Work Text:
fWhip kept a tight grip on the dragon’s smooth back, the crystalline structure of the spikes protruding from its back warm beneath his tattered gloves. Heavy wingbeats carried them away. Away from the smouldering crater that was once the bustling city of Eastvale just one day ago. All the life and commerce and innovation that he spent his life building up, gone in an instant because of him.
He tightened his grip on the dragon’s spine. The wind whipped at the torn and scorched remains of his clothing, and he couldn’t help but shiver and curl further against the dragon despite the weight of Koda and Nova piled in his lap. Normally, the dogs were heavy, being the giant balls of fur that they were, but this time, he didn’t mind. They made up for the weight he had lost. His tools and wings, burned away and obliterated in the explosion. An uncomfortable pressure in his side left the image of his sword lingering in his mind, the day he had forged the sharpened enchanted netherite as a perfect match to Gem’s.
The only thing he had left of his home.
His sister was silent. Gem hung onto a spike closer to the dragon’s head, brushing her hand over its scales as she whispered to it. Her words were stolen by the wind long before they reached him, but they reached their intended target; if the pleased shudder the dragon gave was any indication.
And Violet.
The baby ender dragon rested around Gem’s shoulders like a black, scaly scarf. Barely the size of a cat, she had her tiny snout lifted in the air as she stared at him with luminous purple eyes.
fWhip gave her a tentative smile, only for her to squeak and dart off Gem’s shoulder and down to her lap.
That was fine. He buried his face in Koda’s fur and let his eyes close.
A crackling campfire provided their only source of light as they made camp for the evening. The dragon that had carried them all this way had gone off with its two friends to hunt for themselves, leaving them alone in the darkened plains to cook their own meal. fWhip turned his steak over, sinking back down onto the rock across from Gem and staring at the dancing flames leaving pulsing redstone-coloured embers over splintered oak kindling in the wake of their dance. It hissed and popped, sending showers of sparks swirling into the air before they fizzled out amidst the stars. Crickets chirped. All interspersed by zombies shuffling in the distance and the creak of the bones belonging to patrolling skeletons. But the monsters left them alone, so they did as well.
fWhip ran a hand through his damp hair in the silence. He had taken the time to scrub himself clean in the river, finally rinsing the grimy layer of soot and dust he had carried with him all day. Yes, he was clean on the surface, but underneath, the devastating chain of explosions still rang repetitive in his mind. Over and over.
He focused on the leather scraps in his hand. He had never had much talent for working with leather, always preferring metals if he had a choice. But he didn’t have a forge anymore. This was just something for his hands to do, and he wanted to make a harness for his dogs anyway so they wouldn’t be in danger of falling off the dragon.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
fWhip snapped his head up, staring at Gem through the shimmering flames. Those flames had spread to the Crystal Cliffs as well, yet she watched him with nothing but concern for him in her eyes.
“I don’t know.” fWhip squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. “I really don’t know.”
“It’s not your fault,” Gem softly said. “It was an accident.”
“One heck of an accident,” fWhip muttered. A world ending accident.
Gem sighed. She pulled her staff so it lay across her lap. “You were just trying to help.”
Warm air brushed over his fingertips hanging loose at his side. fWhip jerked his hand away out of instinct, only for guilt to pool further in his gut as Violet darted away with a distressed chirp, leaving a small smouldering fire behind.
“fWhip!”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t see her there!”
“She was just trying to smell you!”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” fWhip snapped, leaping to his feet and using a stick to grab his steak off the fire. He didn’t purposely scare Violet. And he didn’t purposely cause the end of the world. “Forget it. I’m going to eat and sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“fWhip!” Gem called, but he ignored her in favour of tearing a strip loose from the steak and striding pointedly towards their haphazard excuse for a tent. Bland. Tasteless. Like stone dust and gunpowder in his mouth. He forced himself to take another few bites before tossing the other half to Koda and Nova to finish off. He missed his golden carrots. He missed his own bed amidst the tang of copper and smoke that had always permeated the Grimlands.
The smoke of Gem’s magical fire didn’t smell like home.
That was their life day after day. The dragon carried them both further away from the destruction they left behind until it set them down to make camp under the orange rays of the setting sun painting the darkening sky in strokes of pink and purple. They cooked food from whatever fish or animal they could catch, be it a cow, a pig, a chicken, or a sheep before sleeping through the night and setting out the next morning.
fWhip hated eating the sheep. They reminded him too much of Katherine and the last time he saw her, in a panicked flutter of her gossamer wings as she returned to the Overgrown.
It was the fourth day when fWhip was woken by soft breathing in his ear that almost certainly didn’t belong to Gem. He turned his head a lot more carefully this time, meeting the tiny dragon’s eyes as she slowly blinked back at him. The instant he moved his hand, Violet squeaked and darted away.
“No no no don’t wake up Gem!” fWhip frantically whispered. Violet peered out from behind Gem’s hat resting at her bedside. “Are you- uh- hungry? Maybe?”
Violet tilted her head.
“Right. Right, yeah,” fWhip nodded. What was Gem feeding her again? Fish? He was pretty sure it was fish. He hauled himself to his feet, running his hand over the scratchy canvas of the tent until faint moonlight and firelight flooded inside, revealing the rough-hewn fishing pole lying alongside most of their supplies. Gem mumbled and stirred, but flopped over on her side regardless without waking. fWhip released his breath, stooping to grab the fishing pole and stepping a leg outside.
He beckoned for Violet to follow him. She did nothing but stare at him.
“Violet,” he hissed. “Come on! I’ll catch you something to eat!”
Violet did not move.
fWhip sighed, but propped the tent flap open and trained his ears for the sound of running water and any potential monsters, but Gem’s magic campfire had done its job of keeping them at bay. They had stopped in a forest for tonight, under the dense canopy of oak and birch that absorbed most of the moonlight and obscured the stars from view. The leaves took on a slight silvery sheen as they rustled gently in the breeze while fWhip carefully picked his way down to the riverbank, inhaling a fresh, cool air to the song of owls and crickets.
Light footsteps sounded behind him the moment his bobber splashed into the burbling water. Violet flopped an arm’s length away with a huff, staring out over the water and eyeing the red flashes of salmon that darted below the surface.
He wondered if the salmon in the mountain sanctuary had survived the explosion. Maybe they were free in the rivers somewhere if they hadn’t been crushed by debris.
The bobber dipped below the surface. fWhip gave it a yank, pulling a small salmon out. Violet leapt to her feet immediately, her claws scraping loose dirt from the edge of the riverbank as she strained at the fish, snapping her jaws shut with a slight click.
“Let me get it off the hook for you at least!” fWhip reprimanded, having to turn to the side to avoid getting his fingers caught in snapping dragon jaws. Claws dug into his new shirt and pants before he tossed the fish to Violet, who trapped it under her claws immediately and sank her teeth into the flesh.
“How long has Gem had you?” He murmured, casting his line back into the water and watching the bobber float. Up and down. Up and down. “Feels like I was just minding my own business, trying to help people out, and I explode the world in the process and suddenly you’ve hatched.”
He absentmindedly adjusted the plain brown shirt Gem had given him, something she had grabbed from his usual guest room in the Crystal Cliffs. Too bad he hadn’t thought to leave an extra scarf or an extra pair of goggles there, but at least he had a new leather jacket and a shirt and pants that weren’t torn to shreds.
Violet didn’t even look up from her fish.
fWhip gave a half-hearted chuckle. Of course Violet wouldn’t answer him. “I wonder where Jimmy is now. I’m happy he made it out of the explosion at least. Maybe he’ll actually get his Codfather head back one day, even though we didn’t manage to reforge it ourselves.
fWhip sighed. No bites on his line, but he hadn’t used any bait anyway. “We never got along for the longest time, but he has a good heart. And I know Lizzie and Joel will take care of him. That was his main alliance before me. It had always been him, Lizzie, Joel, and Pix forming the Cod Alliance. But Pix has been missing for months now. None of us saw it coming. I don’t know if he’ll ever return to Pixandria, or what state he’ll find it in. I would’ve loved to do another heist with him. Putting the Elder Guardians in Mythland… That was the most fun I’ve had in ages. And that was when Xornoth was loose too. It felt… great. Great to relax while still helping to slow down Xornoth. Wherever Pix is now, I hope he’s happy and doing well.”
Violet pawed at the fishbones in front of her, gnawing at the spine as the bones practically disintegrated in her teeth with echoing snaps. “Don’t hurt yourself on those,” fWhip said, reeling his line in to bait the hook before it went back in the water.
He kept his eyes on the bobber. And kept talking. He didn’t know why exactly he was telling Violet about his friends and the alliances between the empires, but he couldn’t deny that it felt right. Somehow. “And then there was our alliance. The Wither Rose alliance. It was me, Gem, Sausage, and Pearl at the core. But Joey, Shrub, Scott, and Katherine were more or less part of it too. Although Katherine was kind of part of the Cod Alliance too. She was friends with everyone. I think you would’ve liked Pearl, Katherine and Shrub. They’re all wonderful. Awesome people. Sausage might’ve scared you a little until you got used to him. He’s a little loud and excitable, but he’s the best friend you could ask for.”
fWhip’s smile fell. He pulled his line in at a tug on the hook, tossing the salmon to Violet again. “We left him and Pearl behind,” he whispered. He didn’t cast again, just staring at silvery light shining off the barbed metal hook slowly swaying in the breeze and twirling in place, breathing through his constricted throat. “I didn’t think of it. We left them behind and ran without looking back. I don’t- I don’t even know if they’re alive anymore or what happened… Or what happened to Mythland and Gilded Helianthia.”
Fish scales clung to the sides of Violet’s jaws as she looked up from her half eaten second course, tilting her head at him much like Koda and Nova did whenever he had a piece of chicken that they wanted.
“I don’t know if I want to know what happened to them after we left, Violet.” fWhip rested the fishing pole at his side, wrapping his arms around his knees as he pulled them up to his chest and staring out at small waves cresting over concealed rocks. “I know Gem is right. It was an accident and I didn’t know. But I should’ve known. I should’ve tested cod and salmon in a smaller reactor before mixing them in the big one. I was so excited to help out Jimmy that I just didn’t think-”
Violet chirped at him.
“At a basic level, it was my fault. I should’ve done more research. More tests. There’s just so much I should’ve done but now I can’t after I caused the end of the world-” fWhip choked, his eyes burning with phantom ash and heat from the mirage of the explosion ringing in his mind.
“fWhip? Violet? Are you out here?”
Violet’s head shot up at Gem’s voice, abandoning the last gnawed remains of her fish and darting away with the barest flash of purple. Without looking back once. fWhip sighed, grabbing the fishing rod and shoving his frigid fingers in his pockets as he turned his back to the river.
Maybe Sausage or Pearl or Pix or anyone would come and find them at some point.
Swirls of fire danced around Gem, streaming from the pulsing amethyst crystal in her staff lit with a soft glow against the flames. It melted a ring of the snow around her to reveal pale frosty grass and peat-laden dirt, while melting the soft snowfall from fluffy grey clouds into steam.
fWhip kept his eyes on her. It prevented him from lingering on the towering ice-coated mountain peaks in the distance, jagged and jutting out into the stars emerging from the blanket of twilight fallen over the snowy tundra. If he discounted the ice, they far too closely resembled the peaks separating the Grimlands from the Crystal Cliffs. The same mountains housing the salmon sanctuary that he had always seen from his window for his entire life.
But the ice put these mountains more at home in Rivendell instead of the Grimlands. It wasn’t the first time fWhip had wondered about Scott. What had happened to him? He had clearly felt the quakes from the explosion in Rivendell, being one of the first to leave spawn in a frantic rush when he found out what had happened. fWhip still wasn’t sure if he could forgive Scott for hurting Gem with his ice magic. That whole incident and the subsequent spike of ice destroying the railtrack from the mountain mine, felt so long ago now. Even if Scott didn’t mean it and Gem had long forgiven him, passing it off as an accident.
Gem passed a lot of things off as accidents.
fWhip’s breath fogged in front of his face as air rushed between his teeth with a shaky exhale. He flicked his gaze over to Violet, tromping through thick layers of snow that went all the way up to her belly as she alternated between watching Gem and trying to eat snowflakes. She squeaked and jumped, fluttering her wings whenever she reared up on her hindlegs to snap at any larger flakes that drifted her way, leaving a mess of disturbed snow in her wake.
He couldn’t help but wonder, glancing down at the snow beside him. Koda and Nova loved it when he did this, and with them all tired out and fast asleep now, maybe Violet would as well. He wasn’t certain if it was how she normally behaved or if she was mimicking his dogs in any way, but he leaned down off his tree stump to scoop a handful of snow off the ground. The cold bit into his new leather gloves as he shaped the snow into a ball, still stiff and not quite moulded to his skin yet after his old ones had been burnt and torn beyond repair.
With the snowball made, he let it fly well over Violet’s head and sink into a snowdrift.
It certainly got her attention.
She bounded over to the snowdrift, sniffing around the snowy indent and pawing at it with a clawed foot. fWhip formed another snowball, letting this one fall short. Violet immediately abandoned the first one to pounce on the new indent, this time lifting her head up to regard him curiously.
And the hunt was on.
fWhip threw snowball after snowball. He took care not to hit Violet with any of them, just letting her pounce on each one as it burst into flakes to be swallowed by the snow-coated dirt. She played much like the stray cats used to do in the Grimlands. Crouching down and flattening herself against the snow, almost to the point where her snout was coated in white flakes, before her tail swished streaks across the sparkling white surface. It almost reminded him of a haphazard snow angel. She always swished her tail at least three times before her hindlegs tensed and she pounced.
Violet huffed for breath after a while, with small puffs of smoke curling from her nostrils and condensing in the icy air. She shook off the flakes clinging to her wings with one mighty shudder, just to get herself covered again when she took up her hunting position once again.
“Just one more, okay?” fWhip told her. He rubbed his hands together to dispel the frigid numbness in his fingers, a consequence of throwing so many snowballs and soaking his gloves. The pristine snow layer around him was completely marred by gouges torn by his fingers, but he disturbed it once more for a last snowball.
Violet leapt into the air when he lobbed it underhand, her tiny wings frantically flapping to give her just that little bit of extra height. Enough for her to snap her jaws around the snowball and turn it from a nice, neatly packed sphere into an explosion of sparkling flakes haloed around her.
That was, until she fell back to earth in a crumpled heap.
fWhip’s blood turned to ice as Gem let out a panicked yell. Only for Violet to untangle herself from the mess of splayed limbs and claws she had gotten herself into with an annoyed squeak. Stomping her feet and shaking her head, she spat out tiny flames that instantly fizzled out on the snow.
“Violet!” Gem rushed over. “Violet, are you ok?!” She made to reach for the distressed baby dragon, but had to pull her arm away to dunk in the snow when a flame grazed her sleeve.
“I think she has a brain freeze,” fWhip dryly commented at Violet’s screeching wail. “I didn’t think she would eat it!”
Gem snorted a laugh, immediately covering her mouth with her hand at the undignified noise. “I didn’t think dragons could get brain freezes!” She giggled. Violet recovered, giving her head one last shake before she started bouncing in circles around him. “And look at you, trying to fly! Wonderful job, Violet!”
fWhip couldn’t help but smile at her antics.
“You know, I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile since we left the Cliffs,” Gem commented, her voice growing soft.
fWhip gave a humourless chuckle, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’s hard, Gem. I know you keep telling me it's not my fault. But it’s hard.”
“I know. I’m here to support you. If you want to talk, we can, and if you just need more time, then that’s okay too.”
“Do you think Sausage and Pearl made it out?” fWhip blurted.
Gem shuffled her feet, driving the toe of her boot into the frozen packed dirt. “I don’t know. After the state Rivendell was in, I don’t know. I hope they did and still have each other.”
“What do you mean, the state Rivendell was in?”
She bit her lip. “You didn’t see? There were tentacles and lava everywhere. I think… I think Xornoth got out of their crystal.”
“That’s why you were in such a hurry to leave,” fWhip said, his voice flat as he glared at Gem, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. “That’s why we didn’t even check on our own friends and allies and just hightailed it out of there without looking back.”
“Everyone else is perfectly capable of handling any disaster in their empire,” Gem muttered. “It was dangerous to stay there.”
“Dangerous in what way?! We could’ve helped!”
“No we couldn’t!” Gem snapped. “You’re having trouble letting go of this as it is! Do you really think you would’ve gotten over it if you had stayed around the aftermath of that explosion?”
She huffed an exasperated sigh, bending down to scoop Violet up into her arms. “Come on, Violet. We’re going to bed.”
Violet whined, poking her head up to stare back at him over Gem’s shoulder as she carried her away.
Gem still wasn’t speaking to him.
They had left the frosty expanse of the snowy tundra behind at dawn, soaring over the ice-laden frozen ocean. Icebergs grew increasingly sparse until they vanished entirely, replaced with deep blue water broken by white-crested waves tumbling over themselves on their journey to the shore. Occasionally, the sea lanterns highlighting the vast ocean monuments glimmered below the surface, but they were too high up to be inflicted by mining fatigue.
The guardian temples just made him think of the heist with Pix again. And of Lizzie. Having been relegated to his own dragon with Gem far out of shouting range, he had nothing to distract him from his thoughts.
What had happened to them?
He had last seen Pix just days before his disappearance, when they had both been laughing at each other when the Copper King had come by the Grimlands to trade. Because that was during Joel’s stint with the crown, and they both looked frankly ridiculous wearing the head of the Mezalean King.
And then he was gone. The structures of Pixandria standing silent save for the slight breeze rustling grains of sand over abandoned roads and the redstone clicks of empty dispensers. Had he had a sense about the oncoming doom and left before his empire could fall?
Surely Pixandria would’ve been far enough away from the Grimlands that it would remain standing.
“Yet everyone who had been at spawn felt the quakes. Even Joel and Lizzie all the way in the north,” fWhip murmured under his breath, breathing a humourless laugh. “Joey had said his empire was completely destroyed. Boy, was he mad. Maybe it was best that we didn’t stay. He probably would’ve killed me.”
“I still wish we could’ve said goodbye,” he said, louder this time. The dragon made no sign it had heard him, but he pressed on anyway. “Maybe we couldn’t have said goodbye to everyone, especially if Xornoth had broken free- but- but I still wish we could’ve seen someone. Anyone.”
The dragon snorted, extending its wings into a glide. “Did you have other friends you left behind too?” fWhip asked. “You and your two friends were always around Gem’s wizard tower, but there had to have been more of you, right?”
Maybe Gem would know that. He could ask once they were back on speaking terms. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had seen the consequences of the explosion. Maybe Gem is right. I don’t even know, Mr. Dragon. Or Miss Dragon. Mrs Dragon. Or just Dragon. I don’t even know- anyway- What do I say to her now? I just- I just wish she had asked me at least before making a decision for both of us.”
The dragon just huffed in response.
“I hate not knowing what to do,” fWhip muttered. “The thing is, I don’t think I want to go back. We’ve already left. The damage has been done already, I guess.”
Nova nudged his hand where he was strapped in with a leather harness. fWhip sighed, running a hand through his dog’s fur and resting his forehead against the dragon’s warm crystalline scales.
His dragon roared. Powerful wingbeats took them higher into the sky, where the gentle rays of the sun left a soft heat over his face, offset by the rush of the wind around him.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, aren’t you? I do need to apologize to Gem. She just wants what’s best for me, right? What’s done is done. I didn’t mean it to blow up my own empire. But now… now I need to figure out what’s next.”
“Gem?”
Gem dropped her pack on the ground, running a hand over her dragon’s scales before it roared and flew off with a gust of wind, joining its two friends in the cerulean sky.
“Yes, fWhip?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh really.” Gem raised an eyebrow as she swung her backpack over her shoulder, careful not to dislodge Violet from where she rested fast asleep with her tail curled around Gem’s neck. “For what part of it?”
“For snapping at you when you were just trying to help.”
“Did you want to go back?”
“Huh?” fWhip jerked his head up. “No. No, no. I think the damage is done by now. I just wish you had asked me at least before we left? Maybe?”
Gem didn’t respond at first, staring out over the village until she sighed. “Maybe I should’ve. I thought it would make you feel much worse about it if you had seen for yourself any potential damage or death from the explosion.”
“Maybe it would’ve. I… I really don’t know, to be honest. I really don’t know.”
“Will it help if we make decisions together from now on?”
fWhip nodded, unable to suppress the slight smile creeping across his face. “I think I’d like that. How much longer are we going to travel for?”
Gem laughed, returning his smile. “I have no idea. Honestly, I’ve just been letting the dragons lead this whole time. They’re great at flying away from danger.”
“You think they’ll stop when they find a good place?”
“I think so, yes,” Gem nodded. “But I have no idea when that will be, and holy cow, I need some vegetables. I can only eat steak and chicken for so many days before I really start craving a carrot.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’d give an arm for a potato right about now,” fWhip dryly commented, smiling when Gem laughed.
“I think I saw both on the way in. Ooh! We can even stay in the inn for tonight! Sleep in an actual bed and get a bowl of stew! Maybe someone will even have golden carrots! Can you imagine?”
fWhip practically groaned at the prospect of sleeping in a real bed for the night instead of the threadbare bedrolls. And golden carrots… his stomach rumbled at the mere mention of them. Nothing could ever replace their refreshing sweet taste. Especially not bland steak and chicken.
“Oh I can imagine. Oh I can imagine, alright. Race you to the village!”
“What- hey! I don’t want to wake up Violet!” Gem called as he darted away, laughing at her exasperation. “fWhip! You cheater!”
But his light mood evaporated at the sight of the village. Villagers gathered around a half-collapsed house, sifting through shattered cobblestone and charred oak planks while others hauled a broken down iron golem out of the path.
“What happened here?” fWhip flagged down the nearest villager, a tall, gaunt man in a straw hat marking him as a farmer.
“Ah, hail traveller,” the villager nodded. “A pillager patrol, I’m afraid. Threatened us for our crops and shot an explosive rocket before our iron golem drove them off. But they damaged him beyond repair, I think. It’s a shame really. That golem has been here for generations.”
“Did you get your crops back at least?”
“Aye. At least our golem’s sacrifice was not in vain.”
“Hmm,” fWhip hummed. “Can I take a look at it? If you have some iron I might be able to repair it. I’ve forged weapons before and have repaired a few golems here and there.”
“Oh! That would be wonderful!” The farmer waved him along, calling to the weaponsmiths and armourers hauling the golem away. “Bring Feran to the smithy! This lad here is going to take a look at him!”
The villagers all cheered with a chorus of thank yous. The smithy itself was more than a little run down, nowhere near the quality of his old forge at the Grimlands. Dented iron hammers rested on cracked anvils, interspersed between chipped grindstones affixed to the floor and smithing tables strewn with shards of copper, iron and stone. Embers faintly glowed in the forge in the corner, with cracked bellows at the side the only visible way to ignite them.
The villagers left the golem spread out on the dirt beneath the canopy. One of them rummaged through a handful of chests, stacking enough iron ingots for fWhip to do his repair job, along with a handful of moulds for gears and plates and other smaller pieces. “Thank you, kind sir. We’ll leave you to your work,” the villager said before they disappeared around the corner.
fWhip took his time inspecting the damage. Some of the iron plates on the golem’s legs had orange rust eating at the edges, but most of the damage remained on its chest with several holes punched through the metal by crossbow bolts. He pried it open, finding some of the circuitry had also been damaged, with the teeth of some of the gears bent well beyond repair.
So he needed three medium-sized gears, and four iron plates to replace the ones damaged by rust and crossbows. With his shopping list assembled, fWhip got to work, loading iron into the forge and pressing down on the bellows to ignite the dying embers inside.
Once. Twice. Three times. The bellows wheezed and crackled from the strain, but a lot of the hot, dry air ended up hissing out from the cracks into his face instead of blowing into the forge like it was supposed to. It was certainly warm; he already had sweat beading across his forehead and down his back, but it was nowhere near hot enough to melt the iron.
fWhip abandoned his post at the bellows, huffing for breath and dragging an arm across his forehead. There had to be a better way to do this. He certainly was no expert leatherworker, but maybe he could repair the bellows enough to get them to work?
He startled when claws sank into his shoulders. Only a soft chirp and two purple eyes swinging into his peripheral vision stopped him from wildly flailing around and making even more undignified noises than he already had. “Augh! Oh my gosh! Violet, you scared me!” he laughed, shaking his head. “What are you doing here?”
Violet bobbed her head up and down, staring at the forge.
“I’m trying to repair the iron golem. The villagers are really attached to this one, said he’s been here for generations,” fWhip explained. He left the bellows behind and paced around the room while he worked through his thoughts out loud. “They’ve even named him Feran. Three of the gears were damaged by the pillagers’ crossbows. Along with the iron plates on the chest that also have crossbow damage, there’s a couple on the legs that are rusted that I want to replace too. But I need to melt the iron to get it into the moulds. And the bellows aren't working very well, Violet.”
He hummed, turning back to the forge. Heat wafted out from the opening. “No offence to the villagers, but they need to replace or repair some of the stuff in here. The bellows are all cracked and it’s not getting enough air into the forge to ignite the coals. Maybe I can light something on fire and drop it in? But they clearly need their logs around here to repair that damaged house. What to do… What to do. Hmm…”
Violet squeaked, her mouth briefly glowing before she coughed up a small gout of flame into the bucket of iron ingots. They sizzled immediately and began to melt.
fWhip gasped. “Violet! You’re a genius! Do you think you can melt all of this?”
Another cough of fire, and more iron melted. On her third attempt, Violet managed to maintain a steady stream of flame for a second before it guttered out, but it was enough to leave him with a bucket of melted iron.
“Look at you go!” fWhip grinned. “First flying a little, now you’re breathing fire, you’re already growing up, aren’t you? I’m gonna catch you a really good fish tonight once I get this golem fixed up.”
Violet purred, leaping off his shoulder to a smithing table and sending metal scraps flying in every direction. With the iron melted now, fWhip quickly filled all the moulds he needed while Violet supervised, shaping the remainder of the molten metal back into ingots for the villagers to use for something else. Once cooled, dented gears were removed from the cavity of the golem’s chest and replaced with new ones. Rusted plates were set aside with other scraps, until he had a shiny repaired iron golem stretched out across the dirt.
“Right. Let’s see if he works, Violet,” fWhip said, kneeling next to the golem and flicking the switch. Gears whirred to life. Clattering and clicking until finally, a light ignited in its eyes, and the golem returned to life.
“Welcome back! Feran, right?” fWhip smiled. He extended his arm, letting Violet climb up to his shoulders again.
Feran creaked, staring at him and swinging his arms back and forth. Red glowing eyes bored into his, until the golem offered him a beautiful red poppy.
“Thank you…” fWhip whispered. He accepted it, watching Feran lumber out of the smithy and the ensuing cheering and commotion from the villagers. Surprisingly, his eyes burned, water blurring his sight while he left his borrowed goggles and gloves on an anvil. He blamed the soot and dust from the forge.
“That was nice of you,” Gem poked her head in with a soft smile.
fWhip gave a wet laugh. He blinked, clearing his eyes and grabbing the poppy, careful not to dislodge Violet, and joined Gem leaning against the door. The villagers gathered around their golem, draping garlands of flowers over him and temporarily abandoning their carts of debris and fresh building supplies to join in the celebration.
“I can preserve that for you if you want,” Gem whispered, gesturing to the flower in his hand.
“You can?”
She nodded. “With magic of course! I’ve been studying, you know.”
“You’re always studying,” fWhip pointed out, earning him an elbow in the side. He laughed, then sobered as he passed her the poppy. “But for real, I think I’d like that. It’s a sort of new beginning, you know, right?”
“I get that,” Gem smiled. Her staff glimmered with the murmured words of a spell, until the poppy took on a faint green glow that faded just as quickly as it appeared. “There you go. We’ve got rooms in the inn tonight, and potato stew happens to be on the menu. The villagers didn’t even charge us since you were helping them out.”
“Oh, awesome! So awesome. I bet that potato stew is going to be the best thing we’ve ever tasted.”
“Excuse me, miss?” A tiny voice piped up from beside them from a small group of children. “Are you a witch?”
“Nope!” Gem smiled, crouching down to meet the children at eye level. “I’m a wizard! I cast spells instead of mixing potions. Would you like to see?”
fWhip smiled to himself, gently scratching a purring Violet behind her horns while Gem mesmerized the children with sparkles and simple illusions. He could get used to a life like this.
fWhip’s mind continued to linger on the village, even after it had been days since they left. He had to admit, it felt good to have something to work on again, something that helped instead of causing mass destruction. Tinkering was in his blood, for better or for worse, and he knew he couldn’t give it up entirely. But he could learn. Remember. Put the mad alchemist into a different situation and grow from there.
He had come to his resolution when massive floating islands loomed in the distance. Clouds swirled around waterfalls pouring from the heavens, casting shimmering rainbows in the mist feeding the mossy life clinging to the sides of the rocks. A lust forest bloomed below, with towering mushrooms and oak trees laden with verdant flowering vines. It surrounded a sink hole in the ground, complete with a cerulean underground lake exposed to the sky above.
It was absolutely breathtaking.
And the islands weren’t uninhabited either.
Dragons. So many dragons.
Giant dragons wheeled lazily above the tallest island, their wings outstretched while they continued their rhythmic circular path. Others dove and wove between the islands, splashing into the lake and chasing each other around. All clearly the same species as the amethyst dragons that had carried them all this way, but these were all different colours. Red, yellow, blue, green, white, all with scales that glinted like gemstones.
The dragons set them down in the forest, barely letting them retrieve their bags before they rejoined their kin with a triumphant roar.
“Oh it’s beautiful!” Gem breathed. “So many dragons! You’ll be right at home, Violet!”
“So this is where they were taking us the whole time,” fWhip said, running his hand over Violet’s scales as she chirped. Koda and Nova leaned against his legs, their wagging tails thumping against his calf.
One of the yellow dragons dove down from the clouds. Wind whipped up from its wings sent fWhip’s jacket fluttering as it came in for a landing, curiously leaning down and tilting its head back and forth. fWhip stepped forward, reaching out a hand.
“fWhip- careful-” Gem started.
The dragon sniffed his hand. It let out a low rumble before it manoeuvred its snout to rest under his palm, yellow eyes sliding shut. The dragon’s tail lazily swished across the grass while he pet it, and fWhip smiled when Gem moved to scratch behind its horns. Violet leapt across to his shoulders as she passed.
Yes, they had lost their empires and all they had ever known from the explosion of the Grimlands. Nothing would be quite the same. He’d never be able to replicate his old forge exactly. Never be able to remake the same tools and crossbows he used to have.
They’d never know if Sausage or Pearl survived, if they stayed to rebuild their empires, or if they left as they had. He could only hope they were living their best, happiest lives. He hoped Jimmy could forgive himself and that he’d get his Codfather head back. That Lizzie and Joel could find solace in each other. Maybe Shrub would find her people, and Scott would defeat his demon brother once and for all. Katherine would always bring beauty and life wherever she went. Joey might find a better boyfriend than Xornoth. And maybe Pix would return one day and find his empire waiting for him.
They had left so much behind. But that was alright. He still had his sister, his dogs, and Violet. They couldn’t change the past. The Grimlands were gone, but its culture and way of life still remained in him. And it always would be a piece of the past he took to the future with him. They could live here and move forward. Make a new life for themselves.
A new life amongst the dragons.