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“They don’t care about you, you know?”
“What?” Grian Xelqua jumped at Andathen’s sudden intrusion into his personal space.
“The players you keep watching. I’m assuming they are old associates of yours?” Andathen asked. Their voice, so controlled, somehow still exuded disdain at Xelqua’s player origins.
“Friends. They were my friends before I came here,” Xelqua responded, looking back at the crystal he’d been watching through.
“But they are not anymore. For you are not a player anymore. Having such… attachments is almost an insult to the gift you were given,” the way Andathen spoke made it clear that they did not just ‘almost’ see it as an insult.
“Mind your own business Andathen. You wouldn’t understand.”
Andathen sighed. “Don’t let Tetra or other elders catch you doing this Xelqua,” they said, lightly running one of their hands over Xelqua’s empty, blindingly white pure white wings.
Xelqua raised his eyebrow and pulled his wing away from other Watcher’s touch. “And why is that?”
“We both know you are on thin ice with the elders. They are getting increasingly aware of your insubordinate tendencies. You are too attached to those players. You are not one of them anymore. You’re above that Xelqua. I’m just looking out for you.”
Xelqua scoffed. “I’m just watching. That’s what we do right? We watch. I’m watching. Leave me alone.”
“It’s up to you what you do with that information player,” the word player was spat at him like a curse. He’d clearly offended the fellow young Watcher again. Andathen started walking away, but not before muttering “he has his wings yet still uses a crystal. One I’m sure he’s not even supposed to have in his chambers. I’m not one to question the elders but-” the rest of their sentence faded away as Andathen disappeared from Xelqua’s suppressed range. His white wings were pressed tightly against his back. Opening them to watch still gave him a blinding headache. The last time he’d done it he’d ended up throwing up on the floor right in front of Tetra. The consequences were not something he cared to repeat. The lesson had sunk in, and he was aware it was just training, but deep down he wasn’t happy with it.
He turned his attention back to the pink crystal he’d been holding. In it he could see Jimmy and Martyn moving around EVO. They were working on a new build together. A lighthearted discussion was clearly going on, but the crystal only showed the image of them and didn’t produce any sound. To observe that… Xelqua reluctantly opened one of his wings a tiny bit and turned his attention towards the world of EVO. Even with how little he was opening his vision he was still assaulted by ghostly phantoms of other worlds surrounding EVO. Worlds he’d been trying hard to block out. Warped, broken worlds that had been torn apart by corrupted code. He’d been nervously watching the progression of the glitch heading towards his world even before he’d been chosen. A part of him wondered if Martyn, the new admin, was aware of it. He focused with all his might on the two friends in front of him.
“I still think that we should’ve gone with terracotta and not wool Martyn!”
“Terracotta is not nearly bright enough for what we are trying to achieve. We’ve been over this!”
“Yes, but I still think you are wrong.”
“Keep thinking that buddy. ”
He wanted to continue watching, but was violently dragged out of the crystal by force. All his eyes were forcibly turned towards the new presence behind him.
“Junior Watcher Xelqua. We should’ve known you were here.” Tetra’s icy voice cut through the silence of Xelqua’s chamber. Behind him Xelqua could see Adhara, an elder around the same age as Tetra, standing with their arms crossed and their four wings wide open.
He dropped the pink crystal in shock. It clattered on the floor and shattered.
“I’m just watching-” he tried to defend himself, but Adhara held up their hand. The rest of his sentence faltered inside his throat. He couldn’t tell if it was fear or if Adhara was manipulating his code to get him to be silent.
“Just watching,” they said coldly. “Just watching the attachments you have been specifically instructed to let go of. Multiple times.” they scoffed. “Just watching. But how long until just watching turns into interfering Xelqua?”
“I wasn’t-” silence oppressively wrapped around his vocal chords. That was code manipulation, he knew it. It hurt.
“Elder Tetra, what is the state of the world the insolent younglin keeps looking at?”
Tetra opened their second pair of wings. Their face gave away nothing as their visible eyes zoned out. When they snapped back to the young watcher in front of them they looked down on them as they delivered the news.
“As we expected.” Xelqua’s confusion was evident on his face, because Tetra responded to the unspoken question. “Do you really think none of us had noticed your continuous obsession with that world? That none of us would notice you stealing one of our crystals for your personal use? If you think that then you are a fool Xelqua. An obsessive fool with too many attachments to the player world. Though that problem is soon to solve itself.”
Panic shot through Xelqua. What did they mean? He couldn’t ask the question because Adhara was still silencing him.
“Take the younglin to one of the lesson rooms. If he likes to watch that world so badly he can see what happens to worlds like that. Worlds where admins get too confident and mess too much with the fabric of the world they inhabit without the right knowledge.”
-The room he was locked in was entirely white. Tetra was standing behind him, forcing him to kneel in front of Adhara with his wings spread wide. Xelqua’s head was pounding from the multitude of images assaulting him. The shattered crystal had been dropped in front of him as well, as a clear reminder of his failure.
“Don’t-” he tried to defend himself, but Adhara silenced him again. Closing the two eyes in his head did nothing to lessen the images invading his brain.
“You have been warned before younglin. Your obsession with those players has gone on for too long. And now in your pursuit of that obsession you have broken one of our precious components. How long until you’d interfere? Interfere in the world you doomed in your player arrogance.”
Xelqua’s blood turned to ice. Fleeting shots of the desolated worlds surrounding EVO suddenly poked its way into his consciousness. On one there was still a player crawling around, his arm crushed and bleed-
Adhara reached out and roughly grabbed his hair. “And now you will watch as the consequences of your arrogance destroy that world. You will watch, Xelqua.”
With that, Tetra reached out and forced all of Xelqua’s eyes towards EVO.
The first thing he spotted was the warped code. It was slowly spreading from the end into the overworld-
-Martyn was looking with concern at his HUD as it showed many reports of chunks getting corrupted-
-”It’s getting closer Taurtis, and I’m not sure if I can stop it in time.”
“Can’t you contact Ğ̶͈͆̓r̷̛̭̤͍͛́i̴̦͌͂͠a̷̹̋n̵̨̦̑̃̌?”
“Taurtis, we’ve been over this. He’s-”
-Jimmy was screaming as he and Pearl were running away. A… creeper? Was following them. But creepers weren’t supposed to be purple, nor were they supposed to turn the ground black wherever they walked-
-”I need to get this damn portal open! Why won’t it connect to one of the hubs?!”
“Experimental worlds can’t directly connect to a hub!”
“How do you- nevermind that, where do we go then?!”
“Maybe you can-”
-The world was crumbling only chunks away from spawn. If Pearl was less concerned about her safety she’d be lamenting the loss of her builds. But right now she was more concerned with the fact she didn’t know where-
-”JIMMY! GO THROUGH!”
“WHAT ABOUT YOU?! AND TAURTIS? WHERE DID HE GO?!”
“HE SHOULD BE RIGHT AROUND HERE! I’LL LOOK FOR HIM, JUST JUMP MAN!”-
-Blood. There was so much blood. He could feel his very being being torn apart piece by piece as the corruption took ahold of him. Acid ate away at his tendons. His ligaments tore themselves apart as he crawled towards the portal. His blood was boiling. The drops that made it out were smoking as they hit the corrupted floor below him. He cried out with the last breath he had in his lungs before they collapsed in on themselves. “Ğ̶͈͆̓r̷̛̭̤͍͛́i̴̦͌͂͠a̷̹̋n̵̨̦̑̃̌!”-
“Make it stop!” Xelqua whimpered softly. “Please Adhara, please make it stop!”
“No.”
-He saw him. Still convulsing on the ground. His breaths were coming out spasmodically. Blood and spittle mixed as his skin slowly turned an ugly mess of purple and black. “Ğ̶͈͆̓r̷̛̭̤͍͛́i̴̦͌͂͠a̷̹̋n̵̨̦̑̃̌!” he cried. And Martyn’s heart shattered a little more as he reached out a powerless hand towards the dying form of Taurtis. He knew he was gone. Knew that there was no way to save him. If he brought his body through the portal it would spread the corruption to the next world. So, with his heart aching and tears streaming down his face he stepped through the portal and closed it behind him-
Abruptly, Adhara let go of his hair. Xelqua dropped forward onto the floor like a puppet who just had his strings cut. Sobs wracked his body. “Taurtis- no-” his eyes were still seeing his dead body. As it was torn apart by the ruined code. As it-
“Let this be a lesson Xelqua. This is why we watch, and do not interfere. Why players should not be given as much power as they have sometimes. Why we are teaching you to be better. You will be better. You will be perfect like us. Won’t you?”
The only response Xelqua could give was more sobbing.
-The world was crumbling only chunks away from spawn. If Pearl was less concerned about her safety she’d be lamenting the loss of her builds. But right now she was more concerned with the fact she didn’t know where Taurtis was. She’d seen Jimmy earlier, when they’d both been followed by a creeper. Martyn had announced that he was at spawn where he’d managed to temporarily open a portal. But he wasn’t able to teleport people anymore. The world was falling apart around her. The ugly purple ground was fast approaching. She’d seen what happened when living creatures were touched by it. Even just breathing the air of the corrupted world was making her stomach turn.
She needed to get out.
Now.
She knew she couldn’t jump to a hubworld. Not without risking her life. The hubworlds closest to EVO were… hostile at best. Especially to people who entered it through less than official channels. Really, she could only think of one world she could jump to. One she was whitelisted on.
Gem’s homeworld. The world she’d created after she finished becoming an admin.
PearlescentMoon: cant make it to spawn im jumping out will get in contact as soon as i’m safe
She unfocused her eyes and grabbed ahold of the nearest weak spot in EVO’s whitelist. It would be a rough process, especially with the corruption already deeply rooted in the world.
3
2
1
Jump.
Her body bounced against Gem’s whitelist. A sharp shock of pain shot through her. What? She blindly grabbed ahold of the code and started tearing through it in the way G̴̠̀̇ṙ̷̝̤͗i̶̧̳̾a̵̛̮͍̔ņ̶̌̇ had taught her. It was supposed to be a last resort, but she had no other choice. Grab the code, push it aside. Tear through the parts that needed to be destroyed to let her through. Her hands started to burn violently. It was like acid was eating her hands. Fire licked at her hands. But she kept moving. Kept moving. Kept-
She hit the ground hard. She stumbled against a tree and barely pushed herself away from it.
“Pearl?”
She swayed on her legs as she was caught by Gem. “Hi Gem, thanks for catching me,” she breathed out.
“Are you okay? Oh my god what happened to you?!” Gem held on to her friend. She looked harrowed. Some of her clothes were torn and her usually vibrant moth wings were dull and shaking slightly. Her hands looked slightly burned and blistered.
“I uh, sorry, I had to break through your whitelist to get in. You should fix that. The security is fairly weak.” Pearl rambled.
“Let’s, oh god, okay, right. Let’s go inside. I need to bandage your hands. Weren’t you on EVO?”
Pearl’s eyes unfocussed. She’d already been shaking, but the mention of EVO upped the ante significantly.
“Okay, wrong thing to say?” Gem breathed out. When Pearl didn’t respond she gently grabbed her by the arm and started guiding her inside. “So, you uh, jumped? I’m guessing you jumped here. But why- didn’t I- nevermind. Either way welcome to my personal world I guess? I made it right after I finished becoming an admin. It’s not very big, like I didn’t generate it very far? Just enough to get like all the wood types and stuff,” Gem kept on talking as she brought her friend inside the house. She guided Pearl onto one of the dining chairs. “Sit still okay? I’m going to grab some bandages and a healing potion.”
Healing potion? Right. Her hands. She’d torn her way through the firewall to get there. She’d blindly jumped away from EVO when it became clear that the world was about to get fully corrupted. Martyn had managed to get a portal open to… somewhere. But she’d been too far away from it when she’d realised that the corruption was surrounding her. So she’d fallen back on the things Grian had taught her back when they still lived in one of the hubworlds. How to force a jump from one world to another. Not elegant, but it worked. Most admins didn’t take kindly to invaders, so she’d grabbed on to the coordinates Gem had send her when she’d gotten her own world. Part of her questioned why Gem hadn’t whitelisted her. Didn’t she say that Pearl had been?
Martyn, where was Martyn? And Jimmy and Taurtis and BigB and- she grabbed her communicator and tried to type, but the pain in her fingers made her gasp and pull away from it. Right, burned and blistered hands. How had she hurt them? Right, the firewall-
“Oh darling,” Gem exhaled as she entered the room again. “Don’t do that.”
Pearl looked back down at her hands. The angry wounds looked worse now. “What?” she asked confused.
“You were picking at them sweetheart. Can I?” Gem asked, gesturing at her hands.
Pearl vaguely nodded. Gem grabbed one of her hands and gently wrapped the damp bandage around her fingers and hand. “It’s soaked with healing potion. Should speed up the healing process.”
“EVO is gone,” Pearl breathed out.
The bandage that was being wrapped around her other hand stopped moving. “What?”
“EVO,” the shaking that had stilled for only a moment started back up with a vengeance. “Got corrupted. I had to get out as fast as possible? But I don’t know where the others went. Oh god,” she raised up her communicator again. “I don’t- I need to-”
Gem grabbed ahold of her arm. “Pearl, breathe darling.”
She shook herself loose and started frantically typing. But every message she send was bounced back. The communicator seemed to not be able to find any of her EVO friends. She turned back to Gem. “Message Martyn,” she commanded.
“Sorry?”
“Message Martyn Gem! Please, for the love of god message Martyn or any of the others on EVO! My communicator- I think it’s broken. It must be broken. Please message him for gods sake!”
“I will, I will. Let me finish bandaging your hands and then I’ll message them.” quickly finishing the job, Gem grabbed her own communicator and started typing. Pearl watched intensely as Gem’s face slowly darkened.
“What?” she pressed her friend.
“Uhm,” Gem paused.
The silence was not taken well by Pearl. “What?! Just tell me. Tell me!”
“The, uh, the communicator can’t find their ID.”
Pearl grabbed Gem’s arm tightly. Gem winced, but she didn’t notice. “Excuse me?!”
“It can’t find them Pearl. They’re, everyone from EVO, they’re either dead or corrupted to the point where their ID is no longer valid.”
-”JIMMY! GO THROUGH!”
“WHAT ABOUT YOU?! AND TAURTIS? WHERE DID HE GO?!”
“HE SHOULD BE RIGHT AROUND HERE! I’LL LOOK FOR HIM, JUST JUMP MAN!”
Jimmy looked around frantically, inhaled shakily and hugged Martyn tightly. “See you soon,” he breathed out before practically throwing himself through the portal.
Martyn look a tentative step away from the portal. Taurtis should’ve been right behind him and Jimmy. Where was-
He saw him. Still convulsing on the ground. His breaths were coming out spasmodically. Blood and spittle mixed as his skin slowly turned an ugly mess of purple and black. “Grian!” he cried. And Martyn’s heart shattered a little more as he reached out a powerless hand towards the dying form of Taurtis. He knew he was gone. Knew that there was no way to save him. If he brought his body through the portal it would spread the corruption to the next world. So, with his heart aching and tears streaming down his face he stepped through the portal and closed it behind him.
The world tumbled around him. Grey and white mist made it hard for him to see where he was going. This wasn’t how portals were supposed to function. Not at all. But it had been a last ditch effort. If Jimmy was right it would spit them out on a world close to a hubworld. From there Jimmy would be able to jump them to the hubworld. But the movement of everything around him was making him feel sick to his stomach. The mist felt like it was starting to choke him. As if it wanted to keep him in this shadow world forever. He started running. He needed to get away. Before he got stuck here forever. Before-
And suddenly there was light. And ground. And a tree. A tree which he slammed in to at full speed. Gasping, he fell to the ground and grabbed onto his shoulder. White sparks of pain shot through him as soon as he touched it. Shit. He was pretty sure his shoulder was dislocated. But that wasn’t nearly his highest priority. No, his first priority was figuring out where the hell he was. And his second priority was figuring out where Jimmy was. Or any of his friends besides- He raised his communicator and pulled up the basic world details.
Huh.
The HUD wouldn’t show his coordinates. Or the basic world details. Stuff it really was supposed to show. Where he was, where the nearest hub was. That kind of thing. Instead the letters and numbers were so glitched it gave him a headache just looking at it. “What the…” he muttered to himself. He pulled up the world chat.
InTheLittleWood: Jimmy?
InTheLittleWood: are you here?
Nobody replied. Had Jimmy not landed on this world? He knew that the chance of Pearl being on the same world as him was slim. She’d forced a jump on her own when she’d gotten surrounded. But Jimmy should’ve been here. He decided to try and message Jimmy through personal message. It should be able to reach him across worlds.
InTheLittleWood -> SolidarityGaming: Jimmy where are you?
InTheLittleWood -> SolidarityGaming: I have no clue where I am
InTheLittleWood -> SolidarityGaming: the HUD won’t show it
The message you tried to send could not be delivered -> Invalid player ID
Nauseating fear settled in his stomach. He knew he had used the right ID. Jimmy had been his friend for years. Invalid player ID- he didn’t want to think about the possible reasons his ID couldn’t be detected. He could only think of two, maybe three- no. He forced his mind away from the strange beings that had taken Grian. Readjusting the way he was sitting made sharp pain shoot through him again, and he nearly gagged from it. Fuck, that needed to be taken care of. But for all he knew he was alone in this world. Nobody had replied to his global messages. And his knowledge of coding was too limited to look into things like player lists and stuff. Which meant he had to take care of his shoulder himself. He vaguely remembered Grian explaining how to reset a joint.
“Grab it,” Martyn whispered to himself as encouragement. “And then pull-” with a sharp movement he jerked his arm before he could second guess himself. His shoulder mostly snapped back into place. He gagged again, this time from both shock and pain. But his shoulder was mostly back in place. It felt off, like it hadn’t quite fully gone back in right, but he would take it for now.
Now, the problem was that he was still stuck. Stuck on a strange world with no apparent connection to a hub and unable to reach his friends.
In short, he was stranded.