Chapter Text
This wasn’t a normal ancient city.
Of course, it had all the makings of one. Checked off all the boxes. Deep underground? Check. Ruined and sculk-coated deepslate structures sprawled across the maw-like cavern? Check. Faintly pulsing soul lanterns as the only source of light, aside from the inexplicable row of soul flames under the horned portal-like structure of reinforced deepslate? Check.
Heavy, impenetrable silence? Also check.
But this wasn’t a normal ancient city.
For one, it had just as much sandstone as it did deepslate.
Pixlriffs crouched down next to a ruined sandstone structure, completely out of place in the darkened depths of the world. The pale stones jutted out of deepslate and sculk like rows of teeth, curling up over the central walkway padded with grey carpet and puddles of wax spilling off shrines and alcoves. All pale, undyed candles. Whoever had lit these was long gone now, the drips and pools of wax frozen in time the only remnants of the people who used to inhabit this city. At least, it’s all he’s been able to find so far.
He’d been in more than one of these cities in his time. These cities predated even him, any traces of their creators stubbornly refusing to reveal themselves. All these years, and no answers. They were just as inexplicable as the End cities, only instead of shulkers, these were inhabited by sculk and silence.
Anyone stepping foot inside an ancient city took a vow to protect the silence.
And Pix took that vow to heart.
The carpet absorbed his footsteps as he pressed forward. Soft and muffling any noise from his boots, he took care to regulate his breathing until all he could hear was the faint thrum of his own heartbeat in his ears. His fingers brushed against worn sandstone, rough and pitted against his skin. Leather gloves coating his palms drew a soft scrape from the stone, an indistinct garbled whisper of the eroded text that used to be here.
Because something used to be written here. Melded shapes tugged at the edges of his memory, but he couldn’t read any of the words long lost to time. The rough, pitted, grainy texture hinted towards erosion by countless sandstorms over millennia, an impossibility considering the depth of the cavern. The deepslate surrounding the sandstone carried no such markings. Only the sandstone. Like the structures had been perfectly transposed from a desert down into the depths. They couldn’t have fallen down here, not when no openings stretched to the surface. And of course, the minor detail that they were completely intact.
Pages of his notebook fluttered as he flipped to an empty page. He froze in place when the noise sent a nearby sculk sensor clicking, the tendrils gently swaying in the air. It flickered and pulsed with otherworldly light before slipping back into the shadows without alerting anything.
Pix let his breath hiss from between his teeth, carefully extracting his pencil from his bag and sketching out the sandstone ruins. He would’ve loved to take a rubbing of the eroded carvings, but that would certainly alert the sculk to his presence. So he settled with a sketch, taking care to capture the layout and alcoves and shape of the ruins. The placement of the candles and height of the pale stones curling up above his head. His pencil scratched against paper, a whisper in the heavy silence coating the dry, musty air.
He took a swig from his water, gently depositing his notebook and pencil onto the carpet and manoeuvring his foot so it wouldn’t roll away. The water was a risky move, but coughing from the mounting dry tickle in his throat would be far worse. Tucking the canteen back into his pack, Pix pressed forward. Deeper into the city. Darkness loomed, pressing heavy against his mind and trying to dig its claws into his thoughts. It followed him like a raven perched atop the jagged sandstone spine, but this messenger carried no note and was entirely unwilling to divulge its secrets.
Pix shook it off. He’d been in ancient cities before. This one was no different, even if it did send uncomfortable prickles down his spine and left his skin crawling. Flickers of movement flashed in the corners of his eyes, but everything was still at the slightest turn of his head.
Just sculk and deepslate and sandstone and darkness. The sandstone was the anomaly here, not the darkness. More structures appeared out of the gloom the deeper he went. Sandstone. Smooth sandstone. Cut sandstone. The more he found, the more his mind dulled. His sketches became messier. Darkness invaded his edges of his eyesight, interfering with his steady hand and curling around his legs. His footsteps slowed.
Pix closed his eyes, drawing in a deep, shaky breath. It filled his lungs with the dry, ancient air tinged with mould and decay so characteristic of these sculk-infested depths, the very scent of the substance that still evaded his understanding after thousands of years of study. Hauntingly beautiful, yet a deadly parasite capable of consuming the minds of its victims and driving them to spread the substance further. Cubfan had been the first victim he actually got to interact with and study.
And Pix had only narrowly avoided the infection himself.
He knew to keep out of the sculk now.
He exhaled. And inhaled again. And exhaled.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Something else lingered in the air. A metallic tang that clung to his tongue. A smell that always followed him and he could never leave behind no matter how far he ran.
Copper.
He opened his eyes. Ornamental copper lining a ruin straight ahead gleamed out of the darkness, and Pix didn’t suppress the urge pulling him towards it. A circular building sporting a gradient of stripped oak into stripped birch, which in turn gave way to sculk-coated sandstone. Four lines of copper stretched out above the gaping, empty doorway, each frozen in time at a different stage of oxidation. And all hauntingly familiar.
He was staring at the sculk-infested remains of the home he had abandoned thousands of years ago.
His breath shook again, and he couldn’t stop his pencil from slipping free of his fingers, falling harmlessly to the carpet at his feet. Shadows wrapped themselves around his chest, robbing him of breath and leaving clumsily fumbling for his communicator. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, muffling the clicks of a nearby sculk sensor through a low buzz.
This building should be thousands of kilometres away.
The communicator gave a soft beep that sent the sensors into another flurry of clicks, but it was enough for him to confirm that he was still in a stony peaks biome, still under the same mountain range that he had found the cave entrance in. And his coordinates confirmed he was still thousands of kilometres away from the desert.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Take a drink of water so he didn’t cough.
This was probably just a similar style. The same reason why his copper ageing machine rested in the underbelly of the Ancient Capital. But still-
Pix took care to keep his footsteps light as carpet gave way to deepslate. Skirting around a pool of sculk, he ran one hand over the smooth, waxy surface of the copper ornamentation as he peered inside. The outside sported much of the same sandstorm damage that the other sandstone ruins showed, along with the damage of the sculk infestation shown by the rest of the ancient city. Sculk had eaten through most of the interior, coating the walls and floor while ropey threaded veins hung from the walls and ceiling. But it was the stone pressure plate lingering in the dead centre of the room that sent a chill down his spine. All that was missing was the array of chests, the enchanting setup, and the bed. Behind the pressure plate rested a corroded sandstone altar, complete with lit candles and a faintly pulsing totem resting on the pale stone.
Pix sidestepped the pressure plate. He kept his gaze fixed on the toppled totem, not much larger than his hand and staring back at him with one blue jewelled eye. Coated in rivulets of copper and gold, needle-thin threads of oxidised copper pulled a faint glow from within the smooth, dark shell. It rested on its side, perched on one horn-like structure curling out from next to the eye before it tapered down to a flat bottom.
Now this was something new. Perhaps a religious artefact? But it did remind him vaguely of a totem of undying, just a little larger, more elaborately decorated and with a blue gemstone eye instead of an emerald. Yet, only the left half of it rested on the altar, split cleanly and perfectly down the centre. Pix leaned around the back, searching for the second half, but only creeping sculk veins rested behind as they curled dark tendrils up the light sandstone.
This totem was something he needed to study. Resting pride and place on an altar like this, it must have been important for a ritual, and could finally give him some answers on the lost builders of these cities. He stretched one hand out towards it. No dark energy radiated from it to suggest it would be cursed, but he knew to check at this point.
The totem rested perfectly smooth under his fingers, broken by raised bumps from gilded gold and copper ornamentation. No sharp edges, even at the split down the centre to suggest exactly how this totem had been broken perfectly in two. The other half had to be around here somewhere. Pix lifted the totem off the altar.
And dropped it immediately when the shadows let out a piercing shriek, driving thousands of knives into his skull. Pix clapped his hands over his ears, but it gave no relief from the horrid sound. He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, crouched on the deepslate with his head in his hands before the screams finally faded, leaving nothing but a low buzz and his own ragged breathing and racing heartbeat.
Shakily peeling one glove off, Pix ran a hand over his face and into his hair. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just his own hair. He wasn’t infected.
Still surrounded by sandstone. The gemstone eye of the totem stared condescendingly back at him where it still lay glimmering copper and gold. The flanking candles flickered once, twice, and extinguishing themselves in a curl of smoke and plunging him into darkness.
Something skittered past his foot.
A click. Off in the distance.
Another.
Closer this time.
A third, and a sculk sensor flared to life in front of him. Two glowing blue eyes stared back at him, clicking shadowy mandibles once before melting back into the darkness. Blue lights ignited again at his sharp inhale, bringing the candles back to life with cerulean soul flames. Darkness pulsed at the edge of his vision as he scrambled away from this sentient sculk sensor, his boots scuffling against the deepslate before they were muted by the carpet once again. And for once, he didn’t care about the noise he was making.
The sensor followed him. Thin, vaguely insectoid legs scratched against stones. It clicked. Scratched. Snapped. The sound reverberated behind him. Pressing.
Click.
Click.
Snap.
He had to get out of here.
Shadows crept in his peripheral vision. Tendrils of more sculk sensors swayed gently in the gloom, melding together into a mesmerising wave while they crept towards him. A terrifying, infectious carpet, coating the ruins in waving sensors and indiscriminately crawling over sculk, deepslate, and sandstone alike. Some left a thick mat of sculk veins wherever they went, and sent phantoms of those eerie, ropey strands creeping over his skin.
Thousands of tiny blue eyes pinned him in place.
The eye of the totem burned in his mind.
He didn’t know if the clicking came from the sensors themselves, or from the horrid mandibles of these creatures.
Cerulean light flared up above him. His sharp inhale sent another wave of light through the sensors, turning the mat of insectoid monsters into a beacon that cast ghostly shadows over the yawning cavern filled with jagged sandstone teeth. And illuminating the spectral illusions of multicoloured candles floating above his head, each wick adorned by a wavering soul flame.
Pale. Red. Purple. Black. Orange. Lime. Cyan. Yellow. Blue. Light Blue. Green. Magenta.
A ring of eleven larger candles coalesced around him. Every colour, with exception of the pale candle.
Clicking intensified.
The wave of light faded away. Darkness swept back over. Candle flames burned his eyes and seared his thoughts. Colours danced an ominous ritual. Too familiar.
Too familiar.
He couldn’t.
He couldn’t.
The swirl of a past long gone.
He had to leave.
His hand moved automatically while the flames assaulted his mind and sealed his throat from the air. A larger, phantomic eye joined the thousands of smaller ones in their study of him. An eye Pix didn’t want finding him under any circumstance. The eye’s owner hissed. Laughed. Sent shadows skittering after him.
It always had and it always would.
He had to leave.
The shadows screamed when the rocket in his hand ignited. Clicks faded into the rush of the dry, dense air around him and the snap of his elytra. He knew where he had come in. And of course, flying at top speed through the narrow caves was more than a little dangerous.
He didn’t care.
The screams followed him.
Persistent.
Neverending.
Pain exploded in his arm as he slammed into a rock, but one more rocket and sunlight finally flooded over him. The screaming stopped. Pix collapsed onto the grass, loosening his grip and letting his notebook fall at his knees. His rockets followed immediately after. Taking deep, shuddering breaths.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Breathe.
Pix didn’t even know where to begin processing what just happened. All he knew was that his past had finally found him.