Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Adrasteia and Erin have always been experimental when it came to building. Always thinking outside the box and using strange combinations and decoration tactics, and the new update gave them so much more to experiment with. When they woke up, the first thing they did was go into build mode and look at the newest additions to the game. They were forced to basically pass out while this was being added to the code, and once they had finally woken up, they were too tired to look. They knew that before anything, they had to look at what was added.

     Once they had gotten themselves situated on Erin’s housing island, where they usually built random structures only to destroy them later, they started the search. First was a new lilac-colored block that resembled purpur blocks that were in the end. They left that one for later, and skipped to the second one that they could find. The second one was as white as white concrete but had a strange texture, therefore instead of pure white, it had speckles of gray and off-whites mixed in. They joked around about it looking like bird poop, but carried on once they regained their sense of self. The third block was one they had never seen before, or anything similar to it, at least.

     This particular block had a cyan-like tint to it,but you could tell that it wasn’t anything close to any cyan-colored block or as pretty as it.It had mostly cold-toned colors,but they noticed it would look amazing next to some cooler-toned blocks. It had the normal wood-texture,but it wasn’t warped wood,it was something different. The pattern looked bent,and broken. It was so twisted that it looked perfect. The two immediately got to work experimenting with it.

     The first thing they did was make a little house, much like their cabin on their shared island. The next thing they made was a park-like area around a statue made out of the block, when they noticed that they hadn’t done their little tradition yet. Their tradition was to make a portal out of every block and then light it, and try to see if it would lead anywhere. Of course it was a joke and was only started when Erin tried to make a portal out of glowstone when she saw a video on it; but it still remained as something they did consistently.

     When they had finished making the normal portal shape, following the nether portal’s design, and lighted it,as tradition says. They noticed something happening to the world around them as soon as they did though. What was once a grassy island filled with little builds of the new block, had become non-existent-  They were now standing in a void with nothing but the portal in front of them. The panic of their faces meant that this was no prank pulled by the other. ”Erin..? What the hell is happening..?”, Adrasteia questioned Erin, who was beside her in the middle of a mental breakdown. ”I don’t fucking know Teia! Why the hell would I know!?”

     The world suddenly appeared around them again. They let out a sigh of relief, in perfect sync, as usual. Then, the younger of the two started to look around.

”Uhh...Erin?”

“Yeah?”

“We aren’t on your island anymore..”

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     Adrasteia was trying her hardest to figure out where they had ended up, going into multiple menus while Erin was pacing back and forth on the grassy field they had been spawned on.

     “How the hell did that work? Did they purposefully code that? Where the hell even are we, Teia?!” Erin stopped in her tracks, looking at Adrasteia.

     “Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out, dumbass!” Her wings spread out a bit at the last word, twitching in annoyance from not being able find where the hell they were.

Adrasteia had been going from menu to menu, trying to get some sort of grasp of where they were, but to no avail so far.

     Adrasteia sighed and closed every menu and webpage she was looking through with one wave of her hand, the floating screen in front of her disappearing. Her wings calmed as well, folded into a more comfortable position.

     “Well, I haven’t been able to find shit on where we are, so we’ll just have to go exploring if we want to find out. It may just be another world Hypixel coded in that no one’s found yet” She held out her hand, trying to summon her sword when she remembered.

     “Oh yeah... I guess we have to go farming for resources,”, she put her hand on the back of her neck when she heard small laughs from her left, “ What the hell are you laughing at?”, she looked over at Erin giggling to herself.

    “Just your dumbass self,” Erin looked at her with a shit eating smirk on her face. Adrasteia rolled her eyes “Not like your one to talk.” She walked past Erin, spreading out her faded red wings, before stopping and turning towards her, “Oh yeah, and we need to save these coordinates so we know where the portal is to come back to it when we’re done here.”

     “Oh, you’re right,” Erin held two fingers up and swiped left in the air, a transparent screen appearing before her. She pressed a few buttons before typing something out. “Okay, now we’re good,” , she swiped right on the screen with her hand, making it disappear. She walked next to her, spreading her own wings.

     The two spent the next hour or so exploring and flying around, collecting resources. After a long while, they had finally found a cave. Thing was, it looked like it had already been explored.

          Holes were mined into the stone of the cave and torches were placed on the ground every few feet.

     “Huh. So I guess someone has been here before. Looks like we aren’t the only ones who’s discovered this world.” She looked back at Adrasteia, who was already starting to strip mine.

     “You’re seriously gonna do that here? I guarantee there are better caves to strip mine closer to us,” , She crossed her arms and leaned sideways against the cave wall.

    Adrasteia looked back at her “Okay, one, it took us forever to find one fucking cave, and two, it’s getting dark and I don’t feel like going back out there when it’s dark. Plus, we don’t know what difficulty this world is on,” , she turned back around and started mining again. Erin thought for a minute then nodded “Yeah, that's fair.”

     Erin joined in on the strip mining after exploring the cave a bit more. All she found were more torches and a crafting table, where she used to her advantage and made an iron pickaxe. 

     After about two hours of mining, she was about to call it quits when Adrasteia bombed her chat with messages, telling her to get her ass over to her. Running at full speed, it took her about 25 minutes to get out of her strip mine. When she finally was back in the main cave, she was out of breath and hungry as hell. She was keeling over, breathing hard. Before she knew what the hell was going on, she felt a hand grab her arm and pulling her to a run.

     “C’mon, slowpoke! I found something!” , they both started running down Adrasteia’s strip mine.

     “Yeah, you made me aware, bombing me with so many messages,”, Erin stated bluntly. “Yeah, well, you have a tendency to not look at those, and you really need to see this.”

     Erin noticed Adrasteia put her hair up in a ponytail, which wasn’t unusual for her when she was mining. Still, she looked at it swaying back and forth the whole time they were running to whatever Adrasteia had seen.

     It took them around 30 minutes of running and taking breaks every 10 minutes for Adrasteia to stop dead in her tracks after running the last 10 minutes, causing Erin to almost hit her full force. She was able to stop, but only a hair away from almost colliding into her. Erin stopped, breathing hard and keeling over.

     “Oh my god, I haven’t run that long ever in my life. You know how much I hate running!” She looked up at Adrasteia, who still hadn’t faced her. Adrasteia finally turned around and looked down at her, “It was necessary for this.”

     Erin stood up all the way, a quizzical look on her face. Just what the hell had Adrasteia found that was so important?

     Adrasteia stepped out of the way of the end of the strip mine, finally letting the taller one of the two look at what she had found.

     Erin walked over to look and her jaw dropped.

     “Holy shit…”

Chapter Text

“Holy shit…”

     A huge ravine stood before the two, and it was quite obvious someone had been there before. It had stairs everywhere, leading to places of various elevation and was covered top to bottom with all types of buttons.

     The girls stepped out of the small 2x2 hole they were standing in, and only then, Erin realized just how decked out this ravine was. Erin noticed lanterns hanging from stone fences, but they had all been extinguished. There were chests placed everywhere, all of them being double chests.

       “Oh my god, and you found this?” She looked back at Adrasteia, who was leaning on the wall and had a shit eating grin on her face. Erin smiled and rolled her eyes.

     “Alright Miss full-of-herself, We need to start exploring this place. There could be supplies in the chests.” It took them around two hours of flying around to explore the place and its entirety. After she was done exploring around, Adrasteia flew back to the hole she made, finding Erin sitting down and eating an apple.

     “This place just looks straight up abandoned,” , She said while landing on her feet, tucking in her wings closer to her back, and looking around. 

     “Tell me about it,” , Erin swallowed the mouthful she had, “There’s cobwebs everywhere and no sign of anything living besides some mobs I found. I checked in most of the chests too. They were all empty. I was really hoping there’d be at least something in one of them” She took another bite of her apple.

     “But that doesn't make sense… If this is a new world, how can something like this exist?” , Adrasteia crossed her arms and looked down, thinking.

     “That is the question, isn’t it?”,  Erin crossed her arms as well, leaning back onto the wall behind her and looking around.

     “Well, since it’s been made very obvious that no one’s been here for probably over a year, finders keepers?” She looked down at Erin, who was swallowing the last bite of her apple. She nodded at her “Hell yeah! Finders keepers!”

     “Cool. Then let's get our base set up for tonight, then we can go out exploring more tomorrow.”

----The Next Day----

     Once both of the girls woke up from their respective beds,they noticed their feathers both seemed to be in rough condition. ”Hey, Erin?”, Adrasteia asked her counterpart. ”Yea..?” Erin responded in a groggy morning voice. ”I think it’s about time for another group preening session.” Erin responded with, “Why is that?” As conversations work, Adrasteia responded. ”It’s been, like, three or so days since we last preened our wings..,” Erin said, shocked, ”Oh shit, really?”

     The two of them immediately started a preening session,of course after setting up an area that would be easy to clean up. The two of them got to work. Adrasteia would preen Erin, as she only had one pair wings, and then after she had finished, it was Adrasteia’s turn. The blonde had four wings, all going from a light peach to a scarlet red with a few gold feathers sprinkled in. Erin had black wings with an undertone of a rich purple. Their loose feathers littered the ground along with specs of dirt and grime.

     Once the both of them had newly-arranged feathers, they swapped the feathers on their person to be a newly shed feather, rather than the ones from a week ago. Both feathers in their respective places, the two of them got ready for the rest of their day. They decided to go up the man-made stairs leading up, and hopefully, out of the ravine.

Chapter Text

It took a good 10(ish) minutes to get close to the top of the many stairways, leaving both of the girls slightly out of breath when they finally found themselves in a small dirt hut with a bed, chest, crafting table, and a furnace in it.

“This is the time I ask myself, what the hell were the people here doing before us?”, Erin walked over to the chest and opened it , “Shit, nothin’ in here,”, Adrasteia looked visibly uncomfortable, fiddling with the black feather on her necklace, “Dude, can we just leave? I’m starting to feel uncomfy in here.” Erin looked back at Adrasteia then remembered, “Ooooh yeah, I totally forgot you don’t like smaller places. Yeah, we can head out, there’s nothing valuable in here anyway.”

The afternoon was just starting as the two girls walked out of the small hut to see nothing but forest and… a tower made out of pink wool and cobblestone?

“Teia, do you see what the hell I’m seeing?”, Erin grabs her shoulder and points to the tall tower in the distance. “What the fuck is that? A watch tower?”, Adrasteia questions, starting to walk in the direction of it. “It’s a weird ass scheme for a watchtower, though,”, Erin said, following Adrasteia.

“I mean you never know what these people were, or maybe are, about. Maybe pink and cobblestone was their thing,”, Adrasteia noted.

“Yeah well, It’s a weird ass scheme for what, a colony?”, Erin questioned “Or whatever the hell these people were running.”

It took them about five minutes to get over to the tower, only to find out that it was just that- a tower. No door, no ladders, nothing. They even flew to the top, but only found out that it had no roof and was hollow on the inside.

“Well, this is just a waste of resources,”, Erin said as she landed back down on the ground, Adrasteia not far behind her.

“It’s cobblestone and pink wool, you can literally get cobblestone anywhere at any time, pretty much. With the pink wool, yeah, all that dye and wool takes a while to farm unless there's a flower biome near here,”, Adrasteia said, crossing her arms.

“Well, I don’t think we’re gonna get any info on whoever used to live here with this random ass tower. C’mon, let’s go exploring a bit, see if we can find anything else,”, Erin took out her iron sword and motioned for Adrasteia to follow her.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Adrasteia said, unfurling her wings, the span of them almost being twice the size of Erin’s. She took flight once more, with Erin not far behind her.

They flew forward for a moment, before Erin spoke up.
“What do you think that whole thing was?” She looked over to Adrasteia

“What do you mean?” Adrasteia looked back at her, a quizzical look on her face.

“I mean like, the tower, the ravine! What the hell went on here? Or could still be going on here?” Erin held her hands out in front of her, looking back in front of her.

“It could’ve been what you mentioned before. They could’ve been running a colony or some sort of group here at some point. It looks like it was abandoned a while ago though. There’s no sign of life here,”Adrasteia stated, shaking her head and looking forward herself.

“Mayhaps. Really makes you think, though-”

“Mayhaps? Really?”, Adrasteia looked over at Erin, “No one says mayhaps, dude.”

Erin put her hand over her heart in mock shock, “Says you, bitch. I say it all the time, and know plenty of people who say it!”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, man” Adrasteia smiled and rolled her eyes, looking forward again.