Chapter Text
Grian was falling.
Now, this wouldn’t normally be a problem, except for the fact that he was falling out of a plane and hurtling towards the ground at a high speed.
And last he’d checked, high speeds plus gravity usually equals splat.
Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t exactly much he could do when he was— wait, how far away from the ground even was he?
Looking down, he realized that he was... actually not that far away. Huh. He could’ve sworn it’d have taken him less time to fall—
Something on his back shifted. Looking up, Grian noticed that his large, purple-tinted parrot wings were spread wide above him. Ah. That explained it. He’d forgotten his wings, aka his built-in parachute, existed. To be fair, he’d been mildly panicking for a bit there.
The feeling of a cloud in his face sent Grian back into focus. Right, he just needed to find a place to land because goodness was the air so very thin up here. With a flap of his wings, Grian aimed himself at the ground below, searching for a suitable place— preferably with civilization— to land and get his bearings.
Watching the scenery as he flew, he could see quite the expanse of land below. Off in the distance was an ocean, or maybe just a really large lake. To either side was forest, and— yup, behind him was more forest. He’d have to find a clearing or something, then, perhaps there might be a village near the coast. That was where people usually settled, right?
He beat his wings once, twice, propelling himself towards the distant body of water. His suspicions were confirmed as he drew closer— yes, there was definitely something there. And to his great fortune, there was a nice clearing in the thinning forest not far from it. He could easily land there and then walk into town.
That was probably a better idea than, y’know, landing in the middle of a village. That tended to scare people and Grian didn’t feel like becoming a bread kabab on someone’s sword today, thank you very much.
Circling a few times, Grian extended his wings to their full length before diving down and pulling up just as he hit the ground running. Not too bad of a landing, in his opinion.
His wings shifted and relaxed, finally free of the burden of his impromptu flight. Shaking out his arms and rubbing his cold hands together, Grian glanced around him at the lovely meadow he’d ended up in.
There were patches of poppies and cornflowers dotting the landscape, a small pond near the edge of the oak forest. A bee’s nest nearby was dripping with honey, and, surprisingly, most of the grass was cleared away—
Grian paused. Wait, that didn’t seem right. Upon closer inspection, indeed some of the dirt was newly-placed and there was a serious lack of tall grass. A couple of small amethyst crystals were dotted here and there, and that was definitely glowstone and redstone dust sprinkled over the ground. Either the nearby town had had some kind of event here or….
“Hello? Anyone there?” He called out, uneasily stepping back as his eyes darted around. He mentally cursed himself for not thinking to bring more supplies on his person, even though weapons weren’t allowed in inventories on airplanes. “Hello?”
Rustling from the trees behind him made him twist around, just in time for him to see several faces emerge.
Several surprisingly young faces with wide eyes.
From what he could tell, there were seven of them, of various heights but clearly all somewhere in their teens. As they approached, moving into the light, he found he could make out more features.
The tallest of the group, hovering near the back, seemed to be a hybrid of some kind— probably Enderian. They looked the most nervous out of the group, warily flicking their eyes between Grian and their friends as their tail swished around, brushing against the grass.
Just in front of him was a teen who seemed to share Grian’s fashion style, with a yellow sweater and jeans. A red beanie barely clung to the back of his head, while wire-framed glasses made his eyes look even larger than they already were. The teen’s left hand rested on the shoulder of a younger blond in a red-and-white baseball tee, smudges of dirt and a few leaves still clinging to him.
On the other side of the group, a pink-haired piglin hybrid was eyeing Grian over, making the winged blond nervously take a step back.The boy was clutching an axe in one hand, though he didn’t seem intent on using it just yet. Grian was relieved at that— axes were great, when they weren’t aimed at him. Behind him was a brunette girl who seemed intent on staying behind the pinkette, not for her own safety, but for that of a tiny creature she held in a hat— wait, was that a llama? Yup, it was a llama. Grian hadn’t known they came in that size, but apparently they did. Interesting.
Turning his attention to the middle of the group, three boys that seemed to be the most relaxed about this whole ordeal were quickly closing the distance between themselves and Grian. The one on the left had bright blue hair and stars dancing across the parts of him that weren’t covered by his clothes- a starborn, then, perhaps? He certainly wasn't a pantheon, that was for sure. He seemed to be one of the older ones in the group, at any rate, and probably the most reasonable to talk to out of the seven, seeing as the other two boys (one whose cloak resembled one in Grian’s closet but in a neon shade, the other just wearing the same uniform color from head to toe) were currently reminding Grian of lovely excited dogs. Except with a bit more self-control and a lot less slobber.
The blond watched as the group slowly spread out in a bit of a semicircle around him, close enough to talk but also far enough to run if needed. After that, there was a minute or so of near silence, the only noise coming from the bees flying to their hive nearby and the wind blowing through the trees.
“Are… are you Xelqua?” The starborn finally spoke up.
Grian blinked. “Uh. No? My name’s Grian.”
The boy with a beanie wrinkled his nose. “You look like the pictures though. Are you sure?”
“Wilbur, don’t make him mad!” the boy with the neon cloak hissed back at his companion.
“I’m just asking, Dream!”
Grian cleared his throat. “Uh, well, I don’t know of any pictures, but I can definitely assure you my name’s Grian. Although I’ve been called a few other things on occasion… I’ve never heard the name Xelqua before, though.”
The piglin hybrid glared at the starborn. “Scott, you said it would work this time.”
“I thought it would! And it almost did!”
“Sorry, uh, what were you guys trying to do, if I might ask?” Grian interjected.
Scott looked sheepish. “We were trying to summon this legendary figure my older brother told me about."
"Supposedly he's the face in the blackstone. Noxite said Xelqua can revert entire worlds to what they looked like in the early days and he was in the Corruption War a few centuries ago," Dream continued.
"And then he disappeared one day and no one's seen him since." Wilbur finished. "So we decided to give it a shot."
"Ah. That's fair enough," Grian nodded, thinking back to his younger days with Salted, Jumla, and the rest of his friends, and all the stunts they pulled. "I hope I didn't accidentally ruin the summoning by landing in the clearing, then."
"It's fine, it probably wasn't working anyways. We've been here most of the afternoon." Scott sighed, before asking, "So why are you here? I've never seen you around here before."
Grian chuckled nervously. "Yeah, um, I kind of managed to fall off a plane and ended up here… Speaking of which, you guys can take me to town, right?"
Dream’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Yeah! It’s this way!” The boy took off through the trees, his friends and Grian following after a moment.
~~~
Two weeks prior
"Noxite might know where we can find a geode." Scott offered.
"Scott, no offense but I kind of don't trust your brother not to somehow turn this kind of important thing into a terrifying game," Pearl told him.
The group of teenagers (and in the case of two of them, preteens) were sitting in and around a large oak one sunny afternoon, talking about very normal things. Namely, how to summon an ancient eldritch being.
“Noxite also told us about the guy though,” Techno pointed out from his perch near the top of the tree. “So if he doesn’t know where a geode is, then it’s highly unlikely that Xelqua exists.”
Wilbur, just a branch below Techno, agreed with his twin. “And we have proof. Blocks don’t lie.”
“Overworld blocks don’t lie, you mean,” Pearl corrected. She, along with Ranboo, were sitting at the base of the tree on some large boulders, where the two were braiding flower crowns.
Ranboo nodded in agreement with the brunette. “Yeah, Puffy was telling us at dinner how the Nether’s been changing. A lot of weird new things just started appearing out of nowhere. Even the netherrack changed.”
“Yeah, Puffy was really concerned about it. And I overheard some of the guards in town talking about how the old maps in that stronghold the miners found are matching with what the ‘new’ Nether looks like,” Dream, Ranboo’s older brother, added.
“But that just proves that if Xelqua existed back then, Noxite couldn’t make him up!” Fruit waved his arms around, nearly knocking Wilbur’s swinging legs and unbalancing the musician. “Noxite told Scott about Xelqua long before the Nether started changing. And there’s records of a Xelqua in the bastion remnants. He’s gotta be real!”
Tommy, who had been uncharacteristically quiet (then again, he’d spent the last five minutes muttering swears while trying to pull himself up to where Wilbur and Techno were), finally got settled, satisfied to be higher up then Dream. “I think Xelqua’s real, and anyone who disagrees is a right pussy,” he announced.
Wilbur nodded, hair flopping into his face. “Hear, hear. The child has spoken, Xelqua is real and we should try summoning him.”
“So you clearly don’t remember what happened the last time we tried to summon something.” Pearl said.
Dream waved her off. “That snow golem worked in the end, we just didn’t know we needed to carve the pumpkin first. We’ll do more research this time, and then Xelqua can come and be ultra cool and then the adults will stop stressing about the supply problems.”
“Seems like a kind of dumb thing to ask some all-powerful immortal for.” Techno grunted.
“C’mon, Techno, it’ll be fun! And even if it doesn’t work we’ll have something to do for a few weeks,” Fruit urged.
Techno huffed. “Fine, whatever. I’m in.”
“Same here,” Scott nodded. “Pearl? Ranboo?”
Pearl sighed. “....Fine, but if this goes badly, I’m blaming you guys.”
Ranboo nodded in agreement.
“Yo! Let’s do this!” Dream whooped and promptly fell out of the tree, Pearl and Ranboo diving to catch him and all three ending up in a tangle of limbs. “I’m good!”
“I’m not,” Ranboo, who was squashed under his brother, grumbled.
“Let’s just not break any bones while doing this,” Pearl sighed, before detangling herself. “So, you said you could get a geode for the ritual, Scott?”