Chapter Text
The universe whispers secrets as the sun sleeps; of past lives and red curses. It speaks of cities underground- blessed with and enchanter, and the beast chosen to guard its power. The universe offers visions of glowing moss that crept up dark brick, candles that dripped wax and burned with dim flame- the light they gave nothing compared to the enchanter's glow.
Etho woke with a start, gasping as panic flared in his chest.
He was still in the nest, cushioned on wool and hay. Furs tickled against his back, where the fabric of his shirt had ridden up slightly throughout the night. Sun peeked over the spikes that lined their base, wall of birch wood pale and looming. It’s instinct to reach for his sword, resting just to his side, layed cautiously around the rim of the nest before he’d turned in for sleep, but when his eyes found it, he also spotted the walls, the gate to the base closed. Perhaps it was intentional, but the nest’s position gave a full view of the space enclosed by birch walls- no enemies in sight.
Etho let his head fall back against the mound of wool (that would no doubt leave thin lines of fluff in his hair) and allowed the tension to leave his shoulders. He was safe.
They were safe.
Half on top of him, lay Grian. Despite the slow adjustments Etho’s learnt made in the past few days, it was still jarring to find another person, so close- sleeping away, on him. Grian seems to have no regard for personal space, not even in his sleep. The red feathered wings draped across them both, and his soulbound, culled around Etho’s left side, had his face pressed against Etho’s stomach. Their legs were tangled in a way that wasn’t that comfortable, but not enough so that he felt the need to move.
Etho had dealt with contact-heavy people before (he’d managed to hang around Bdubs for so many lives) yet this was different. This closeness, it satisfied some ache that lurked deep in his mind, like the warmth of a fire in a snowy forest. The weight of someone else, pressed against him, it was nice- a foreign feeling but a welcome one. His hand found its way to Grian's hair and Etho allowed himself to bask in the warmth of his soulbound briefly, fingers tangled into the soft blonde locks that brushed against his skin.
He’s not sure how long he lay there, but it wasn't until the sound of horns echoed across the cavern was it that he cared to move. Grian squirmed in his sleep, rolling over to smother his face in the wool beneath him. His wings curled around himself like a cocoon as his hands drifted up to the side of his head in an attempt to block out the noise. A displeased grumble built in the back of his throat that just barely escaped the shell of his wings, yet it died out quickly along with the horns.
There was a sense of unease, watching his soulbound so ignorant to the noise- so willing to ignore what Etho would describe as literal alarm bells- literally, the horns were proof the server was up and about, threats in the morning, of swords and traps, much more dangerous than those that poked around at night.
Along the side of Grian’s exposed throat, sat three hearts- one green, one yellow and one red. They glowed in the morning light- pulsing in time with the thrum of Etho’s own heartbeat. It serves as a grim reminder that they’re linked, shared damaged and pain limited to only three lives.
The horns tapered off into faint echoes and Etho takes the distance he was granted to rise for the day. Where he’d left them the night before, their sheep shuffled quietly, also not quite awake.
But he eased open a chest to gather some blocks- birch and dripstone, because god forbid he ruin the base aesthetic, to make them a pen outside rather than indoors.
Etho had become quite good at mimicking build styles over the years, so he made the same short pillars of birch planks and stripped the logs down- tall enough that the sheep couldn’t climb out, topping them with little dripstone spikes and placed down a gate for easy access. As a secondary thought, he took some of his iron and made a hopper which he embedded in the ground and a dispenser which he loaded with sheers- activated by a little wooden pressure plate.
One of the simplest automated farms he’d made by far, but it would do the job- shearing sheep as they triggered the crude redstone machine. They trot themselves happily over as he breaks down the scrap job fence he’d made the night before, drawn to by the piles of wheat in their new enclosure. Etho spared a glance to Grian, still curled up even as the sun rose to a point that was at least eight-am.
There was movement across the river and Etho made himself a ladder and climbed the interior of their wall, settling between two spikes to watch as people woke and began to move around the server. Joel and Lizzie had- daringly enough- settled just across the river, near the pillager tower, with a few round farms and a simple cobblestone line between them and the pointed crossbows. But it seemed to be working well enough.
The pair of them seemed happy, and through his spy-glass, Etho noted that Joel had fashioned himself a tshirt plastered with a simplistic design of Lizzie’s face- pink hair with big blue eyes. He seemed proud of himself at least, voice carrying around the canyon as he followed her; ‘Lizzie, Lizzie- look!’
Some distance to the east, almost in the centre of the server, another wall had popped up, made from mangrove roots and dark oak, where Mumbo ambled out the gate, yelling behind him- presumably at Scar and-or the pandas that were trying to follow him out of the enclosed wall.
If he tried, Etho could probably spot the mid-century modern home that Bdubs and Impulse had been constructing the day before, but that thought still prompted something a little bitter- like a bad taste left in his mouth.
And yet, there’s a little part of him that knows he’s is better off without Bdubs, that in their past lives, that it was a danger to be around Bdubs- that red curses and failed traps can only excuse so much betrayal- that there is a line that he must draw, where Etho must acknowledge, there is no point ruminating on what could have and what once was. It’s that same part of him that liked the weight he’d become accustomed to on his back over the past few days, knowing that it wasn’t from him, but his soulbound- who the universe had decided was perfect for him. Someone marked in their new life with a heart that beat in tandem to his, someone to hold and protect, and someone to share his pain with, as told by the phantom ache of wings that pricked and pulled at the muscles of Etho’s shoulder blades.
There was a lingering sense of awareness that Etho himself would never have experienced if not for the soft cascade of red feathers that puffed and shifted with the environment around his soulmate. Speaking of which.
A twitching sensation flittered through the limbs he didn’t sport, and from his perch on the wall, Etho turned to one side, letting a leg hang down as he watched Grian rouse from his sleep.He looked like a bit of a disaster as he brought a hand up to brush sleep from his eyes, blinking as his wings twitched the slighted of movements. His red sweater was sleep rumped, creased and skewed to one side, and despite the distance and his bad eyes, Etho was able to see the three hearts that sat on Grian’s jugular, glowing dimly with every beat of Etho’s own pulse.
“Someone's a heavy sleeper.” He teased, noting the way Grian’s immediate thought was to look around- presumably for Etho if the way a thin spike of panic had flared across their bond was anything relevant.
“And someone could have woken me earlier.”
“Well you looked comfortable. And I figured the horns would do it eventually.” As if on cue a barrage of goat horns echoed across the server, some louder than others.
“I could sleep through an earthquake. Actually- I might have done that once.” There’s a little crease between Grian’s brow, one that grows when he tries to remember. That little voice in Etho’s head thinks it's cute.
“Well I figured one of us should get some beauty sleep.” Etho dropped down to the grassy ground, the push green crunching with morning dew under his boots.
“Did you not sleep well?” And it’s staggering how quickly Etho understands what is happening- that the way Grian’s wings droop just a little and his fingers meet too impatiently fiddle together.
“No, the base is great. I’m just a light sleeper- the horns definitely didn’t help.” And the undertone there goes unsaid. The nest is great. Etho knew hybrids- he’d met a lot of them through his lives, and he knew that sort of thing mattered more than seemed logical. A beat passes and Grian’s wings go lax, free of the tension that had been bleeding into them.
“How long have you been awake?”
“A little while.” Etho mused, heating up the smoker to make stew from the mushrooms he’d found the night before. “I made a sheep pen.”
He lights up a little with that. “You did?”
“But I was thinking I might try and find some cows too.” Etho hums, digging through the chests in the centre of their base. The mushrooms were still fresh, his hands moving on instinct as the sun rolled higher off the horizon. Splitting the stems and peeling back the caps as he dumped them into the smoker’s pot.
There’s a memory that dances through his mind, something of a past life, and he remembers clean white walls, and days spent gathering mycelium- field only by mushroom stew and Grian’s smile. Of afternoons spent building mini games together, throwing waves towards the others with his riptide tridents. And those thoughts linger in his hands as they stir the stew. Perhaps that small smile that drifts on Grian’s face is spurred on by those memories too, or just a feature of his mornings.
Either way, it bubbles and spins slowly as the flames flicker around it. He halves it, between two bowls and holds one out for Grian who takes it with that same smile Etho remembered.
Another barrage of Horns echo through the cavern, bouncing off the walls and into the sky. He prickles slightly, and settles himself on top of a chest, with his legs folded up and crossed beneath him, facing Grian who is still sitting in their nest of wool and furs.
The mushroom stew swirls slowly in the bowl from the motions of his spoon, and while it did not look appealing at all, Etho couldn’t help as though it felt awfully right, warth leaking through a carved wooden bowl, Grian stealing glances at him though fluttery lashes every now and then, while they don’t quite talk, but they also don’t quite lapse into silence.
It reminds him of something else, something fun and bright. But he can’t quite place what- another one of those past lives, mixed and muddled with blurry memories.
WIth spoon in hand, poking at the lumps of brown mushrooms as he considers which one to scoop up next, Etho looks out the gate of their wall, spotting some of the others running around in the distance. “So what’s the plan? Finish the base?”
Grian hummed, swallowing before answering. “Yeah well, I wanted to make a few different tiers to the spikey cake.”
Etho lets the smile pull at his lips, exposed and in the open for grian to see. “Spikey cake?”
“Um. Just a name.” Grian seemed a little sheepish now, but he was still smiling.
“I like it.” Etho said, looking up at the spikes, and imagining what more layers would look like. “I’ve never lived in a cake before. You’re going to have to handle the build plans. I’m too much of a redstoner to build a cake-fort.”
“Well I was thinking I’d go gather the wood for the base and start up construction, while you go make some allies and gather more resources? Maybe go mining?”
“Sounds good to me.” Etho sipped at his bowl, draining the last of his soup and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
And they divided and conquered. Grian starts his work to establish their resources for base building and Etho heads off to trade with other pairs across the server- maybe make a few allies along the way. There isn’t really much of a game plan to how Etho goes about the server- given that he is generally horrible at directions, but he heads across the cavern first.
He’d watched the pair of them meander around that morning, perfectly content in their partnership and it seemed as though Lizze and Joel were made for eachother, his budding love for chaos balanced by her remarkable ability to resolve any conflict with that sweet smile of hers. Yet, as Etho makes his way towards their base, consisting of two beds planted in the open and a messy circle of crops, something becomes immediately apparent.
They were yellow.
Glowing along their necks, bright despite the morning sun, were not three, but two puling hearts, one red, one yellow. Joel and Lizzie had died. How Etho had missed that he wasn’t sure. Not that it seemed to affect the pair at all- still living precariously close to that pillager tower with only a waist-high wall between them and the mobs that seemed to have infinite ammo and crossbows that packed a punch.
Etho keeps his shield in hand (despite how much he hated the darn thing), just in case the pillagers did decide to attack- he’d been caught off guard by them before, and wasn’t willing to take the risk again.
They clock him when he’s about halfway across the thin dirt that they’d used to bridge that massive gap over the canyon. In spruce logs stripped back of their bark, there’s an outline of a base starting, but Etho is nowhere near enough of a builder to guess what it may be once they finish up. A faint little memory plays in his mind- of a fairy fort, secluded in trees, border thick with enough greenery to hide anyone. This did not look to be a fairy fort, but it would no doubt be just as picturesque, if not more so with the pair of them working together.
Lizzie greets him with a grin, arms full of wool that looked freshly sheared. “Etho! What brings you to our side of the river?”
“Oh you know, on an adventure, bartering for resources.” He tucked his hands in his coat pockets, fiddling with the woollen lining. He was never good at this part. Making allies. People usually came to him- like bdubs or Tango, and then they could deal with the rest of the server for him. But Grian sent him on a mission and he wasn’t about to disappoint.
“Well unless you want a surplus of near-dead crossbows, we don’t have much.” Joel pitched in, digging through a chest, probably for more spruce wood but came up empty.
“Think I’m right on that front actually.” Etho clicked his tongue in thought. “How’d you two end up on yellow, anyway?”
It must have been a common topic between them- as if losing a life wouldn’t be- because Joel seems to wilt as Lizzie sent him a glare. “Well someone, can’t kill an enderman without getting us killed.”
“I said I’m sorry- Lizzie,” Ans sure, Joel is whining, but there’s the tease of a smile on his lips, andwell, Lizze doesn't hide hers as well as he does, turning away to hide the upwards tilt her lips had taken.
“What happened to those boat kills you were practising?”
“Doesn’t work if someone breaks the boat.”
Etho bit back a laugh, turning to Joel, who looked thoroughly embarrassed. “You broke the boat.”
“On accident.” He stressed. “But that’s besides the point- you came here to trade!”
A new spark lit up in Joel’s eyes, mischief rife with excitement. “Got any sugarcane?”
Etho sighed. “I was hoping you two did.”
“Someone’s hoarding the bloody stuff.” Joel scoffed.
And while Etho was thoroughly annoyed at not having all the resources he wanted- he couldn’t exactly blame whoever did have sugar cane for not sharing- especially with the tone that wove its way through Joel’s words, something not quite good or bad, but unstable enough to go either way and be back in time for sunset. Etho had been on the other end of Joel’s axe before, so yeah- he couldn’t blame someone for not sharing just yet. “Maybe because they don’t want loose cannons setting off TNT traps.”
It gets a giggle from Lizzie, who just hands her soulmate a new iron axe, a few spruce saplings and a stack of bonemeal. “That makes two of us.”
“It’s not like I'm going to kill you. That’d be pretty daft.” He sulks about it, but marches off to farm up his spruce wood.
Etho bids the pair goodbye as they refocus on whatever their base was going to be and heads off east, casting weary glances over his shoulder just in case one of those darn pillagers decided it was worth picking a fight.
The morning sun had certainly set in, making its way through the sky and roasting any mobs that were still wandering from the night before.
Just along the south border, were two cottages he hadn’t seen earlier, one on each side of the canyon. Made from a mix of pale and dark woods, they face each other over the chasm, and Etho wonders who they could have belonged to.
A new bridge that had not been there a few hours ago seemed to be under construction as well. Unlike Joel and Lizzie’s haphazard line of dirt blocks, this one was at least three blocks wide and made from neat wooden planks with a deepslate railing- so there wouldn’t be any untimely falls into the canyon below. Not that it would do much damage with the water running through it, but Etho was sure that at least one person would miss and hit the rocky cliffside eventually.
Cleo’s standing in the centre of it, crouching along its edge as she makes the railing. She’s an old friend, he thinks. They’ve been here before, and she was an ally- that or a dreaded enemy. So perhaps it was in his best intentions to make peace with her and whoever her soulmate was now.
He lets out a low whistle of appreciation, standing on the cliff side, not quite ready to step foot onto her bridge without permission. “You got two cottages, and a fancy bridge?”
There’s a grin on her face when she does look up, and he catches a glimpse of those three hearts glowing on her skin. Cleo lets her axe hang low and lax in her grip as she wanders back towards him. “Well it’s a bridge. I don’t know how fancy it’s going to be.”
“I donno, you’ve got a railing. Better than those two.” he jutted a hand out back towards Lizze and Joel’s base.
Yet in that moment, Cleo takes damage, a blow that throws her off-kilter for a few seconds before she steadies herself and wipes blood from a new cut on her forearm. Etho’s mouth went dry. “Oh your partner’s, uhhh.”
“Yeah, my partner’s off doing… other things.” Cleo all but spits.
And Etho isn’t a fan of the anger that lingers there in those words, the bitterness as she glanced across the unfinished bridge. But it’s gone just as quickly as it bubbled up, and her smile is back as she turns to him. “So what are you up here for? I Thought you and your pesky bird settled on the other side of the river.”
“We did- but you know, resource gathering, making allies. Lots to do. Thought I'd pop over and visit.”
“Just for a visit.” She repeats.
“Well, I’m in a bit of a bartering mood.” Etho offers rolling between the balls and heels of his boots. “Got anything good to trade?”
“We do have cows- but Scott's about to kill a load, so you might want to hurry across the bridge.”
And sure enough, when they make it to the other side of the cavern, Scott is by a cow pen, sword in hand looking just about ready to slice and dice some beef. But he stopped to greet them as they approached.
“Etho,” he says with a nod. “What are you doing here?”
And maybe it comes with that reputation of his that people liked to exaggerate, but Scott has never trusted Etho. Whether it be with trades, secrets or even across the battlefield- they always ended up on opposite sides.
“Hey, Scott.” He tries and fails to shove that awkwardness from his voice. “I was just trying to barter with your partner here about some of those cows…”
“He hasn’t immediately come and stolen from us.” Cleo pointed out, as if that was the bare minimum.
“That's a step ahead of Ren and bigB to be fair.” Maybe it was the bare minimum. Apparently Cleo and Scott’s standard for a trade partner was really low.
“What about…” Scott sized him up, as if to see just how much he could extort from Etho. By the way he sighed to himself, Scott didn’t deem that Ehto had much wealth to his name. “Sugarcane? You got any of that.”
“No, also on the lookout for that.” Sugar cane was really proving to be a pain. Surely someone had some. And while he didn’t have much to trade, there was one thing. “I have sheep though.”
Scott and Cleo share a silent conversation that ends in Scott rolling his eyes and huffing a particularly annoyed sounding exhale. “I mean wool would be a good resource, a one-on-one exchange is fair, yeah?”
So Etho wanders past Scott’s house and back towards the wall where he and Grain had set up base, not finding it necessary to walk across both bridges again. He returns with two sheep, one under each arm and drops them into Scott and Cleo’s cow pen.
In return they attempt to give him just two cows, but a few more scuttle out.
“Ah it’s fine. Take the four of ‘em.” Scott relented, not bothered enough to try and hoard them back in the cramped pen.
“I like this one Cleo, you got lucky.” Then that little reminder from Bdubs resurfaces in his head and Etho gives the pair a once over. “Are you two actually soulmates?”
“I mean- we’re besties.” Scott grinned in that manic way he often got away with, hidden behind cheeky humour. “But no.”
“Ah- I was gonna punch Cleo to find out but…” He trailed off with the joke, but it didn’t seem as though the ‘besties’ had quite understood that he was joking.
“No, look!” and with that same manic twinge to his grin, Scott punched Cleo in the arm- hard. Harder than looked okay.
The hearts on her neck flashed rapidly for a few seconds before calming. Not that either of them seemed to mind- in fact they seemed to be delighted by it. “I get to punch Martyn.”
“And If I do this,” Cleo rebutted, slamming the butt of her axe into Scott’s side with a blow that would undoubtedly bruise. “Pearl suffers.”
“Right…” Etho said, a little lost for words. If he thought Joel would be a danger as a loose cannon, then he should be praying to not end up on Scott and Cleo’s bad side. “Quite the partnership you guys have going.”
“We find it very rewarding.” Cleo laughed, like this was a chat between old friends and she wasn’t punching someone just for the hell of it.
There had been a lot of unhinged behaviour in this server, in his past lives. Yet people chose to excuse that as the influence of red lives, of curses and manic states- of desperate players fighting for their lives. This wasn’t that. Scott and Cleo were still on their green loves, he could see the hearts pulsing out of time to each other, as if to show everyone that it wasn’t planned and that it wasn’t going to offer the same harmony as their true soulmates.
They had no excuse for this- they had just… lost it.
So Etho makes his polite excuses, and departs with his cows, feeling quite shaken from the encounter.
As the walk stretched into mid-day, he was left to contemplate what about him made Bdubs worry- no, believe, he could possibly end up like that. Abandon his soulmate.
Surely Etho didn’t appear that against alliances, did he? Even if he had been stitched up with the somewhat manic Scott or loose cannon Joel, Etho wouldn’t just cet them loose. Did people seriously think he would do that? Did Grian?
Maybe it was a bigger issue than he’d thought, when Budubs had dragged him aside, gave him a talking to- when he wanted to know just what Ehto was planning to do with his soulmate. He hadn’t really thought much of it, considered it to be another one of Bdubs’s weird tendencies, perhaps there was more to it than than. And as he approached the peak of his and Grain’s base, Etho decided that his next stop would be The mid century modern house, to ask Bdubs for a little more clarification.
He considers just asking Grian, but when he wrangles the group of rather rowdy cows back to the under-construction spikey cake, his soulbound is nowhere to be seen, but there’s half of a second layer built up out of spruce, and topped with dripstone. And the sheep are freshly sheared.
So there’s no point to linger around in wait, he’d been given a list and he was only halfway through it. And if he went mining without this little turret of thoughts, it might drive him insane.
The stripe of white stands out like a sore thumb, jutting out of the mountain side in a pillar of clean concrete, contrasted with smooth spruce. And if anything screams Bdubs, it’s the pen of horses already established at the front of the building.
Standing amongst the three horses were Impulse and Bdubs, the latter was firmly grounded but Impulse was wobbling unevenly on horseback. It almost looked like he was learning to ride if that wavering smile of his and white knuckled hands in the horse’s mane was anything to go by.
“Already stolen all of the horses on the server?”
Bdubs whipped his head around away from Impulse and it’s a little shameful that Etho’s heart flares’ in his chest with pride that he was the one that had that little growing smile on Bdubs face morph into a splitting grin. “Etho! Can I interest you in a horse?”
“I donno “ He sized up the pen, they really didn’t have many in there, only four, and Etho had seen more wild horses on the map. “I’ve been enjoying the walk around.”
“No no- you need a horse.” Bdubs declared. And usually, Etho would have no qualms with that. He liked horses, liked having them to keep him company and travel with. But there’s something there in Bdubs’ eyes that he can’t quite trust.
He tilts his head in curiosity. “What, you're just going to give me one?”
“I thought you might need a pit of uplifting, you know, with what’s happening.”
“With what’s happening?”
“Oh- um,” Bdubs looked back at impulse for a second, “So Grian swung by earlier. Well… he had some things to say about you.”
They’ve known each other for a long time- him and Bdubs. Enough to spot a lie. While others may not see it, Etho does. It’s in the details, like how Bdubs shifts from foot to foot a little slower than he usually did, how he tucks his fingers behind his back to fiddle with rather than keeping them in his lap.
And Grian had no reason to seek out Bdubs and impulse, he’d been set on building with that sort of determination that Etho saw in his reflection when he thought up a new redstone project. Still, he humours them. “All good I hope?”
“You know- we promised not to say anything… but if you aren’t feeling secure with your soulmate, then you and impulse could potentially go get us with some enchanted gear.” Bdudbs offered slowly and when not faced with immediate rejection, seems to take that as his answer. “Off you go!”
Admittedly, it did seem like a good plan to head down and find the enchanter- it would level up his tools and gear enough to make a notable difference. But that dream he’d had, it didn’t seem safe. There was something down there, and Etho didn’t like walking in blind, but he also wasn’t one to sit around and just wait.
Impulse brings redstone with him- for a zero-tick clock. He claims he’s dealt with the beast before and that it relies on sound and smell, that it can’t see at all. He gives Etho the pouch of redstone and carries the vision and repeaters himself, hauling them down a rather precarious cave that was a little too steep for Etho to feel comfortable with- a few too many overhangs for Creepers to drop from.
But that becomes the least of his worries when they reach a mined out section, a precocious little platform with a seemingly endless expanse of darkness below them. The faint outline of pathways could be seen, and in the centre looked to be a massive ring, perhaps for a portal or simply another form of magic lost to time.
What really should have been a concern was what covered the paths. It was just as bad as it had seemed in his dream (or maybe that was a nightmare, it was a little unclear). Lines of messy growth trailed along the floor, like moss or vines, but pitch black with glowing blue specs littered throughout. The stuff- skulk Impulse called it- stunk. Like rotting animal corpses and decaying flesh, it has Etho gagging behind his mask as he clenches his eyes shut.
“I can taste that.”
“Yeah,” Impulse shrugged. “It's a bit foul.”
Etho stared at him. “A bit?”
“Guess I’m used to it.” Impulse said, mining out a platform for them to see the ancient city below them.
It was dark- pitch black dark.
And there’s an itch that runs through Etho’s fingers with the urge to drop down a torch, even if it would flicker out when it hit the cave floor, he needed to see what was down there beyond the faint glow of stinking skulk. But Impulse had warned him that sound- almost any sound, would set off the sensors below, and there was one, a block of wiggling, crawling tentacles that slithered about the skulk with each block that dropped down.
“Remember- shriekers are the ones we gotta look out for”
Etho wished he hadn’t gone on this little spelunking mission- not that he was given much of a choice, Bdubs had just sort of sent him off with Impulse, and even after all these years, it's hard to say no to him.
The redstone is warm through its pouch, threatening to burn pale skin if he dares touch it.
They traverse down the thin staircase Impulse had carved out, and when they do touch on the ground, and the skulk is so soft that their boots sink into it, Etho stops trying so hard. If he was going to spend an extended period of time in an ancient city, being silent and almost gaging- he wasn’t about to do it in the fucking dark.
The torch lands nicely in the skulk, standing steady, but it sends a ripple of light though the mush, flowing all the way to a nearby sensor that wiggled to life for a moment before it calmed down.
Impulse elbowed him in the stomach, and if Etho was anymore nauseous, he might have actually puked. “I told you no torches.”
“But it’s so dark!” The harsh whisper isn’t enough to set off weird wiggling skulk blocks, but it still makes Etho’s heart hammer in his chest and he briefly contemplates if Grian could feel his fear too.
They'd been close to death once, and there had come feelings deep in his heart that weren’t his, that flooded through the soul bond and made themselves at home in his mind. But Etho wasn’t quite about to die- in fact he was at full health. Either way he probably should have told Grian he was heading into the ancient city, but it was a little late for that now.
Supposedly the guardian of the city, was a creature made from the skulk, that would crawl its way from the ground and blast waves of sound at whomever disturbed its slumber. But they didn’t know how much noise they could make. In preparation for a worse case scenario, Etho and Impulse had come armed with reliable redstone, enough to build a zero tick clock that would hopefully make so much noise that they would go undetected.
But that was a last resort because if they built the machine before the ‘warden’ as impulse kept referring to it as, arrived then it would certainly show up when they busted out the redstone.
“If we die down here…” Impulse trailed off. Not that Etho didn’t know exactly where he was going with that one. Sure they were risking a lot to find the enchanter, but there was no guarantee that even if they did make it to the enchanter and embed the magic into their items, they could still very much die on the way out. Where they would not be able to recover their belongings and they would land at spawn with one less life.
“I mean- if i’m gonna go,” Etho murmured, looking both left and right for sensors before he jumped a gap onto the structure. “This is the way I want it to happen.”
“Fair enough.” “No one can make fun of you for dropping to yellow if it happens down here.”
“That’s the plan.” Etho bit his bottom lip, allowing himself one step back before taking a running start on the wool and vaulting over a gap in the walkway.
The ancient city certainly lived up to it’s name- dark brick made of deepslate crumbling off in chucks, and the wood was rotting skulk eroding away at the pathways and bridges. Wool and carpets had been patched over the top of walkways, perhaps as a precaution against the warden, or even a mark of explorers past. Either way it served its purpose, as each heavy foot fall of iron plated boots fell silent against its plush surface.
It really was too dark for his liking, but at least he could stab the end of a torch into the wool and it wouldn’t make any sound. It calmed his nerves just a little bit, but they still nipped at his throat until it was dry and breath was ever so slightly shaky.
Apparently the enchanter was in there somewhere, but even the tell-tale glow of magic wasn't enough to distinguish it from the dark cavern. Candles burnt and flickered in the sill air, but even they were far and few between, hardly enough to light the block it rested on, let alone the ones around it. Although- there were patches where the white candles clumped together, in groups of five or six, and beside those, surrounded by melting wax caked onto black stone or dark wool, were chests.
Maybe about five or so, which meant there was a limited amount of loot. Etho took a glance behind him where Impulse was bridging with his own wool, not wanting to risk the jumps or even trust the plush paths that were already laid for them. “Are we going to loot chests while we’re here or?”
There’s a pause, where Impulse looked up, scanning for chests with a frown on his lips. He tilted his head in a so-so motion. “It’s a bit risky, don’t you think?”
Etho gives him a look- one that was very telling of the ‘are you serious’ he was holding in.
“Okay, yeah.” Impulse relents. “I guess we may as well go all for it. We’re in this deep.”
Luckily, one of them had actually been planning on heading to the ancient city, and had enough wool blocks to muffle the sound of a chest opening. He gave a quarter stack to Etho and he piled it up around the chest, paying close attention to the back where a shrieker was supposedly hiding.
“Where is this thing?” He frowned, it was so damn dark that he could hardly see a thing, let alone what was probably a five block drop over the platform’s edge.
“What?” Impulse asked, unhitching the clip on the chest he’d found.
“The shrieker.” Then he heard it. An almighty scream that echoed through the entire cave, high pitched enough to make his ears bleed- set off by the creak of a chest’s rusted metal hinges. Etho clamped his hands over his ears, doubling over. On the ground, emerging from a pile of skulk was a bone white points, four of them and in the centre, a mouth of long, jagged teeth, pointed at the tip as they flared with the scream.
The pain had him dizzy, with waves of nauseous flowing over him as the world around him turned black, darkness hitting with the light headedness as panic ruptured though his chest. Ethe grasped for blocks- the wool Impulse had given him and started pillaring up. “Is this it? Is it here?”
“No no. I think we’re good.” Impulse said, glazing around wildly from where he’d taken point on one of the railings. “There’s no warden. Not yet at least.”
There was that flickering blue that rippled across the floor, as the skulk sensors writhed at the sound the shrieker had set off. But after a little while it fades, chittering away into silence that felt so thick he could drown in it.
Together they decide that logically, the enchanter would be in the centre of the city where the glow was strongest and a mess of candles circulated something that was just beyond view. A few more chests stood between them and where the enchanter had to be, and now that they knew how to properly isolate the noise, they looted them as they passed.
In one Etho finds a whole skulk sensor, and it wiggles and thrashes in his hands, so he shoved that in his inventory to deal with at a later date.
Finally, after struggling in the dark and fumbling torches and wool for what feels like a lifetime, Impulse calls out in a hushed tone- “It’s here!”
And there it is- glowing book hovering on the encrusted table of precious stones and obsidian rock. Sleek red velvet drapes across it and onto the ground, pooling in piles of thick fabric.The Ornate table was centred to the strange portal frame, topped that, a book of knowledge, chained to the table with thick heavy iron, holding the secrets of the universe and keeps the monsters at bay with its low glow.
It leaves a shine to his iron sword, the blade a little sharper than it could have been otherwise, glimmering with power and magic. He gets his chestplate done too, but when he sends a backwards glance just to ensure the enchanter’s hum wasn’t setting off anything- there’s a flash of movement- not just movement, light.
“Etho?” Grian stared across the cavern, and there, on the opposite side, was his soulmate- shining in enchanted iron armour.
He stared back, red eye glinting under candle light- then as the biggest moron, raised a hand and waved. Grian would almost guess he was grinning. If there wasn’t an entire ancient city between them.
“Have they already done it?” Martyn asked, squinting to where Etho and who looked to be impulse, were lingering, “They have- that’s the enchanter.”
“Jeez,” mambo huffed. “You’d think your soulmate would give you a bit of warning that he’d be heading down to the deep dark.”
“I mean- I did tell him to go mining.”
And admittedly- Grian had gone to the deep dark without warning Etho anyway. Mumbo had come knocking, when Grian had just about started the second layer of spikey cake, telling him that a group was gathering to head down to the deep dark.
“Grian! Wanna come to the deep dark?” He called from the ground, head tilted right back to look up at the build. “We’re getting together a group - Martyn and I stumbled across the ancient city last night. You should come, safety in numbers and all that.”
“Scar’s not coming, is he?...” Grian asked, putting down the stack of dripstone in a chest and steadily emptying his inventory. Maybe it was a little mean- but Grian had spent the last few days babysitting Scar and it nearly got him killed. And to venture into the deep dark with that man chasing after an ally- well he could already see it. He’d summon the guardian within the first ten seconds.
Although, Mumbo doesn’t really get offended on behalf of his soulmate, instead he just shrugged. “I donno, I’m not really talking to scar.”
Grian frowned. “Oh?”
“Yeah. If it was up to me I would have picked a different soulmate. A lot of people would have.” Mumbo’s gaze feels particularly heavy as he watches Grian glide down to the ground, feet crunching the bright green grass. “Maybe if I'd gotten to choose, I wouldn’t have to be living in a cave with a bunch of bloody pandas.”
It’s enough to make Grian’s wings flutter with nerves. Joel had swung by earlier and mentioned that not everyone seemed happy with their soulmates- that some people had chosen to reject the bond between them, but he didn’t think Mumbo would be the type. He was all perfect posture and neat suit. Too steady to follow in the manic footsteps of Scott and Cleo, both of which had a history of going nuclear.
He hopes that Mumbo never ventures far into the nether, because with the little spark of something that lingers in his gaze was awfully familiar– something Grian had seen over the glowing point of an end crystal before it had gone boom. Grian liked his lips, throat dry and fingers fidgeting.
“How many others are going?”
Four others it turned out. Lizzie was there with instructions from Joel to cause as much chaos as possible (which she’d promised she wasn’t going to do while they’d been on the way down), BigB and Ren came together, dead set on Enchanting their gear and coming out on the other side with all three lives intact. And of course Martyn was braving it with the hopes that an enchanted diamond sword would win back Cleo’s favour.
And Mumbo- well Grian wasn’t really sure why Mumbo was there. With someone as nonchalant about health and armour as Scar was, Grian wouldn’t stray ten metres away without sealing him in bubble wrap, a layer of wool and maybe drenching him in slime blocks just to make sure he’d bounce. But Mumbo didn’t seem at all concerned with Scar dying or falling off a cliff when he was gone.
Though, Grian wasn’t much better. The only reason he’d even ventured down in the first place was to prove himself- not to his servermates or to gain some skewed sense of bravery, but to show that he was a good soulmate. That he could provide the same as Etho could- whose mere reputation had already garnered him respect from the group he was with.
“Wow, you got lucky. That man doesn’t die.” Ren had remarked, and thinking on it, there were very few times he could recall Etho losing a life from incompetence- not in the death games where lives were limited, or even in the other servers they’d spent time on. It just didn’t happen.
So Grian had embarked with the hope that maybe, if he came back with enchanted gear or some loot from an ancient city, that it would work towards putting him on the same level, someone who could provide and protect. He’d even brought extra iron to maybe even make more tools and armour for his soulmate in case they could spare the resources.
Apparently, Etho beat him to the punch, already standing beside the enchanter and waving with a big goofy swig at the group of them that were creeping into the city like it was rigged to explode.
“Does he want to get us killed?” Mumbo hissed, but the others had already taken this a sign of safety, hurting over the woollen path and to the Enchanter, Grian following happily behind.
He tried to keep in the way his winds puffed and fluttered with excitement. Key word; tried.
It has Etho laughing quietly behind his mask. “Well you’re a happy one aren’t you.”
“What are you doing here?” Perhaps Grain should have tried to sound more mad- more frustrated than his soulmate- whose life was literally his own, had ventured down into the deep dark but he just couldn’t find it inside himself to be. There was just something about being beside him that made the nerves and threat of danger better.
A feeling that had grown significantly since the day before. Perhaps people are right when they say distance makes the heart grow fonder, because Grian’s got more energy now than he’d had all day. He’d bounce up and down on his tip toes, peering between the gathering of people around the enchanter and the shiny armour strapped to Etho’s chest. “Any good enchants?”
“Prot-one on the chest plate and sharpness on the sword.” He showed off the shiny blade, it glowing faintly in the dark and reflecting Grain’s big eyes back at him. Maybe he stared for a little longer than he should have because what snaps his attention back is another one of those deep breathy chuckles that Etho seemed to be partial to. “You like shiny things.”
Grian might have blushed. “They’re pretty okay.”
“Mm,” Etho glanced down at the blade, silver reflecting a whole lot of red as the angle edged towards Grain’s wings. “I’ll say.”
They take turns enchanting, one of them standing guard while the other mumbles the spells scrawled out in smudged ink, in hope of finding a good one. They don’t come out overly well, but Grian does get blast protection on his leggings, always good when people go stomping around with TNT, Etho just laughed at that.
Pinpricks of guilt trail down Grian’s spine as his soulmate says that there might not even be any sugar cane up for grabs, that or someone’s hiding in all. Because Grian was hiding it all. It was buried under the spikey cake, growing slowly but surely.
He almost blurted it out then and there- that, yes! It’s me, I have the sugar cane! We have the sugar cane! But there were far too many people to give up that advantage he had. Later. He decided, when they were back building the spikey fort.
It’s when he’s onto his boots- the last piece of gear to enchant when it happens. A shrieker.
The noise is deafening- so much that it has Grain stumbling and clamping his eyes shut from the pain of it hitting his eardrums. Hands landed on his shoulders and braced him, warm and firm with the right amount of pressure to ground him.
“It passes.” Etho whispers to him, quiet amongst the chaos and panic that surrounds them. “I promise.”
But another one goes off- or maybe it was the same one, spurred on by the fright it had caused, but either way, there’s a roar, and the sound of bricks cracking as the platform they stood on shook.
Grian’s panic flares up again. “Oh God.”
“Etho- redstone!” And that’s Impulse and Etho’s hands are shifting from Grian’s shoulders but one trails down into his own, tight grip dragging him along as Etho pours lines of redstone to power whatever contraption Impulse was laying out in front of the enchanter.
Around them, people scattered and screamed, a tail of shriekers following them though the cavern. Then the redstone roars to life, a hammering of pistons slamming back and forth with little time between them.
“Alright- up we go!” Etho decides, scrambling up onto one of the higher platforms and pulling Grian behind him.
The beast was there. He couldn’t see it with the waves of darkness, but he could hear it, the squish of skulk under its heavy steps. He could hear it sniffing, slow and steady inhales, just behind him as it inspected the redstone- right where they had just been.
“Okay, we’ve got to pillar up,” Etho whispered, handing Grian half a dozen wool blocks. “Come on- stay with me Grian.”
And they pillar up side by side, white wool plush under their feet as they stand dead still. Watching in the candle light as the beast lumbered around below them.
It was horrifying. A creature made from the Skulk that coated the city, its head lolled around with each movement, a little too big for the rest of it with sensors sticking out of its head like a crown of tentacles, whipping around and lighting up with each minute sound that echoed.
Grain held his breath and drew in his wings, inching a little closer to the centre of their pillar- as close as he could in good conscience without pushing Etho off the other side.
Another shrieker sounded, further away this time, but still loud enough to have Grian flinching. Etho squeezes his hand a little tighter, eyes narrowed on the beast as it runs towards the staircase where the others had run to.
Etho lets out a breath, and it must have been heavy because the force of it is enough to ruffle Grian’s bangs and fans heat over his cheeks. “I don’t like that guy.”
Grian snorts. “Agreed. Are you done enchanting? I really wanna leave.”
“All done.”
So they leave. The other’s panic about trying to find Martyn and Mumbo’s staircase, and impulse has pillared so high he’s hit the ceiling (and found an iron vein in the process- luckiest stack ever) but Etho leads Grian to the opposite corner, where there’s a cave leading out.
He gets them to the surface and then Grian takes over when Etho starts walking the wrong way back to the base- Grian though his apparent horrible sense of direction, was a joke but it was seeming more and more true as they progressed.
But the first thing he does when they make it to the half finished spikey cake, is dig up the sugar cane. He’s sheepish about it and a little worried it might cost him a bit of that trust Etho had been so willing to offer, but it doesn’t seem to be the case, in fact- Etho seemed thrilled.
“You’ve been hiding it!” And he sounds so elated that Grian can’t help but laugh. “Oh-ho, we are set.”
Grian looks at him with disbelief. “You're not mad?”
Etho laughs, and claps a hand over Grian’s shoulders (taking a wide arch over the wings), pulling Grian into his side. “Should I be mad?”
“Because I made you walk around the server and try find sugar cane.” Etho had recapped him on his trading adventures while they’d strolled back- about Joel getting him and Lizze killed but they still seemed to be in good spirits, how Scott and Cleo were bordering on unhinged, walking a tightrope of betrayal and backstabbing.
“Which means no one will think we’ve got any.” He points out. “And I didn't even have to lie. I’m terrible at that.”
Honesty becomes grian’s favourite quality as he sticks as close to Etho’s side as he possibly can without tripping the pair of them up, walking a loop around the base and explains what he wanted to do with the base. They pass Etho’s sheep pen which he shows off proudly, explaining he can make a separate cow pen with the spruce wood just like their ‘spikey cake’
Etho claims to be a ‘copy ninja’- that while he may not have the best of building skills, he has certainly gotten very good at mimicking whatever was laid out in front of him, and he was proving to be excellent at following Grian’s lead with the base. It probably helps that the ‘spikey cake’ isn’t all that complicated.
And he lets Etho potter around with dripstone and logs as he farms up mangrove wood for the final layer.
The roots are a little hard to work around, but if he spams enough bone meal the trees grow around the already existing roots.
Grian works on the ground level, terraforming around it and building a little more inside, slowly replacing dirt with planks.
It’s a while before anyone shows up- but when they do, it’s pretty obvious, as the fresh dirt and gravel path crunches underfoot.
He turns, and he would have smiled, if not for the look of danger that lingered on Mumbo’s face, the desperation in his eyes. Instead, Grian frowns, shoulders tense as he sends a glance up, Etho still working away on the base’s upper level. “What brings you here?”
“He’s burnt down the ranch. I can’t deal with him, Grian.” Mumbo stressed, stepping closer.
Grian dumps another load of mangrove wood in the chest with a frown. “Well you don’t have much of a choice, do you?”
“I can. Scott and Cleo made their choice. They don’t need their soulmates. They chose each other.” And he really doesn't like the way Mumbo says that. Not one bit.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Mumbo was so willing to ditch his soulmate, not after the pillager tower disaster.
“I can’t do this,” Mumbo had sighed and finally let his posture truly slum, with a hefty sigh and a hand against his brow in defeat. “Scar, I’m leaving! If you get us killed…”
He trailed off with thoughts and threats left unsaid. The retreating sight of his soulmate didn’t deter Scar who shouted promises of a powerful base and continued his building in spite.
But maybe in obligation to his friends, or simply intrigued by the idea, Grian made his way to the top of the tower, his own soulmate in tow. He watched Mumbo retreat, disappearing into the tree-line.
Grian slammed the chest shut a little harder than necessary. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m saying we’ll work better together, then we are now- we could win.” Mumbo is still edging closer, one step at a time.
And it’s worrying because the sun is setting, it’s about to dip past the horizon and in the torch light, Mumbo looks taller- scarier. Back-lit by flickering yellow flames that don’t help that unhinged glint in his eyes.
And Grian remembers this conversation. Standing in front of his best friend and telling him that they could still be friends, with a pickaxe in his hand and smile on his face, hands itching with desperation as he moved closer and closer. Grian feels nothing but guilt- this is what it feels like, this is what Mumbo had experienced.
He grits his teeth and straightens his posture. His claws were inching out on instinct, but Grian didn’t want to swipe, so he curled his hands into fists, clamped at his side as blood dripped into his palms. “Just because you can’t handle Scar, doesn't make it my problem.”
“But don’t you get it- it was supposed to be us. In what world am I a better match with Scar than I am with you?” Mumbo pleaded, lowering his shield, there’s desperation in those words, in his panic and backhanded insults. But Grian drew the line at what he said next. “And in what world do you and Etho even make a lick of sense?”
Because he and Etho did work. They could divide and conquer, they trust each other, they worked together to build their base and they split resources easily. They shared secrets and kept each other steady
Etho was a good soulmate. He made Grian strive to be better, to care and protect. He stood atop a platform in a dangerous ancient city and waved with a massive grin hidden beneath his mask. He kept Grian safe and used a shield despite the others saying how much he hated it. He built a sheep pen out of the same resources that Grian made their base because he understood how much the aesthetics of building meant to Grian. He would gently pull the arrows from Grian’s skin with apologies tumbling from his lips because he understood the pain. He slept in a nest because Grain wanted him too.
And there’s rage bubbling up in Grian’s stomach, like boiling water, searing hot as it spilled over pot’s edge, dropping into burning flames and hissing as it turned to steam. He took a step forward, hand drifting to his blade. “We make sense. We work.”
“Yeah? Is that what today was? Him going to the deep dark without even trying to tell you? Nearly getting you killed in that horrible place by drawing the warden in with redstone?” Mumbo pressed, gripping Grian by the shoulders and holding him there- but he didn’t like it. It didn’t feel the same as when Etho had done it. This felt wrong, like he was being held down, chained to the ground. “I can do better. Please Grian. Let me be better.”
“No- Mumbo.” Grain rolled his shoulders, and flapped his wings, to shrug his hands off. “Just- back off okay?”
But Mumbo pressed further, getting right into Grian’s face, pleading. “You’re going to get killed working with him- and scar’s going to kill me.”
And maybe that would have been when Grain reached for his blade, give his words more weight- maybe he would have even swung.
But he didn’t need to because Mumbo's eyes flickered up, above Grian’s head and the low rumble of Etho’s voice growled: “You need to leave.”
And Mumbo pales, taking a step back with something akin to fear in his eyes.
There is blood dripping through those fingerless gloves of Etho’s, red and vibrant against his pale hands, one of which gripped his iron sword, glowing with sharpness. It hangs low in his grip as he stands at Grian's back, but there is enough fear in Mumbo’s eye to show that he understood. Etho would not hesitate to use it.
“I was just-”
“I said leave.” And then the blade tip is pressing against Mumbo’s jugular- right where those blinking three hearts sat pulsing rapidly with the beat of his heart.
Then in the silence. A hiss.
He feels the panic flare from a sense of awareness that wasn’t his, and the blade is gone from Mumbo’s throat as Etho pivots to slash, but it’s not enough.
Grian is not thrown from the force of the explosion, he doesn’t die from the fall damage because Etho had been there with his blade in the creeper. Maybe if they had shields it would have been a little different, if they weren't building and had dumped them inside so they could work freely. Perhaps they would have face planted just like they had when Joel smacked Etho with his shield, when they’d both ended up in knee deep water feeling well out of their depth with a soulmate.
But that’s not what happens, and they are dead the second it detonates.