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“So this is your castle, right? And like, you're Herobrine , right? Like, Herobrine Herobrine, god of Death Herobrine?"
To Herobrine’s credit, he did not sigh with annoyance at the way the immature tones of the barely-teenaged boy rattled off the dark stone walls of his castle, rapid footsteps pitter pattering in the most irritating of ways against Herobrine’s steady, even steps. His solid white eyes stared directly ahead, paying no mind to the eager, insatiable eyes that stared at him with uncontained glee, golden replicas of his own eyes. As if he needed more confirmation that this child was his spawn.
"Yes,” came his answer, short and curt and sharp enough to make even the bravest of trained men cower.
And it was utterly ineffective for a 14 year old boy.
"And you're my dad, right?!" came the next question barrelling out the moment the god finished speaking. And again, Herobrine bit back the signs of his ever-mounting anger.
"Yes."
"So what does that make me, a half god? Are there other half-gods?"
"The term is a demigod, and you are the only demigod in the world."
"Awesome!"
It was awesome to the barely-there teen. After being the adopted child his whole life of a struggling family with parents who were far too stressed to pay much mind to their unruly children, being someone important , someone powerful , was like a dream come true. No more would he be picked on and bullied and feared for his unnatural solid gold eyes, his curly hair refusing to be tamed, his stature small and unimpressive, constantly reminded of how he was found abandoned on his adoptive parents’ doorstep with nothing but a piece of paper bearing his name.
To go from that to being the son of the god of Death, of Herobrine himself, was very fucking awesome, horror stories be damned. Most of them were fake anyway. Sky happily skipped alongside his new father figure, eyes wide as he looked around the huge throne room of the castle Herobrine had taken him to. It was in the Nether, the realm that Sky had only briefly heard of but oh he loved it.
"So like, what can I do? I have magic, right?” he started to ramble, voice echoing to and from and back and around again. “I'm pretty sure I have magic, cause I got really pissed one day and pushed my sister and she got thrown across the room and Mum had a massive go at me-"
" Enough ."
The low growl made Sky stop with a start, shivers running down his spine. He paused for a moment, a vague thought wondering if it was maybe worth shutting up, but his mouth moved and his voice blurted before he could stop himself. "But like, I can do magic. Right?"
The Death God turned to look at him, his white eyes piercing into Sky's molten gold ones. "Yes. You can."
Sky fist-pumped the air with a whooping cheer. "Yes! So what can I do? Can I make fire balls? Can I fly?! Teleport?! Command people?!"
For the second time ever (the first time being when Sky eagerly agreed to sneak out of his bedroom window in the dead of night and follow Herobrine into his great new future), Sky saw his birth father smile. "Yes, all of those, and many more things that you cannot even begin to comprehend. As far as I am aware, you will be as powerful as I am, and capable of all the amazing feats that I can also perform. But first, your magic must be awakened."
Sky grinned eagerly, feet dancing and eyes widening as he imagined himself tall and strong doing powerful magical things. “How do I wake up my magic?!” he demanded.
"Give me your hands, palms up," Herobrine instructed, stopping them and turning to face the demigod. Sky obeyed, holding his hands out in front of him, baring the pale hands of a boy not even hitting puberty with soft skin that hadn’t yet been hardened or scarred by work. Herobrine put his hands underneath Sky's, lightly touching the backs of his palms with the tips of his cold middle fingers. "Close your eyes."
Sky did so instantly. He was excited. He was excited , so much so that it was difficult to keep still.
"Focus on your chest. You will feel a tingle or an energy of a kind appearing there. Focus on it. Reach for it. Wake it."
Sky felt gentle heat radiating from the tips of Herobrine's fingers as he turned his attention inside himself, past his energetic wiggles that thrummed in his blood. He felt nothing for a moment, or nothing out of the ordinary, but then he felt a pulse. A quiet pulse like the soft breathing of some sleeping thing. He reached for it with feeble mental strings, trying to take hold of it as it pulsed again with little clue for what he was doing. For a moment, he had it. Then it slipped.
" Focus, reach out and grab it," Herobrine instructed, his voice darker than before. Sky frowned as he tried, eyes still shut as he searched for that pulse again. The sleeping thing stirred slightly like it was sensing him, but he couldn’t grab a hold of it. It was too deeply buried, not yet awake enough for him to touch it and pull it up. Even the pulses of energy stemming from where Herobrine’s hands touched his didn’t help, but Sky somehow knew what to do. It reminded him of a sleeping animal, and he knew how to deal with that.
"I-It's sleeping, I can’t grab it properly," he confessed. "But- Hold on, maybe I can help wake it up, I just-"
He didn’t get to finish his thought. What had been gentle pulses of warming magic suddenly became a painful stabbing that ripped through his body, tearing through his blood and lurching right for that sleeping presence without a care in the world that Sky got caught in the crossfire. He was barely aware that he was screaming with his head thrown back and eyes screwed tight, all his attention focused only on that burning presence tearing through his body and something white-hot inside him - magic, his magic - roaring into his defence.
Fire ripped through his blood, arching up his neck and fusing together his spine. His soul ached with it, tears pouring from his eyes as his muscles seized up and he couldn't move but he needed to move, to get away from this pain . He couldn't scream loud enough to get rid of it, to stop the sensation of his eyes burning up, his body being ripped, being too full of a power he couldn't comprehend or use that automatically tried to protect him without knowing how and it was too much and too soon and Sky couldn't breathe -
And he breathed, gasping on the floor that was too warm, twitching and spasming. He choked, coughing out liquid that he couldn’t properly see, his vision swimming with black and white spots. He tried to blink it away, his face wet and his whole body aching and groaning.
"Hmph," was all the displeased voice above him said. He heard feet back off two steps, just two. His arms trembled as he tried to make them obey, starting to pick himself up from the floor, but the boy could only get to his knees, cradling his arms to his heaving chest. Though his neck ached, he raised his head to see his father between his sweaty curled locks.
"Wh- What- What was that?" he panted, shivering with the energy that pulsed and trembled in his chest, far too warm and far too full , so much so that it felt like it was stretching his skin.
"Your magic," came the reply.
"Wh-Why did it hurt so much?" Sky felt like crying. He'd never felt that kind of pain before. He never wanted to feel it again.
"A necessary process. Activating magic is always painful to some degree."
(It would be over 200 years before Sky realised that that was a lie. Over 200 years before Sky figured out that his father had caused him pain on purpose, had attacking his magic to force it to lash out. Over 200 years before people who actually cared told Sky how unpainful regular magic activation was, as long as you were calm and patient.)
"Come. Up. I will take you to your room."
Sky whined, curling in on himself. “I don’t think I can move…” It hurt far to much to do anything other than huddle there and feel sorry for himself.
He wasn’t given a choice. A hand grabbed his arm and yanked him to his feet, setting him down, and the cold, hard voice of Herobrine spoke.. “The pain will fade. You’ll get used to it. Follow me. Now .”