird me out here. What are you even planning on doing? I don’t know if I really want to be embroiled in a grave robbery.” He let the backpack slip off his shoulders anyway, dropping it gratefully. “What’s in there anyway? My shoulders are killing me.”
The other boy tore open the zipper and hefted out a large book. Its cover was made of a coarse looking brown leather, the spine cracked heavily with age and only tacked together by a few messily sewn strands of yarn. The pages were of uneven sizes so that some of them stuck out, the protruding corners fuzzily soft from wear. A few of the sheets looked too thick and tough to be paper. Tubbo cracked the book open and flicked through it rapidly, uneven pages flying by in a blur until he paused. Leaning over Tommy could see that the page was covered in writing, but the letters didn’t look like any language he knew of.
Tubbo set the book down with a thud that disturbed the carpet of dust and moved back to his own bag, withdrawing a few bottles of shimmering liquid. “Would you mind reading that page out to me? I need both hands free.”
Tommy blinked, swallowing. “Tubbo. Big T. T-Money. Seriously, this wasn’t even that funny to begin with. Can you just drop it already so that we can go home? Phil’s gonna notice I’m gone soon.”
He was completely ignored. “What does it say after chorus fruit?” A mortar and pestle joined the bottles.
Tommy grabbed the book and thrust it in Tubbo’s face. “Nothing! It says fucking nothing, because it’s a gibberish book you probably bought in some weird garage sale just to prank me, and it’s cold and dark and there’s a literal dead body about three feet away from me and can we please go home now!”
The book was snatched from his hands abruptly. “Netherwart. Can you get me the netherwart? It should be in a jar at the bottom of the bag. Grab the spider eyes too while you’re at it.”
Tommy let out a wordless shout and kicked the side of the coffin, yelling again at the pain that bloomed through his foot as it crunched into the solid granite. “CUT THE ACT, IT’S NOT FUNNY!”
Tubbo sighed, standing up to look Tommy in the eyes. “Look, I don’t have time to explain now but I promise this will all make sense soon. You’re safe, don’t worry, but I just need your help because I only have a few minutes left in control and I don’t think I’ll be able to persuade him to come down here again. So please, Tommy, just get me the fucking netherwart.”
Tommy was trembling, he realised dimly. He sunk down to the ground and squeezed his eyes shut, blindly fumbling through the bag until his hand closed around smooth glass before yanking it out and thrusting the jar in Tubbo’s direction. He felt it leave his hand before there was a loud scraping noise that seemed to rattle his very bones. He faintly heard the sound of chalk rasping against stone, of liquid splashing and the click of a lighter. A muttering started in a strange, guttural tongue, growing louder and louder as the smell of burning grew stronger and Tommy thought he might just claw his ears out if it would only make it stop before suddenly only the sound of his own gasping breaths filled his ears. And then a yelp, a cough, the sound of fabric rustling and an oddly familiar voice crying out at the top of his lungs.
“SON OF A BITCH, THAT HURT!”