Chapter Text
It was a little bit strange when Zed invited them over for dinner out of the blue, but hey; after the runaway success of his build height bucket clutch a few weeks earlier, it was understandable that he’d want to celebrate. Properly celebrate, too, not just laugh about it. New season, new Zed, and with everyone living so close together, well.
Tango would be lying if he said he wasn’t happy about knocking shoulders with so many hermits so frequently.
He punched Impulse on the shoulder as they scaled the hill, down into Zedaph’s new base. A pit in the bottom, something he’d dug out with wooden tools and nothing else. Godly wooden tools, but hey. Still wood.
Tango chuckled at the thought of it, shaking his head as he descended the ladder into the pit. Zed’s base was looking very flash with its beautiful quartz walls, bushes and pillars- a far cry from the sterile white aesthetic of his last base, the lab that had saved them all.
Tango’s heart swelled just thinking about it. He was still so proud of Zed. Word of the man’s potion had spread far and wide, with Zed Potions for sale in the Hub and available in the inventory to creative players. The Devs themselves had made some announcements about the issues with the void, and had some sort of a fix in mind- something to do with the Warden? It wasn’t fully ready yet, and until then, they had Zedaph’s cure as a stopgap.
His friend had saved not just the hermit’s lives, but thousands more outside of hermitcraft.
Tango stepped off the ladder, his footfalls echoing across the deepslate. This hole was certainly beautiful, and it would make for a fine megabase. Pecked into the walls at the four corners were alcoves, letting him peer into the living spaces and storage systems Zedaph had set up- including one with a pair of rough spruce doors set over it, along with a sign. Tango grinned and strolled over to that one.
A rocket cracked overhead, and he craned his neck up to see Impulse spiraling down on his demon wing elytra, flaring them and coming in for a landing right beside him.
“Been awhile since we just sat down for dinner together,” Impulse mused, as though he hadn’t just come careening in from overhead.
Tango chuckled.
“Hello to you too, Impy. And yeah. Been a bit.” He shrugged, and gestured towards the door.
Behind them, the sun was starting to sink into the horizon, and Impulse chuckled.
“Man, I haven’t seen Zed out after dark in ages! You think he’s been talking to Bdubs?” Impulse chuckled, and Tango shrugged.
“Maybe he’s finally got some semblance of a sleeping schedule? I don’t know, man. I try not to throw rocks from my nice glass house, so-“
Impulse rolled his eyes.
“How is it that the only one of us that isn’t even fully alive is also the only one that knows what it means to sleep consistently?”
“Hey, you were pulling that mooners crap last season, don’t even come at me with that! You’re as bad as the rest of us, Impy!” Tango protested, “Besides, Zed’s been spending half his time in the Nether getting the auto-tainter set up, so there’s your answer.”
Impulse nodded. The soft smile of pride on his face matched Tango’s own thoughts on the matter- Zed’s achievement had really gone the distance, and they all owed him big time.
The auto-tainter was a complicated redstone contraption, set up around a blaze spawner in a chunk that had been carefully overloaded with double-chests full of books full of nonsense characters in other languages. One of them had to stand there with an inventory full of leads clipping them to blazes, and the machine did the rest- dropping them into the void, overloading the chunk so they didn’t die, and squeezing the juice out of them when they bounced back up.
Zed and Doc had been working on it flat-out. Every hermit had donated something, be it slime or leads or time or books. No wonder Zed wanted a break.
Tango rapped on the wooden door with a smile, just as the sun fully slipped past the rim of Zedaph’s artificial crater.
“Come in!” Zed called from inside, “Come in, come in, I’m just setting the table…”
Tango pushed the door open and stepped inside the small space. Zed had clearly spent at least three minutes putting together a table and some chairs, which was three minutes more than he usually spent. Which was a little weird, but hey, Tango wasn’t gonna question it.
“So what’s for dinner, big guy?” He asked easily, grabbing one of the three chairs and sliding into it. He’d already taken off his armour, and there was a rustling as Impulse unequipped his wings and slipped them into his inventory.
Zedaph grinned, gesturing at the smoker in the corner that was crackling away.
“Steak and jacket potatoes, with a nice sweet berry wine to finish!” he said brightly, and Tango quirked an eyebrow.
“Sweet berry wine? Etho’s got his casks set up already?” Impulse looked incredulous. It had barely been a few weeks- hell, Keralis didn’t even have his brew vat set up for beer yet, much to everyone’s dismay.
“No, no. I made it!” Zedaph said, “I did a little bit of potion wizardry. Might be a little more bitter than you’re used to, sorry. It’s hard to speed-brew things like that…”
Impulse shrugged.
“Well, I haven’t had a drink since we dodged the moon, so I’m down to try it!” He sat back in his chair, taking a closer look at Zedaph. And specifically, at his face.
Something wasn’t…entirely right with his friend. He looked a bit…off. Gaunt and pale, or…something. His smile a tinge too wide…
But then Impulse saw the bags under Zedaph’s eyes and it all became clear.
“Long hours in the nether? Man, you need to rest a bit more.” Impulse said, concern on his words, “Don’t push yourself, Zed…”
“Yeah, if you need to tap out at any point, just ask one of us. I’d love to get a crack at the auto-tainter…” Tango added, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.
Zedaph waved them off with a grin.
“Nah, it’s fine. The auto-tainter’s done anyway, just needs some maintenance and reloading bottles occasionally. I’ll get some rest after dinner, I promise.”
With that, Zedaph ambled over to the smoker and started pulling out their meal, humming to himself. Tango and Impulse shared a look of concern, but with Zedaph so close, they couldn’t exactly talk it out.
Three plates slid across the table with a scrape of ceramic across rough wood, rattling the forks and knives that had already been set out, and Zedaph took to his creaky chair with a grin. The meal was simple- a steak, a baked potato, and a carrot. Never let it be said that Zedaph was anything but an average cook.
Tango shrugged and tucked into his meal right away. It smelled delicious, and he was absolutely starving. The steak was cooked to perfection- red and bloody in the middle, and with a pat of butter on the potato, it was just what he needed.
Impulse glanced at Zedaph and then back down to his plate, and with a sigh, tucked in a second later. A sigh that rapidly turned into a moan of delight- he loved steak. One of his favourite foods, actually.
Zedaph cut up his own steak with a smile, chewing his piece and sitting back in his chair with a grin.
“For a guy who can only cook three things, you sure do those three things well.” Tango said with a teasing edge to his tone.
Impulse quirked a brow. “Why, what’s the third thing Zed can cook?”
“Beer!” Tango and Zedaph chorused, before both falling into peals of laughter. As the giggles subsided, Zed bolted out of his chair and scrambled for a chest.
“Oh! Oh, right, I almost forgot! The drinks!” he grabbed three glasses from the chest, as well as an opaque green bottle that clearly held some sort of liquid, “Again, sorry if it’s a bit bitter, it took a lot of finagling to fast-brew wine on a brewing stand. Once Etho gets his casks going, we won’t have to do this, but I think it’s a good enough stopgap for the start of the season!”
He set the glasses down with a clank, one in front of each of them, and carefully uncorked the wine. Slopped a hearty helping into each glass, and placed the bottle in the centre of the table.
Zedaph sat down heavily, grabbing his own glass and taking a sip.
“Well? Try it!” he said eagerly, a bright and excited look on his face. Like a puppy who’d just successfully retrieved a stick for the first time.
Impulse took a sip and had to clamp down on a strong urge to shudder. The wine tasted…burnt. There was a faint taste of gasoline lurking inside it, and he swallowed his sip with a forced and crooked smile. Because Zedaph looked so eager, slugging back another gulp of his awful, awful wine, and Impulse cringed internally and took another swig. Across the table from him, Tango was twitching a little, a frozen, forced smile on his face.
Because they both knew that Zed was probably sleep-deprived because he’d been working on this exact thing. He’d stayed up all night and all day, working and testing and tinkering, trying to just make his friends a bottle of wine early in the season. It was a very Zed thing to do, and telling him that it tasted like coffee grounds soaked in diesel would just…well…
Impulse slugged back another large gulp, deciding that getting the pain over with as quickly as possible was probably for the best. Beside him, Tango had a similar idea, and a few swigs later, the glasses were empty and resting on the table.
Zedaph’s grin ticked up another notch. Past the point where it would be reasonable. That had something in Impulse’s guts pinching uncomfortably. Something wasn’t right.
“Can I get you another glass?” Zed asked brightly, “Do you like it?”
“Oh, no, I- couldn’t possibly.” Tango said with a forced smile, “No, I have to, uh, walk home, and then use a boat-“
“I’m flying!” Impulse said, “Can’t, shouldn’t drink and fly! You know how it goes.”
Zedaph nodded, and swirled the mixture in his glass, glancing over at the door. He held it to his own lips and chugged it back, the wine sliding down his throat, glug, glug, glug.
When he lowered his head again, licking his lips, something was deeply wrong.
He was staring at them. Barely blinking, eyes flicking between them.
“I want you to know,” Zedaph said, “I fought it as long as I could. Stupid of me, right? But you know. You strap someone into a Chinese water-torture machine for long enough and they WILL crack. Every day, another drip, drip, drip on my forehead, the whispers, they grew, and I couldn’t-“
Tango locked up. Terror bloomed in his breast, an-ice cold spike of panic- human panic, from his human half. His blaze blood started to burn, spiking his temperature, and he swallowed.
“Zed,” He said quietly, “What the hell are you going on about?”
“Oh, it’s not- I mean, it’s not important,” Zedaph said, pouring himself another glass of wine and holding it to his lips, “I just, I mean, I wanted you to know. That I did- I mean, it’s stupid now. It’ll be nice to have some company, I suppose. Shame we can’t go for a dive together, but, you know-“
Tango’s heart dropped.
He stood up so fast he knocked his chair over, storming to the spruce doors. Ripped them open with a thunderous bang and craned his neck up to see the moon. It had risen just over the rim of the crater, shining through the door, shining into the room.
He turned around slowly.
The moonlight washed over Zedaph’s face.
His left eye was black. The whites, the sclerae, were fully subsumed by the inky stain of the abyss. His iris glowed out of the darkness, a thin rim of purple clutching onto a pitch-black pupil. Spikes of the Void’s taint sunk into the ring of colour, giving it a jagged appearance. His other eye was shadowed, a greyish staining to the healthy white sclerae- not fully gone, but well on the way. Pulsing out from the left, a spiderweb of tainted veins, snaking through his flesh. Glowing green with every single heartbeat, driving the poison farther into his body with every second-
“It didn’t work,” Tango croaked, hands starting to shake as his red eyes went wide as saucers, “you needed the full potion. The half dose didn’t work.”
Zedaph held the wine glass to his lips, took a sip, and pulled away with a satisfied ah.
The glass hit the table with a clink.
Zedaph looked up, and the grin spread across his face was so wide it looked painful.
“Oh, Tango…” he asked sweetly, “Do you hear that?”
Impulse was breathing shallowly, cradling his head, staring at his hands. In the moonlight, he could see, he could see the black veins, starting to crawl faintly to the surface-
“No,” Impulse whispered, “NO- NO NO NO NO NO- NOT AGAIN!”
Tango leaped out of the door, slamming it closed behind him. He pulled out his comm, opening the general chat and starting to hammer out a message. Frantic, harried, he needed, he needed-
The door slammed open behind him, and a second later he was being slammed into the stone, pinned by Zedaph. His face scraped against the deepslate, and he struggled, desperately trying to get free-
Inside the dining room, Impulse’s screaming petered out, softly dwindling into-
Zedaph chuckled.
“Come on, Tango. Stop fighting it. Give in.” He purred, hands grabbing Tango’s wrists, lying on top of him. A steel-strong grip that Tango was frantically- trying- to fight-
He just needed to- click- send-
Tango’s eyes went wide, and he went very, very still.
Because faintly, in the distance, he heard…
Singing.