Chapter Text
The silence that echoed through Mizu had broken.
For years and years, the City of Mizu had been a quiet, lonesome place. After everybody in the city had been massacred-- Quite gruesomely, may I add-- The whole city had been left to collect dust, abandoned. Well… Aside from one person. The person behind all the bloodshed, the only person left behind. A peculiar half-enderman, with arms that carried several books, and hands that stained with ink.
He had been alone here for ages. Well… Mostly alone. Fishermen and weary travellers sometimes stumbled upon the place, and he was seldom visited by those who had already known of the place. All of them suffered the same fate, for the better or the worse. Their bodies left to rot in the depths of the ocean, eaten by fish until they were nothing but bones.
Kill them , the voice had said in his mind. It was more of a subconscious voice, but sometimes he heard it clear as day. A voice which was not his own. It had been there since he was born, came from his mother and all his ancestors before that, as well as his memory problems. He speculated that the two may have been connected. He never found out.
He had to kill them, even when he didn’t want to. Even when they were innocent, even when they had done nothing. Even when he smiled around them, and enjoyed the company. Even when they were friends, people he had grown up with, lived his life with. Even when they were the people who he ran the City of Mizu with. They had to go.
They aren’t the same, the voice had told him, They aren’t like you, they aren’t like him. That was the time the voice was the loudest, his vision tinting with green, his hand drifting to the dull iron sword, the one he was never supposed to use. The one he kept in his inventory for only the most dire of emergencies. Kill them, Ranbob.
That stupid prick of a self-appointed leader was first. The one with strawberry blonde hair and a wide grin, with a loud voice and red-tinted goggles. The one who hummed to himself through the halls, the one who spoke the loudest and argued when he didn't get his way, the one who cherished useless things and whose pockets were almost full.
Kill him, kill him first, kill him now. The voice was almost overpowering, the quill in his hand snapped, and when he looked down at his book, the whole page was filled with scratchy smiley faces, none of which he had recalled drawing, he hadn’t realized his hand wasn’t even moving. All he’ll do is get in the way, he’ll tangle every thread, he’ll ruin everything.
Ranbob didn’t hear everyone’s voices shutter to a stop as he stood. Well.. Almost everybody’s. He could still barely hear the leader’s loud yelling over his own voice in his head, the leader’s voice so shrill and loud he almost grimaced hearing it. Annoying. Their voices got louder as he held up his sword, but so did his own. Kill him. Kill him.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! RANBOB! STOP, WH--” His victim was shouting, screaming. He didn’t hear it, his sword was raised into the air, and he flung it down, a loud scream almost loud enough that it could have broken the glass of the dome piercing the air. Red was splattered on his sword, on his clothes, even staining the white of his fur and hair.
Ranbob spun around to face everyone else, his eyes almost speaking what he would have asked, Who’s next? The voice in his mind led him on, his dual-colored eyes going only one color as he moved. None of his actions were his own, slicing and stabbing with his sword, over and over, ignoring every scream and every plea until nothing but his breathing and the steady drip-drop of blood hitting the floor was left.
It was finally quiet. His vision returned, his voice faded, and all that he could hear was silence. Ranbob heaved every corpse upstairs one by one, put them on a boat, and threw them in the ocean miles away. He cleaned the blood up best he could, though neglecting to clean the smears from the higher floors.
He spent the next few months in complete silence. The first week or two, he was in shock at what he had done, refusing to move from his spot in one of the lower idol rooms, his favourite one. Sitting in the fake grass, leaned up against a statue. He barely took care of himself, refusing to eat or drink unless he felt as if he were on the verge of death.
Eventually, he forgot about it. He still remembered his friends, the people he spent years upon years with. But he didn’t know why they left. Left him alone to run Mizu. But this was his home, he’d run it alone if he really needed to. And so he did, he kept up his studies of the folklore of the past, filling up book upon book, things he’d never forget, try not to forget.
Next time there were visitors, he welcomed them in, told them to ignore the stains-- “ Oh! I just had an accident, tore up my leg, but I recovered. Just never cleaned up the stains.” -- And he walked with a fake limp the whole tour around. But the two visitors felt untrustworthy. And his voice told him again, Kill them. And Ranbob soon learned it was easier to listen.
There were few visitors after that. Nobody had visited Mizu much at that point before, anyways. There was a group of a few explorers, he all killed. There was one visitor who found a years old poster, he killed. There was a group of fishermen, he killed. Anybody that stepped foot in Mizu, he killed. All for his idol, Dream.
After one of these times, where he killed a group of fishermen, Ranbob finally left the silent confines of the City of Mizu. It was only for a while, just so the sapling in the oxygen room could grow. He couldn’t stay, lest he risk himself running out of oxygen and dying. Ranbob visited some family, distant family, his cousin Ran.
They talked, caught up on eachother’s lives since last time they had met. Ran hadn’t been doing much, just running his library as usual. Ranbob used to stay there a lot, flipping through every book, writing down as much as he could on his own notebook. Especially from books about the past, or fairytales, as Ran called them. Ranbob especially had spent a lot of time here before he left for Mizu, but never was able to visit afterwards.
Ran told him that he almost died, at one point. Fought in the King’s Pit to become general, and failed. He snuck out just as he was about to get killed, though, which Ranbob was quite thankful for. He asked a couple of questions, about other opponents, about what happened. Ran answered anything he asked, and mentioned as well, “The cameraman looked quite tacky, bright hoodie and a pair of cheap violet goggles. Absolutely not dressed proper for the event.”
Ranbob stayed with Ran for a week or so, before bidding his cousin farewell, getting in his boat and sailing all the way back to the City of Mizu. When he arrived back, he dropped off the bag of books Ran had let him take, letting them all spill out onto the floor. He was content with the quiet as he filled more books with new information, read every book that he’d written in the past or gotten from Ran, filled his meaningless days with information that never got old. Maybe because it was new to him every time he read it.
It was quiet, for months. Months and months. He had grown used to the quiet, as if he weren’t already. The only noises being his own footsteps, the flipping of paper, his own breathing. The voice. It didn’t talk often. It gave him ideas, guided him on what to do, was merely a thought in the back of his mind. He didn’t hear it very often.
But then, the silence of the City of Mizu broke.
All throughout the halls, there echoed what sounded to be a mix of a poof! , and the loud noise of an explosion and clattering. Ranbob jumped to his feet, the book he was reading collapsing to the ground. That didn’t sound like any other visitor, that noise came from within the city, not above it at the entrance. Ranbob grabbed his most valuable books-- His memory book, the ‘ introductory ’ book about everything that happened in the past and all the idols, and his favourite fairy tale book he had read since he was a child.
He should run away. Whatever that noise was, it sounded like something dangerous. It sounded like something bad, it surely wasn’t just a visitor. Ranbob decided that he should either hide-- In the secret room, Dream’s idol room-- Or, he should try to run out of the city. Maybe he would do that, he could go stay with Ran again, even get Ran’s help in case there was any real danger.
Go. The voice in his head spoke clearly, for almost the first time in a year. Ranbob began to walk, almost on autopilot, towards the source of the noise instead of away from it. He trusted the voice, took comfort in it, doing whatever it was that it told him. Ranbob kept his steps quiet and cautious, peeking down the hall, hiding himself mostly behind a wall.
There was the source of the sound. Just down the hall, right in front of the doors to the tree dome, was a man. There was a white puff of smoke and magic around him that had faded into thin air, and a bunch of books and other items had seemed to fall to the ground. He was wearing a bright colored hoodie-- That seemed familiar-- and had a pair of goggles strapped to his head.
The figure seemed to be rushing around to pick stuff up, placing his things on barrels. On one of the barrels was a gold pocketwatch, one that seemed to be.. Glowing? The man himself was rushing around, picking up books and flipping through them frantically, almost seeming to be panicking.
“Where is it, where is it-- Where am I? Who were they?” The man spoke in a rushed garble of words, rushing to a barrel where he had placed down a book and opening it, flipping through it till he got to one of the pages and began to read, one of his hands against his forehead in a distressed manner as he read through the page.
Come here. The voice in his head spoke again. It was louder, clearer. It wasn’t the same as the man that now had his face almost buried in the book now, though. The man almost sounded familiar, he couldn’t quite place why, but he supposed it didn’t matter, did it? Ranbob’s eyes were pulled towards the pocketwatch, which seemed to be almost glowing brighter, with a green hue.
Ranbob took a deep breath, before emerging from his place hidden behind the wall. He stared at where the pocketwatch was, all the way across the hall, concentrated very, very , very hard, and…
Vwoop!
By the time that the man had heard the little noise and turned around to see what it was, Ranbob had already picked up the pocketwatch, and opened the lid on it. He looked down at the clock as it glowed brighter, the hands spinning faster and faster until he couldn’t even see them anymore. And just like that, with a bright flash of white, he disappeared.