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Keralis had a slit in his back.
Everyone knew it. They’d all seen it- whenever they’d have a group outing to the beach, it was virtually impossible to miss. It stretched from the base of his neck down to the tips of his shoulder blades, a hideous black gash that yawned almost hungrily, an inch at its widest point. Inside the cut was even more darkness, swirling and shifting like waves on the sea.
He didn’t try to hide it. They all knew.
Sort of.
There were some things best left unexplained, and hey; they lived in a world with a six-foot cyborg creeper man, a miniscule winged horror in a red sweater, and Mister Doomslayer’s wayward sons. Keralis didn’t even crack the top three weirdest hermits, not by a long shot.
Even so, his wings were a bit…weird. He never wore elytra, like Grian and a few others with intrinsic wings. Instead, he’d slide a pair out of the slit in his back. Two long insectoid arms holding a thin, translucent membrane in place, like the wings of a pterosaur…with extra ooze.
But that was about it, for Keralis. Just another slightly-less-than-human oddball in a world full to the rafters with them.
Nothing for anyone to concern themselves with.
Right up until Ren started talking to a godforsaken moon rock.
Ren skimmed low over the sea, eyes locked on the big-eyed man standing on his helipad. Doc soared next to him, the cyborg’s huge metal elytra clanking as they flew.
Their robes flapped in the breeze, and Ren grinned.
“His name is Keralis. His name is Keralis. His name is Keralis. His name is Keralis.”
Chanting, over and over, both of them joining the endless, maddening refrain of the Hermatrix. Drowning out all thought, even so far from their Odditorium. The only reprieve in the constant, pounding drumbeat came when they successfully cleaved another head for Hermatrix off a pair of ungrateful shoulders and laid it to rest around their makeshift altar.
Keralis was blissfully unaware; Ren glanced at his comms, and saw that the man was in a brief AFK trance. His weird membranous wings were out, gently fluttering and dripping in the breeze.
Ren flared his elytra and swooped in, already throwing sticky spiderwebs all over the ground and raising up his axe, still chanting their endless, maddening refrain; Doc was hurling potions, draining the strength from their unarmoured quarry.
Keralis was caught completely unawares. He barely had time to pull out his axe to defend himself before a swift strike from Doc had his head tumbling from his shoulders and into a nest of spiderwebs.
Keralis1 was slain by Docm77 with [Order of Octa].
Ren scooped up the precious trophy, still leaking Keralis’s maroon-coloured blood, and took off into the sky without another word. Doc gathered up Keralis’s things and tossed them into a shulker box, dropping it by the corpse before taking off himself a second later.
Their refrain changed as they flew away, whispering, “His name was Keralis. His name was Keralis. His name was Keralis…”
Behind them, their victim’s body didn’t vanish into code.
It was bleeding from the stump, a foul black-tainted liquid. And as the body lay there, baking in the sun, its fingers began to twitch.
The body didn’t vanish into code.
The sun crawled across the sky.
The corpse’s arms began to spasm, muscles moving of their own accord, shoving the arms back, dragging the hands across the ground.
The body didn’t vanish into code.
The moon started to crawl over the horizon, the last rays of the sun slipping below the waves.
The body didn’t vanish into code.
Black ooze erupted from the neck stump, long thin tendrils that curved down and carefully wrapped themselves around the body and its limbs, pressing down into the fabric and leaving black stains in their wake. Dozens of them, some curling around the fingers, others wrapping around the legs, and a few latching onto the torso and beginning to force air in and out by compressing the diaphragm.
Slowly, Keralis’s arms, guided by the tendrils, pushed back against the ground, lifting the headless torso up into a sitting position.
The body didn’t vanish into code.
The body climbed to its feet, retracting the fragile wing it had torn in the fall and shoving a fresh new one out of the slit in its back.
With the moon overhead, the body wasn’t the only undead thing to emerge from the darkness. A Zombie, sensing easy prey, snarled and stumbled towards the headless torso, rotten eyes set on its new meal.
The body trembled. It flared its wings as wide as it could, feeling the air-
And when one rotten hand grabbed a fragile wing, the body spun on its heel and struck.
Ren knelt down, placing Joe Hills' head on an amethyst crystal, hands trembling. What would her next order be? Where would they have to go next?
Hermatrix, her voice humming through the moon rock, paused.
Then-
“His name is Keralis?” she said, her voice lilting upwards in confusion.
Ren raised an eyebrow and looked at Doc.
“Keralis? But…we already got his head?”
They both looked down at where the innocent builder’s head was resting on an amethyst clump. Still dripping a horrible maroon ichor. Everyone else’s heads hadn’t bled at all. Why was Keralis’s head still bleeding?
“His…name is Keralis? His name… is Keralis… His…name…is Keralis…” the Hermatrix said, stammering on some of the words.
A rocket fired somewhere outside the Odditorium, and there was a flapping noise- like shaking out a soaking wet towel.
The door downstairs slammed open, and Ren’s blood froze.
“His name is Keralis,” the Hermatrix said, almost frantically, “His name is Keralis. His name is Keralis. His name is Keralis.”
Footsteps.
Footsteps thunking across the oak floors. Heading for the stairwell.
Gurgling gasps, someone sucking in air through a lungful of blood.
In, with a gargle. Out, with a rasp. In, with a gargle. Out, with a rasp.
Mechanical and regular, just like the footsteps.
Like a bellows.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Up the stairs.
Unhurried. Unbothered.
Ren pulled out his axe and a totem. Doc did the same.
“His name is Keralis. His name is Keralis. His name is Keralis.”
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Another few steps. Ren tightened his grip on his axe.
What came stepping out of the darkness, slowly and carefully, was a nightmare.
Keralis’s body, his wings half-folded behind him. Horrible black tendrils grew out of his neck stump like branches from a tree, curving back down and wrapping in great bands around his arms and legs. Some were belted around his torso, keeping him upright, flexing his chest to draw air in and out. Every time they did, a horrible rush of gurgling air would slide in and out of the slightly-crushed windpipe.
It had one hand hanging limp, loosely clutching a firework, and the other-
It was held straight out in front, the head of a zombie firmly grasped by the rotten hair. Based on the skin and viscera hanging off the rotten remnants of the neck, the head had been torn clean off the Zombie's body. Horrid black tendrils looped from the underside of the arm and plugged into the exposed vertebrae of the zombie, like cables into a monitor. The zombie head’s eyes flicked around the room, locking on to the one head on the display that was still bleeding.
The Hermatrix fell silent.
Keralis stumbled across the room, swinging the zombie’s head around like a flashlight in a dark room, yet always returning the head’s gaze to where his own was lying in a pool of blood on an amethyst plinth. Ren could do nothing except step back, his entire body shaking in fear.
Keralis dropped the fireworks on the floor and knelt down next to his own head, reaching out a hand and grabbing it by the top. He dropped the zombie head, patting around with his now-free other arm until he found his face. Grasping the head gently, he lifted it up and brought it up towards the neck stump.
Tendrils reached up, grasping at the flesh and pulling it down, and as that happened, the black bands wrapping around his limbs retreated, sliding back into the slit in his back and the severed neck stump, all of them vanishing back inside as the head fully reconnected with the body.
There was a sound like ground beef splattering into a pan, and the cut mark vanished.
Keralis’s eyes snapped open, and for an instant between blinks, they were completely shrouded in black.
Then he blinked, and the familiar arctic blue was back, just like a normal human.
He blinked a few times, looking around the room. Taking in his surroundings, and the zombie head he’d dropped on the floor. Then he noticed the altar, and the moon rock floating above it, and he scratched the back of his head.
“Sorry. I forgot to tell you, I can’t respawn without my beautiful head. If you’d asked a bit earlier I could have saved us all some time.”
Ren nodded mechanically, his jaw still agape.
“Anyway, I hope I didn’t ruin your fun cult stuff.” Keralis looked genuinely apologetic, gesturing at the bloody spot where his head used to be.
“I- Uh-“ Doc started, “How come you- can’t-“
“Respawn without my head? Because I have to keep my pretty shell all in one piece to count as a player! Otherwise I’ll start to leak out.” Keralis said with a grin, “By the way, I love what you’ve done around here with the amethyst. It's giving me lots of ideas! Anyway, sorry for the trouble. I’ll be going now!”
Doc swallowed, metal augmentations loudly clanking as he did so.
“You’re- you’re not mad!?” Ren spluttered, incredulous and more than a little terrified.
Keralis patted the top of his own head a few times and grinned.
“Nope! I got my head back, so I’m happy. And you were just having fun. You didn’t know. Why would I be mad?”
Ren just stared at him, absolutely dumbstruck.
He turned and set off towards the stairs, pulling his cap from his inventory and putting it on his head. It was just as he reached the top of the stairs that he paused and turned around.
“But if you want to play with some real monsters, I can get you in touch with my…brothers.”
There was a long, pregnant pause, as Keralis pulled some rockets out of his inventory, and then turned back to give them a big smile.
“Anyway, have fun!”
And with that, he vanished down the stairs.
Doc, Ren, and the Hermatrix all stood in silence for a full thirty seconds.
“…Uh,” the Hermatrix said, “Uh...”
“Yeah. I- yeah. I agree.” Doc echoed.
“Let’s…just…My bad. Sorry.” She said, “Uh, let’s just…take a mulligan…um… His…His name is BdoubleO100?”
“…Y’know what? That works.” Ren agreed. “Bdubs? Doc, you good with that?”
“Yeah, that works for me.”
“Great. Thanks, guys. Sorry about that. I’m- usually a bit more careful about- not messing with- Anyway…His name is BdoubleO100. His name is BdoubleO100. His name is BdoubleO100…”