Chapter Text
Iskall hated diorite.
That fact was up there with the great basics. Objects on Earth accelerated downwards at 9.81 m/s2. Hydrogen fused in the heart of a sun into helium, and on to neon, and down the chain to iron. Water was made of two hydrogen molecules bonded to one oxygen molecule, it was highly polar, and was less dense as a solid than a liquid.
Facts of reality, up there with “Iskall hated diorite.”
So it was…an unusual sight for Bdubs, to see Iskall peering so intently at his diorite tower. His monolith, his pride and joy. It had been a building challenge, really, to see if he…even could. Diorite was admittedly a very ugly block, but at the same time, any block could be beautiful with enough love poured into it. At least, that’s what he told himself.
But Iskall was…a special case. A very special case.
As was diorite, come to think of it.
Bdubs sidled up to them, glancing over at their right wrist. There, dangling loosely, was a golden bracelet with lapis inset into it. Bdubs spared a quick glance at his comm, nodding at what he saw- He-him today, then.
Bdubs walked a bit closer, putting on his best happy smile.
“So, uh, Iskall!” he said brightly, “How’s it going? I know it’s diorite, man. You don’t gotta- I mean, I spent a long time on it, so like, if you want some to burn, I can give you my leftovers-“
“Burn?” Iskall said, turning to look at Bdubs in surprise.
Bdubs’ blood turned to ice in his veins, and the smile on his face froze slightly.
There was. Something ever so slightly off about Iskall. He was smiling, sure. Big ole smile. Perfectly normal. Didn’t meet his eyes, though, and moreover, that one eye was-
Wide.
Really, unnaturally wide.
Bdubs blinked three times before he caught Iskall doing the same. Just one wide green eye, past the point of normalcy, staring into his soul.
“Ah. Uh. Well.” Bdubs said uncomfortably, examining Iskall’s face, “Burn. Right. Yeah! You can uh, burn. Burn my leftovers! My leftover diorite, that is. I’ve got some in my, uh, my chest.” He said awkwardly, scrambling for his lost train of thought.
Iskall slowly, oh so slowly, blinked his one organic eye. Literally, Bdubs watched it go down, over the course of an entire second. The longest single second of Bdubs’ life.
“Oh, I don’t want to burn it. I’ll take it if you’ve got any spare, though!” Iskall said brightly, and Bdubs’ heart skipped about fifteen beats.
“Uh,” he said intelligently, and Iskall nodded.
“Oh, okay. I bet you still need it, right? That’s fine. I’ll go get some more.”
Bdubs blinked, and swallowed down his unease. This was. This was. Well.
“Uh. Are you okay?” Bdubs said slowly, taking a step back, “Do you. Like if you need to talk, man, I’m here. I’m. We’re here for you. We can get you some help.”
Iskall stared at him blankly.
“Help?” he said, genuinely confused, “I’m perfectly fine!”
Bdubs nodded slowly.
“Sure thing, buddy. Don’t worry about it. We care about you, okay?”
And with that, Bdubs turned tail and sprinted in the opposite direction.
Iskall shrugged and opened his comm.
<Iskall85> Anyone got any diorite for sale?
<ImpulseSV> O_O
<Tango> Uh, you…you feeling alright there, dude?
<Docm77> Another diorite burning party probably. Am I invited this time? I’ll bring the TNT.
<MumboJumbo> Iskall we talked about this. It’s not healthy.
<Grian> You know what? I don’t care. Ten stacks for your weird vendetta!
<Grian> one diamond a stack and I’ll even throw in a free flint and steel <3
<GoodtimeswithScar> ten stacks, five diamonds for the lot, plus five free buckets of lava. Special offer, just for you!
<Iskall85> done.
<Grian> SCAR!
<GoodtimeswithScar> Business is business, my friend!
Of all the things Scar was expecting to sense during a simple transaction, a soul-deep taint in his friend was not one of them.
He could see his sucker client as a distant blurry spot against the blue sky, rocketing closer with every second. Scar glanced down at his comm, flicking over to the “status and pronouns” screen next to everyone’s names. He nodded at Iskall’s updated entry- he/him, then.
Iskall was spiralling down on his elytra, and Scar smiled, leaning back in his wheelchair. “Wheel” was a bit of a stretch- to go with his magical elf theme that season, he’d decided to freshen things up with a new mobility aid. The wooden chair had taken some fiddling to get the enchantments to sit right, but it could walk on its four carved wooden feet. Honestly, it was pretty great- able to handle uneven terrain without too much trouble.
Iskall landed with a thump and a skittering of boots on dirt, and Scar smiled, reaching into his inventory and pulling out a stack of diorite and a lava bucket. He could feel the heat of the volatile liquid through the metal- the only thing preventing third-degree burns being the magic of the server itself.
And then he glanced up and got a look at Iskall’s face and his blood turned to slush in his veins.
Scar could…feel…something deeply wrong, radiating out of Iskall’s…being. Something…magical? It was hard to describe, but the taste that filled his mouth was cold and slimy and the smell in his nose was cloying, like a muddy river in a downpour. He blinked a few times, and he could just. He could feel it. He could feel the taint. He could see it, in the slight crazed shine in Iskall’s one eye.
Scar’s stomach dropped as he put two and two together and came out with eighty-five.
Ah. Okay. So. Then. That.
Hm. Yes.
“Uh,” Scar said, swallowing, “So, uh, I think…it’s…um. You’re gonna. Burn this, right? The, uh, the lava’s free!” he said, trying to force a smile as best as he could.
His eyes flicked over to Iskall’s prosthetic eye. Never before had Scar been more jealous of that prosthetic- if he had one, he could already have drafted a private message to Joe and already be working through the problem.
Unfortunately, Vex magic didn’t get along too well with electronics, and it meant that integrated prosthesis of the type Iskall and Doc used were somewhat out of the question. So he swallowed, and started mentally noting down every single thing he could about the situation, sampling at the magic in the air as his mind raced.
There were a number of possibilities, and only a handful of likely ones.
And then Iskall had to go and open his mouth, and Scar’s train of thought derailed itself into a wall.
“Burn it?” Iskall echoed, “No, I’m going to build something with it! Got some inspiration. Bdubs made it look so beautiful. And I’ve been thinking, you know? Maybe it’s time to try something different. Make a fresh start? I think I can do something cool with it.”
And Scar’s entire worldview tilted about forty-five degrees to the left. He gripped the arm of his leg-chair, which took a step back in response.
“Oh. Oh. Kay.” Scar said, forcing a smile on his face. Because. Because there weren’t a lot of things that could force someone to cross their own morality. But there were a few things. And Scar…
Scar’s stomach dropped as he took in Iskall’s unnaturally wide eye, and swallowed down his fear.
Because it wasn’t fair to Keralis to just jump to conclusions like that. He needed more information.
Scar swallowed, handing over the stacks of diorite. Iskall grinned, stuffing each one into his inventory, and withdrew a fistful of diamonds.
“Pleasure doing business with you!” he said brightly, and Scar just nodded. Yeah, pleasure alright.
“Uh, the. Lava buckets. Did you still want-“ Scar said, desperate for Iskall to just yell ‘SIKE’ and start laughing in his face.
That didn’t happen.
Iskall just shook his head.
“Nah, keep it! Make a moss farm or something. Oooh, that gives me an idea for what I should build a bit later…not a moss farm. Something else. Anyway, thanks Scar!” he said, and with that, he blasted off into the sky without another word.
Scar was left sitting there on his trembling legchair, staring at the sky as if it had personally slighted his mother.
He sighed.
“Great. Guess it’s an exoskeleton day today. Drat.” He smacked the arm of his legchair and sent a spark of magic through it, making it turn and start walking towards his front door. As it ambled, he opened his comm.
<You have opened a private message with joehillssays.>
<GoodtimeswithScar> Joe
<GoodtimeswithScar> Iskall’s possessed or influenced or under some kind of mind control
<GoodtimeswithScar> And I think it might be Keralis
<joehillssays> Great. Are we 100% sure that this is happening? Why do you think that?
<GoodtimeswithScar> There’s some kind of magical aura around him that tastes like mud, instead of ozone like normal-people magic. Also he bought some diorite off me and intends to build with it. That means whatever’s in his head is powerful enough to. You know.
<joehillssays> Great. Okay, so that’s…troubling…but it could be any number of things. We need more information. Are you willing to do some data gathering?
<GoodtimeswithScar> you mean you want to spy on Iskall. Sure, I’m in. Give me a bit. Are you gonna tell X or should I?
<joehillssays> Xisuma has been really busy lately trying to fix the issues with the server’s code walls. Some kind of new bug, he says. In light of that, I’d rather wait until we have more information. If it is that serious, we’ll be armed with evidence and better prepared to confront him.
<GoodtimeswithScar> makes sense to me, I guess. See you in an hour?
<joehillssays> done.
Stakeout. Scar knew all about stakeouts. He didn’t do them very much, obviously, because there wasn’t much need, but there had been a time-
Well, that wasn’t really relevant.
They were lying in the moss in a secluded place, by the entrance to Iskall’s cave. Bit nerve-wracking to be inside the cave itself, but the entrance was close- they could fly out if they needed to.
The man himself had flown in sometime earlier, and Scar had found them the perfect vantage point to peer down into the cave and spy on their friend.
Out of concern for his health, obviously.
As the grass prodded at his clothes and bent against the weight of his exoskeleton, though, Scar found himself praying he was wrong.
He turned his spyglass to peer in a little closer, watching as Iskall fiddled around on the ground floor of his cave. There wasn’t anything too exciting going on- mostly just the man of the hour messing around with block pallets and pacing back and forth. They’d arrived just a little too late to catch Iskall’s building of the horrid diorite idol in the corner of the cave- and that was already unsettling enough. It stared out of the wall with two huge eyes, a mouth agape and glowing with lava.
“What’s he doing?” Joe hissed, and Scar growled a little.
“Shh. He could hear us.” He said. Every sound echoed off the walls of the cave, meaning that Iskall’s mutterings were floating up to them with slightly-warped clarity.
Scar put his spyglass up to his eye and twisted it.
Iskall slammed a chest closed, the sound echoing off the rock walls, and he started walking towards his little diorite idol- “Dioboi”, she was called.
“I’m glad I gave you a function!” he said, talking to the build itself. That wasn’t anything unusual- hermits talking to their builds was as normal as the sun rising in the east. If a day went by where a redstoner wasn’t screaming a litany of mother-based insults at their latest spaghetti mess, something was dreadfully wrong somewhere.
So that wasn’t concerning. What was concerning was the stiff, almost unnatural way Iskall was walking, heading towards Dioboi with armfuls of diorite.
“See, your purpose is very simple. You, Dioboi, will be here to burn up all of my dio…dio….rite….” Iskall struggled to say, the words coming out…strangely strangled. Echoing off the roof of his omega cave, it left Scar staring at Joe in terror.
“Resistance. Good sign.” Joe muttered to himself, and Scar winced as the faintest echo of Joe’s voice bounced off the roof of the cave. He put a finger to his lips, and Joe huffed.
“…No. No, I mean…dia…monds. Diamonds. You’re for…burning diamonds. Yes!” Iskall said, clearly struggling with the words. He staggered over to his ender chest and grabbed a handful of shiny blue rocks from the depths of it, stumbling and tripping over his feet on his way to the diorite idol.
Scar bit his lip, and zoomed in his spyglass. He could only see Iskall’s back from where they sat, but the hissing sound the diamonds made as they hit the lava rang though the cave like a grim bell.
Joe shook his head.
Scar nodded in response to the silent statement. He shifted a little on his moss perch, watching as Iskall locked up, staring into the depths of Dioboi’s mouth.
“That. Uh. Should I have…?” Iskall’s tone was struggling, skipping and straining over the words. Like he was completely unsure of what was coming out of his mouth, lost in his own confusion.
Scar nodded grimly. That…yeah, that ticked another box.
“Oh…oh well.” Iskall said, turning around with a rather pained grin on his face, “At least. I mean, at least. At least Dioboi’s happy. I…I should…probably do something else. Yes.”
And with that, he stumbled over towards his slime farm. Scar raised an eyebrow. What was he doing now?
Iskall stared at the wall for a few minutes, making a few Hmmm’s and hrmmmm’s as he pondered what his next steps were. Then, he ambled over to his chestmonster and started kicking chests open.
“Logs. I’m going to need…a lot of logs. And logs means… Oh. I…have no logs. I’m going to have to go…log shopping, I guess.”
Instantly Scar and Joe shared a look of pure terror. Log shopping meant leaving his cave, and leaving his cave meant flying right past them.
Both of them scrambled to their feet as quietly as they could, Scar internally wincing as the servos in his exoskeleton hummed and whined. The sound was deafening to his adrenaline-shocked ears, and then-
He stared down at the rockets in his hands in despair, and Joe shook his head and grabbed Scar by the hand, dragging him frantically on foot towards the runway at the entrance.
It took some scrambling over rocks, in which Joe knocked a pebble loose, but before long both of them were sprinting down the cobblestone path. Joe leaped off and spread his elytra, and Scar followed a second later, gliding and gliding-
He fired a rocket and soared as fast as he could.
“Well,” Scar said to himself as Joe banked towards the shopping district, “that went well.”
“I like those trees.” Scar said, peering through his spyglass.
Joe rolled his eyes, leaning back against the tree he’d selected by the banks of the river.
“You and your trees. I thought you were the one that wanted no talking ‘till we got the job done?” Joe quipped idly.
Scar snorted.
“Look, just because we got a job to do doesn’t mean I can’t take some quality time to appreciate a nice build! And besides, Iskall’s not here yet. Also, we’re not in that cave anymore. Chat away, my friend.” He gestured grandly at the river, and at Giga Logs across from them, as if to accentuate his point.
“Right, well. Let’s talk about that, then.” Joe said, removing something from his inventory.
“Sure, let’s. So. You think I’m right?” Scar said, and Joe tilted his head back and forth a few times.
“It’s not that I think you’re right. It’s that I’m struggling to work out why Keralis would want to do something like this. He’s never done it to a hermit before, to my knowledge. So why’s he gone and influenced Iskall of all people? And influenced him into liking diorite? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Scar nodded.
“Well, as a man of the science of magic, I must say that the evidence does point us in that direction.”
“Yeah, whatever is left, however improbable. I get it. I’m just…I don’t know, Scar. It’s a hard one to understand. My big worry is that Keralis has some ulterior motive we don’t know about. Where is he, anyway?”
“Last I heard, off grinding logs with Ren.” Scar said with a shrug.
Joe sighed. “Still. It doesn’t… make sense.”
Just then, a rocket cracked overhead, and both men watched as Iskall soared in for a landing at Giga Logs.
Scar held up his spyglass, zooming it in on Iskall and perking his ears up.
“Grian…Grian’s shop. Pricey, too pricey. Don’t have any diamond ore…” Iskall muttered, and Joe and Scar shared a look.
“So, unwavering loyalty? Still think I’m wrong?” Scar hissed, and Joe shrugged.
“We’ll see.”
Then, Joe lifted something up to his eyes, and Scar completely forgot all about Iskall and the mission.
“What the hell is that.” Scar said flatly.
“It’s a byglass. See? You tape two spyglasses together and then it becomes a byglass.” Joe said, holding up his byglass for Scar to see.
“You mean binoculars. You’ve made a pair of binoculars.” Scar said, blinking a few times in confusion.
“No, I mean a byglass. I know what I said.” Joe put his byglass to his eyes, peering through them at the distant shape of Iskall.
Iskall, who was frantically digging through a chest containing dark oak logs.
Dark oak logs, the most expensive thing the store had to offer.
“Okay, so we’re…I mean, he’s dumping all his money into the most expensive chest. Can we…like does that count as sacrificial behaviour, or is that unflinching loyalty?” Joe asked, “I’ve read the book, I’m just not sure…”
“If this isn’t a sacrifice, then that diamond-burning business in the cave definitely was.” Scar said firmly.
“Then I’m saying we take this to Xisuma. This is. This has me worried.” Joe replied.
“Well, on the bright side, at least it’s not, like, blood offerings.” Scar said, trying to put a cheery spin on it.
Joe nodded.
“Yeah. Like xB isn’t-“
And then he stopped.
He lowered his byglass, staring myopically into the blurry distance. Without his glasses he could barely see three feet away, but that didn’t matter, because Joe was seeing something far, far closer to home.
“We didn’t follow up on that.” Joe said flatly.
Scar’s eyes went wide.
“Oh my god. We didn’t. The moon- I-“
“Yeah. The moon. And then we lost track of time, and then-“
“-xB’s- offering blood. To a Primordial. And we forgot to mention it to Xisuma?!” Scar repeated, the metaphorical penny hitting the ground with a thunderous clang.
“Why. Why did we forget that. Oh my god.” Joe sat back, cradling his head in his hands.
“I think. I think we’re just idiots.” Scar said, leaning against the tree he was using. “Oh God. I need to sit down.”
“Yeah. I. Yeah.” Joe nodded, and the two of them spent a few seconds in silent contemplation.
“Oh, cripes- Iskall. I forgot about-“ Joe facepalmed, “Okay, one thing at a time. We gotta keep one eye on Iskall. Assuming what I think is happening is happening, you’ll go confront Keralis and I’ll go talk to X.”
“ME?!” Scar yelled, loud enough to have both of them flinch. He clapped his hands over his mouth, and they both sat there in silence, waiting to hear if Iskall had noticed them.
A few tense seconds ticked by. Joe risked a peek through his Byglass-
-to see Iskall, completely oblivious, packing the dark oak logs back into the chest. Joe’s heart hammered- was that- was that common sense? An emergence of-?
“No, no, that’s too…that’s too pricey…” Iskall muttered, and Joe breathed out a massive sigh of relief. Maybe it would all be okay. Maybe?
Both men watched as Iskall walked over to the spruce chest and started to grab logs from that instead, packing the much more reasonably priced logs into one of his shulkers. Scar let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, and they turned to look at each other.
“Okay. So, it’s not…the influence isn’t as strong as we thought. That’s…good.” Joe said, running a hand through his hair.
“Yeah. Or it’s waning, or he’s fighting it off. So many possibilities!” Scar said, a slightly stressed edge to his tone.
“Whatever the case, I still want to talk to X about this. And you need to go talk to Keralis.”
“Yeah. Sure. Great.” Scar said, biting his thumbnail.
Joe put his byglass back up to his eyes and frowned.
“Where’d Iskall go?”
Scar sighed and lifted his own spyglass, scanning over the area.
“I can’t see him.” Scar mumbled, slowly panning over Giga Logs-
Boots crunched onto the dead leaves behind them and stomped closer, and both men locked up.
Scar slowly rolled over-
“Hallo!” Iskall said brightly, “Any specific reason you two have been spying on me since this morning?”