Chapter Text
Elisabeth was running, she had been running for a few minutes now and yet sand was still all she could see, she had found a few cave openings and memorized their entrances as well as she could but she hadn’t strayed into them yet, first she had to find a tree, maybe some seeds. Hopefully she could catch a chicken or two. She jumped up a few blocks and looked over a deep ravine that stretched the desert for miles and miles but wasn’t that broad at all. It had a small waterfall in it and she took the jump, landing on the other side with only one heart damage. She ran on.
Finally, she found a hill with trees on the top, the grass seemed to smile as it waved in the breeze. Elisabeth took one look at the sun, noting that it was past midday, and began to cut down the wood. Oak, the most common type. She made her first crafting table, getting the achievement last, it pinged up in her peripheral vision. She made a pickaxe and a shovel, glad to note that the looming mountain also had a small cave entrance, now she wouldn’t have to go back or dig something new. There was plenty of coal and once she had gotten her stone and enough wood the sky was turning dark and orange tones so she lit up the entrance, warding off the monsters that would soon come and ventured into the cave.
She had to kill a few spiders with her pickaxe and narrowly got cornered by a surprisingly large mound of zombies. She had three hearts left when they were finally gone but now she had a new problem, in all her haste to make it into the caves she had forgotten about the food. She had nothing but rotting zombie flesh. With a disgruntled noise she decided that she would have to get a lot hungrier before she would eat that. Perhaps she would get lucky and find someone who had been wiser with their priorities.
This did mean, however, that she could not afford to lose any more hearts, she’d be damned if she lost her life on the very first day. She looked into the deeper parts of the cave, where it was so dark she could only guess, based on the monster noises, what was waiting for her in the darkness. So she crafted another pickaxe and started digging out whatever iron and coal she could find in the lit parts of the cave, worriedly keeping her eye on the food bar that was steadily declining.
“Oh thank god, I thought I was the only one here.”
Elisabeth jumped, pickaxe ready in her hand and saw Miss Hudson standing in the middle of the cave. She cheerfully looked around, jumping through parts of the cave clearly hoping to find any iron Elisabeth might have missed.
“You scared me.”
“Sorry dear, I just wanted shelter from the mobs. I nearly got hounded there by a group of skeletons. Hate those things- with their nasty arrows.”
Elisabeth smiled at the chatty lady who was searching around, standing still at the part of the cave that ventured into darker areas.
“You are welcome to stay here, and hey, do you happen to have any food with you?”
Ms Hudson looked at her for a moment before throwing some pink and red things in her direction, “uncooked, but here you go. Do you have something I might want?”
“I’ve got coal?”
That did just fine. Hudson used the coal to craft torches which quickly filled up the whole cave. A bit of a waste to Elisabeth but she decided not to object. They chatted away, glad to have company, waiting for the pork chops to roast in the oven and for Elisabeth’s health to go up.
“I’ve got to be honest with you, I'm not the biggest fan of this whole hardcore mode, I get very scared to die.”
Elisabeth hummed in agreement while she made an iron pickaxe and a sword.
“I’ll stay with you while we cave, okay? I kill the monsters, you dig.”
She nodded solemnly, “That will do just fine...”
So they ventured deeper into the bowels of the earth, finding their way through tunnels and treacherous ravines and holes in the ground. Miss Hudson turned out to have a knack for finding small tunnels that led into bigger ones and she led the way for them while Elisabeth took on spiders and zombies. When they got really deep, so deep the stone was beginning to turn into a deep slate and they had to work extra hard to get through it all the narrow tunnel they had been digging opened into a huge cave. She had to kill a lot of slimes, this time getting help from Miss Hudson who saw the threat all these creatures formed for them. And after lighting up most of it she could see a part that was already alight, not by lava but with a torch.
“Someone has been here before.”
“Mr Darcy got the diamond achievement a while ago, it could be him.”
“Oh no.”
Miss Hudson giggled at her serious tone, “I’m sure there is plenty left.”
“Unlikely,” Elisabeth grumbled as she started digging out the few ores she could find, she had a notable collection of iron by now and a small stack of redstone and lapis, but no diamonds, and they had been digging for so long. When she saw Miss Hudson's skeptical face she shrugged, “I’ll be nice.”
“Good afternoon to you ladies” Mr Darcy’s low voice echoed through the stone walls and this time Elisabeth did not jump,
She stepped off the ledge and found Mr Darcy in a side route she had missed next to a small stack of chests. He was wearing full diamond armor.
“Hello to you too sir.” She said with her most formal tone and imitated a bow by crouching.
“You don’t happen to know the location of any diamonds around here right?” She asked as she searched through his chests. He had an aggravating amount of stacks in there but no diamonds she concluded while Mister Darcy tried to push her away from the chests.
“Hey, don’t go snooping.”
“Snooping. Me? What do you accuse me of sir?” She smiled while Miss Hudson audibly rolled her eyes in the background.
“Go find your own stuff.”
“Oh I've got plenty, I was only curious.”
“So, have you found a village yet?” Miss Hudson interjected casually. She walked directly between Elisabeth and Darcy, breaking up their argument.
“I think I'm gonna be making a farm on this server,” she mused, mostly to herself, “I hope the villagers are still alive.”
“I hope so too but I wouldn’t be too sure of that if i were you. There has been a lot of cow slaughter these past minutes. If you are especially unlucky all resources could have gone up before you find your way back to the surface.”
Elisabeth shook her head, “Stupid shortsighted people.”
“Oh and you haven’t killed any cows?”
“No, as a matter of fact i haven’t”
“Yes, you just get to eat the ones I killed.” Miss Hudson reminded her.
“Who's committing murder and when can I join?” a new, slow voice appeared from behind them, scaring everyone except Darcy who didn’t move at all and simply watched Crowley as he took a final jump and stood next to them. He had long, flaming red hair and dark black sunglasses. In the other servers he often used his elytra to create black wings for himself, adding to that Fallen Angel flair he tried to emit. Without them, he just looked like some guy in a leather jacket.
“You’re not allowed to start killing until your third life, Crowley.” Mr Darcy reminded him with the tone of someone who has had that conversation before.
“Eh. Rules are what I wipe my buttocks with.”
“Mr Crowley!” Miss Hudon scolded him, she sounded genuinely upset. “You cannot speak like that.”
“Right,” Elisabeth murmured to herself, “We best get going, see if we can find a spot you two haven’t exhausted yet.” Elisabeth began pushing Miss Hudson ahead of herself into the tunnel.
“Good luck with that.” Crowley yelled after them. Mr Darcy said something else but they were already too far to properly hear what he was saying.
They did end up finding diamonds, one to be exact, and Miss Hudson insisted Elisabeth could take it. By then they had gotten themselves geared up, and as much as she would like to complain, it had been a rather successful trip and food was running low. So they went up to the surface sharing all their profits as fairly as they could. Elisabeth gave her last few porkchops back to Miss Hudson hoping that would be a semblance of repayment for the diamond.
“Pleasant working with you, Miss.” She said, already looking around for a next mission, she wanted to get more wood, before a monopoly on any trees could exist and she wanted to catch some animals, all of which would be much easier to do alone.
“Well. I'm gonna see if I can find a village.” Miss Hudson said, also looking around. “There is a river over there,” she looked at the mountain, gesturing over it.
“I’ll go there then, If i find a village i’ll give you the coordinates.”
“Good day.” They smiled at each other and simultaneously looked at the sky, it was morning, but they knew that even night would not bring their end.
She dug a hole in the ground in the forest hoping it would work as an automatic trap and then she planted a few trees around it, hiding it from view, should it catch what she hoped it would. It wasn’t a large world and she didn’t take very long to run into someone else. While she was cutting down birch trees, a kind she loved to work with, she spotted a nametag at the other side of the hill.
She cut down the last tree block opting to leave her chest and crafting table where they were in order to go after whoever was nearby.
“Hello, who is there?!” She asked while running through the woods in the direction of the nametag,
“Hello?” A lady's voice came from somewhere she could not determine and Elisabeth began to smile, she knew that voice.
“Jane, is that you?”
“Yes, who is it?”
“It’s me, Elisabeth.”
“Sister! Up here!”
Elisabeth looked up and saw Jane standing on top of the trees. She had blonde hair pulled back in a braid and was wearing what looked like a blue dress but with separate legs so she could move around more easily. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where were you?”
“I was busy caving, but I've got a load of good supplies now, come with me, I'll show you the chest.” She said, already jumping up and down in the direction of where she had left her things. Jane, who wasn't geared up at all except for a pair of boots, quickly jumped down next to her and began to follow. “I’ve been struggling here at the surface, nearly dying to those blasted mobs twice now. But you want to know what I do have?”
“Well?”
“A diamond.”
“What would you do with a sole diamond?” Elisabeth asked while thinking about how happy she had been with her own single diamond.
“Not a clue but I got it for free from Crowley.”
“Free?!”
“In return for an unknown favour.”
“So you sold your soul to the devil.” She jokingly stated, pushing Jane to hurry up and go back to her spot on the mountain.
“Come on now, he’s hardly a devil, I was planning to team up with him later anyway, just wanted to see you first.”
Carmilla: fell from a high place
Elisabeth hadn’t noticed the message in her peripheral vision until the reaction started to come in. Jane was searching through her chest and slid a hand through her hair. “I cannot believe Carmilla has died already…”
“How???”
They were silent for a while, thinking about their friend who has already lost one of her lives. She was known for her reckless nature but this was impressive, even for her.
“So much iron, lapis, redstone, deepslate. Oh we could build such a pretty house from this.” Jane exclaimed as she searched through their stuff. “And look at all that coal.”
Elisabeth shrugged, listening only partly. “Do whatever you want… But I'm not teaming up with Crowley, he’s in the same team as Mr Darcy.”
“Why? What did he do wrong?”
“Crowley’s fine, Darcy just annoyed me.”
Jane hesitated for a few seconds, looking around like a solution was to be found in the leaves and clouds.
“Fine. Do you want to make this the homebase or shall we search for something else? I have seeds so we should plant them as soon as possible.”
“It’s a bit steep,”
“I’ll give it legs to stand on, come on it’ll be really pretty.”
“I’ll start the farm. I might even have some cows around here.”
Jane started jumping out of excitement while she searched through the chests again and started sorting stuff. Elisabeth used the time to create a bucket and ventured out to the river she had seen nearby. it wasn’t really the premise of the game, to decide who you will and will not team up with, before it has even properly started but Elisabeth found it near impossible to not team up with Jane, she trusted her more than everyone else on the server combined. How could she pick anyone over her sister ? She walked past the river bedding, searching for possible sugarcane and picking a few flowers. before she took a bucket of water. There was a lot of sand where she stood and on the other side of the river a desert began. The very desert she had braved on the first day here. She was distracted, staring at all that sand just when someone jumped out of the water and next to her on the river bedding. She shouted and Elisabeth nearly dropped her bucket. Directly next to her stood a girl with dark hair pigtails and blood all over her clothing and even beneath one eye. She looked like she came straight out of a horror movie in which the little girl is the serial killer.
“Hi Wednesday.”
“Did I scare you?”
“Yes, I'm terrified.”
“Good.”
This whole exchange was done in a dry tone that didn’t betray any sarcasm from Wednesday’s side. Elisabeth looked her haggard from up and down.
“Are you okay? You look… rough.”
“No worries, I just had a run in with a vampire.”
“Do you mean Carmilla?” Elisabeth asked, thinking about the vampire persona who loved to haunt servers and kill anyone on sight, she was made for things like this and as much as the woman scared her she could easily predict that having her on her side would be the best. “Did you leave on good terms?”
“Oh yes naturally, she’s out adventuring right now but we’ve already agreed to team up.”
“That sounds smart.” She agreed, internally winching in fear of these two being a murder duo. It was a good thing they were still peaceful. Hopefully it would last.
“Do you want to see the base Jane and I are working on?”
“Sure” She said in her cold voice, following Elisabeth right behind as they walked back into the forest just as the sun began to go down. Elisabeth placed as many torches as she could while they walked/sprinted back. She hoped Jane had been smart about it and placed torches in the whole area. She probably had, Jane thought ahead and things. When she found the base back she was anything but disappointed, Jane was standing on a dirt pillar a few blocks above the ground slaying a single mob that had already spawned. Wednesday grinned at the sight, “You good up there?”
“Having a blast, thank you. You look rough however”
“Appearances are not what they seem,” Wednesday said as more mobs started to spawn and she went after a single skeleton that was firing at them. Elisabeth placed some more torches in the already decently lit up area and received some blows from a zombie she hadn't heard come up to her. It didn't take too long to clear out the area and Wednesday seemed to share Jane's vision for the house and started helping her build. Elisabeth watched them work together, discussing building blocks and what would give the most mountain cabin-like vibe. It seemed to become a heated debate between cobblestone at the base or granite, one that Wednesday was winning. Elisabeth listened for a while before she realized that she didn’t care and started to work on the farm. There were stairs leading up to the front door and beneath the stairs she started to level out the ground, digging on one side and adding blocks on the other the ground started to become more and more level. near the food of the hill she did some final landscaping and then finally planted her small collection of seeds, it wasn’t too long until green sprouts started to rise from the earth and some even turned a darker shade of green. She placed a few more torches, just to ensure their growth wouldn’t be obstructed by the darkness of the night. Just when she turned around to start making a chicken coop, she had seen plenty around, it wouldn’t take long to fill it. She saw a flash of red from the corner of her eye. At the bottom of the hill, still a notable distance away a woman was running at them full speed, she turned around only once to hit a zombie to death with her bare hands and then hide behind a tree from a skeleton. Elisabeth was so entranced by the sight that she completely forgot to help her until she got hit with another arrow and let out a yelp in genuine fear.
Elisabeth jumped down three blocks, glad she had calculated that she should never make a plane so high you could get real damage from falling down it.
“I take the left, you take the right, okay?” she stated, before quickly drawing her sword, it was more equipped for hand to hand combat like this, her shield was still in her inventory and she took it out in a small pause after she had taken down the skeleton. They fought side by side in silence, too busy holding off the mobs to have a proper conversation, like ‘hi, welcome to the mountain cabin.’
Wednesday and Jane had come out of the house by now, realizing something was wrong thanks to the noises.
An arrow landed between the eyes of the zombie that was currently beating Elisabeth and she looked back for a split second in gratefulness to see her sister standing on the half made roof holding bow and arrow and focusing now on protecting Carmilla who was still fighting two zombies at the same time. Wednesday jumped into the melee without hesitation and fought back to back with Carmilla.
Now that four of them were fighting and they were slowly backing up into the lit parts of the area the monsters quickly lost interest or were killed. Carmilla stood on the first wall made of oak planks and looked around the half built house. “Cool house you got going here…” She was silent as she looked through one chest, “Do you guys have any food for me?”
“We’ve got some pork chops left but it’s running low, we haven’t had a lot of chances to farm yet.” Jane explained, carefully checking if Carmilla didn’t take anything other than food from their chest.
“Oh I've got seeds, I even have potatoes. Here.” She said to Elisabeth who caught a small stack of potatoes and three seeds.
“Did you find Laura?” Wednesday asked, steering the conversation to what she was actually curious about.
Elisabeth listened to them talk while planting her seeds and potatoes. “Yes, we talked for a while in the village but she got scared of the monsters and hid herself in a hole in the ground. So I got bored and decided to take a nighttime walk.”
“If it’s close we might want to go there later, did you see Miss Hudson?”
“Yes, she’s been teaching all of us a lesson in ‘not murdering anything that comes on your path.’”
“So no cows?”
“Nothing running around anymore no. Why? Did you want to start a farm too?” Carmilla asked with a laugh in her voice, she didn’t seem to care what was going on with the cows and put on a vaguely guilty tone.
“How many cows did you kill?”
“If I killed all the cows I wouldn't be hungry now would i?”
“Yeah that tracks.”
Carmilla grinned, showing off her long pointy teeth, and looked at the hut they were building. “That looks awfully flammable…”
“That’s what I've been saying.” Wednesday said with a, told you so look at Jane who only shrugged.
“I don’t care how “Flammable” my base is. I refuse to build a whole house out of stone.”
“We could make it underground.” Elisabeth said slowly, while thinking out her own idea. “We’ll have the house made of a mixture of stone and wood and then only place out chests in a non flammable part of the house, the cellar or something, that is already half beneath the dirt.”
“Oo, yeah, and add traps and secret tunnels.” Wednesday said, sounding more excited than she had been all session.
“I’ll help you, I've got a tnt farm going so we can rig this whole mountain. And I know a zombie farm.”
That explains what Carmilla has been up to , Elisabeth thought while sending a meaningful look in the direction of Jane. “I’ll help with the exterior, just tell me what to do.”
She followed Jane’s instructions as best she could but couldn’t help misunderstanding every now and then. when she had to redo the roof a second time Elisabeth gave up. “I'll help the murder duo with their cellar and move out items.” She stated as she jumped off the roof and walked in through the front door only to be met with yelling.
“No no no, stop, don’t move.” Wednesday’s voice sounded from the floor beneath her.
“I’m only standing in the doorway.”
“We’re building a trap so you have to be careful.”
“You’re not rigging up the whole base right?”
“Don’t worry the precious cabin will stay intact.” Carmilla’s voice came from directly beneath her feet, “Unless anyone takes out flint and steel that is, but we won’t be the one to do that.”
“We’re building a sinkhole.” Wednesday contributed a few steps away from the trapdoor. Elisabeth nodded to herself, of course a sinkhole, why not ?
She walked over the wooden floor and stepped down the ladder. finding that sinkhole was a perfectly accurate descriptor of what they had built, it was a hole directly beneath the ladder two blocks long and three wide, she hung onto the ladder, keeping herself a respectful distance away from the sinkhole while Carmilla quickly filled the space beneath her feet with dirt.
“Well that’s terrifying. How did you dig down so fast?”
“Discipline.” Was Carmilla’s short answer, she turned around and continued digging out a respectable space. It was starting to get visible shape and Elisabeth started filling up the walls with cobblestone blocks, even the roof, better safe than sorry. At the same time Wednesday had started working on the tunnels, digging into the side of the cabin that was already half underground.
When Elisabeth was certain that the night had passed she excused herself and went back up to the surface through one of the tunnels, she came out on the other side of the mountain and planted a few trees around the exit to keep it from view of everyone else.
There were no cows in her trap that was a hole in the ground, what she did find were some chickens and a sheep. So she brought them back to the base, trapping both the sheep and chickens inside wha she had first intended to be a chicken coop. Carmilla’s words still rang clear inside her mind and she opted to make a hole in the ground that the animals went into surrounding it with a small fence mostly to keep the foxes out. She looked up to see Jane had finished the roof, made of deepslate, and was now planting flowers in the windowsills. She smiled just as her sister looked out of the window down to where she was standing. It was so far away she couldn’t hear if Jane was saying anything so, hoping the message would be clear she jumped up and down a few times before turning around and running off. She hadn’t seen her surroundings properly yet and they would soon run out of food and other resources so she decided to take a little walk just like Carmilla had done, only this time by daylight.
The first thing she ran into after she took a boat down the river was a small house, basically a hole in the ground with a wooden door. She wouldn’t have even noticed it was a house if she had come from any other direction.
“Hello, is anyone home?” She asked loudly, but no response came. She considered opening the door anyway and just going in but that seemed invasive so she went back inside her boat and rowed on. Normally a river like this would have sugarcane in it but by now everyone who had passed had taken everything they could. She started to realize she would have to rob someone to get sugarcane just when the river opened into a large bay in the middle of which was a wooden ship, modeled after an old timey pirate ship she guessed based on the skull like flag that hung on the mast. At the front, she guessed it was the front side at least, of the ship waved another flag, a rainbow this time.
“Anyone home?” She yelled again, just like only a few minutes ago. She docked her small boat and decided to climb the ladder. This thing had to be a group project to be done in only one day.
“HElloo?” She asked again, now standing on the railing. She looked over the whole thing and could hear Carmilla’s voice whisper honeysweet in her ear. That looks awfully flammable .
To her horror, not Sherlock who she had expected to live here but Mr Darcy came up from the lower side of the deck. He looked around and froze like he was just as shocked to see her here as she was.
“Hello.” He said.
“Hi.” she breathed in, unsure why she was so shocked to see him here. “I was just here to say hello.”
“Hello.” He repeated in the same cold tone.
“Nice ship. It’s a good boat.”
“Sixteenth century warship. Sherlock insisted on making it. I wanted a castle.”
“Made entirely out of wood?”
“Yes…” He said this with the resigned air so someone who knew full well his house would not remain standing for very long. With a bit of good luck the violence would only begin after people got on their red life.
Someone else's voice came from the side of the ship. “Helloo? anyone here?”
Elisabeth looked down from where she was standing and saw Laura standing on the dock. She had her hands loosely by her side and looked flush with sunlight but otherwise healthy. Her hair was done up in a neat bun and she wore a nightgown-like dress.
“Elisabeth, I didn't know you liked pirate ships?”
“It’s not my ship, I am only visiting.”
Mr Darcy who had made it to the side of the boat looked annoyed as Laura made her way up the ladder, she stood next to Elisabeth and looked approvingly around.
“Hello.” She said to him and Mr Darcy narrowly avoided a scowl. “Hello. Good to see you two. Now if you have no other business here I must request you take your leave.”
Laura didn’t need to be persuaded and cheerfully ran to the other end of the ship only to jump overboard. Elisabeth followed her in a much more leisurely manner, taking her boat and catching up to the girl when she was already halfway across the stream. Laura got on the boat and wrung out her wet hair.
“That was a nice little dive…” She said, while Elisabeth tried and failed to avoid getting wet as well. “I wonder why Darcy was so strict with us, do you think they're hiding something?”
It hadn’t occurred to her, but now that Laura said it it started to make some sense. “I thought he was just an asshole.”
“Could be both.”
Elisabeth laughed and started to explain the current allyance to Laura.
“Wednesday and Carmilla more or less invited themselves into our home and we let them.” She said, eliciting laughter from Laura. “They can be like that, yes. Did you know Carmilla almost burned down the village when she and Miss Hudson got into an argument?”
“She never mentioned it, but I'm not surprised.”
Laura laughed again and shook her head, “So now what? Am I invited to live with you guys?”
“It was implied when we let Carmilla move in so yeah, sure why not. Be warned though, the murder duo is rigging up the base and I doubt they’ll tell us all their traps.”