Work Text:
There is a warden in decked out.
Hypno knows this, partially, because he’s been to level three himself. He knows that wardens roam the catacombs of The Black Mines on every level, sniffing out his scent faster than any ravager ever has—even though his run to level three was short lived—and Hypno knows that because… well, it’s hard not to know things with his namesake. It was a bit of a stand off of senses, really.
But Hypno isn’t talking about those wardens. He’s talking about the one that’s everywhere, and effectively, nowhere all at once. He’s talking about the one he’s heard humming in the shop. He’s talking about the one growling in the crypt. He’s talking about the heartbeat, identical to the thu-thud of Decked Out’s, in the spider’s den and the pirate ship. He’s talking about the sniffling sound, and something akin to a chuff, as he rides the minecart into the dungeon.
Indeed, there is a warden in Decked Out’s walls.
Tango doesn’t seem to be aware of this fact. At least, Hypno thinks he isn’t. Despite the Deepfrost Citadel and Decked Out’s visible complexity and design, Tango’s general observation skills aren’t as cracked up as it seems.
He mentioned his concern to the guy a few days ago, just before phase one ended so it, theoretically, could be fixed before phase two. To ensure fairness, and all that jazz.
As Hypno turns a corner towards the River of Souls and hears the faint groan beneath his feet, he knows it wasn’t fixed. He hops over the hazard trapdoors all the same and bounds towards the stairs of the crypt—and comes face to face with a ravager. He turns around. Whatever. He’ll just go—
The compass flips directly back into the crypt. Darn it.
Deep from below (or left? or right? sometimes it feels like the sounds are right on top of him) a warden chuffs.
It sounds like laughter.
Just yesterday, Hypno asked some of the others in the waiting room—or, the daycare? is that what they were calling it now?—if they’d heard the warden in Decked Out’s walls. False had said she thought she heard one in the circular room towards the front of level one, but she might have confused it for a ravager instead. Gem said she definitely heard one in level two a few days ago. Etho said something about speculating it was some kind of secret regarding the fourth level, which Cub immediately shot down by saying that the distance between levels would be too far if they were to assume level four was below level three.
Scar said he had heard a very loud growling inside the shop. Something like warbling, half jumbled noises and speech that seemed to range between content and very, very irritated. Tango had told him it was a squirrel.
Grian had spun around on a dime and gave the most expressive face he could muster with only his two eyes as he yelled, “Why on earth would there be a squirrel in the dungeon, Scar!”
Good news, Scar no longer thinks it’s a squirrel. Also good news, from that conversation, Hypno had came to the conclusion that he was not, in fact, going crazy.
Bad news—Reckless Charge is played, Tango’s disembodied voice announces, and Hypno scrambles over a nearby shrieker only to trip face first into a dripstone stalagmite in his haste—now that he knows this thing really isn’t supposed to be here, it makes the irritated growling at least ten times worse every time he picks up his frost ember spoils.
Hypno slides into the next room and finds a key laying atop a pile of snow. He scoops it up, shakes his hand free of frozen powder, and turns back around.
Now that he’s thinking about it, Hypno really wishes he’d asked Scar when Tango had told him the warden noises in the shop had come from a squirrel. Having a timeline here would be extremely helpful. If Tango already knew there was a possibility of a loose warden and still lied to Scar… Well, of course, there was always the possibility Tango was just messing with the guy, but…
Hypno drops his key into the slot.
He furrows his brows. Well. That would be really weird.
It would be really weird, actually, because Tango was a game design perfectionist. He set out to make the best possible design and playability in a game known to man, and expected others to do the same. He expected everything to run smoothly, and would test and test and test some more until it would. Everyone knew that. Tango wouldn’t just purposefully leave a warden to wander around Decked Out.
Or maybe he couldn’t find it? Hypno purses his lips. That somehow seemed less likely. Tango knew the ins and outs of this game like nobody’s business. He was tangled up in its redstone guts for thirteen months, for god’s sakes.
So why…
It feels like a truck hits his abdomen.
Hypno yelps, startled out of his thoughts, and crawls back into the entryway of level two. He glares at the ravager, head poking through the doorway innocently. Hungrily. Hypno sighs and begins to stand back up.
Maybe he was putting too much thought into this whole “warden in Decked Out’s walls” thing. He couldn’t even hear it anymore, anyways.
But by god, he couldn’t help it if his head swam with all of the possibilities, the reasons, the details—the fact that the hermits knew it was there, and tango didn’t, and wasn’t that odd—the everything that came along with this game, and this particular unexplainable detail about it.
What a meticulous creation, to have something so uncared for.
Hypno dives into the water. He swerves out of the way of an incoming trident and rolls out onto land, dripping wet and breathing hard. He would have to ring out his bandana between these runs again. That was going to start becoming a hassle very soon. One he would have to endure, unfortunately. God forbid he take off his bandana for a full run and accidentally see where every evoker was hiding in the floorboards.
There’s a key lying on the ground just in front of the dripstone caves. He rushes over to pick it up.
The door chimes. Hypno steps through and down into the darkened stairwell once more, half squatting, half tiptoeing, at the plateaus. Deep below, loud enough to shake the lantern’s flame on the shelf next to him, there is a wet warble of a warden.
It’s appropriately timed now, Hypno thinks, but it still makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up all the same. The warden is loud now, louder than when it was in the walls, and the floor, and in front of him. It’s almost like being suffocated, the sound bounces off the walls and into his eardrums and makes it sound like it’s on top of him, or just behind him, or—
Or everywhere, and nowhere all at once. In the shop, in the dungeon, in the walls. Always present, never visible.
Following.
Hypno freezes in the entryway to the Black Mines. There is a warden in decked out. Two, actually, but that second one is of nowhere near his concern as he looks directly into the spot where this warden’s eyes would be, no more than ten feet away from him.
The darkness pulses around him. Hypno takes a step back, hand searching for the stairwell’s walls and missing, waving at air instead. The warden growls.
Darkness floods Hypno’s vision. It pulses around him, wanes, and Hypno reaches back for the stairwells walls. His hand misses. The warden wails. It bounds off of the walls, reverberates as a horrible shriek. The walls are nowhere to be seen, and the sculk at his feet hums as it reaches closer for his skin, thrumming and shrieking to the same tune. Hypno scrapes his hands on the ground as he falls, staring at black, then blue, and then black, and Hypno sees robes as his eyes widen, darkened and silk in texture with snowflakes embroidered into the seams, and blue, and black, and blue eyes where they shouldn’t be, and the heartbeat is deafening now, he can see it pulse through the warden’s chest as it howls and its chest opens, and Hypno thinks he sees his face in one of the souls it carries there, and black robes, and blue eyes, and a darkened hood, and a cackling laugh, and Hypno screams as the warden blasts his head clean off.
He shoots up in bed. There’s sweat on his forehead. The voices outside call his name. Hypno breathes hard, and sits there, and puts his hands in his hair.
There is a warden in Decked Out’s walls. As Hypno stares up at Tango, a nervous smile on his face, he realizes, there always has been.