Chapter Text
It’s very, very hot in the chamber they’ve set aside as their command room.
It’s hot everywhere in the Nether, though. False has had years to get used to it - to the constant dry heat, the bubbling of lava, the faint exhaustion that never seems to leave her…
Jens has, at least, stuck a little packed ice in the corner, smuggled in from his home server, but all it’s really doing is making the room muggy and hot rather than dry.
Still, that’s - that’s not what’s making her eyes burn. That would be the tears - tears that she’s desperately trying to hold back, because -
- because they’re losing. But for the tall Blaze woman standing at the head of the table, they’ve already lost, and… and she doesn’t look like she’s got a plan.
The Dev - whose name is a ringing stream of bell-like chimes that False can’t hope to pronounce - is looking at Karthe, who - who still has her eyes on the battlemap in front of her, fingers wrapped tight around a piece as her other hand traces out lines of offense.
“Karthe,” the Blaze says, softly. “All of my brothers and sisters are dead.”
“You’re still alive,” snarls the Admin, looking up, and her eyes are glinting with gold and tears in the light radiating off the lava.
“So are you.” It’s - it’s painfully gentle. Like the Blaze knows that she’s breaking a heart. “We aren’t going to win this. And you have -”
She waves, a flux of magic and fire, at the rest of them. “Responsibilities.”
Jens steps forward. “My lady -”
“There’s no reason for all of us to die here,” a brute, Razorback, False thinks his name is, grunts. “I - you lot did as best you could, for us. But you aren’t Netherkin - you can still get outta here, go back t’ your servers an’ -”
He trails off. “Live.”
“You should,” the Blaze agrees, quietly. “Before we’re all trapped here. Notch will - any of you he catches here are going to die slow, Karthe. He’s going to want to make examples out of you. I’m - I won’t make it out of this Bastion, regardless.”
Karthe is - silent. For a long, long moment. “Is that an order?”
“Does it have to be?” the Dev asks, and the air around her seems to tremble.
“False,” Karthe says, instead. “Bree. Luminere. You three - you’re going to take the southwestern tunnel, and you’re going to escape, am I understood? Razor -”
“You know none of my men are going to leave -” protests the brute -
“I know.” Because Piglins do not outlive their bastions. They’ve - they’ve tried to save survivors before. Piglins do not outlive their bastions. Piglins, alone - it’s not a fate she would wish on any of them, and the Piglins of Cracked-Gold-Tooth are their brothers. “Go get - whatever hybrids are willing to flee. Tell them - tell them the Nether isn’t going to be safe, once the Bastion falls.”
She looks up at the Blaze, and False can see that she is crying. “Notch isn’t going to be any gentler with them.” A pause. “Tell them to go.”
“And you?” Asks the Dev, voice still so painfully soft.
“Jens?” asks Karthe, and the man laughs and takes her hand, their fingers twining together.
“You know what I’m going to say, my love.”
“We die here, Quenque’aquin. We’re not -” And she reaches out, and runs her free hand through the magic that comprises her Dev - their Dev, whatever Notch or Jeb_ or anyone else may claim. “We aren’t leaving you.”
-----
“I’m not leaving you,” False snarls up at her Admin, who is -
Who is looking down at her with pity in her eyes.
They both know that Karthe isn’t planning to survive the coming battle.
“You are,” she says, regardless. “You - I need someone strong, False. Someone who can make sure everyone else gets back to Minecraft safely.”
And that would have worked on False, once, when she and Karthe first came through the veil together, slipping like minnows through the cracks between the worlds. It would’ve worked on her when she was a child -
But she isn’t one, anymore. Twenty years of losing a war have made sure of that.
“Bree can manage it.” She’s always been the stronger of them, magically. “I stand by my Admin.”
I die with my Admin, that’s what it means, and - and she means it, because -
- because she’s old enough to remember the Nether before the War. Not a lot of people are - not with so many Players dead, and the Hybrids raised to replace them too young. The Piglins - those who were alive back then are grown to be elders, now, and the Blazes are so scattered -
She hasn’t seen a living Demon in years, and no one can agree if that’s a good thing or not.
But Karthe is shaking her head. “I need you to live, False.” There’s a moment’s quiet, and then a hand reaches out, and grips her shoulder, and her Admin’s touch is like iron. “I need someone to survive who can remind them. In - fifty years, or a hundred, whenever it’s safe - I need someone who can make those bastards remember what they did to this place.”
“Oh,” says False, because -
- because she doesn’t know if she can bring herself to live for her own sake. But she can live for spite -
“They’ll try to forget us,” Karthe tells her, and there’s hatred burning in her eyes along with sorrow. “They’ll - they’ll try to act like this was - was justice. Was right. I need you to live, and spit that in their faces.”
“I can -” her voice cracks, but she needs to be strong. “I can live for that,” she tells her Admin, and Karthe’s smile is thin, but real.
“I’m sorry,” says the Admin, and False gets it.
“I’m sorry too,” she answers back, and Karthe smells like sweat and smoke when she pulls her into a hug.
-----
She feels it, when Karthe dies.
It’s like the snapping of a bowstring, and she loses her grip on the sheer soulsand cliff she’s scaling, and only the reflexes of the piglin hybrid climbing just below her are enough to save her from plummeting to the brown desert below.
There is a clawing void in her chest where her heart should be, and -
And in the distance, through the haze of smoke that makes her eyes sting, she can see blue fire and explosions as the last Bastion in all the world falls.
And then, there is a great silence -
And as she’s dragged onto the clifftop, the whole world echoes and resounds with a great and terrible roar, the very air cracking like ice under a weight too heavy to bear, and it’s a sound she’s felt in her bones before.
The last Dev in the Nether is dead, and even if they hadn’t all been deafened, the group of them would still be silent, because…
Because there’s still lava below them, and soul sand beneath their feet, and a great high arching ceiling of netherrack overhead, but the world has just ended.
It should feel different, maybe, but she’s felt the hopelessness that sits like a dull weight in her chest for a long time.
She claws her way to her feet, and grabs - a blaze hybrid, one she doesn’t recognize, but that doesn’t matter - by the hand, and drags them to their feet.
“We’ve got to move,” she tells them, and she can’t hear her own voice.
But they stagger upright, and all eyes are on her, and she shoves away the grief and guides them on, into the dark that is never truly dark.
-----
It occurs to her, as they flicker through the void, that only she, Bree, and Luminere have ever seen the overworld sky.
The hybrids they're travelling with - escaping with - have never seen grass, except for the dried-out silk-touched little garden that Jens built in a corner of his corridor.
They’ve never seen water beyond the small and mage-bound fonts that the Blazes use to prepare their potions.
And they all spill out onto a wide and naked world. It’s daytime, and the sun above them is bright as it shines down on a hub she doesn’t recognize, and…
And the sky is so blue that it could break her heart, so cloudlessly perfect that she can hear their breaths catch when they see it.
She looks up at it, stares into that endless, crystal blue, and it’s been almost thirty years since she’s seen it -
It doesn’t look like home, anymore.