Chapter Text
The last couple of weeks had been pretty damn weird, even by Hermitcraft’s usual standards.
And between the code walls freaking out and the Entity chattering away inside his brain, Grian’s thoughts had been something of a tangled mess.
Mumbo was back, which was great. Both he and Keralis had left for some time away to think and relax a bit- usually, they just went to their private worlds to fiddle with builds and designs. It wasn’t abnormal.
Getting stuck, on the other hand? That was pretty damn abnormal.
And before that…
The seed block thing. Grian was still turning that over and over in his head. He had so many questions, questions he was honestly a bit…nervous, to ask Keralis.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want more lessons. It was simply that he’d never Looked into the past so deeply, and he wasn’t in the mood to see any more horrors. At least, not immediately. He was still a human being, and his heart was…well.
Grian pondered on this as he flapped towards his destination. He munched on a cookie- one of the many he’d been forced to buy off Scar. The price for some Vex magic had been remarkably cheap- no blood, no suffering, no meat, no sorrow. Just money for cookies and business at his shop.
Scar missed Mumbo just as much as anyone else.
But with his main issue taken care of (that being a chronic Mumbo deficiency) Grian still had to take care of his burning curiosity.
Again, he could just ask Keralis about it. Artificial seed blocks were a more recent invention. So if they hadn’t existed from the word go, then…who had been making the natural ones to begin with? But Keralis probably wouldn’t tell him. He’d just roll it into a lesson. No sense in it; he could just Look back, right?
He alighted on the cobblestone tree farm with a few flaps, munching on another cookie and walking towards the low wooden hut.
TFC called it ugly. Grian called it simple.
…And also ugly.
He opened the door and stared down the ladder hole, sighing deeply. Great. More holes. More deeps. It was just so good for his claustrophobia.
Grian descended the ladder slowly, taking each rung as he went. The twin glowberry vines followed him down and down, deeper into the bowels of the earth.
He needed to talk to TFC.
He needed to know.
And to make matters worse…
find original one ask find find ask ask past must know must know He Comes He Comes He Comes stupid boy stupid stupid He Comes should left mind maker fool fool find original one
…This hadn’t been entirely his idea.
The Entity’s latest round of nattering demands came as a rather irritating reminder of what he was running away from. There wasn’t anything he could do- ever since his stupid rock had sprouted legs, it seemed like there was nowhere on the server he could escape its babbling.
So.
They’d made a deal.
He’d go talk to TFC. And it would shut up. Hopefully, forever.
Grian wasn’t so naïve to think that it would actually uphold its end of the bargain.
Maybe he really should talk to X about his stupid rock…
It did have a point, though. More than anything, he needed to know. How the hell had this whole crazy system got started? Who was using Natural seed blocks before? How…how did any of this work? And most of all, how come nobody but them seemed to have any idea of all of this hidden history?
He climbed lower and lower, thoughts swirling in his mind, until finally his boots hit the cold stone underfoot and he looked down the sprawling mess of tunnels.
A pick hammered at the stone, tak tak tak, and with a crunch a block broke under a will more iron than the tool itself.
Smoke from the endless rows of torches curled through the cold air of the mine. Water dripped from cracks in the ceiling, small soda straws forming in its wake. Torches flickered by the chests of the most reclusive man on their server.
Grian took a step forward, listening as his footfalls echoed off the stone.
Another block down one of the branches broke. Grian turned to look at the pile of chests, the furnace, the crafting table. The small chair, the small table with a dirty plate and a half-full cup of cold tea. He stepped past these few small furnishings, and walked deeper into the mine.
Because getting answers the way a Watcher would…. threatened to have him cross the timeline of the man he sought out. Because sometimes, his conscience did manage to squeak through. That wasn’t a funny prank, where all mores went out the window. That was…a violation. Of TFC’s privacy.
And considering the answers he wanted likely went back to the very beginning…
Yeah, there was no way.
He stepped up to the most recent branch in the mine, a shallow scrape dug into a smooth wall of rock. TFC’s mining techniques left remarkably few pickaxe marks on the rock wall- he was a true master of his craft.
“TFC?” Grian said carefully, leaning down the branch.
In the flickering torchlight, he caught the black shirt and long grey hair of the man himself. Hunched over, pick in his hands, slowly straightening and turning around.
Brown eyes blinked at Grian. Brown eyes that were all an illusion.
“Grian?” TFC said, quirking an eyebrow, “What brings you down here?”
Grian grinned weakly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He shuffled his wings, and did his best to compose himself.
“I, well. I had…I had some questions for you.” Grian said eventually, and TFC lowered his pick and let it hit the stone with a faint clink.
“Questions?” TFC said, “I think you’d be better off asking Keralis. He’ll tell you all you need to know.”
Grian shook his head.
“Not about…not about what I want to know. I- I learned about the seed blocks.” He said.
TFC froze.
“Right. Okay. And you learned about them. Good! So now you know why I’m so grateful to be here, where I’m safe and wanted. Good.” TFC said, turning back, “Thanks for letting me know, I guess.”
He raised his pick and smashed it into the rock, metal striking stone and singing at the impact.
Grian kicked a pebble and cleared his throat.
“Ah, well, I…I just…I had some more questions about that.” He said slowly, “I just wanted to know something…if most people use artificial seed blocks now, then…what happened before those were invented? I know they haven’t been around forever.” Grian asked gently.
TFC put his pick down and turned around. He was clutching it tightly, Grian noticed.
“Well, they used the natural kind, I think.” TFC replied, “then Jeb came up with a lovely little algorithm for cranking out infinite artificial seed blocks. And everyone who isn’t a hermit or on 2b2t’s been using them since.”
Grian stepped into the branch, then, discomfort in his stance as the walls closed in around him- he couldn’t spread his wings in the cramped space.
A dozen paces between them, elder and acolyte, staring into each other’s eyes.
“…But you’re not really asking about seed blocks, are you?” TFC said, “You’re asking about In The Beginning.”
“Yeah, I- I am.” Grian said.
“You want to know about all the things that happened before. All the reasons the world is the way it is.” TFC said, and Grian nodding frantically.
“Well, I can’t tell you because I wasn’t there for most of it.” TFC said flatly, turning back to his wall, and Grian’s face fell.
“Wha- really? No way. They call you the Original One for a reason, I mean-“
TFC sighed, and turned around slowly.
“You really want to know, don’t you? You really do? And what happens when you learn the truth? You can’t just forget it. Our kind don’t forget.”
Grian shook his head.
“I- I need to know.” He said, and the Entity’s blathering fell silent.
“Fine.” TFC said.
The miner tucked his pickaxe into his belt and stepped towards the edge of the branch. Grian got out of his way, guts suddenly filling with ice cold slush.
Was he making a mistake?
“Well?” TFC said, gesturing at him, “Get out of that. That’s not you. Or has Keralis taught you nothing?”
“Uh, what-?” Grian said, startled.
“We don’t talk about things that are this important in English. That’s your language. It’s not my language. I fought like hell for my mother tongue. So we’re doing this my way, okay?”
Grian took a deep breath, and nodded.
He closed his eyes, reaching within himself. Grabbing at the twine that bound down the edges of his soul, flinging the cover off like a tarpaulin. He opened his eyes in their tens of thousands, growing and spreading, sliding out of his own back and unfurling his thousands and thousands of wings.
Grian looked down as his body slumped to the floor, hovering in the air.
In front of a nonplussed TFC, who simply folded his arms and raised an eyebrow expectantly.
“Uh… The Sighted One sees the Original One for what he is,” Grian tried.
“The Stubborn Fool welcomes the Watcher to His Domain.” TFC said, uncrossing his arms and gesturing for Grian to follow him.
Grian glanced back- well, several dozen of his eyes floated away and began examining his body from all angles. TFC sighed and knelt down next to it.
“May I?”
“Please. If- if you could.”
TFC knelt down and scooped up Grian’s body, carrying it with no small amount of care towards his little table and chair. He carefully placed it on the ground, and then turned and broke the ladder going up, blocking up the entrance to his mineshaft.
Leaving himself and Grian alone in the flickering torchlight.
Slowly, so very slowly, TFC turned back. And to Grian’s eyes, his glamour began to flicker.
TFC sat down heavily in his chair and fished in his pockets, pulling out a pipe.
“That’s really bad for you,” Grian blurted out, dozens of overlapping Past Grians joining in his chain of admonishment.
TFC barked out a surprisingly loud laugh, cackling a bit and shaking his head. He packed his pipe with some fragrant plant, then looked up into Grian’s eyes.
“Sighted Child, I’m older than the Ender Dragon. The creator of all things couldn’t kill me. What makes you think a common weed will?”
Grian huffed.
“It’s still not good for you.”
“Tell you what. If this ends up being what kills me, you come back with your eyes and stare me in the face, right now. How about that?” TFC said with a teasing edge to his tone, and Grian huffed.
Nevertheless, they both sat there for a few seconds, waiting patiently.
Nothing happened.
TFC put his pipe to his lips and lit it with a stroke of his flint and steel. He sucked some smoke back, and breathed it out, letting it curl up to get caught among the crevices in the stone.
“See? There you go. I was right, it won’t kill me. Now…I believe you wanted a story?”
“That I did, Original One.” Grian asked humbly.
“Well, let’s see. How do I start off a story? Well, might as well keep it classical.”
“In The Beginning…there was a grassy field.”