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Everything hurts.
No – that’s not quite accurate. Hurts implies a physical body to feel pain with, and unfortunately you’re sorely lacking one of those right now. Can you call it phantom pain if the “phantom” part is your entire body? You can certainly try.
But you would rather have a physical body than a phantom one, right now, so:
Step one: Picture a hand. Picture your hand, whatever you think it looks like.
You think it’d look… you had armor on, didn’t you? Scale-mail steel burnished like Netherite for that extra bit of intimidation. Yeah. Okay, okay, so, gauntlets over your hands. Picture that. Hands like… what did your hands even look like again? You can’t remember the last time you weren’t wearing your armor, you can’t remember anything–
1A. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about that until you have hands. Picture your hands.
Right. Okay. Hands covered in gauntlets, you think, slim fingers equally suited to playing piano or holding a sword. For delicate detailwork and chopping off heads. The gloves you wear are grey, too, a darker grey than the metal of your armor. The gauntlets have scales, banded together with leather, fine detailing that ends with each fingertip a pointed claw, not enough to impede movement but enough to draw blood if you attack while unarmed. A point of pride, you think. Sharp and keen, like you, and:
You have hands now. Oh, you have hands now, and they hurt, but they hurt like something that exists. And they may be made of recalled memory, may not be as solid as they could be, but you have them, you have a part of you.
Step two: Dig.
The area around you is solid. The Nether reset floats to mind. So the blocks around you are netherrack, and you, you need to dig before you start thinking about
2A. Don’t think about breathing. Don’t think about your body. Think about your hands, and dig, because your life depends on it.
You do. You dig like your life depends on it. Nobody else is going to come save you if you don’t save yourself first. Always been a loner. Always
2B. Don’t think about that either, damnit, just dig.
Right, yes, of course. How long does netherrack take to break, anyway? Not long, but longer than you thought, and finally you’re in a 2x2 air pocket, you think you are at least, because all you know of yourself right now is your hands.
Step three: Sit down.
You do that. Sit cross-legged and, oh, clever thinking, you have legs now. That’s nice. Same scale-mail armor, lightweight and durable, surprisingly silent as you move from frozen in superposition to sitting cross-legged on the ground. The air is oddly cool and ashy, and something else about it feels… odd? No, the netherrack isn’t netherrack anymore, it’s grey and directional
3A. Identify your location. If it is […] a basalt delta, proceed to 3A-3.
You lean your head back against the basalt and breathe ash.
3A-3. Decide on what parts of yourself you are keeping for this new environment. Decide how you feel about pillars of basalt and rough terrain. Decide you do not want to be in a hole.
You have decided that you do not want to be in a hole. It’s nothing against the basalt, which is almost smooth and worn but not quite aged or polished just yet, and it’s nothing against the weird energy prickling in the air that you can feel at the back of your mind like little white spots on ill-developed film, but you do not want to stay here.
3B. Think about the rest of your body if you haven’t yet.
You did forget to remember the rest of your body, you realize with a stab of embarrassment. That’s almost funny.
3C. Remember that you’re remaking yourself from scratch, here, and you are whatever you want, so what are you again, exactly…?
You think about that. You think that you’re tall, only as tall as your doppelganger, and you look hauntingly similar to him, but with slightly darker hair and red eyes. You think about the way your armor is forged to allow you to move with surprising grace and silence when you need to
3D. Except that’s not the only thing you think about.
You think, you don’t just want to be the weird clone of Welsknight, and you don’t just want to be the champion of Hels, and actually, come to think of it, screw that place anyway, what has it ever done for you after all you’ve done for it? You think about this. You let it pass.
You think, I want to be a creeping kind of disaster. Little white dots on camera film and background noise from environmental feedback. The kind of thing that I can contain, but nobody else can. I want to be able to gnaw at the roots of the world until it snaps in half.
You think that’s maybe a bit grandiose, but you feel this sudden bitterness welling up within you, because everyone left you to die. Including the person who’s supposed to be the “good” and “just” you. You think that’s a real shame. You think maybe you want to be sort of a sense that something is wrong, and you don’t care if that means you end up a little more cautious than usual, because you have always been a very intelligent person.
Step four: Take stock of the situation.
You are Helsknight, and you are in a Nether that was reset around you by the Hermits, and if your goal wasn’t to tear down Hermitcraft before, oh, well it is now, and you figure you’re going to have to be a lot more cautious than usual, because you don’t want this kind of thing happening to you again.
You look down at your hands. They don’t look quite right. Nothing of you looks quite right, sort of like an old videotape with a little bit of scratching and screen tear, a little bit of visual static. You think that’s probably fine. You think you’ve always really liked older camera equipment, anyway, had a real knack for this sort of thing.
Step five: You are not a vengeful ghost, though. You are still very much alive, and you are going to make it everyone else’s problem.
Well. You have a bit of travel and a very interesting season ahead of you, if you’re going to catch up to Wels like this. You’ll need to keep your head low, sow a couple seeds, and wait to see which way the wind blows and if there’s any possible allies you can pick out of the crowd.
5A. Enjoy that feeling. Nobody else will do it for you. Nobody else will take it from you.
Yeah, you think. Yeah, you’re going to enjoy it all right. This next season will be your best one yet.