Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Soft and kind 

Cold as ice 

Hold yourself 

Beneath the brine 

“You ever wanna just…lie down and sleep forever?” 

Impulse froze, caught off-guard by the question. 

“Why do you ask?” he asked warily. 

Tango shrugged. His legs were dangling over the edge of one of Joel’s builds, but his gaze was fixed on the horizon. 

“I keep having these weird dreams, and when I wake up, I wish I could stay there forever.” 

“What kind of dreams?” 

Tango hummed. His tail flicked lazily behind him. 

“Mostly you, me, and Zed hanging out together.” His head drooped just a little. “It feels like we don’t get to do that as much anymore. You’re always around Skizz, and I-” 

He froze, biting his tongue. Impulse set down the pile of shulkers he was carrying and sat next to him. He clamped a hand on Tango’s shoulder. 

“Hey,” he said gently. “I get it. I love you, dude. I’m just excited I get to see him. Give it a few months, and things’ll be almost back to normal, okay?” 

Tango nodded. His eyes were half-closed; Impulse could see on his face that Tango didn’t believe him. 

“Actually! Let me put this stuff away, and we can hang out for a few hours. Sound good?” 

Tango shrugged halfheartedly. “Yeah, I guess so.” 

Impulse patted him on the back and climbed back over the wall. Tango heard the scrape of shulkers on stone, followed by a grunt and the swiftly-retreating sound of footsteps. He closed his eyes and sighed. 

“I just want to stop feeling like an afterthought for once,” he mumbled. There was only himself and the wind around to hear. 

Tango woke in the middle of a field of rushing grass, lying on his back, staring up at the gemstone-blue sky. He sat up; if he paid attention, he thought he could feel every blade of grass and the warm soil under his fingertips. 

A voice called out to him from the other side of the field. He climbed to his feet and grinned at the sight of the man standing there. Impulse waved to him, grinning right back. 

“Come on, Tango!” he shouted. His voice sounded like he was speaking through rushing water. “I wanna show you something!” 

Tango sprinted up to him. He wasn’t winded by the time he reached him, not in the slightest; if anything, he felt more energized than before. Impulse offered him his hand, and they left the field behind, plunging into the forest up ahead. 

Strange, Tango thought. I don’t remember Impulse having blue eyes. 

Chapter Text

Etho felt like he was losing his mind. So, first Tango hadn’t shown up at the post office that morning. He and Pearl had waited almost three hours before resigning themselves to the fact that he wasn’t coming. 

“Maybe he’s sick?” Etho suggested about two hours into the wait. 

Pearl shook her head. “Usually, he at least messages me if he can’t make it.” 

They’d held on for a little longer before going their separate ways for the day; Etho would be lying if he said his friend’s absence didn’t dishearten him, and he was sure Pearl was, too. He couldn't help but notice that she didn’t set off towards her base, but Tango’s. Then, on his way back home, Etho almost crashed into Grian. It had taken some impressive aerial acrobatics to avoid an accidental, unwanted respawn. Both hybrids landed clumsily in a field afterward to try and regain their bearings and check in on each other. Or, at least, that was why he assumed they’d landed. 

Grian had looked out of sorts, almost panicked. He’d grabbed Etho by the shoulders and shaken him frantically. 

“Where’s Doc?” 

Etho blinked. “Uh…pretty sure he’s still in exile.” 

Grian spluttered a hasty thank you and took off again. Etho watched him go, confused, then decided it wasn’t his problem and returned to his business. Then, a few hours later, when he finally made it back to his base, he was almost immediately hit by a message from Pearl. 

<PearlescentMoon> Found Tango. He’s asleep. 

<Etho> sounds about right. 

<PearlescentMoon> No, I can’t wake him, Etho! I’ve tried! 

Etho frowned, drumming his fingers on his comm case. That was…odd. Tango wasn’t Bdubs; he wasn’t the type to sleep through anything, and Pearl was an expert at making a ruckus. 

Then a message popped up in the world chat. 

<JoeHillsSays> hey guys 

<JoeHillsSays> we’ve got a bit of a problem 

<JoeHillsSays> can y'all do me a favor and check in with each other? Lmk if you find anyone acting weird or passed out or something 

Etho had stared at the message for a moment, baffled. What the hell was that supposed to mean? 

Well, he hadn’t talked to Bdubs in a while. This might be a good excuse to stop by for a visit. He strapped on his elytra and took off. 

Etho knocked on the door, which swung open under his touch. He frowned. That was definitely unusual. 

“Hello?” he called. “Bdubs?” 

There was no response. He pulled his hood up and drew his sword, slowing his steps to avoid being heard. The base was unnervingly quiet and seemingly empty, but it wasn’t until he reached the bedroom that he realized why. Bdubs was sprawled out sideways across his bed. He didn’t stir when Etho entered the room, didn’t even make a sound aside from the gentle whirr of his breath. 

This was wrong. This was so, so wrong. He’d never known Bdubs to be anything but vibrant, always moving or always making noise or both, even in his sleep. Seeing him lying there, near-motionless, made his stomach churn. Etho sheathed his sword and shook his friend. 

“Hey,” he said gently. “Bdubs, you gotta get up.” 

No reaction. Etho’s heart sank even further. He shook him again, harder this time, to no avail. 

Etho backed away from the bed. His chest felt tight. He reached for his comm. The world chat was full of messages from the other Hermits, most addressed to Joe; some were asking for answers, others were freaking out. Cub, true to form, was being…well, Cub. 

<Cubfan135> not to freak anyone out but Scar won’t wake up. 

<Grian> HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MAKE US NOT FREAK OUT 

Etho sat against the wall, trying not to look at the sight before him, as if ignoring it would do any good for anyone, even him. He closed his eyes and forced in a few breaths, which burned in his lungs and throat. His mouth felt dry. 

<Etho> Bdubs is out too. 

<Zedaph> okay great 

<Zedaph> fantastic 

<Zedaph> now scar bdubs AND tango are in a coma 

<ImpulseSV> and skizz 

<ZombieCleo> Joe, what the hell is going on?! 

<JoeHillsSays> get everyone you can find who’s out somewhere safe, then meet me at spawn 

<JoeHillsSays> we’ve got a bit of a problem right now 

Spawn was just as chaotic as Etho expected. The Hermits were in an uproar over whatever the hell was going on. The chaos made his head fuzzy; he wished he remembered to bring his headphones. Although, to be fair, he also wasn’t planning to be around this many people, period, and he’d been having trouble with his inventory space this season and felt like he needed to conserve as much as he could. He settled for clamping his hands over his ears to muffle the worst of it. 

Joe showed up a few minutes after he did. Cub had to throw down a bucket of water to keep him from dying from fall damage on landing. 

“Okay, start talking,” Cub said. “What’s going on, Joe?” 

Joe stood. He was gasping for breath and shaking a little. He wiped water out of his face. 

“Alright, so by now you guys all know some of our friends are comatose, right?” 

“Coma…what?” Ren asked. 

“Comatose,” Doc said. “It means they’re in comas.” 

“Oh. Thanks, dude.” 

“I haven’t figured out what’s wrong with them. The code looks fine, but I’m not as good at it as X or Tango are, so I’m gonna need to ask you guys if one of you can volunteer-” 

“Why don’t you just ask X?” Jevin asked. 

The blood drained from Joe’s face. Cleo buried their head in their hands. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” they muttered. “He’s gone, too.” 

Joe nodded numbly. The cacophony started up again. Etho dug his nails into his skull, trying to drown out the noise with pain- 

“Alright, that’s enough!” Beef shouted. He turned to Joe. “What do you need us to do?” 

“Uh…I need someone to help me go through the code and see if we can figure out what’s going on, because this should not be happening.” 

“Oh, you think?” Joel snarked. 

“I can ask the other ex-Emperors if they have any ideas, too,” Gem said. 

“Yeah, great, you do that. The rest of you, I need you to bring everyone who’s unconscious that you can find here.” Joe glanced at Joel. “Can you get started on a building to put them in? Just for now.” 

Joel scoffed. “Fine. Not like I had anything else to do, anyway.” 

“Great, thanks.” 

Keralis stepped forward. “I’m not as good with the code as Shashwam, but I can try to…to…” 

His eyes glazed over. xB reached out for him. 

“Keralis? You okay…?” 

Keralis slumped to the ground. xB caught him before he could fall. The other Hermits gasped; Etho stared at Keralis blankly, struggling to process what had just happened. 

“What the fuck?!” Joel cried. 

“Holy shit,” Cleo breathed. 

xB shook his friend a bit, murmuring something Etho didn’t catch to him. Keralis didn’t react; he was just as limp and still as Bdubs had been. 

The Hermits plunged into a horrified silence. Dark smoke coiled in the back of Etho’s mind, a guilt and regret he hadn’t felt since Last Life. Was that what had happened to Bdubs? There one moment, then gone the next? Had he known it was coming? Was he scared? Had he wondered why he was alone before it all went dark-? 

Etho shook the smoke out of his head and began rocking back and forth. No, no. Those thoughts wouldn’t help him now. The important thing now was saving Bdubs; he could have an existential crisis about it later. 

xB looked up. His eyes were wet. 

“Fuck,” he breathed, and Etho was startled by the curse. He didn’t know xB well, but he hadn’t taken him for the type to swear. xB scrubbed his eyes with a sleeve. “What are you guys waiting for? We’ve gotta fix this before we’re too late.” 

Chapter Text

The Hermits split up into smaller groups. Most of them set off to gather their unconscious friends. A few stayed behind with Joe to go through the code, and Joel split off from the rest with xB to start working on the building Joe suggested. Gem, with Pearl tagging along for company, went to go comb through every resource at her disposal in the hopes of finding something that might help them. 

Her first mission was to send out a message to the rest of the servers she was involved with in case just one of them knew something, but that would take time for her to hear back any responses, and so in the meantime she began poking through her old stash of magic books. Pearl leaned against the wall, watching her work, her wings poofed out behind her. Gem could tell even at a glance that despite her best efforts not to appear so, she was tense. 

“So what are we looking for?” Pearl asked. 

Gem blew dust off the cover of an old tome. “We’re looking for anything to do with sleep and the dream world: dream creatures, sleeping curses, so on and so forth.” 

Pearl nodded. She picked an old book up, wrinkling her nose at the smell of must. 

“Gods, how old are these books?” she asked. 

“They’ve been passed down through my mother’s side for at least three generations,” Gem said casually. 

Pearl winced. Gem turned back to her work to hide her grin; she didn’t know how familiar Pearl was with fae and half-fae biology, but the actual time span her family had had these books was at least three times as long as Pearl probably thought it was. Fae were some stubbornly long-lived creatures. 

“Wait, why are there so many bodice-rippers in here?” Pearl asked. 

Gem groaned. “Oh, Void, I forgot I borrowed those from Sausage.” 

Pearl snorted. Gem grinned. 

“Don’t tell him I said that,” she said. 

“He doesn’t seem like the type to hide it,” Pearl said. 

Gem flicked some cobwebs off of another book and flipped it open. “It’s not that he’s trying to hide it; it’s that I borrowed those right before Empires 2 ended, and I haven’t found the time to give them back yet.” Then, almost offhandedly, she added, “I’ll turn you into a newt if you tell anyone I’m reading them, too.” 

Pearl raised an eyebrow and set the book she was holding aside. 

“You know I’m a Watcher, right?” she asked. “I can just turn back.” 

“It’s the principle of the matter-” Gem began before an idea hit her with all the subtlety and grace of a mallet. “Wait, Pearl. Do you think you can use your powers on these books to see which ones might have what we’re looking for?” 

“Huh? Probably…” 

Pearl closed her eyes and spread her wings. The feathers began to turn an eerie purple, rippling through them like spilled ink on paper. A shimmering ring of eyes blinked into existence around her, forming a twisting halo that seemed to look straight into Gem’s soul. A wind whispered through the room, growing into a howl the longer it went on. Gem’s ears popped as the air pressure plunged, and she suddenly began to feel so very, very cold- 

“Got it!” 

Then it was over, just like that. The ring of eyes vanished, and the purple color dissolved from Pearl’s wings. She marched over to a crate of books, pried it open, and proudly held up a pair of leather-bound tomes written in Elvish. 

Gem swallowed, wincing at the pain when her ears popped in response. She took one of the books from Pearl and flipped it open. Pearl did the same with hers and frowned. 

“I can’t read this,” she said. 

Gem held out her hand, and Pearl gave her the book. She flipped through it, scanning the pages but barely reading them. 

“They’re vitreous almanacs,” she realized. 

“Huh?” 

“Uh, books on the dream world,” Gem said. “They’re not very common, and most of them don’t make a lot of sense. I wonder where I even got these.” 

Then again, it was probably best not to know. Matters of the dream world were…complex and usually ended up causing you a headache. She’d ventured into oneironautics more than once and had left it more confused than when she started every time. For all she knew she’d probably woken up with the almanacs one day, left them in that box, and then forgot about them. 

Gem flipped open the cover and began to read. The pages were made of thick vellum and inked over with old mineral paints. They showed increasingly more bizarre images of a world she’d only scraped the surface of: rivers of teeth, cities in the clouds, impossibly large caverns bigger than the mountains they were constructed inside. There were bits and pieces, glimpses of creatures the tome’s author had only seen in passing, many of which hurt to look at. 

And then, there, at the back of the book, she found the answer. 

The Fauchereve 

Fauchereve are a rare, likely extinct breed of dream demon. Due to their scarcity, fauchereve often never meet another of their kind, and as a result are desperately lonely. They will lure in or abduct dreamers and whisk them away to their corner of the dream world. The fauchereve can reconstruct this area into the dreamer’s idea of paradise. They will take the form of someone their victim loves to entice them to stay; if your will is strong enough, however, you can see through their illusion to a secondary form underneath, which resembles the shadowy corpse of the creature’s last victim. 

The only way to rescue someone from a fauchereve is to enter the dream world and forcibly break the dream. This is a daunting and dangerous task, as the fauchereve’s realm is near-completely under their control and the creature is reluctant to let its victims go. 

When a fauchereve takes a dreamer, while it often appears sudden to outsiders, there are subtle warning signs. Wistfulness, uncharacteristic depression or moodiness, a fixation on mirrors, or unusually prolonged or intense periods of sleep are the most common. During these symptomatic periods, the fauchereve will enter the dreamer’s mind and craft a perfect world to entice them to stay; these symptoms are a side effect of this taste of a perfect world, which the dreamer becomes obsessed with obtaining permanently. 

The abduction itself takes anywhere from a few seconds to a minute and usually takes the form of a sudden wave of exhaustion. The victim will act sleepy or even delirious; they will rapidly descend into a slumber they cannot be roused from. The victim will perish within a few days if no actions are taken to save them by either the victim themselves or someone from the waking world. 

“Gem?” Pearl asked. “What does it say?” 

“It’s a dream demon,” Gem said quietly. “They’ve been taken by a dream demon. To rescue them, we have to enter the dream world, and to do that we have to get our hands on an ascension potion.” 

“Okay,” Pearl said slowly. “You say that like there’s a catch there.” 

Gem shook her head. Her eyes burned, but she refused to cry. Not now. Now wasn’t the time. “You need at least a month to make the potion, and we don’t have the time or ingredients.” 

Gem snapped the book shut and slammed it down on the floor. Pearl jumped, startled. 

“I’m sure we can manage something,” Pearl said. 

“No, we can’t,” Gem growled. “Even if we find the ingredients, we don’t even have a week to make it because by this time next week, our friends will be dead.” 

Pearl’s eyes widened at that. Her wings drooped. Gem buried her head in her dusty hands and fought back tears. 

“Oh…” Pearl breathed. 

Fuck. Fuck. They were doomed. Their friends were going to die, and there was nothing they could do to save them. They were going to watch them wither away before their eyes, and it would all be because of some stupid- 

Gem’s comm buzzed. She rolled up her sleeve, frustrated, ready to switch the damn thing off so she could have a moment to think before she saw the contact name. 

<Smajor1995> sounds like a dream demon 

<Smajor1995> i think i might have something that can help 

Gem almost laughed in relief. 

<GeminiTay> scott, if you weren’t gay, i’d kiss you right now. 

<Smajor1995> i’ll take that as a compliment. when should i come over? 

<GeminiTay> as soon as you can. I’ll ask Joe to whitelist you when he gets the chance. 

<Smajor1995> ty 

Gem slumped against the wall. 

“Scott thinks he might be able to help,” she said. 

Pearl’s eyes lit up at that. She grinned, but the smile quickly faded. Her fingers inched towards her sword. 

“Gem?” she asked uneasily. 

“Hm?” 

“Is that supposed to be there?” 

Gem followed Pearl’s gaze but saw nothing. She stood and looked around. Propped up against the wall to her left was a mirror; when her gaze passed over it, she caught a flash of something that really shouldn’t be there, looming just over her shoulder- 

And then it was gone. 

“What was that?” Gem breathed. “Did you see it?” 

Pearl nodded. Her face was pale. 

“What’d it look like?” 

She fell silent. Unease churned in Gem’s gut. 

“I…I didn’t get a good look at it,” Pearl admitted. “But it looked…it looked like it was covered in shadows.” 

Chapter Text

Gem and Pearl burst into Joel's newly-constructed building in a frenzy. Both were breathing heavily; Gem’s elytra were missing, and she clutched an old leather-bound book to her chest. 

“Gem-?” Impulse began. 

Gem laughed and combed a tangled mass of snarled red hair out of her face. “We found it. We know what’s wrong with them.” 

A low murmur passed through the room. 

“This is going to sound kind of insane, but bear with me,” Gem said. “It’s a dream demon.” 

You could’ve heard…well, maybe not a pin, but definitely a coin drop in the silence that followed. Gem’s face fell a little, like she was expecting them all to disagree with her or call her insane. 

“Well, it wouldn’t be the most absurd thing that’s happened to us,” Grian remarked. 

Gem let out a relieved breath. 

“What do we do?” Impulse asked wearily. 

“First, we need to whitelist Scott. He says he might have something that can help, but we have some choices.” 

More murmuring. 

“So, first off, the only way we can save them is by entering the dream world,” Gem said. “And we have a time limit: in a few days, all of them will be dead, and respawn won’t bring them back.” 

“What? How?!” Grian squeaked. 

“It must sever the connection between their soul and body,” Joe mused. “Right?” 

Gem shrugged. “Something like that. The longer they spend in the dream world, the more fragile their connection to this one becomes. After a few days, it’ll snap entirely, and they’ll be lost to the dream world forever.” 

She drew a deep breath through her nose and said, “But I’ve gotta ask something first: did any of you notice anything suspicious going on before all this happened?” 

“Uh…Grian wasn’t stealing as much of my stuff as usual,” Mumbo said. 

“No, not like that!” Gem said. “I mean, did the victims say anything odd? Were they acting out of character or sleeping in more?” 

Silence. Impulse was the first to speak. 

“Tango told me he wanted to sleep forever,” he said, his voice cracking like brittle glass. 

“Keralis kept saying he was having weird dreams, but that was pretty normal for him, so I didn’t think anything of it,” xB chimed in. 

“Bdubs sleeps so much already, I don’t think I’d have even noticed-” 

“-said something about just wanting everyone to be happy-” 

“-I found him passed out in front of a mirror-” 

“-said he was always left behind-” 

It kept coming, more and more, as it slowly sank in for them how much was wrong that they’d been too wrapped up in their heads or problems to notice; more and more little things that seemed fine in isolation, but when put together built up into the calamity they were now facing. 

“We’re terrible friends, aren’t we?” Ren mumbled, burying his head in his hands. 

Joe shrugged. “Only in hindsight. It’s like the Lost Franklin Expedition.” 

The others stared at him, baffled. 

“What?” Joe asked. 

“The…what now?” Jevin asked. 

“Lost Franklin Expedition. It was this really messed-up Arctic expedition where everyone died: Their food and water supply were poisoned with lead, the winter was worse than usual, and their ships were too big and slow to make it through on time. But no one had ever done something like this before, and with all those little details, no one realized how catastrophic it’d all be until it was too late.” 

“...Joe, I’m not sure this situation and a bunch of colonial-era idiots freezing to death in the Arctic is a good comparison,” Joel remarked. 

“Actually, most of them starved to death-” 

“That’s not the bloomin’ point!” 

“I think I get what he’s trying to say,” xB said. “We’ve never faced something like this before, and all the warning signs were so small that even if we had noticed them, we wouldn’t have come to the right conclusion.” 

“Yes!” Joe cried, pointing at xB. “You get it!” 

“So what do we do?” Doc asked. He was unusually subdued, all things considered. 

“We need to figure out who’s going into the dream world, and who’s staying here to keep an eye on all of our bodies,” Gem said. 

“...why?” Cleo asked. 

“Because if you’re injured in the dream world, you’re injured out here. And if we die in there, we can’t respawn, either.” 

Silence. Cleo sighed. 

“I shouldn’t have asked.” 

“How do we decide who gets to go? ‘Cause I’m not leaving finding Bdubs to just you guys,” Etho said. 

“That’s rich, coming from the washed-up-” Grian began. 

Pearl shot Grian a look, and he clammed up immediately. 

“I say whoever found them gets first pick,” Beef said. “So that’s…xB, Grian, Impulse, Pearl, Hypno, Etho, and Joe, right?” 

“Wait, why me?” Joe asked. 

“...weren’t you the one who found X?” 

“No! That was Mumbo!” 

All eyes turned to the otherwise-silent redstoner, who immediately turned bright red and shrank back. 

“U-uh, yeah. Yeah, that was…that was me,” he mumbled. 

“Alright, all in favor of Beef’s idea?” Joe asked. 

Several of the Hermits exchanged looks. Probably about half of them raised their hands, Gem and Pearl included. 

“Who else?” Joe asked. 

“Well, Gem’s the one who knows the most about the dream world out of all of us,” Jevin said. 

Gem blinked, then sighed. “I guess that’s true, isn’t it? Alright, but Scott's going to have to help you guys out with all the magic stuff.” 

“...we’ll take it.” 

“The dream world’s dangerous, so we’re going to need to bring some fighters, too,” Gem said. “Joe, how secure are the firewalls, do you think?” 

“Pretty sturdy. Wait, hang on, I have to whitelist Scott, let me check-” 

“So we can probably risk sending in some of the better fighters,” Gem said. “That just leaves the question of who and how.” 

“Why don’t we fight to the death over it?” Joel asked, sounding far too eager about the prospect. 

“First of all, no,” False said. “Second of all, you’d lose in the first round.” 

“I say False and I should go,” Cleo said. “Not like we’d be of much more use out here, and I’m not going to sit around and let you guys have all the fun.” 

“Joe’s the only admin we have right now, so he can’t go in-” Gem began. 

Joe shook his head. “I don’t mind staying out here. You’ll need Cleo in there more than I do out here.” 

Cleo crossed their arms and smirked. 

“Okay, so that’s settled,” Grian said. “That’s me, Pearl, Mumbo, Gem, False, xB, Etho, Cleo, Hypno, and Impulse going in, right?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s-” 

“Scott,” the room chimed up in unison. 

Grian visibly deflated. His wings drooped. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” 

Mumbo buried his head in his hands. “Grian…” 

“Don’t ‘Grian’ me! It’s not like you mentioned it multiple times-” 

“I did,” Gem hissed. “At least twice, and Joe mentioned it, too.” 

Grian flushed. “...ah. I might be stupid, then.” 

“Oh, don’t worry, we knew that already,” Cub said cheerfully. 

Scott showed up a few hours later with a bottle of strange, honey-like liquid. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I ran into some… issues.” 

“Let me guess: you stopped to flirt?” Grian asked. 

“Oh, no, I’m not that careless. I forgot where I put this,” he held up the bottle of dubiously-honey, “And then had to fight Martyn, who was absolutely convinced Ren was in danger.” 

Ren blinked. “Wait, but I told him-” 

Scott smirked. “I know. He got your message right before I left. I think it was the only reason he let me go.” 

Ren chuckled. Scott’s expression faded into neutrality. He scanned the group, eyes flickering from face to face as if looking for someone. A glimmer of relief sparked in his eyes at the sight of Cleo and Pearl. 

“I don’t have very much potion, so you’re going to have to divide it up-” 

“We already did, Scott,” Gem said. “I told them some of us have to stay behind to make sure we don’t bleed out in our sleep.” 

Scott nodded. “Good, I’m terrible at explaining these sorts of things. Who’s going into the dream world, then?” 

The volunteers raised their hands. Scott nodded. “Come with me.” 

They left the entrance chamber and headed into the next one over, the one where all their sleeping friends had been placed. Scott’s gaze passed over the room; worry tugged at his expression but faded just as quickly. Damn elves and their emotional suppression. 

Scott placed down a log to serve as a makeshift table and held the potion aloft like it was a beacon or something. 

“This,” he said, “Is a sleeping poison. It’s like a sleeping curse, but in potion form. You’re supposed to use an ascension potion for something like this, but those are a pain in the arse to make and I couldn't be bothered to make one on short notice even if it was possible. Ascension potions and normal sleeping potions wear off; this will not. I have to dismiss the spell to wake you up, and I won’t know if you’ve succeeded until your friends wake up first, so if you go in there and can’t save any of them before their minds shut down, you’re joining them in the dream world. Forever.” 

“Great. Sounds lovely,” Pearl said sarcastically. 

“Doesn’t it?” Scott said. 

“This doesn’t sound very safe,” Mumbo said nervously. 

“Oh, it’s not!” Scott said with dissonant cheer. “It’s just the best I could come up with on short notice.” 

Gem was really, really starting to wish someone else had answered her message. 

Scott set the bottle down, then flushed in embarrassment. “Ah, do any of you have any cups? I forgot to bring some of mine.” 

Impulse scurried out of the room, returning with a stack of plastic cups. Scott took them graciously and laid them out in a ring on the table, then slowly began to pour the thick liquid into them. 

“This might take a while,” he admitted. “I forgot how thick it was.” 

Twenty-five minutes later, there were a ring of ten cups with a thick, gooey, orange-yellow substance at the bottom of each. Scott set the now-empty bottle down. 

“Gem, did you explain how the weapons in the dream world work?” he asked. 

Gem smacked her forehead with her palm. “Shit, I forgot! Okay, uh…do you want to do it, or should I?” 

“I’ll do it,” Scott said. He folded his hands behind his back. “So, because this dream realm does not belong to you, you won’t be able to do any cool stuff like, oh, walking through walls or flying or anything like that.” 

“...dammit…” Hypno muttered. 

“Can avians still fly?” Pearl asked. 

“Yes, but you’ll need to be careful. All your innate powers should still work as long as the demon doesn't find out about them. If it does, it can change the rules of the dream world to counteract them. It cannot be everywhere at once, so as long as you use them where it and its servants can’t see you, you’ll be alright. Now, when you enter the dream world, you can conjure a weapon to bring with you - just one, so choose wisely.” He clapped his hands together. “Alright, I think that’s about it.” 

“You forgot the shapeshifting,” Gem stage-whispered. 

“What- oh, right! The demon can take on the form of anyone. If your will is strong enough, you might be able to see through it, and most likely it will not realize you’ve broken the illusion, but be careful. Don’t go out alone or let each other out of sight if you can help it, and if one of you starts acting suspicious or looks a little off, heed your gut. It’s better safe than sorry.” 

The group was silent for a moment. Then Cleo pushed their way forward. 

“This is going to be fun,” they said sarcastically, then held out their hand. “Alright, let’s do it. You only live once, I guess.” 

Scott handed them their cup. Slowly, the others shuffled forward to take theirs. 

“On the count of three, we drink,” Gem said. “One…two…three!” 

She gulped down the potion; out of the corner of her eye, she could see the other Hermits doing the same. She grimaced at the taste; it was a chalky sort of sweetness, and it clung to her tongue like dust. She rolled her tongue through her teeth to scrape some of it off. 

“How long does it take to kick in-?” Etho began. 

His cup clattered to the floor, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He toppled to the ground with a heavy thunk!

A warm, thick fog rolled in through Gem’s head. She caught the nearest bedpost and clumsily lowered herself to the floor before she could fall over. Her eyelids drooped. A few feet away, she saw False drop to her knees. Behind her, Impulse and Mumbo were already on the ground, slumped against Tango’s bedframe. The last thing Gem heard before it all went black was the sound of Scott’s voice. 

“Holy shit, I can’t believe that potion actually worked.” 

Chapter Text

It was a weird feeling, falling without being able to catch yourself. Grian had long forgotten what it felt like and doubted he’d feel it again. It felt like he didn’t have a body, and his soul was plunging deeper and deeper into the void, freefalling forever. He had no eyes to see, no hands to touch, no wings to slow his descent. It was just himself and the darkness and the yawning nothing beneath him. 

Then the void began to brighten, and feeling returned to him. When he opened his eyes, he saw a clear blue sky above him instead of darkness and felt grass against his back. 

Grian pushed himself upright and spread his wings out to stretch them. A cool, faint breeze whispered through his feathers and ruffled his hair. He brushed his fingers across the grass; he knew it wasn’t real, that this was all happening in a dream, but damn if it wasn’t a convincing dream. Scar wasn’t a fool, but Grian figured even he would be tricked by it. No wonder he’d fallen into the dream demon’s trap. 

Grian stood and looked around. He was standing in a picturesque meadow framed with stone cliffs, which spread out in a tangled maze as far as he could see. He cupped his hands over his mouth. 

“Hello?!” he shouted. His voice bounced off the cliffs. There was no response, which totally wasn’t ominous at all, nope. He glanced at the nearest maze channel and began walking towards it- 

Thunk!  

His foot hit something hard, which almost tripped him over. He yelped and flapped his wings to steady himself, then whirled around to face the offending object- 

Oh. 

A plain, unenchanted netherite axe lay in the grass. Grian knelt to pick it up; the wood was smooth, and he could feel the grains under his fingertips. The axehead was heavy, but not atrociously so; enough to add a nice swing to the weapon. Grian slashed it around a bit to test it out, then grinned. 

“Oh, I’m going to have a lot of fun with you,” he decided. 

He hung the axe from a loop on his belt and continued on his path. 

Grian found Mumbo standing in another open clearing in the maze, eyes squeezed shut and body tense. 

“Hey, you alright over there?” Grian called. 

Mumbo nearly jumped out of his skin. Grian giggled. 

“Don’t scare me like that!” Mumbo gasped. 

“Sorry!” Grian said, not sounding sorry at all. “What are you up to? You look like you were trying to poo.” 

Mumbo turned bright red. “I…I was testing out what Scott said about our powers.” 

Grian raised an eyebrow. “And?” 

Mumbo closed his eyes again. He vanished in a burst of purple light, reappearing a good twenty feet away. 

“It’s a lot harder than it is back home,” he said sheepishly. 

Grian shrugged. “Well, at least now we know Scott wasn’t lying. Now, come on; let’s go find the others.” 

Hypno, like Mumbo, was out in the middle of a field with his eyes closed. He was sitting, his head tilted like he was listening to something. 

“Hey, Hypno!” Grian said cheerfully, fluttering over to land directly behind the man. “Whatcha doin’?” 

“Listening to the flowers,” Hypno mumbled. 

Grian shot a look at Mumbo, who shrugged, looking equally bewildered. 

“What are they saying, then?” Grian asked. 

Hypno opened his eyes and stood. 

“That you’re a nuisance and to please stop stepping on them. It’s rude and it hurts.” 

“...sorry…” Mumbo mumbled sheepishly. 

The next was Impulse, who they almost missed because he was stuck in a tree. 

“Little help?” Impulse called. 

Grian cackled. 

“How did you get up there?!” Mumbo cried. 

“I don’t know!” 

Hypno sighed and trudged over. What followed was the weirdest tug-of-war Grian had seen in a while between Hypno and the tree as he tried to pull Impulse off the branch. Eventually, the half-demon toppled over the edge of the branch and smacked right into Hypno. The duo lay there, dazed, until Grian strode up to them with all the confidence of his non-human half, propped his hands on his hips, and grinned down at them. 

“Hypno and Impulse, hanging in a tree-” 

Hypno threw a rock at his head, which hit him square between the eyes. Grian recoiled with a yelp. 

“Oww!” he moaned. “What was that for?” 

“For being a nuisance,” Hypno said, clambering off the ground. He offered Impulse a hand and hauled him up, too. 

Etho was next, and in a return to the pattern was sitting in the middle of a field of flowers. When Grian grew close, though, his head began to spin from their scent. 

“Oh, gods!” he wheezed. “Oh, that’s strong.” 

“What is that?” Mumbo asked. 

Impulse crept up to about the edge of the pollen line and began shouting. 

“Etho! Etho! ” 

Etho looked up. His eyes were glazed over, like he was in a trance. 

“Etho, come on, dude! We’ve gotta go find Bdubs!” 

A spark of recognition appeared in Etho’s eyes, chasing away some of the fog. He stood sluggishly and staggered over like a drunk man, then collapsed immediately into Impulse’s arms, giggling. 

“Those flowers were nice,” he said sleepily. “You should try them sometime.” 

Hypno snickered. “Looks like he’s high as a kite.” 

“Higher, probably,” Grian said. 

Pearl was sitting on a rock with a deck of cards spread out around her. She looked up when she heard them approach and waved them over. 

The cards looked a little like the decks Grian was more familiar with, but the illustrations were more intricate, and the symbols were much different: coins, cups, wands, and swords instead of spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts. 

“What are those?” Grian asked curiously. 

“Tarot cards!” Pearl said cheerfully. “Martyn taught me how to read them a long time ago, but I can’t really use them right now.” 

“Why not?” 

Pearl opened her mouth to speak, but Etho finished her thought for her. 

“Looks like the Major Arcana are missing,” he remarked. 

Pearl nodded. “I don’t know where they went; they were on Gem when I…er…” 

Grian raised an eyebrow. Pearl scowled. “Don’t tell her.” 

“Oh, I won’t!” Grian said. “You’re just not usually the type to steal something so directly.” 

“I was bored; sue me!” 

Gem was surrounded by a cloud of small fairies, which looked more like the ones from the storybooks than the ones she was descended from. She was holding what seemed like a conversation with them in a strange, scratchy language that sounded vaguely familiar. 

“Oh, hey, guys!” Gem said cheerily. “I was just asking the fairies where my tarot cards went!” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Grian saw Pearl tuck the deck a little deeper in her back pocket. 

“You can talk to fairies?” Impulse asked. 

Gem’s brow furrowed. “Yeah? I’m half-fae.” 

Impulse looked like he’d just been decked in the face. Etho chuckled. 

“Well, we have to go find the others, so…” Grian began. 

“Yeah, just give me a minute to wrap this up.” 

xB was lying facedown in the middle of the path in an area where one side of the canyon walls gave way to a tranquil lake. 

“You, uh…you good there?” Hypno asked, nudging him with his boot. xB moaned. 

“The water’s not real! It’s like…” Hypno made a funny squeezing motion with his hands. 

Grian scooped a handful of water out of the lake and immediately flung it back. xB was right; it was more like jello than water. Grian wrinkled his nose and wiped his hand clean on his pants. 

“Gross,” he muttered. 

“Well, it looks like we might be on the edge of this area of the dream realm,” Gem said, gesturing across the lake. The other side was hidden by a thick wall of roiling mist. “Whatever rules exist here break down this far from the center. We’ll have to go closer to find any of our friends; the demon wouldn’t keep them this far from its reach.” 

“So…you’re telling me there might be real water here somewhere?” xB asked hopefully. 

Gem shrugged. “Well, none of it's real anyway, but if you're talking about more realistic water, probably.” 

xB slumped against the ground in relief, banging his head against the packed dirt. “Thank the Abyss.” 

They didn’t find False and Cleo; False and Cleo found them. They ran into them in their meanderings a few minutes after finding xB. 

“Found you!” Cleo said, swatting Grian on the back hard enough that he could’ve sworn he felt his ribs creak. Grian wheezed. 

“Where were you guys?” False asked. 

“Looking for you,” Hypno said flatly. 

“What’s the plan?” xB asked. 

“We need to find a way out of this stupid maze,” Impulse said. “We’re not gonna rescue our friends by being stuck here.” 

“No, I meant after we get out of the maze.” 

“...oh. My bad.” 

Gem cleared her throat. All eyes turned to her. 

“The dream demon’s probably divided this realm up to ensure its prisoners don’t run into each other. They shouldn’t be that hard to find; we’re close enough to the edge that as long as we head away from it, we’ll run into something eventually, and since the dream realm changes to match its victims’ desires, we’ll just need to look for some sort of change in the terrain.” 

“Okay, that all sounds like a great idea, but we’re still stuck in the middle of this maze,” Grian pointed out. 

Gem stared at him blankly. 

“Grian, you have wings,” she said, sounding deeply disappointed in him. 

Grian flushed red in embarrassment. “Oh. Right.” 

Grian spread his wings and pushed into the air. Mumbo was right; it was harder to fly here than in the waking world. It took him a few more flaps than usual to reach the top of the nearest cliff. He landed less-than-gracefully on the uneven rocks and scanned the horizon. There was nothing - less, maybe - as far as he could see, just more cliffs and- 

Wait, what was that? 

In the distance, he could see dim, blurry blue-grey shapes hovering on the horizon, standing out in surprisingly sharp contrast against the sky. 

“There’s something over there!” Grian shouted down at the others. 

Relieved chattering erupted below him, too quiet for him to hear. Grian glided back to the ground, landing somewhat inelegantly, although he righted himself quickly. 

“Come on, then!” he said. “Let’s go save our friends.”