Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He blinked. Awake. 

He wasn't sure if he had been asleep before. 

Or what sleep was. 

But he was awake now, something slightly obscuring his sight. 

He reached up to touch it, but saw his hand. 

That was a hand, right? Why did he know what that was?

It was slender, pale, the many bones floating perfectly in place. But something beyond the hand distracted him. 

Looking up, he saw light. Above him was fading light, a deep color seeping out of what hung over him. 

It was all.. blue. The color was blue, with a few stray patches of white like his hand. Clouds in a sky. 

He liked that color. Wanted to be up there with it. He was white like a cloud, right? 

But the light was fading now, leaving darkness in it's wake. Small lights glimmered in that dark, and he admired that too. The clouds, now a dull, shadowy gray, would occasionally drift across the black, glittering expanse. 

He missed the blue. 

Blue. The word rolled around in his mind. How did he know that word? …How did he know anything? The knowledge was simply there inside him, appearing from nothingness just like his mind had. 

Who was he? What was he? 

A dull clatter caught his attention, looking to see a face made of bone, pale yet expressionless. He stared, taking in the other. A skeleton. He knew what it was, just like he knew the other was holding a bow. With a jolt, he realized something was in his hand, unnoticed as he'd previously stared at the unoccupied one. 

Also a bow. 

..Did he look like that? Blank, ridged face, dark, empty sockets? 

He didn't like that thought. It seemed.. wrong. 

But he was also a skeleton, right? He. He looked the same. At least, the parts of himself he could see. 

How was he supposed to see his face? It was what he saw out of. 

He didn't know. 

So he took a step forward. There was a dull clatter, making him look down. His body was the same as the other, but something brown covered his legs. Now that he was paying attention to it, he could feel it there, rubbing slightly at his bones. 

Pants. They were called pants. Leather pants. 

They were fairly rough, he knew, though he had no idea how he knew. This strange knowledge was weird when he questioned it. Even weirder when he wondered what happened. He wasn't asleep yet he just woke up. He couldn't remember what was going on before. He simply.. was. 

So he looked out at the place he had woken to, as if the swaying trees and bubbling brooks could answer him. There was nothing but the wind in the leaves and trickling water in reply. So he looked to the skeleton beside him. 

“Why am I here?”

The words surprised him. He hadn't realized he could do that, touching his teeth in shock. The other hadn't reacted to his words anyway. He tried again. 

“I? … I am here.” The words thrummed in his skull, hummed in his ribs. He could feel it all. Hear it. Taste the letters, even. But..

“..But why?” 

The wind sighed in response. 

There was nothing here that could answer him. He was alone here, thinking, speaking, awake in this world with nothing but the bow in his hands and the pants on his legs. Wait.. was..? 

He also had a helmet on his skull. 

Nothing but a helmet, pants and a bow. 

So he started walking, glancing back briefly at his fellow skeleton, seeing a cave behind them both- and deciding to move on. He strode under trees, past silent creatures and shifting plants; all the while their names came to him. He had to whisper them under his breath, awed at his knowledge of them, mysterious and magnificent as it was. 

Didn't that make him magnificent? 

He could recognize all he saw at a glance, knowing its name and attributes, able to speak for no discernable reason and think for himself. He knew everything else he looked at couldn't, though not why. 

Maybe he was magnificent. He was special, for some strange reason. He decided he would treasure that. Magnificent was a delightful word. 

So was the word blue. Maybe that could also be his. 

Though he couldn't color himself- at least, he didn't think he could. But he wanted it to himself. He was magnificent, and he was blue. Somehow. 

He glanced at a river he was now walking beside. 

He had to stop. 

…He really was different. 

Glancing up at another nearby skeleton, simply sitting on a spider's back, he analyzed the differences. His face was rounder, sockets larger. There were bright lights there, burning like the ones overhead, but blue like the sky had been. He really was blue. 

Blue. 

A name. A special name. It meant everything he was that other skeletons like him were not. He was a skeleton. He thought. He spoke. He knew. 

He was magnificent, and he was Blue. 

There was warmth inside him as he reached that decision. Something new. 

He knew, then, that there was something else he could do. 

He didn't know how, but.. he turned in excitement and slapped his free hand into the grass beside him. Something came loose. In his glee at feeling the earth in his grasp, at feeling so viscerally, he kept hitting. 

And then he was falling. 

Though not far. 

Blue pushed himself up, finding that where grass had been, was now a hole. In his hand was a compact clod of dirt. He had to stare in awe. 

He had done this. He could change the world if given enough time. 

Grabbing his bow again, he fit it over his skull where it hung off his shoulder. He didn't want to lose it, he knew he could do things with it- just didn't quite know what yet- and closed his hands to hit a tree. Just to see. 

It too, broke away. 

Though this was different. The top was dropping, and Blue had to dive out of the way as it crashed to the ground. After a moment, it broke apart into pieces. He snatched them up, gathering the fallen branches as well as the leaves continued to break apart. Even the red things, apples. 

Blue found he could store them away, gone from his hands, yet he still felt their presence in his mind. Like a bubble somewhere that they took up space. In a moment, he also became aware that the space wasn't empty. He summoned what was hidden away into his hand.

Arrows. Lots and lots of arrows. 

He knew what he could do with these. He just did. It came so easily to him, taking the bow and notching an arrow. He stared at the bow, then looked around. He had to see… so he aimed at another tree. 

The shot hit dead center, embedding deep into the wood. 

Awesome. 

Blue decided to put it away in favor of seeing what else he could do. 

And he learned much in just a few minutes. 

He could break anything solid it seemed, though only most things could be put back down, mostly as before. 

He could also combine the wood to form planks. Soon after trying multiple combinations he found he could create stairs, slabs, something he knew was a table to help him make things- which he was using- and strangely enough, more sticks. 

So, he considered combining the wood with the sticks. 

He produced a wooden sword. 

…Blue recalled seeing a zombie with a stone one. And he knew stone was somewhere beneath the dirt. He needed something more. 

The pickaxe was created. He just knew what it was for. 

So he took the table and began digging, delighting when he reached the pale gray, excited as it broke beneath his tool. He was discovering more, how to create stone tools, not to mention even more tools he hadn't known about through sheer creativity, going deeper. 

He found iron, but he knew it needed something more before it could be useful. The coal he'd found felt right. He just needed to find out what he had to do. He had a lot of time to spend here, digging. 

Though he often had to come back up to get more wood. He'd paused the first few times, finding that the sky was light again. So bright, so blue. It was beautiful. 

Though not even that could distract him for long. 

He created a furnace, finally learning what to do with his materials. He tossed away the crumbly chainmail he'd made from the stones, gleefully making himself real armor, a chestplate of iron. It felt like a proper achievement. He was covering his exposed self. 

Blue was soon able to find enough to trade his mildly irritating pants for iron ones, even fitting boots on his feet. His delicate body was properly shelled now. 

He wasn't sure how he knew he needed it, though he also knew better than to question his knowledge. It was helping him so much. 

Playing around led him to a shield, and finally Blue decided to put his bow away for real. Into the space where he would feel it in some kind of bubble instead of on his shoulderblades. 

He still burrowed through the earth, stumbling into a space full of wood planks and things on the floor. Rails, he knew them. This place was a mineshaft. 

He greeted zombies that meandered past him and strode around spiders that scuttled about aimlessly. They didn't mind him. Out of curiosity, he even rode on one. It wasn't very interesting. It was covered in coarse hair, and just kept wandering around without a care to the armored skeleton on its back. 

So Blue left it behind, moving on and mining more materials. Gold, copper, lapis lazuli. He was even intrigued by granite and diorite. Strange things could be made from them, though it wasn't quite as versatile as stone. Nor could they be made into armor, like gold. Though gold, admittedly, seemed a little flimsy. And was too flashy. Blue felt he looked better in iron. 

In the chests of the mineshaft, he found strange things. He found smithing templates and knew that the other table he'd made while messing with wood and iron would help. 

Blue found he liked lapis lazuli on his armor. It went nicely with the lights in his sockets. 

And it was blue. 

He kept finding more things underground, things like deepslate, lichen, glow squids that shimmered brighter than the diamonds he encountered, and even a strange, deep, sort of black material that for some reason filled him with dread. 

Blue quickly backed away from it, knowing it was called sculk. He didn't like sculk. It felt wrong, twisted. Something in him screamed to run whenever it was close. He could even sense it's presence through walls. 

What freaked him out the most though, was how it also sensed him. 

Random noises he made would trigger strange, glowing tendrils that rose out of the mass. He could feel a pulse from them each time they heard him. 

The sculk unsettled Blue, freaking him out enough that he decided he'd like to explore the surface again. If only to just escape the disturbing infection underground. 

So he dug upwards, following random caves, taking their more valuable resources as he went. 

He eventually splashed into water, light distantly shining through it. 

Blue emerged in a lake, blinking in wonder at the light. There were few trees here, mostly just rolling hills. Most notable were the.. structures. Made of wood and stone. Shapes were milling about, and Blue felt the need to explore. 

So he climbed onto an incomplete bridge and entered what he knew was a village. The beings here hummed and hawed at him, a few scurrying away with fear in their eyes as others seemed vaguely curious. 

There was something like him here. Not quite him, but closer than he'd seen previously. 

Blue tried to greet some of them, but all he got were vague looks of confusion. They couldn't understand. 

That was alright. He was pretty used to being alone anyway. 

Still, Blue liked this place. He could make it nicer, he thought. He could do things like that. 

And there was a hint of awareness behind their eyes, an intelligence he recognized from himself. If there was anything like him, it was them. 

So he walked into the place, waving at any who looked at him. Most scurried off. 

That was fine, he was easily intimidating for many reasons. He would have to make it clear he was a friend. 

Now how to do that..? 

There was an enormous iron being marching towards him, covered in wiry plants that bloomed. 

Blue hesitated, feeling an instinctual danger in the being as it approached. Still, he stared and waved. He wasn't preparing to run. Why would he need to run? He was a friend. The.. golem.. was a friend. Or would be? It was still marching closer. 

It suddenly paused before him, only a few feet away. It's eyes were a deep red, pupil-less orbs that seemed to softly glow as they stared at him. Blue was reminded of the powdery redstone he had encountered. The strange power it seemed to hold. 

The almost comically small head tilted to the side, and by some strange impulse Blue slowly lifted his helmet. If he could see this golem’s face, why not return the favor? 

Something shifted in it's expression, and it took a step back, hesitantly turning away. 

“But I don't know what you wanted..?” Blue trailed, watching it go, glancing back at him repeatedly. The villagers too, seemed to be staring at the interaction. 

A part of him knew exactly what it had wanted. 

He just didn't understand why it stopped. 

Maybe it really knew he was a friend, it just needed a good, long look at his absolutely friendly face. 

Besides, he was wearing really cool armor! Who wouldn't admire someone in such cool digs? 

…He wasn't wearing anything underneath the armor. 

Looking around at the villagers, who were at least civilized.. maybe he should? 

But what would he wear? They all mostly wore browns and grays, and Blue wasn't really for that. He liked.. well, blue. And silver. He felt good wearing those. 

He pondered the conundrum, tapping a boot idly as villagers continued meandering around him, some speaking to one another in their indecipherable, but definitely simple language as others went about seemingly self appointed tasks. The sun shone bright overhead, almost idyllic. 

Suddenly, there was a strange metallic snap, and his skull was immediately burning. 

He jolted more out of shock than anything, falling under the overhang of the nearest house. 

Blue stared at the point he'd been standing before, bewildered. His helmet, his beautifully crafted iron helmet with lapis trim.. was just broken. Snapped clean in half, the top mysteriously stained somewhat grayer than before. 

Blue could only stare. For once, he didn't know why something happened. He only had the vague feeling that it was because he was a skeleton. 

“Did anyone else see that?” He called to the villagers, still processing. 

The villagers, of course, said nothing in reply. Only continued their business, humming and hawing. 

Until one wearing generally gray and black paused, standing beside the broken helmet. After a long look at the broken thing, they looked up at him. Blue blinked, feeling seen. The other also blinked, but also recoiled slightly. It didn't seem to be from fear, just a sort of surprise. 

“I.. I put a lot of effort into that helmet.” He explained quietly, thinking it was over the quality. 

Then the villager nudged the helmet with a foot, rolling a shoulder and turning away. 

“Wait! I-” He called out, a certain longing to be seen, to be acknowledged by something at least a little aware like him. 

The villager paused, glancing back at him. They seemed a little exasperated, rolling their shoulder again. 

Blue hesitated, thinking. 

“Do you.. want me to follow you?” He pointed between himself and the other. The action seemed to satisfy them, turning and walking away. 

He started to follow, but recoiled when his hand stung. He cringed at the sharp rattle he'd made jumping away. The light, it was burning him now. Had the helmet prevented that before? What was tied into a helmet that protected the rest of him? Why didn't the rest of his armor do that too? 

There was an irritated hrrn from the strange villager, marching back. Blue backed up, concerned as the forever linked hands came apart and reached for him. “Wait, but I-” He cut off as they grabbed the shield at his back, tugging it over his skull and directing his hand to the bar. 

Blue was again, shocked. “...Will this work?” He asked the other. 

Clearly they couldn't understand him, simply grunting and walking away, looking over their shoulder. 

Unwilling to annoy the other further, Blue surged after them. He still tensed when emerging from the protective shade, huffing in delight when indeed, the shield worked. Of course, he had to angle it carefully, as the light still felt hot on his bones when it grew too close.

The villager led him through the buildings, ignoring others as they curiously glanced after the two of them. Blue tried waving at each one. He was briefly distracted by a small one staring in open wonder, only for another regular villager to quickly step between them. Given the slight anger on that big nosed face, Blue decided to move on before they got overly upset at him. 

Finally he was led into a house near the edge of the community, gratefully dropping the shield upon stepping inside. His current savior was ruffling through a chest, humming to themself quietly. 

Then they whipped out a helmet, plain, but iron like his had been. Blue straightened, having not expected that. They could do things like he could. The other may very well have created that helmet at some point. 

“Is.. is that for me?” He asked, despite knowing the other didn't understand him. Instead, green eyes met the lights of his sockets. 

Then with a flick, an emerald appeared in their weathered gloves. 

Somehow, he just knew. The other wanted an emerald from him in exchange. 

Blue had only come across four of the green gems. 

“Look, I.. I don't have much, but will you take this?” He hesitantly offered his stash, wincing at the strangely blank face. 

“I'm sorry, I've only found so much in my travels. Emeralds seem to be quite rare.” 

Yet the villager slowly pushed the helmet into his bony hands, gingerly taking one of his emeralds. Then those same gloved hands seemed to shoo him away. Blue took the hint, thanking the other profusely while backing away. With another helmet covering his skull, Blue put away his remaining three emeralds and stepped anxiously into the sun. 

Now that he was paying attention to it, he could feel the heat there, barely held back. Looking at his humerus, Blue slowly poked.. there was a faint purple shimmer. 

So helmets just had magic like that, apparently. 

And maybe it got overextended protecting him for too long. 

Did the villagers deal with this burning problem too? Or was it just a problem he had as a skeleton? 

…Come to think of it, he hadn't seen any other skeletons or zombies since surfacing from the water. He might have seen some in the water? But their insides gleamed blue with a strange power. 

A bit like himself, actually. A slightly off shade though. A bit more turquoise. 

Was he possibly awake due to a strange energy like them? 

There was no way he could tell. 

And he had other things to worry about, like protecting this village. 

He had to, for some reason. Maybe it was to prove himself in some way. That he was more than the empty beings he so constantly encountered. More than what these villagers seemed ready to believe of him. He was more than even them, though it wasn't nice to say that. 

And Blue wanted to be nice. 

So he reached the most logical conclusion: he would improve himself and the village as well. First thing to do? Find something that would protect him from the sun longer. Clearly the helmet was unlikely to last long, so he had to experiment. 

Most of that involved wandering through the village, keeping to the shade and exploring. He peered through windows, discovering new things like bookshelves and fletching tables and anvils. He'd never seen them before, yet their names came to him easily, as always. 

It was the discovery of the loom, sitting unused in a corner of one house that something seemed to click. 

This, he could use. He just needed string and wool. 

…That was the first time words had come to him without seeing them. Blue had to pause again, now leaning on the door of the seemingly abandoned house. 

His own knowledge seemed to regularly surprise him now. 

Yet more things solidified in his mind. Wool came from sheep, string came from a variety of resources. Primarily spiders. He had to kill spiders for that. 

Why did he have to kill them? Surely there was another way. 

Blue ended up taking the loom with him, taking some things left in the chest nearby and walking out of the village to think. 

So far there were shears from the chest, and he knew he could use those for wool. And leaves. Why did he know that? 

Well asking himself obviously wasn't going anywhere, so he moved on yet again. 

There were sheep in the nearby woods, so he thankfully had shade to work in. The delicate thing brayed at him, curiously watching as he stripped it of its wool. It would be fine. The next one was more energetic, trying to pull away several times with multiple annoyed brays. 

He kept finding sheep and shearing them, getting into a groove as he did so. Wander the forest, find a sheep, shear them, rinse and repeat. It was pretty cute watching them trundle away without their thick layers of wool anyway. They always had a bit more bounce in their step. 

It was dark again by the time he snapped out of his sort of trance, blinking face to face with a swaying corpse, green with rot and mold. Ah. Sometimes zombies were a little too much. Blue had to turn away from the stumbling cadaver, slowly retracing his steps. 

Since it was now dark, he decided to take off his helmet as he walked, debating how he might decorate it. As it was, it didn't quite fit with the rest of his armor. No fancy trim, no blue. He would have to fix that. 

Did he still have that spare template? Yes, yes he did. He didn't really want to use it and be left without a spare though, so it would have to wait. He could probably make more, he just had to find out how. 

There were noises up ahead. New ones. Sounds that he had never heard before, yet sounded distinctly familiar. 

Blue stepped through the trees, glimpsing the warm glow of the torches in the distance. He watched a green shape get flung out past a house. 

Coming closer, Blue recognized it as a zombie, now barely held together from the force of the impact. Still, it tottered to it's feet, uncaring of it's shattered ankles as it sagged back the way it came. 

Peering around the corner, Blue saw the golem, currently slamming it's metal fists into a flailing spider. There wasn't a villager in sight. 

He flinched as the arachnid exploded into goo, splattering over the metal construct and stone wall behind it. Then the golem turned, setting it's dull red eyes on the approaching zombie. 

With a single swing, the undead’s face was smashed into the wall. Blue recoiled, seeing fragments of bone. 

The golem could have done that to him. 

Blue snuck away from the scene, terrified of getting involved. He'd rather slink back into the abandoned house he'd found his loom in. 

Luckily the golem was preoccupied with brutally ripping apart all other creatures in the vicinity, stomping around and crushing them into pulp. 

It was horrifying. Nope. Not going near that. 

So he swiftly opened a door, ducked inside and closed it before anything could spot him. 

Except he didn't go unnoticed. 

Blue jumped at a gasp nearby, freezing when he saw a villager cowering by a bed. He slowly eased, realizing he'd scared them. Glancing back outside, he pointed at the golem. “He's quite murder happy out there, isn't he?” 

As usual, all he got was a look of bewildered confusion. 

There wasn't much else to do, so he just leaned on the locked door, sliding to the floor with a sigh. 

“Is he like this every night? I won't lie, that seems to be a fairly unpleasant neighbor.” 

No answer, of course. 

Suddenly, there was a banging on the door. Blue jumped away in alarm before noticing the green on the other side of the peephole. 

“Oh dear, even the zombies are running away.” He noted, reaching for the handle. 

The villager started breathing fast and hard, making him look over as the door opened. 

“Are you alri-” He couldn't even finish his sentence before he was shoved to the ground by the putrid corpse. 

“Hey! That was rude!” He complained, knowing he'd never get a response as he got back up- yet a gut-wrenching scream shot through the air. 

With wide sockets, Blue looked up to see the villager frantically trying to keep the bed between them and the flailing zombie.

“What the-?!” Was all he could say, recoiling as it snapped rotting gums at the poor villager. Like it was trying to bite them. 

“What is wrong with you?!” Blue demanded, yanking it away. There was still no response, the villager trying to climb up the corner to get away while continuing to scream hysterically, the zombie desperately lunging for them despite Blue's tight grip on its neck. 

There was an eerie tingle up his spine when it occurred to him. 

The zombie didn't want in to get away from the golem. 

It was here for the villager. 

He felt strangely cold at that realization. So, delicately, he started pulling the zombie to the door, finding it was seriously yearning for flesh, completely ignorant that he was there at all. It wasn't all too difficult to just get it out the door. 

He was able to get it far enough away that it changed it's mind, yanking itself in a new direction. 

Blue followed it's gaze to see it was a house currently right next to the golem. 

Suddenly it all made sense now. 

The golem wasn't mindlessly violent at night. It was simply a fierce protector. 

For some reason all the creatures he'd seen as hollow yet docile were simply.. waiting for prey. 

These villagers, these simple people he couldn't yet understand, they were constantly threatened each night by these creatures. 

The day was safe because they burned. 

He burned. 

Now Blue couldn't help but wonder why he'd been helped at all, if this is what they knew of creatures like himself. 

He couldn't just let that happen now, could he? 

He would simply have to build their defenses as well as his own. 

It stung, knowing he had come from what clearly was a violent creature to innocent beings, but it simply meant he was even greater of a person for not being that way. He would show them who he was. 

With the decision made, Blue took out his bow, kept one socket on the potentially raging golem, and started shooting. 

He had to start one way or another, after all. 

Chapter Text

"You see Carrot, the entire top half of the wheat must be yellow when harvested, otherwise not all of the seeds are ripe." He explained to the cat lazily watching him work. The straw hat on his skull started slipping forward as he bent over again, corrected with a free hand as he tugged the domestic grass out of the tilled soil. A bit of energy seeped into his bones from the effort, and he knew he had enough for what he'd been waiting for. 

"Oh! You see that? I can do the magic now!" He exclaimed to the lazy feline before throwing seeds into the plot and taking off. 

He sped past villagers minding their business, heading to the large structure rising out of the lake. 

He'd spent several days and nights working on a building that included many things he'd found during his travels. It was also big enough to house everyone in the community at night, using both the water, fences and walls to keep out.. uninvited guests. 

Of course, it was only meant to be temporary, as he wanted to remake all the houses in the village as well. He could do it, so he would. He'd like to see what else he could do. So far everything has been incredible. He'd found he could read the books on the shelves and everything starting getting better from there. 

There were books on farming, blacksmithing, clothmaking, brewing potions, a highly prized and magical book just for enchanting weapons and armor, and another, somewhat forgotten book on the surprisingly fine art of weaving enchantments into cloth. Those had far more variety, though most of them were to only protect the materials, not the wearer. 

He still found that it didn't break when he delicately wove sun shield into a bandana. A blue one, dyed with cornflowers and white dye. 

So many books on so many things, all brimming with their own protective and channeling spells that the revered red book of enchantments seemed to feed on. It really took a lot of energy. The same power that coursed through everything that seeped into him at random was what it needed to truly do anything. Trying otherwise tended to kill a lot of things in a short radius while simply producing pitiful spells. 

So Blue made sure to follow the recommendations, and now he was here, ready to add another one to his armor. Specifically his chestplate this time, as it could generate a weaker field of protection against the sun and fire in general if he were to do so. Blue was going to take all the fire protection he could get. He was at a considerably higher risk of combustion than others around him, after all. 

As the power settled into the armor and Blue slumped slightly over the black podium it and the book hovered over, he glanced at the orange cat. 

"See, Carrot? There's so many things one can do to improve themselves. I ought to dress you up in armor yourself!" 

Amber eyes stared blankly at him. 

"It's not as if you're invulnerable, you know!" He lectured, straightening again. 

Of course, because he was a cat, Carrot continued to stare. 

"Oh sure, you look at me that way now. You'll see. I'll have to come in and save the day for you!" 

The silence between them stretched on. 

Carrot turned to start grooming himself. 

"Really, you're just being silly now." Blue huffed, crossing his arms and turning away. "So lazy." He muttered, picking himself up and plucking the chestplate out of the air, feeling the new energy around it and attempting to memorize it. He liked the idea of knowing enchantments at a glance. It felt suitably cool for a skeleton like himself. 

Then he was walking back out, idly calling for Carrot to follow if he didn't want to get lost. Of course, that meant the feline wouldn't chase after him. Carrot was a little menace like that. 

Regardless, he still had his chores. 

And by chores, he meant clearing the recently grown in patch of forest he planted not too long ago. Saplings liked to shoot up into adulthood when they weren't watched. So he twirled an axe and opened a recently constructed gate to leave the village. Fences worked wonders for stopping others from intruding and attacking villagers. 

The golem didn't have much in the way of expressions, but Blue rather thought it was grateful for the lighter workload. It hadn't tried killing him yet, at least. 

Which was a bit of a low bar in hindsight, but what could he expect? It was created simply to protect one side from another. He was just glad it somehow recognized him as not an enemy. 

Didn't stop it from occasionally mistaking him for a normal skeleton though. Hence his bright, mostly blue clothes. He stood out from the rest that way. 

Blue was distracted from his musings by the appearance of another figure in blue, but hooded. 

They stared at each other for a long moment, green eyes shocked as they stared into cerulean lights. Blue studied the stranger, realizing that they very much weren't a villager, despite looking and sounding similar. 

Trader, his mind supplied. A traveler that collected things to sell to whoever would rather buy from them rather than make the journey themselves. 

Well, Blue had made the unfortunate decision of tying himself down the moment he'd emerged from underground, so he hadn't had much time to travel aboveground. Might as well say hi and see where things went. 

Putting away the axe, he waved to the trader, thinking about the emeralds he still had on himself. He'd managed to gather many since his first day, offering his labor for the payment in order to turn around and get better armor. It turned out that rough but kind villager had much better things to offer once he could pay for them. He still added his own new enchantments after reading from the book anyway. Can't hurt to be even safer and cooler. 

It transmuted a lot of lapis lazuli into magic though. 

The strange creatures the trader was leading around brayed at him, curious of his presence. 

"Hi, what do you have?" Blue asked, holding up an emerald. For a long moment, the trader continued to stare. 

Eventually they noticed the gem, blinking in surprise. 

They shook their head. More. Blue pulled out five others. The trader hesitated, clearly still shocked by him as they slowly offered up something dark with pale pink fluttering around it. A wonderful scent surrounded it, and Blue was instantly intrigued. It was a sapling, he could tell, but nothing like any he'd seen before. He handed over the gems, ignoring how quickly the other jolted away from his touch. 

Holding up two more emeralds, he asked. "Do you have any other trinkets, good sir?" 

Another strange plant, this time shaped like a stick with leaves on the end, except bright green. He got the feeling that it was something that liked water. Given that he typically got plenty more shades of wood and building materials from different kinds of trees, Blue decided to take it as well, handing over the money. 

The next thing held out was a bright blue bundle of flowers. A bit like the sky, though not quite as close as he'd managed to get his bandana. Still, he wanted it. It would be a nice accent to his mansion. 

So he let go of another four emeralds for the plant, briefly wondering if plants were all that the trader offered. 

As if to answer him, the trader offered a strange round shape full of water. 

A bucket, his mind supplied. He could use it for things. Lots of things. It was currently full of something dark that wriggled through the water. 

Blue was more interested in the bucket than the creature, though he would certainly take care of it, paying 6 emeralds for it and gently stepping away. 

"Thank you." He nodded to his fellow wearer of blue, ignoring how the trader was still sort of just.. staring. They wouldn't pass up a deal, it seemed, though being confronted with a friendly skeleton seemed to break their mind. 

He resisted the temptation of wondering how small their mind was in the first place. He would not be rude. It was unbecoming of him. 

So he delicately planted the two new trees further from the new stretch of woods and closer to the fence, after which he gently carried the bucket through. He was going to make glass and a little home for his new creature. His knowledge told him it was a tadpole. They didn't stay in the water forever, but became something else. 

A fancy glass home.

Now all he needed was to remember which appliance melted sand. And maybe find his first panes of glass.. though they were probably too flimsy to be useful. Everyone had their mistakes, and he'd honestly discovered glassmaking entirely by accident. How was he supposed to know sand could melt into that? 

As it was, he was setting the bucket on a shelf, making sure the tadpole was still swimming. He should definitely try and feed it. He just needed to figure out what it ate. 

No matter! That would come in time. As it was, he had lots of glass to make, then trees to harvest, stone to be mined.. lots of work for a single skeleton, yet the villagers clearly appreciated it. He wasn't getting dirty looks or having adults anxiously drag their children away. Progress! 

..Glass was not made in the blast furnace. 

The currently red-hot splatter all over the thankfully stone floor of the room was obvious proof of that. 

Alright, he'd clean that up when it was cool. He could probably still mess around with another furnace nearby without consequence. The tadpole needed a sunny home! 

On second thought, it would probably like shade too. If it was to be in a small house all the time, he'd certainly need to make it nice. 

Big, then. Previously he was thinking on a low platform somewhere in front of his mansion, but now he'd probably carve out a pool? Cover the top so nothing could sneak in and do something. Maybe give his little aquatic friend a beach. Tadpoles became semiaquatic later in life, he just knew it. 

Why did he- nope. Stop thinking about it! 

Instead, he considered all the things he had stored from his travels underground and around the area. He had some magically enhanced tools that could gather some of the more delicate materials. The underwater greenery could spruce up a little pond, and the shore he was thinking of, oh it could have those plants from the beautiful caves! Maybe he could even make a little hidey-hole underwater like a bedroom. 

"Don't you worry, little tadpole, soon you're going to be the fanciest tadpole that ever lived!" Blue called to the bucket sitting on a shelf just outside the room. Of course, as always when he spoke to something, there was no reply. Not even a sound. It was a fish. Probably. No, he had the feeling tadpoles weren't fish. Maybe it could have fish friends though? He could probably catch one live using the bucket later. 

He would have to try and make a bucket of his own as well. It was probably something like making a helmet. 

What fun. Blue rather thought his favorite thing was to give others better lives. He could do it, after all. And doing such was often such an adventure on its own! Like the puddles of molten glass rapidly solidifying around him. They were cool enough that he could safely step on them now, at least. 

Obviously not directly touch, but at least he didn't have to tiptoe anymore, laying out another flattened sheet. He could probably fit the panes between wooden logs. That would be fancy. 

When he'd decided there were a suitable number of panes, Blue moved on, checking on the tadpole to see it had little legs hanging off it's body. He could have sworn it didn't have those before, though he hadn't had a very good look previously. He'd been more interested in the bucket. 

As it was, he took a decent shovel, a pickaxe just in case, and headed out for the spot in the village. Just a point where folks could meet, discuss things in their humming haws and maybe trade back and forth. Blue was going to introduce something nice here, for them and his new tadpole. 

So he set up a quick fence to keep out overly adventurous children and started digging. If half the village came over to watch, that was fine. He was doing something a little new. And fun. He could replace the plain stone at the bottom with something a little more textured, as well as moss for some green- and a hole at the bottom to place the tadpole and water. He'd add more water, of course, but he'd need the bucket for that. So into a hole the tadpole would go. 

Moss made a nice shore, especially when paired with flowers and those leafy plants. Blue had to run off to gather those- pausing when he'd spotted the already enormous, twisting roots of what had been the stick-like sapling. Mangrove, he knew. The roots and leaves were a nice color too, he wanted to add them. So he grabbed a few of both, surprised at the new seedlings growing from the leaves. He already had more trees in waiting. 

So he harvested the entire tree, admiring the deep red of it's wood. He ought to build with it at some point. And then he had to stare at the drifting pink petals falling from the other tree. 

Cherry. 

It was awesome. Blue now had a tree worth planting in the middle of the village. It would help shade his frog, too! 

..Frog? Was that what the tadpole was becoming? 

Huh. Neat. Blue would be happy to introduce his frog to a lovely new home soon. So he harvested the cherry tree and a few new sprouts, appreciating the bright pink wood as he did so. It would pair nicely with white, he decided. And purple. Probably his blue as well. It was a new material to build with, and he was going to have fun when he had enough. 

The pen was soon coming along nicely, and he was able to replace most of the fence with glass before deciding it was time to start filling with water. 

On his way to drop off spare materials and grab his watery friend, Blue heard an unexpected boom in the distance. He had to investigate that strangeness. 

When he found it, all he could see was a crater where a portion of the fence had been, bits of scattered green and white plant matter here and there. Bits of stained grey finally confirmed it to be remnants of those strange walking plants. Creepers. What happened here? 

A part of him knew this wasn't unusual at all, yet Blue had never seen a creeper do anything other than frantically run away from cats. What had exploded a creeper? At his fence, no less. The audacity. He had to repair that now, otherwise he'd get an infestation of violent creatures seeking to harm his villagers. 

Well luckily, he had plenty of spare dirt and fence to fix the issue, so he scraped the remnants of the poor thing off to the side and dealt with it. Now he just needed to keep an eyesocket out for whatever had caused that. Should he clean up the pile? 

...Nah, that was future Blue's mess. He had a frog to fetch and house. 

So he continued on, finally getting inside and putting away his things, trading them out for other tools and materials. The bucket was safely stowed away after cooing at the now larger tadpole. 

Onward it is, then. 

The assembly went fairly quickly, but what Blue was really worried about was how the creature would fair in the hole. So at the moment of truth, he poured it in and waited. 

...He wasn't sure what he was worried about, now that he was staring at the tadpole bumping into the slightly wider walls of a new space. 

So he decided to move quickly, darting off to the lake for more water. 

He went back and forth many times, watching the pool grow bit by bit with his efforts, tadpole swimming higher and higher as it found more space. It's tail was definitely smaller now, legs kicking idly as it moved through the water. 

On one of his many trips, Blue spotted something strange. A familiar green shape wandering through the village, yet moving strangely as it slunk behind a house. He had to stop what he was doing to stare. 

That.. was a creeper, right? It was weirdly hunched. Maybe something in it's internal structure was broken. 

Still, it was weird to see one here. They typically bolted from the cats. Carrot took great pride in lazily staring down the walking flora. 

Well, now Blue was curious. He started heading for where he'd seen the creeper last, eventually finding it doing the opposite of what creepers did. 

It was just.. stalking a cat. A very confused, mildly annoyed cat. 

Eventually the feline paused by a covered stall, glancing back at the creeper and Blue standing not far behind. 

"That's right, you little shit." A voice, jarring with how comprehensive it was, spoke out of nowhere. 

"I ain't scared of you." 

Caught between utter shock and annoyance at the foul language, Blue found himself replying. 

"Isn't that a bit rude?" 

The creeper abruptly spun, straightening as it looked at him. Blue stared back at what was usually an imitation of a face. For a creeper, it was strangely expressive, the gaping hole in semblance of a mouth downturned in what clearly looked like bewilderment, the hollow sockets flickering with glowing rings as it just stared back, emitting a low hiss. 

"Uh." The creeper said. 

An instant later it was suddenly gone, some unknown force ripping it apart from the inside and carving another crater into the earth as plant bits splattered the ground. 

What. Hang on, what? 

"It.. talked." Blue finally whispered. A simple creeper with a strangely expressive face- and that wasn't even a real face, just some weird pits on the top bulb in semblance of one- that had spoken. And he could understand it. 

And then it had.. exploded? 

Blue suddenly had to sit down, dropping to the ground as a tightness spread through his ribcage. He shuddered despite himself. It was just so sudden. 

One moment, he had been seen, truly seen by something that had heard him and understood, and then the next it was just.. gone. Something hurt inside, though he couldn't quite tell where.

The cat from before decided to crawl into his lap, rubbing against his ribs for attention. Blue suddenly didn't have it in him to pet it. He just felt.. empty and full at the same time. He just needed to process it, was all. He was fine. 

..The bits of green were moving. 

Blue startled when he noticed, flinching away when a nearby piece shifted. He watched them start sliding over the dirt, a dull red glow appearing low over the center of the crater, a strange grey cloud pulling out of the dirt and circling it until it resembled a target. The green bits were piled below the strange thing now, seemingly connecting to one another, pulling up over other fragments. It was rising. 

He watched in a sort of morbid fascination as it rose, gradually taking a more familiar shape. 

"...What..?" He murmured, leaning away in bewilderment as the red light and gray powder were covered by plant matter, slowly returning to creeper shape, four basic legs and all. 

Finally the face reformed with a gasp and a cough, a faint gray mist escaping it as it did. Blue couldn't help but gawk at it. The weird face was back, smirking at him. 

"What, never seen a creeper blow up before?" 

"No..?" He replied incredulously. 

The creeper blinked. "Wow, you actually talk." 

"And so do you?" Blue pointed out, feeling his thoughts stutter and crash into one another. 

"Yeah. I talk. You're not supposed to talk." 

"You're not either!" He gestured wildly at the blatantly talking plant. 

"See, here's the thing: I'm just better." The creeper suggested, not taking anything of their interaction seriously. "And you're a walking pile of bones. Why aren't you killing villagers yet anyway? Isn't that part of your thing?" 

Blue spluttered indignantly. "Of course not! I'm not like them! I protect this village! A village you invaded, just so you know!" He accused, suddenly recognizing the crater. 

"What can I say? Someone's gotta show the cats who's superior here." The creeper called gleefully, walking away. 

"Are you trying to blow up on purpose?" Blue questioned, scrambling to his feet to follow. As bewildering as this was, there was still a small part of him that was jittering with euphoria. He was having an actual conversation with someone who could understand him. 

"Why not on purpose? I've got infinite lives, bitch. And you have only 9! Hah!" He mocked another cat walking by, the feline glancing over in curiosity, entirely unbothered. 

"I would appreciate it if you didn't explode parts of my village." Blue remarked, disappointed in the childish behavior. 

"Why do you care? It's just a bunch of zombies in waiting." 

Blue stopped walking, staring. The creeper kept going for a moment, then paused, glancing back. The gaping smile faltered. "What?" 

"What do you mean by that?" Blue asked, uncharacteristically harsh. 

"Have you never seen a villager turn?" The other questioned, genuinely surprised. 

"..No, I haven't." Blue answered faintly, thinking back to his first night. Somehow this was worse than the zombies being mindlessly hungry. 

"I thought they were just.. hungry." 

"Well, yeah. They're hungry all the time." The creeper awkwardly nudged a flat foot at the dirt. "Villagers are usually lucky if they just die. Y'know. No zombifying then." 

"Is there a way to undo it?" Blue demanded, feeling panicky. He needed more preventative measures, he couldn't let that happen to his villagers. 

"How the fuck would I know?" The creeper retorted, giving the impression of a shrug without having shoulders. 

Blue immediately started pacing, thinking of ways to better improve his defenses. He couldn't risk accidents, not when something so horrifying could happen from even one accident. He'd been lucky so far, at some point it was likely to run out. 

"Dude, calm down. Zombies are dumb as hell anyway." 

"I can't! I don't want to lose any of them! They never hurt anybody! They just get attacked every night for- for- for no reason!" He waved dramatically in distress. "They have their own thoughts, hopes and dreams! Zombies don't have that! They're just- they're empty! And they would take those dreams?! I can't allow that, I can't do that at all!" 

The creeper stared at him as he went back to pacing. He could probably replace the fences with high walls, make an overhang to keep spiders from climbing and hang lanterns to repel the rest. And maybe a layer of campfires after that just in case. And another fence so nobody gets too close to the open flames. But that would be a lot to maintain and noisy. Maybe he could set rows of sharp stalagmites from caves- 

"Look, they're not getting in your precious village. They can't even get through a basic fence." The creeper pointed out, pointing a foot at the distant border. "Just don't open anything at night if you're so worried, geeze." 

Blue stared at him, still uneasy. "I can't allow a mistake to kill someone helpless." He explained severely. 

"You're really determined about this sorta thing, aren't you?" 

"Of course!" 

With a curious head tilt, the creeper finally asked the question. 

"Why?" 

He had to pause, just to collect his thoughts. Then he stood straight with a smile. 

"Because I'm better. Because I can do what they cannot, and because it doesn't hurt to have a little kindness for others less fortunate than you. I'm a skeleton, but far from the norm. I'd rather be as magnificent as can be, and that includes being nice to people." He booped the creeper between the hollow "eyes" on impulse, getting a scowl in return. 

"You're fucking weird, you know that?" 

Instead of responding to that, he smiled wider. 

"I'm Blue. Do you have a name?" 

The creeper froze for a moment, blinking again. 

"... Killer." He finally stated. "Call me.. yeah. Killer." 

"Why?" Blue immediately questioned. 

"Obviously because I kill things. Like all the time. Maybe even call me cat killer." Killer was grinning deviously already. 

"I'm not going to be doing that." Blue deadpanned. 

"Suit yourself!" Killer cackled, swaying as he raced away. "Try and stop me!" 

Blue jolted, racing after him. "You're not getting away that easily! I have the longer legs here!" 

"Bitch how dare you- I could outrun your rattling ass whenever I want!" 

Except Blue was speedwalking beside him, keeping up with the creeper's top speed. Killer finally glared at him angrily. 

"Fuck you, man." 

Blue finally burst out laughing. 

It felt good to talk to someone. 

Chapter Text

He was flattening out a hill into terraces, which was a lot of work, especially when a certain creeper occasionally leapt over to explode for no reason. Blue had discovered he was very good at dodging, and simply said nothing when the other reformed to find his fragments had been flung into a fenced off ditch. It didn't mean he didn't want to be friends, though. Clearly they both liked having someone to talk to, even if Killer was an absolute menace. 

Still, the creation of the new fields were coming along nicely, and if nothing else, Killer was helpful for obtaining seeds. For whatever reason the creeper had lots of random junk stored in his mass, and with a little convincing would give up a few unique seeds he'd obtained in his travels. Blue had never actually heard of watermelon or pumpkin, but he most definitely wanted to grow them! Though he had yet to figure out cocoa beans and glowberries. 

Killer seemed to have been around a bit longer than him, given all the random things he knew. Glowberries didn't grow out of the dirt, they dug roots into ceilings and sprouted downward. Cocoa beans were something he'd found growing off the sides of trees. Pumpkins and melons were huge fruits that likely needed space to grow. 

He clearly wasn't as interested in growing other things as Blue was, but certainly had an intelligent perspective, being a sort of plant himself. Of course, hanging around Killer did end up answering a few questions Blue had about creepers in general. 

Killer would sometimes pause his shenanigans for several hours to simply stand in the sun, often rooting into the dirt for those spans. Occasionally the creeper would splash into water for seemingly no reason. The only explanations he got was the other drank with his feet and ate the sun. 

Not even Killer was sure how he did that, he just knew that was how he worked. 

Eventually though, Blue had more burning questions to answer that he had been putting off for a while. 

Can skeletons (and now creepers) eat? 

He'd been putting it off because villagers did need to eat, and he wanted to make sure they had enough when he could go without and have no problems. But now that he was creating more than enough fields with all sorts of new foods, he thought he'd give it a try. 

Killer was actually just as curious when he admitted the question, having never bothered to cook when he didn't even have hands. Blue felt bad that he didn't have hands, though he couldn't do anything about that. He couldn't change people, only the world. 

So he gave cooking a try, taking a newly grown pumpkin as he read an old cookbook that the villagers had also abandoned. They couldn't exactly use it when they didn't even have half the resources most of the recipes required. 

Blue was quickly changing that, of course. Having a bucket worked wonders for getting water places. Especially in streams for sugarcane to be grown around. 

It certainly smelled nice when finished, though Blue still struggled with cutting it up like the recipe said. 

The first slice was offered to Killer, who in excitement suddenly shot out a long tendril of a maybe tongue? Or an equivalent? Either way, he still paused before groaning. He didn't seem to experience anything special when trying to eat. 

Which was just terrible. 

So Blue tried it himself. 

Given he had never actually experienced food before, he was initially overwhelmed and spat it out. 

“Whoa you have a blue tongue.” Killer startled him with that comment. Blue hesitated, rest of the slice still plated. “I have a tongue?” 

Killer now stared, entirely caught off guard. “..How did you think you talked?”

“I don't know, I think I forgot to focus on how and only wondered why when I thought about it.” Blue finally remarked before looking into a window at his reflection. 

Yep, there it was, he literally had a glowing blue tongue. Come to think of it, there were a lot of differences between himself and a typical skeleton. Others had a basic jawbone yet he had a smooth plane that resulted in an actual mouth. Where a tongue resided. That only now he noticed the existence of. 

Blue didn't really pay much attention to himself, did he? 

So he went to try the pie again. Now that he was prepared for the sensation, he found he rather liked it. 

“I think I can taste.” He then declared. 

“You think? Shouldn't you just know?” 

“I've never tried to eat anything before.” Blue admitted with a shrug. Killer scrunched up at that, snorting. “I guess not? I figured you'd be like a zombie that way or something. Hey, what's up with your arm?” 

Blue had to look over at his right tibia and fibula, shocked that a scratch he'd gained from mishandling an axe a week ago was sealing itself in seconds. 

Then he slowly looked up at Killer. 

“...Did your book say anything about food doing that?” The creeper asked, stunned himself. 

“No, I don't think so.” Blue muttered, setting aside his plate to start flipping through pages. Nothing about the effects of food. There was one about gilding apples that imbued them with power sacred to the crimson wastes, though he had yet to understand what that meant. Still nothing about regular food anyway. 

“I don't know if this is something normal for food or if it's due to being a skeleton at all.” He mused, baffled. 

“Well I don't need it anyway.” Killer did that scrunch of his upper half in his way of shrugging. 

“I just regenerate everything in a few minutes.” 

“Have you ever wondered why?” Blue impulsively asked, still in thinking mode. 

“No shit I've wondered. Normal creepers don't reform.” 

Now he had to stare at his friend. 

“They don't?” 

“They don't.” Killer was getting used to his general lack of knowledge in random things. 

“.. I'm sorry.” 

Killer now huffed at him. “For what? They're not like me. They just blow their one life away at random. I can do it whenever I want and get back up in just a couple minutes. At least I have dreams or whatever it was you said.” 

He then walked away, the strange light within him pulsing like it wanted to get out. Blue let him go, knowing that meant the other was going to explode. He'd rather it happen outside. 

Though he couldn't help but wonder if Killer even knew what his own dream was. 

When he heard the much awaited muted boom, Blue sighed. He wanted to help Killer find a dream of his own. Even if it turned out different from his. He had the potential for one, and everyone who could think deserved to have a dream of their own. 

He ended up sharing the pie with the village. Blue didn't really need it, and Killer didn't get anything at all from it, so it would just be a gift to them. Though he might at some point make that gilded apple. He was curious as to what the magical aside ment. 

Though looking at it, Blue thought it was a lot simpler than expected. Literally no cooking required. In fact, it was looking more like it was for creating an edible magical artifact than a recipe. It even came with a small chant to be muttered. 

So he went about collecting the gold and a few apples, all while pondering what the crimson wastes were. There was a chance Killer knew something, but probably not. The name sounded like something very much noteworthy, if anything. 

It came together so quickly, Blue was almost worried he'd made a mistake when the gold flashed purple and white as it melded into the apple, golden flames briefly dancing across it. Yet somehow, taking it in his hand.. he felt… strange. 

There was an energy inside it, faintly radiating outward. Something both dangerous yet safe. He couldn't understand it. Blue could only cradle it, eventually tearing his gaze back to the book. The apples were said to be capable of healing like nothing else could. Even curing illnesses when potions failed. Right, there was a potion or two that aided in healing. 

Blue was staring at the fruit again, oddly entranced. Apparently it could even help cure diseases. Fascinating. 

“What are you doing?” 

Blue yelped, fumbling with the apple until slamming it on the table, whipping around to regard the already regenerated Killer. “You startled me!” 

The creeper just tilted his head. “You were being fucking weird. Your eyes or whatever were huge rings and everything.” 

He blinked, recoiling at the thought. “They were?” 

“Yeah. Kinda like what I get sometimes. Just.. blue? What's up with that?” 

He peered at the golden fruit again, intrigued. “I don't know..” He murmured, looking at the page again. 

After a moment, he thought he'd check something, just in case. 

“By the way, have you ever heard of a crimson waste?” 

Killer strode closer, looking at the page with him. 

“Nope. I don't know any red places. Maybe it's somewhere Else.” 

Blue didn't miss the slight emphasis there, regarding his friend. “Else?” 

The creeper seemed a little surprised he'd noticed, scrunching slightly. “I can read too, y'know. Read your own books.” 

He didn't even want to ask how the other could even open a book, much less turn a page. 

“I haven't read all of them yet. What books are there about.. other places?” 

Killer sighed dramatically, turning around. “Whatever, I'll just get it.” 

“Hang on, I want to see where you found this book!” Blue jumped to follow, still holding the apple. It didn't weigh nearly as much as the amount of gold used in its creation, yet still felt heavy in his hand. 

“I didn't even read much, it wasn't that interesting. Just talked about some delta place. Gray spikes and pools of lava. Never seen anything like that.” 

“How much did you read?” Blue asked, curious of such a strange place. It sounded like something one might find in a cave. He'd seen vast pillars of gray lit by pools of lava below. 

“Like a page, I guess.” Killer scrunched, his way of shrugging. 

“..A page.” Blue echoed flatly. 

“Yeah.” 

“A single page.” 

“It was really boring.” 

Blue stared, Killer studiously ignoring his blank gaze. 

For all of five seconds. 

“Reading’s not my thing, okay?” He snapped. 

“You found a book talking about somewhere Else with a capital E, and you weren't intrigued in the least?” Blue questioned. 

“Hey, I read a whole page!” 

“You have got to be joking.” 

Killer mocked him under his breath while heading up the steps of an unremarkable house, shoving his front into the door to latch a tendril on the knob and open it up. Blue paused, recognizing it as a house with bookshelves he had yet to skim through during his free time. 

The creeper was quick to nudge a book lying open on the floor. Blue automatically gasped, seeing the state of the books and scooping them up to set them back on their shelves. At least the open book hadn't been ruined, though the pages seemed a little loose. He didn't know how to fix books. 

Still, he had to study the dense leather cover in curiosity. It was dyed a deep red, reminiscent of mangrove wood or blood. The title was engraved in gold, elegant and bold. 

The Netherworld and Portals: How to Leave This World For Somewhere Else. 

Blue stared for a good minute, then slowly turned to Killer. The creeper took a moment longer to return the look. “Cool book, huh?”

“Another world, Killer. This is a book about a whole other world.” 

“And how to get to it, apparently.” He pointed out. 

“Are you not the least bit curious?” Blue questioned. 

“I mean, yeah. But how do you know we can get there without being stuck?” The creeper had a surprisingly good point there. Blue had to open it up, skimming the table of contents for a hint- and right there at the front was a chapter about building a portal. 

“Let's take a look, shall we?” He asked rhetorically, flipping to the page to see a fairly simple diagram. 

“Obsidian.” He found himself repeating aloud. “It's just obsidian and fire.” 

“Huh.” Killer brilliantly added. “...Says you better fence it off.” He nodded at the book. Not very helpful, but he didn't have much in the way of pointing at things. Blue eventually found the aside he was talking about. It was advising to fence off the area before lighting, should the portal release any hostile denizens of the Nether. 

He considered flipping to the chapter about the creatures, then decided otherwise. For now, at least, he wanted to know exactly how it was made. Not to mention that he likely wouldn't be attacked. He typically wasn't the target of most creatures. It seemed to be quite helpful now that he could see the struggles of whoever had once written the many books he now read. He had it fairly easy by just being a skeleton. 

It apparently didn't take much obsidian to build a portal, either. There were even recommendations on how to obtain it. Obsidian was a very strong material, formed by cooling lava. One had to be careful, as lava couldn't form the rigid, glass-like structures if it was moving too much. It was also easy to be cut by fragments. Diamond tools were recommended, as they better matched the hardness of the strangely magical material. 

Blue couldn't help but keep in mind that it was fairly impervious to most explosions. Of course, he didn't say it out loud. Killer didn't need to know that Blue wanted to build a blast-proof chamber for him. A place to retreat to that wouldn't be immediately destroyed at random, Killer deserved that much. 

“Do you want to build a portal to another world, Killer?” Blue finally asked. 

“No.” 

He hesitated, seeing the creeper deadpanning. 

“I have no hands.” Killer stated. 

Blue facepalmed at the ridiculousness. 

“You know what I mean!” 

“Sure.” Killer smirked. “I'll watch you build it. Might even decorate it. I think it can use more green.” 

“You're not going to blow up the portal, Killer.” 

“Worth a shot.” 

Blue just rolled his eyelights at him, closing the book and putting it away in his inventory. 

“Why not build one? I have diamonds, I know where obsidian is. I even know a good place outside the village for such a thing.” 

“Don't worry, I'll supervise.” 

“If it'll make you feel better, sure.” He patted the creeper’s side, ignoring the indignant squawk he got out of that, simply opening the door. 

“Come along, Killer! The sun is setting, we'll be able to spot the lava after dark!” He called, skipping back to his mansion. 

“Wait, you want me with you??” Killer popped out after him, bewildered. 

“Of course!” He turned to start walking backwards, letting the other stumble out the door and catch up. 

“It's about time we have a short adventure together!” 

“Right. Adventure.” Killer huffed, keeping pace now. 

“Tell me, is there any chance something will attack you while we're out?” Blue asked, heading for his boat. 

“Nothing cares about me anymore than they care about you.” The creeper scoffed. 

“I only wanted to check. It doesn't hurt to be careful.” Blue pointed out while hopping into the craft, patting the empty space behind him. 

Killer stared. “I'm going to tip it.” 

“No you won't. Get in, get in!” 

He grumbled, but carefully stuck a leg into the boat. Blue grabbed the dock to keep it steady, waiting patiently. Killer hesitated, then nervously put another leg in. Again, nothing happened. So he shakily brought another leg over, wobbling slightly. The fourth leg jolted across, Killer practically throwing his upper half over Blue in fear. 

“This fucking sucks, man!” He hissed, pulsing slightly. Thankfully the light didn't stay, meaning he wouldn't be exploding in the boat. That would have been mildly disastrous. 

Blue just took it in stride, turning and paddling away from shore. 

“Does it have to bounce?” Killer whined, roots clinging to Blue's legs. 

“Relax, it'll settle down when you do. Boats are faster than everything else. We won't be long at all.” He assured him, turning to row up the river.

Already various creatures were dragging themselves out of the dirt and otherwise coming out of hiding now that the deadly light was gone. Blue had to look up at the emerging stars, the cerulean fading in the west. 

“Oh fuck, eyes forward, eyes forward!” Killer panicked as the boat slowed.

 “Sorry.” He apologized quickly, returning to rowing. A minute or so passed in relative silence, filled only with faintly splashing water and distant groans from zombies on either shore. 

“I've never asked.” Blue began, mostly just to fill the silence. 

“What was it like for you, when you first woke up?” 

“When I first woke..?” Killer trailed off, realizing what he meant. The mood quickly became thoughtful, something that didn't happen often with the creeper. 

“..It was raining. Pretty hard, actually.” He went quiet for a moment, thinking. 

“....I don't know. It was like one minute there was just nothing, then the next I was alive. It was pouring rain, but I could still see through the clouds. It was a full moon then, I don't know why that stuck with me. I just stared at it, hearing thunder all over the place. It was like I woke up and was the storm.” 

Killer snorted after that dreamy statement. 

“Then I blew up for the first time.” 

Blue hummed his acknowledgement, nodding as he scanned the horizon for a telltale orange glow. 

“So what about you?” Killer asked, following his gaze. 

Blue had to smile, a little proud of himself for getting the other to open up for once. 

“It was a night like this.” He began, gesturing vaguely upward. “The first thing I saw was the sky. I was on a hill. There was a cave behind me, but all I could see was the blue of the sunset. I don't know why, it simply resonated with me. It's my favorite color, though I don't need to tell you that.” They both snorted in mutual agreement.

“...I remember asking why.” Blue went on quietly. “I even turned to the skeleton next to me to ask. It was silly, I know, but I felt so.. lost.” 

They returned to silence after that, though it was a peaceful sort of quiet, where for once Killer wasn't antsy to pull some more shenanigans. 

He finally spotted the orange haze, sliding the boat against the sandy shore and stabilizing it. Killer was the first one off, shuddering in a mixture of relief and disgust. “Boats still suck, by the way.” 

Blue shrugged at that, climbing out himself. 

“They're not for everyone, I suppose.” 

They then spotted the bubbling pool ahead, walking around scattered creatures until they were standing at the stone separating it from the grass. It bubbled before them, ever so slightly ominous. 

“Sooo.. how we getting obsidian outta this?” Killer started. 

Blue finally whipped out a bucket. “I figured we'd slowly pour water over it and see how well that works.” He admitted. 

Killer sat down at that. “Cool. I'll just keep warm while you figure that out, I guess.” 

With the creeper settled in to watch, Blue crouched down, delicately pouring the water out over the stone, watching it flow. The instant it hit the molten rock, it exploded in steam, thick white clouds billowing upwards as the bright orange quickly dimmed to black beneath it. 

Eventually he could see that it had worked, the glassy surface gleaming in the night, dully reflecting the fiery glow of the still molten lava nearby. Blue beamed at his handiwork, whipping out his still new, yet highly enchanted diamond pickaxe. He'd been waiting for a good reason to finally use it. Before it was mostly just waiting for his iron one to break, but he wasn't one to turn down the recommendations on how to best make a portal to another world. 

It made a satisfying clang against the obsidian, barely cracking it. Blue hesitated, seeing how little it did. This was a highly enchanted pickaxe. He'd spent a lot of time and energy on it. 

Wow, obsidian was tough. 

So he kept chipping away, eternally patient. He had all the time in the world to collect this. 

“Do you ever wonder who wrote those books?” Killer spoke up, laying on his back and staring at the starlit sky. A spider scuttled nearby, glancing over at them. 

Blue hummed, still hacking away. 

“Every so often, yes. I don't think it was the villagers. They might read sometimes.. but I don't think they write.” 

The lapse in conversation stretched on. One chunk came free. Two. 

“Maybe it's villagers who were awake like us.” Killer suggested into the night. Blue glanced over at that, thinking. “You may be right. The writers seemed to struggle with attacks from just about everything else, didn't they?” 

The creeper hummed, a rustling, buzzing sound that came from within. 

“Wonder where they are now.” 

Blue broke off another piece, catching it just in time to recoil at the still molten lava beneath it. He could feel the heat through his boots. He shook off the few glowing droplets and put it away, turning to mine a different direction. “Maybe there will be someone in the other world.” He mused. 

“Wouldn't that be something.” Killer sighed, sounding like wind through grass. 

He then looked over at Blue. “Think it might go any faster if I blew?” 

“The book said it was resistant to explosions.” Blue pointed out. “Given how long it's taking even now, I see why.” 

“Damn. We're gonna be here all night.” Killer fell back dramatically, going limp while kicking. 

“You knew it was gonna be boring!” He accused, huffing a cloud of powder in annoyance. 

“I really didn't think it would take so long. I've never mined obsidian before. I think I tried once, when I first came across some while I was wandering caves. I had an iron pickaxe at the time, and it simply was not breaking at all.” 

“And you thought it'd be fast now?” Killer scoffed, kicking again. 

“Well, yes.” Blue admitted sheepishly. “I spent quite a while enchanting this pickaxe. A bit longer than I've even known you.” He broke off another piece, making sure it didn't fall in the magma below. Then he quickly pulled out the book and opened it to the portal page, sliding it over the grass to Killer. 

“Why don't you tell me what else it says?” 

Killer immediately groaned, swinging his front legs over to roll on his side, plopping down in the new position and staring at him. 

“You want me to read that thing?” 

“It can't be any worse than how bored you are now.” 

He groaned again, falling back in defeat at the sound logic. 

There was a minute of nothing but slowly cracking obsidian. 

Then Killer huffed, lurching upwards until he was on all four feet again. 

“Fine, I'll read your dumb book.” He snarked, bending over the page. He stared at it, long enough for Blue to break off another piece. 

“That can't be right.” He finally said. Blue looked up again, still mining. 

Killer squinted at him. “A minute. It says it takes about a full minute to break off a piece with diamond. There's no way it's taking that long. It's way longer.” 

Blue actually snorted at that. “Really? I thought it was taking around 30 seconds each time.” 

“Wh- how?!” 

“I've enchanted the pick, Killer. What it can do should look much cooler on something like stone.” 

“You haven't even tested it??!” 

“Nope!” 

The creeper groaned again, falling backwards into the grass with a dull thud. “You're so boring!” He complained. 

“Really? And here I thought I was the only interesting person in miles.” 

“Only because you also talk.” 

“I'm wounded. I'm truly magnificent, you simply cannot process my coolness.” 

Killer childishly mocked him for that. 

He simply continued mining in silence. Blue could hear a page turn, glancing over to see Killer sliding the roots of his foot between them to flick them over. He let the creeper read, simply enjoying the menial task of chipping at the glassy substance. 

“I think it's called Nether for short.” Killer muttered. 

“It is?” Blue encouraged him to say more. 

“Yeah. There's a lot of pigs there? ..And endermen now, too. Something about curses since an extinction.” 

Blue almost paused, confused. “I've never heard of endermen.” 

Killer scoffed at that, choosing silence until the current chunk was broken off. Before he could start on another, he interrupted. “Look over there.” 

Blue turned, then followed where the gnarled roots of a black foot were pointing. 

There in the distance, across the river, stood a tall, strange figure. Completely black, darker than the shadows, but wreathed in a mysterious purple light. It was long and gangly, standing straight and peacefully looking around. He glimpsed brilliant purple eyes glowing in the dark, recognizing an intelligence there. Like the villagers. Not quite the same, yet unmistakable regardless. 

“That's an enderman.” Killer explained. 

“I.. I've never seen one before.” Blue whispered. 

“Yeah well I wouldn't make eye contact. It pisses them off, and they hit hard. Also make horrifying sounds while they do it.” 

The enderman suddenly looked at him, and Blue quickly looked away, instead facing Killer again. 

“They're like the villagers.” He stated. 

The creeper deadpanned at him. “They're not innocent like them.” He immediately shut down the obvious empathy. Too bad for him, though, Blue already cared deeply. After a moment, Killer mimed rolling eyes and looked back down at the book. 

“Anyway yeah, they're more common in the nether. Especially some warped forest of some kind.” 

Blue glanced at the enderman again, fascinated. “Are they from the nether? …And how did they end up here?” 

“They can probably go between worlds on their own.” Killer remarked. “Just watch, you'll probably see it.” 

“See what?” Blue couldn't help but ask, still staring at the tall creature. He quickly looked to the side when it regarded him. He felt seen, like when a villager looked at him. It could see him. He watched it in his peripheral, seeing the head tilt. On some impulse, he waved. 

And suddenly, in a flash, it was there, appearing in a cloud of purple sparks with a sound unlike anything he'd heard before. 

“Oh shit.” Killer perked up now that it was right here, staring at Blue with surprisingly gentle eyes. 

The enderman made a sound, completely alien, distorted in a way he couldn't name. 

But.. it sounded familiar. Vaguely. Something about it set off something in his mind. 

Blue stared at the faintly patterned chest, seeing purple gleam off the skin as dark as obsidian, almost like they were the same substance. It was so, so much taller than him, most of that height being just legs. Long, crooked legs with bewildering feet, three long toes splayed out in front and two stubby ones behind. 

A different sound, and suddenly it clicked. 

“W̸͛͛h̵͌̃̄̾a̶t̸̽͒͊͑̚̚̕’ş̴̩͖̇͂͋͠ ̴̺̬̦̓̓͋̇̌̆̆͜͝up̵̀̓?” 

It spoke. It spoke. The enderman spoke. Blue almost looked up, gasping faintly as he remembered not to. He could still somewhat see those soft purple irises regarding him. It made a strange chitter at him, briefly revealing a dull violet tongue. 

“Hi..?” He hesitantly greeted. 

“H̴͋̿̇̀̈́̌͘ͅï.” It echoed back, though it didn't seem to be with any comprehension. Blue felt an ache inside, realizing that. Still, it seemed to be thinking, head tilting the other way. Then it said something eerie. 

“L̸̛̇́̿̈́̐͝øōk̴̇͆̆́ f̵͋̈́͑ò̴r̷̊̓̈̏ t̴̄̌͆̓̎he̶̿ ̷̿ě̸̑̊́͐͛̊̀yë̸́̈.” 

The enderman turned away, regarding a patch of grass with a croon before bending down, forcing it's hands into the dirt and plucking it out. Blue gaped at it, still processing as it turned around and flashed away. Gone. He couldn't even see where it went. 

“... What just happened.” Killer stated, also shocked. 

“I don't know.” Blue murmured, slowly turning to look at him. “You did understand what it said, right?” 

“I didn't realize it was talking until you said something!” The other cried defensively. Blue didn't care. “But you know what it said? I didn't misunderstand? Look for the eye?” 

Here, the creeper hesitated, looking back at the bare patch of earth uncertainly. 

“Yeah.. I guess it said that..” He muttered. 

Blue regarded the spot as well, feeling a strange sense of importance in the moment. 

“Look for the eye..” He echoed. His bones clanked softly as he scanned the horizon for the alien figure. 

It was just gone. 

Chapter Text

It was an invasion. 

They were boating back to the village, and it was practically overrun with enemies. Blue was horrified, snatching his bow and shooting at zombies in panic. Killer soon flung himself onto dry land, hesitating at the scene. 

There were no words to be said, Blue could only keep firing, leaping out of the boat in a smooth roll to snipe several others. The golem was already overwhelmed, swinging wildly. A skeleton was flung halfway across the village, where it crumbled into the dirt. 

Blue charged into the fray, finally shouting. “Make sure everyone's inside! I'll find the breach!” He didn't even glance at Killer, too focused on getting rid of the threat. He had never seen so many mobs in one place before. It was almost like they had waited for an opportunity. He couldn't actually believe that. They very clearly couldn't think. He had searched for any sign of intelligence, of consciousness. There was nothing. This shouldn't be possible.

He switched his bow for a diamond sword, finding gratitude in his preparations as he swept three zombies, and a skeleton atop a spider away, clearing the space to snipe them in rapid succession. His shield came up in the next moment, recognizing a sharp hiss. 

“BAZINGA.” Killer threw himself in the middle of a throng, exploding. Blue blinked as it took out a good portion of the crowd. That was actually a pretty smart move. 

He was quick to take advantage of the clearing, cutting down the already injured mobs and briefly putting his back to the golem. It was a thin thread of trust, but still effective to cover each other's blind sides. 

He still moved faster though, soon turning to snipe those just out of the golem's reach before spinning to take care of the stragglers on his side. It was clearing out nicely, giving him some breathing room to find out how they got in. He quickly regarded Killer's regenerating form before casting his sockets over the bodies and spying part of the fence between two buildings. 

Blue almost froze when he noticed it. A patch of earth was piled up on the other side, creating a perfect ramp for the intruders to get in. Even now, a zombie was clambering up. He shouted wordlessly, charging over and shooting it as he ran. It collapsed over the side, rolling over and twitching once. He barely gave it a second glance, lunging over and desperately punching it away. The whole while, he was questioning what did this. 

When it was low enough that nothing could walk over it anymore, Blue glanced back at the golem. It was punching the last of the invaders to a pulp, Killer now watching from a safe distance. Blue was still breathless, still questioning. 

A distant frantic squawking reached him, and Blue glanced over at the still small chicken pen in mild confusion. Somehow the gate was open, three birds wandering out. 

“Damnit.” He hissed with a harsh clatter, pushing off the fence and jogging over. 

He slowed when he noticed something large in the pen, twitching in the shadows under the window of the building attached to it. Blue frowned when he recognized dark green, hearing a muted crunch. He was reasonably sure it was a zombie, though he'd never known them to go after chickens. He'd actually seen the smaller zombies riding the birds. 

The moldy green looked up suddenly, and Blue froze. 

Red. 

A bright, piercing crimson eye regarded him, made entirely of light. An entire half of the zombie's face was gone, leaving ivory bone behind. Not even all of that, as there was a gaping hole there as well, above the burning red eye. An iris hanging in a socket that was just a little too wide, a little too jarringly familiar.

It's lips closed around the broken upper half of a dead chicken limply, crunching absently. Blue could only stare, more chickens escaping through the open gate. 

Killer finally approached, recoiling as soon as he spotted the object of Blue's attention. 

“Oh shit, that's horrifying.” 

The strange zombie blinked. It blinked, turning to the creeper. It's dull, blackened eye barely moved, but that intense iris floating in a socket stared with such unmistakable focus, Blue had to take a step back. 

Still nothing was spoken, even though he suddenly had the strangest feeling. 

Now it was rising, dead bird falling from it's lips- though still clenched in one hand. It swayed slightly, yet no one could say anything. The zombie was different. It was more broken, more rotted than they had ever seen of a zombie, well past the point of collapsing and going inanimate, yet it still moved. It's left hand was nothing but bone- unsettlingly identical to Blue's own hands. In fact, that seemed to be what was so unnerving about it to him. The exposed skull was identical to his own. The socket blinked. It was too wide for a normal skeleton- even though this was still mostly clad in flesh. 

It wheezed, a painful sound, yet different from any other zombie he'd ever heard before. Then it let out an unmistakable rasp. 

“...Talk?” 

They finally turned to look at one another, wide sockets to gaping holes. 

“Holy shit.” Killer spoke for the both of them. 

Somehow the crass statement snapped him out of the daze, shaking his skull and taking account of the situation. 

“I- uh- alright.” Blue stammered, running his phalanges under his helmet shakily. “You can understand us?” He asked the sentient corpse just to be sure. The other blinked, looking equally amazed as it nodded with a coherent grunt. 

“Okay then.” He put his hands together, figuring out what to do. Eventually he just pointed them at the zombie. “How exactly did you get in?” 

On some level, he already knew how. 

The undead confirmed his suspicions by lifting a clod of dirt in his skeletal hand. Blue nodded, still very conscious of the ongoing shock he was being regarded with. 

“Did you mean to launch an attack on the village?” He had to be sure. 

The zombie grunted again, stumbling closer to peer around him. Both creeper and skeleton followed the gaze to the golem in the distance, slowly but surely approaching a skeleton that kept backing away to keep shooting. 

“Distract.. big guy.” He explained hoarsely. 

Blue frowned, a little bit out of sympathy. The golem was terrifying. Still, he had to know.

“Have you harmed any villagers?” The question was stated with utmost severity, his burning blue lights boring into the singular red. 

The zombie scrunched up his nose best he could. 

“Don't wanna. Just.. hungry.” His gaze briefly trailed back to the half eaten raw chicken. 

He didn't go back to feasting though, instead he brokenly added. 

“They kinda.. like me.” His unoccupied, bony hand tapped his head, brushing through a sparse tangle of hair. 

All his tension abruptly bled away into understanding. The zombie saw it too. The awareness was seen by him too. So he gently reached out, barely flinching when his hands met one so much like his own, gently guiding him out of the pen. “Why don't we get you some real food, hmm?” 

“Why.. helping?” The zombie wheezed, still confused. Blue just smiled forlornly. 

“You're like us. You're.. awake.” He hesitated on what word to use, still feeling he'd chosen incorrectly. 

“Yeah.” Killer agreed, a little awkward. 

“Attacked.. place.” He mumbled confusedly.

“You did.” Blue hesitantly agreed, glancing back to see the golem standing over a broken skeleton, staring intensely at them. 

“But you don't appear to have done so out of plain maliciousness. You seem to just be hungry, right?” 

The other hummed quietly, more of a low moan than anything. “Saw.. chicken..s. Hungry.” 

They strode over the bridge leading to his place in silence. They were hit with the smell of sweet pumpkin as they entered, the newcomer stumbling from it. 

“Have you ever tried pumpkin pie?” He asked the zombie. The other grunted, twitching his head sideways. “Smell.. nice.” 

They soon arrived in the kitchen, where the zombie finally let go, stumbling towards the cold pie. Blue had time to wince at the signs of a cat feasting on the meal before the other started scarfing it down. Blue shared a look of shock with Killer, hearing the obscene noises. 

“...Again, horrifying.” Killer remarked. Blue swatted him for being rude but otherwise kept silent, sort of awed at the speed with which the other tore through the meal. The half eaten chicken was actually left forgotten on the floor now. In about a minute, the entire pie was gone, zombie turning back while licking dry lips. His glowing eyelight that looked like an iris was more focused than before, it's edges sharper, the cloudiness receding. 

“Good. It's good.” He rasped with a lot less hesitancy than before. 

“I'm sorry we don't have much more.” Blue apologized. The other grunted, twitching his head to the side again. “Thank you.” He breathed instead, sounding genuinely so relieved. 

Blue had to smile at that. “Of course. We- I want to help.” 

He blinked, huffing a breath as his brilliant red iris flicked to Killer, who perked up slightly in curiosity before it was back on Blue again. 

“..Horri.. Horror.” He seemed to decide. 

“Really?” He was slightly taken aback. 

Horror just slowly grinned, revealing startlingly white teeth for a zombie. Instead of dull yellow, they were ever so slightly tinged red. With oddly protruding canines. “Yeah.” 

“Did you pick that because I called you horrifying twice?” Killer asked bluntly. Blue shot him a look at the audacity, but Horror seemed mildly delighted, starting to smile wider. Unnaturally wide for a zombie, actually. Not that they'd ever actually seen a zombie smile before. Maybe it was in fact, natural. 

“I like it.” His voice rumbled from his chest, deep and slightly gurgly, but much less strained than it had been. 

Killer started laughing at that, a slightly hissing sound. For some reason it was infectious like that. Blue dared to start smiling. It started as a peaceful night turned frighteningly stressful, but looked like he just might be getting a new friend out of all that. 

So he moved closer, offering his hand. 

“Would you like to stay, Horror? We should be able to get you the food you need.” 

Horror lit up slightly, hopeful as he regarded the offered hand, holding out his left before pausing. 

Blue also hesitated, mentally going over the similarities and differences between the two. 

His own was a smooth, faintly striated pearly white, almost gleaming in the lantern light. Horror's were a little yellow, like extremely pale birch with a slightly more prominent striation that even more closely resembled wood grain. 

Their hands finally met, and he could feel the slightly rougher, firmer grasp of the other. 

It brought a huge smile to his face, finding the familiar texture unimaginably comforting. 

Given the equally broad grin Horror was sporting, (to the point that it was slightly unsettling) he was feeling the same. 

The handshake lingered, though they eventually, somewhat reluctantly, pulled apart. 

“Heh.” Killer chuckled, tilting his head. “So you got any protection from the sun, Horror?” 

Blue was again swatting at the highly offensive creeper, zombie wincing. 

Trying to recover from Killer's general assholery, Blue smiled apologetically. “Would you like some?” 

At that, Horror blinked, leaning on the counter behind him. “..You can do that?” 

Blue indicated his bandana. “The wonders you can accomplish with woven enchantments will blow your mind.” He explained, beaming. 

After a moment, he jolted. “Actually, I may have something for you already!” He took off from the room, heading through the building for a certain out of the way chest. He'd experimented a little with what he wanted to wear at first, most of which consisted of blues. A lot of them just weren't his shade. Like the greyish blue jacket that he'd included wolf fur in. He'd felt terrible for killing the wolf, but it really had attacked him out of nowhere. 

At least now it wouldn't be in vain. 

He returned, proudly presenting the coat. Horror blinked at it, and Blue simply flipped it to show off the lining, covered in woven runes. “A simple use of sun shade. The original purpose is to prevent the cloth from bleaching in the sun, but it protects us from getting burned as well. It's really useful!” He declared, handing it over. 

Horror fumbled with it a little, his fleshy right hand visibly stiff as he ran the phalanges of the other hand through the fur. The slit in the middle of his glowing iris dilated like a pupil as he did so. 

“You like it?” Blue asked. The zombie nodded quickly, awkwardly turning it around to slowly work his arms into the sleeves. 

“Hey uh. Wanna get some shoes to go with it?” Killer suggested, staring at the undead's feet. Blue followed his gaze only to freeze, caught between mortified revulsion and a desire not to offend the other. 

The feet were completely bare, a few scraps of what might've been boots once clinging a little past the ankles. The flesh was tattered, barely clinging to the tops with the bottoms worn completely to the bone. Most of the toes were reduced to bone as well. Horror just peered down, wiggling them self-consciously. 

“...I have some old leather boots.” Blue quietly suggested. He turned to walk a way, left uneasy at the sight. The ragged line between flesh and bone on the other's face was alright, but the state of his feet were genuinely sickening. If Killer hadn't been a plant, he probably would have vomited. If Blue had a stomach, he also would have likely thrown up. 

So he located the first boots he had made. They were initially for comfort, until he found he just preferred leather lined iron. So he returned to offer them to Horror, trying not to let his queasiness show. If it did, Horror wasn't bothered, simply sliding them over his feet silently. 

“So what now?” Killer asked, still faster and higher than usual. 

“...More food?” Horror suggested, at least looking sheepish about it. 

Blue simply went with it, clapping his hands together with a clack. “I think we can do that! I'm sure we can try different recipes. I even left the cookbook here.” He noted, moving over to open it. “This should be interesting!” 

Now all three of them were leaning over the watercolor illustrations in fascination. Killer was sort of interested in the variety, mostly just disappointed that he couldn't enjoy it like anyone else. 

“I haven't heard of seaweed.” Blue noted of one of the recipes. 

“..Grows in saltwater.” Horror murmured. 

“Euch, saltwater?” Killer hissed under his breath. “I hate that shit. Makes me feel all shriveled up and crackly.” 

“I'm not sure I've ever encountered saltwater.” Blue noted, still flipping pages slowly. “I spent most of my time in this village and underground.” 

Horror hummed, sounding phlegmy. 

“How.. you get big guy.. not to.. hurt you?” 

Blue could only shrug, glancing at a picture of a roasted chicken. “I've never quite been sure. The first day I think he might have been planning on killing me, but he simply saw my face and stopped. He never targeted me again. He might do the same for you. I hope he does.” 

He started turning the page, but a hand stopped him. He glanced at Horror, who was staring at a recipe for pork. His swollen iris turned to Blue. “Pigs?” 

The skeleton shifted awkwardly. “Not many.” He admitted. “Though I'm sure we can let go of one for now. I've been trying to grow the population.” 

Horror grunted. “I like pig.” He stated, tapping the paper. “Want to try it. Just for now.” 

Blue accepted that with a nod. “We can part with a pig for now.” He glanced at Killer, who scrunched again. “Think I saw a wild one on the northeastern side earlier today, actually.” 

Blue lit up at that. “Great idea! We can keep growing our porky population with greater efficiency that way!” He turned to Horror. “Do you like that?” 

The zombie nodded. “More pig for later.” 

“It most definitely is.” Blue agreed, stepping back. 

He gestured for Killer to lead the way, Horror turning to follow with just the sweetest lost expression. Blue smiled at him, waving for him to follow as they all headed out. The golem was standing by the bridge, already waiting. It was surveying the rest of the village as was it's duty, but slowly turned as they now cautiously approached. 

Horror outright tensed, knees bent as he stared up at the massive metal defender. It stared back, face as blank and impassive as ever. Unreadable. 

Then it abruptly turned and started walking away. 

“You have been labeled as friend.” Killer remarked in mild amusement as it strode away, footsteps thudding along. 

“See? Nothing to worry about!” Blue cheered. Horror just looked confused, staring after the iron guardian. 

“Why..?” 

“No idea. Just don't think about it.” Killer was quick to say, heading to the right. 

Horror seemed to accept that, following. 

“How shall we do this?” Blue asked, heading for the gate. “We could kill and carry it back, but that seems barbaric.” 

“I've got carrots.” Killer explained, and suddenly one such vegetable was hanging out of his mouth via the vaguely unsettling vine he had there. Horror openly stared, creeper beginning to grin. 

“He accesses his inventory that way, don't mind him.” Blue sighed. 

“..Freaky.” Horror noted, facing the night once again. 

“You're a menace.” Blue reminded his creeper friend. 

Killer's grin widened at that, waggling the carrot from his gaping maw. 

He just rolled his eyelights at the sight, walking out the gate with the other two following shortly after. He still ended up behind them, shutting the gate to prevent any more invasions that night. 

Soon enough they spotted the orangey chestnut shape trundling carelessly through throngs of mobs. Horror clenched his hands, tight enough that Blue faintly heard bone grinding from the left. He was even more surprised to see a dimly glowing carmine tongue emerge briefly. 

He still stayed back, letting Killer get close to tease the animal with the carrot, leading it back. It followed dutifully, grunting with each step as the creeper walked backwards. 

“Just be patient, Horror. I'm sure it's far better to eat cooked food over raw.” He warned, listening to the grind. 

The zombie just sniffed, leaving him uncertain of whether or not he'd been acknowledged. 

Thankfully he seemed patient enough, simply sort of stalking the pig as Killer led it back. Blue felt a bit awkward, walking behind the half-crouched zombie and all too innocent pig just chasing the carrot. At least Killer was able to force open the latch from behind, ducking through the gate as the rest of the unusual entourage passed through after him. 

They were almost at the bridge to his mansion over the lake when Horror suddenly sort of dithered, glancing back nervously. 

“Kill pig now?” He asked. 

Blue hesitated. “Are you sure? I thought we were going to try cooking it?” 

The zombie just grunted, shifting side to side. “Kill outside. Less mess inside.” He spoke in short sentences. Blue blinked at that. “I hadn't considered there being a mess.” He noted, glancing over at Killer. 

“Don't look at me, I don't know shit about what we're doing.” The creeper backed away. 

“Well.. I suppose we can do that, then.” He agreed, slowly pulling out his sword. The whole situation seemed sort of wrong at this point. 

Though Horror saved him the trouble by abruptly pouncing on the pig's back, hands suddenly around it's neck as he bit down. The poor thing squealed in pain, turning around and around as blood poured out of it's neck- there was so much blood- Blue was backing away in shock, Killer not far behind him. 

The pig kept screaming, Killer loudly shouting his dismay at the scene as Blue just stared. 

Horror was not alright. That was all he could think as he watched the zombie continue tearing into the pig's throat from atop it's back. Eventually it ran itself ragged, flopping on it's side as it's breath came in heavy, sawing gasps, every exhale a continually weakening squeal. 

He could feel the energy draining out of it, not just see it, almost falling into Horror like an apple fell to earth. He'd never seen energy be so totally and completely yanked from one thing to another. Least of all from the death of a being by another's hand. That was always a messy ordeal, leaving energy cascading about to seep into the earth and surroundings. 

Finally, the pig was limp, Horror rising to his full height with blood smeared on his face and hands, more splattered on his clothes. His new jacket and boots. 

That was fine. They were his to stain if he wanted. Not disappointing at all. 

His single glowing iris was burning fervently, light reflecting off the odd angles of his face. He seemed strangely remorseful. 

“... Sorry..” He mumbled, still licking blood of his lips with a brighter red tongue. 

“What the fuck.” Killer hissed, disturbed. “Do you enjoy doing that or something?” 

Horror swayed slightly, the sheepish look on his face not matching the rest of his rotted, bloody appearance at all. 

“It feels good.” He admitted. “Less.. tired.” 

“I.. I suppose that makes sense.” Blue whispered faintly. 

“How does that make any sense at all??!” Killer turned on him in bewilderment. 

Blue shrugged weakly. “He's.. very efficient.” He noted dully, staring at the now corpse. 

“Brutally efficient.” He amended. 

“Efficient my ass, that took way too fucking long. I could've killed it in a second!” Killer hotly argued. 

Blue finally turned to stare at him, seeing the creeper go from repulsed and horrified to a slight mixture of fear and concern, looking back at him. 

“What's going on with you?” He demanded, leaning away. 

“What do you mean?” Blue was distantly confused. 

“Your.. eyes or whatever, they're burning.” He hissed that last part, genuinely stepping away. 

Blue frowned, reaching up to his sockets. A brighter shade of blue was reflecting off his hands than he was used to, puzzling him. 

“Why are my…?” Blue found himself trailing, hand falling against his will as everything seemed oddly dim. He blinked up at the other two, seeing them almost like they were glowing with watery light, yet they looked so utterly horrified. Was it something behind him..? 

Before he could think to look or ask what was wrong, the world tilted violently to the side and went dark. 

For a moment, he thought he saw a sea of dark, swirling brown speckled in familiar blue, drifting particles of black sifting through a gray haze. 

He knew that strange, desolate place. He'd been there before. 

Chapter Text

He was waking up again, feeling a strange sort of deja vu as he blinked at a wall. He stared, watching it come into focus. That was his wall. He'd built it. He'd harvested the stone from the earth, cut down the wood himself. He was proud of that. 

Yet the strange feeling of his thoughts slowly coming to him was so familiar. He couldn't help but think about a quiet night sky, wearing nothing but leather pants and a simple helmet. 

Blue blinked, feeling the wall behind him, his armor nowhere to be found. Just his clothes.. and something he didn't quite recognize. Some piles of white were shoved against his sides, soft and vaguely familiar. He picked at it, memories coming back. These were sheets from one of the villager beds. 

There was a strange clatter somewhere, something metallic hitting stone or a similar material with a bit of force, making him look up. He saw the now oddly comforting crimson eyelight of Horror staring at him, wide with a strange expression on his face. It seemed remarkably sharp and clear, even containing faint striations like a real eye but in glittering, luminous red. There was something in his bony hand that he glanced at, then quickly turned to put down. 

And then Horror was crouching in front of him, looking beyond concerned as he gripped Blue's shoulders. He was saying something, but the sounds were distant. He just seemed to be pulsing with energy, painful to look at first. It was distracting. Blue had to hold up a hand to get a moment, slowly touching his skull in confusion. 

Eventually the slight ringing and oppressive silence filled with faint crackling like fire began to lift, letting sounds come to him again. He could hear things slamming somewhere, coming closer until he saw a truly distressed Killer burst into the room, a particularly reddish glow seeping between the gaps of his main body. 

“Are you okay?! Please tell me you can talk. Please. Please.” His voice sounded loud, uncomfortably so. 

“I.. I can speak.” Blue found he sounded scratchy, still distracted by the deep well within Horror but also the chaotic swirl of power in Killer as well. Normally he could ignore it. Usually he ignored it. For some reason it seemed to be screaming at him now, and he was struggling to think around it. 

Blue realized Killer had moved to sit beside him, legs folded under him as he waited anxiously.. for what? 

Horror was just on his knees, a porkchop sitting on a plate, held out to him. 

“I don't eat.” Blue finally addressed him, smiling sadly as he pushed it away. “Really, it was all for you.” 

Horror just stared at him strangely, Killer stammering slightly, trying to say something but stumbling over his own words. 

“Can't or don't?” 

Blue was startled at how much clearer and confident sounded in his own words, blinking up at that burning red iris. It was so big and.. entrancing. 

“What do you mean?” He finally remembered his own words. 

“Don't eat, or can't eat?” Horror clarified, oddly assertive. 

Blue pushed himself further upright, dislodging the blankets originally helping him sit up. 

“I suppose I don't. I don't need to. I'd rather it went to someone in actual need-” He cut short when the plate was set on his lap, staring at it before looking at Horror, stupefied. 

“It helps more than you think.” 

He regarded the meat with some trepidation. Pumpkin pie was one thing, but this had come from a living creature. One he'd watched die painfully. 

Blue wasn't sure how to explain that without sounding rude. 

“I.. I'm sorry, I've only recently learned I can eat at all.” He worked out. 

Somehow, the vaguely mystified look quickly morphed to understanding. “Too much?” Horror asked. Blue smiled apologetically, trying not to look like he wanted to get away from the plate. 

“What, only a plant eater?” Killer latched onto the chance to tease, likely searching for a sense of normalcy. 

Blue spluttered, but couldn't get far before Horror had suddenly snatched away the plate, pork practically vanishing as it was stuffed entirely in his mouth in one smooth motion as he quickly walked away. The skeleton was frozen in shock. 

Killer snorted. “He's been doing that.” 

“For how long?” Blue was astounded that he genuinely didn't know. The last thing he remembered was the pig. 

Killer seemed uneasy, one leg lifting to rub back and forth on the floor. 

“Do you know how long you were out like that for?” 

“..No.” It was unnerving to say it out loud. “..No, I don't. All I can recall is Horror killing the pig.” He left out seeing them all in blue, so bright it was nearly cyan. And the strange maybe memory of the dark, brown place of ash and nearly cyan lights. He didn't really know what it was. 

Killer shuddered then, completely uncharacteristic of him. He glanced at Blue with a strange look on his face, the white rings appearing again. 

“You were literally burning.” He finally explained, oddly quiet. Blue gaped at that, looking at his hands in fear. They were fine. 

“No, you didn't get burned, if that makes any sense.” Killer told him, still shifting about uneasily. 

“But you were on fire and it was blue. It just exploded from your uh, your ribs? And eyes. And then you fell. We thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.” 

Blue blinked up at him in dismay, finally recognizing just how frightened the usually unfazed creeper was. Killer was unafraid of death, but he was terrified of losing others. Of being alone.

So he shoved himself off the floor, wrapping his arms instinctively around the hollow, plant body and held him there. “I am so sorry.” He whispered, close enough to hear the faint humming of what could only be his core. 

“I've always wondered why you sounded like fire.” Killer chuckled weakly, not acknowledging the embrace. 

“...I do?” Blue asked, not wanting to pull away. 

“Yeah..” The creeper leaned back, and Blue reluctantly let him go, seeing the peculiar look on his face. 

“I think this'll sound weird to you, but I think there's something under your shirt.” 

The skeleton frowned, one hand reaching up to touch his sternum thoughtfully- before recoiling as something was thrust in his face. 

Horror was there, holding a carrot that was strangely gold and shiny. Like the gilded apple. 

“It burns me to eat it, but I think it's because I'm dead.” 

Again, huge difference compared to before. 

“How did you..?” Blue trailed in disbelief. 

“He's been obsessed with the cookbook.” Killer explained drily. 

“You were out for two days.” Horror added, surprisingly stern as he continued holding out the carrot by the leaves. 

He hesitantly took it, fascinated by how light it was. How full of energy it was. 

“Are you sure?” He asked. 

Horror nodded, the tufts of hair still attached to his rotted head swaying with the movement. They were limp and greasy. Blue quickly looked away. Horror needed a bath. 

“I suppose I'll try it.” He sighed, giving in to the weird intensity the other was regarding him with. 

It crunched rather loudly, which was a bit jarring. Eventually Blue had to put down the rest of it. 

“...I don't think I know how to describe taste.” He realized. 

“It's sweeter than normal carrots.” Horror supplied instead, unbothered by his confusion, moving to sit cross-legged beside him. “It doesn't sting, does it?” 

“I don't think so.” Blue glanced at it. “It sort of tingles. This is a gilded carrot, isn't it? I hadn't realized there were gilded carrots. I only found the recipe for apples.” 

Horror shrugged. “Takes less gold. Said they were for healing. Still have some leftover.” He lifted his fleshy hand, revealing a globule of the precious metal. 

“Where did you find that gold?” Blue was curious. 

The zombie hummed. “... Some village a while ago. Not here. Ate all their cows.” 

Blue hesitantly took another bite, pondering it. “I wonder why it stings you and not me. We're both sort of undead, aren't we?” 

Horror shrugged at that. “Maybe you're partly living.” 

He gave him a look for that. 

“He's literally just bones.” Killer pointed out. 

“How are just bones walking?” Horror shot back. 

“By that logic, your hand should be gone.” Killer nodded at the purely bone hand. 

Horror followed his gaze, flexing the phalanges. They spread out further than flesh would have allowed, far enough a finger could have fit in some of the gaps- before snapping back to their natural order. “..I dunno.” He admitted. 

“Maybe we're all just strange.” Blue decided, shrugging. “We're already fairly different from the norm. You can't die.” He nodded to Killer, hesitating at Horror. “You might be unable to die as well. I've never seen a zombie quite as rotted as you. That doesn't bother you, does it?” 

The zombie grunted, shrugging. “Just weird like that. You have the blue fire.” 

He nodded, a little slower this time. “I don't know why. Or where it came from. Do you really think there's something burning under my shirt?” He asked Killer, reaching for the cloth self-consciously. 

“Yeah. I heard it when you.. did whatever that was.” 

“..That was a hug, Killer.” He quietly stated, realizing the other didn't know where it came from either. 

“Can I hug you?” Horror asked suddenly. Blue winced at that. “..I don't mean to be rude, but you ought to bathe first. You're still covered in blood.” He leapt on the excuse, knowing it was more than that. 

The zombie peered at himself, new boots crusted with a dark brown that was dried blood, more spots staining his shirt and pants. Not to mention the gaping hole in his thigh going all the way down to the bone. “Yeah..” He seemed to agree. 

“I'm just.. not used to this.” 

“That's alright. It hasn't been very long. I'm sure we can help you feel at home soon enough. Perhaps later we can finally pick up that project we dropped when you arrived!” 

“Not now.” The assertiveness was back, glaring slightly. “Now you rest. Don't want you exploding in fire again. We just met.” 

“I honestly have no idea what caused that.” Blue admitted, glancing at his arm in slight anxiety. It was still unmarred. He wasn't hurt despite the inexplicable spontaneous combustion. 

“I won't kill around you again.” Horror swore, and something in his countenance felt so undeniably genuine. This was not someone who made promises lightly. 

“Are you sure that was the cause?” Blue quested, fiddling with the unfinished golden carrot. 

“We talked.” Horror nodded to Killer, who awkwardly looked away. 

“You started going weird when he first attacked the pig. It just took a while to remember, I guess.” 

“How was I weird?” Blue folded his legs under himself, accepting that everyone was on the floor for now. Killer tilted side to side, debating his answer. 

“I dunno. Your.. eyes? Kinda turned ring-like and got brighter. Then you started glowing from the middle and then it was just exploding out all over. You were on fire and not burning. I know, it makes no sense. You were calling him efficient or whatever too.” 

Blue finally began to understand what had happened, though some things still made no sense. 

“Did you not feel how effective he was? Was it only me?” 

“I mean, he definitely killed the thing. Took a while.” 

Horror was cringing a little. “I do it because I wake up a little more from it. I don't like doing that, but I like being awake, too.” He rubbed the back of his head, tugging scraggly hair and sagging scalp back and forth. 

“That makes sense. It is a lot of energy to take in at once.” 

“What do you mean?” The zombie glanced at him in confusion. Even Killer was puzzled. He stared between the two blankly before it suddenly clicked. 

“Do you not see it?” He asked. 

“See what?” Killer was the first to ask. 

It felt.. almost wrong, realizing it. 

“The energy.” Blue clarified in concern. 

“What energy?” Killer further questioned. 

“Th- The energy, Killer. All around us. Do neither of you see it?” 

“Blue, I have no idea what you're talking about.” 

He frowned, one hand gripping a fibula as he processed that information. Only he could see it. They weren't even aware of its existence. 

“Are you okay?” Horror's voice was a warm rumble, grounding. 

“I- yes. I'm fine. It's just a bit of a shock.” Blue admitted, sighing as he worked out an explanation. 

“I.. I can feel the energy within everything.” He began, looking up. 

“It often moves. Especially when something is killed, it typically travels from slain to slayer, though much is scattered about everywhere instead. However, whatever you do, Horror, somehow draws all of the energy into you. So I imagine that would wake you up quite a bit.” 

There was silence as they processed that. Horror slowly regarded his hands in fascination, Killer frowning thoughtfully. 

“...What do you see when I blow up?” 

“Most of your energy falls into your core, the rest seems to latch onto all of your fragments.” Blue explained after giving it some thought. 

“My core?” Killer seemed surprised. 

“Do you not even know about your core?” Blue was astonished. 

“I- yes. No. Maybe.” He stammered, looking down awkwardly. “I know I feel something? It aches when I gotta blow, that's about it.” He scratched a gnarled foot along the floor. 

“Is it the red light?” Horror asked. 

“I glow?!” Killer yelped, studying himself frantically. 

“Well, not most of the time, no.” Blue mediated, calming the agitated creeper before an explosion could be triggered. “And yes, your core glows red. However, it flashes white when you're about to explode. Sometimes your.. vines? Your vines move around and it is visible. Horror may be referring to that, right?” 

The zombie nodded. Killer tapped the floor anxiously. “I never even noticed. Shouldn't I have noticed? I should have. There's a glowing part of me and I didn't even know. Normal creepers don't have glowy bits.” 

“Well, you've told me they also flash before exploding.” Blue pointed out. 

“Yeah well I never thought I did that. I'm stupid.” 

“You're not stupid.” 

“I can't even see it, Blue!” 

The skeleton finally huffed in annoyance, throwing a hand out and pushing aside the pliable vines, revealing a glimpse of the target shape dwelling within. “Can you now?” 

Killer was frozen for a few seconds before jolting, curling forward in curiosity. “...Fuck.” 

“What?” Horror asked, clearly intrigued by the unusual turn of conversation. 

“...I can't.” Killer slumped in disappointment. 

Blue hesitated, considering what he could do next. 

“Well.. given my hand is already there, maybe I could grab it?” He suggested. He had no idea if this was a bad idea or not. 

“Fuck it, you're right, grab my glowing heart or whatever.” Killer agreed, equal parts disturbed and fascinated. 

He slowly leaned closer, a little unsettled at the sight of his arm vanishing into a living body. Stranger still was how completely hollow the creeper was, some sort of fine powder drifting in the empty space, swirling around his hand. He could feel the energy buzzing under his phalanges, knowing it was right there. 

“That feels weird.” Killer was unusually quiet. 

“..Are you sure?” Blue checked, also nervous. 

“I.. guess?” The creeper shifted, dragging Blue's hand side to side with him. 

“This might be the dumbest thing I've ever agreed to.” He added. 

“Agreed.” Blue nodded, cringing as he closed his hand. 

There was a jolt that surged up his arm, one he could physically see as flickering red and white as they both gasped. 

“Ow??” Killer pulled away, Blue also quickly retreating from the awkwardly intimate experience- except his hand was still clenched around the circular shape. 

“Okay. Um. That was in me.” Killer gasped, his entire shape sagging a little as he regarded it. Blue also stared at it, feeling the tingling as it danced up his arm and spine, twitching somewhere inside his skull. 

“Weird.” Horror noted. 

It was bright, distinctly shaped like a target, gray particles floating in the glowing white rings, thinly separated from the crimson dust surrounded in a flickering red aura. Looking at it, Blue rather thought it might've been redstone. 

That's part of me. A familiar voice in his mind whispered incredulously. 

Blue flinched, knowing he hadn't thought that. Instead, he looked up at Killer, who was still going worryingly limp, his form drooping as coiling vines started falling to the floor. 

“Killer, I think you need this to stand.” He pointed out. 

The creeper glanced at him, then suddenly blinked. 

Why he looking like that? Echoed in his mind, and Blue really wanted to put it back. 

“Your eye things.” Killer started. “They're white.” 

Horror was now leaning over to look. 

“Like your rings when they show.” The zombie noted. 

“Can I put it back now? I think I'm hearing your thoughts.” Blue quickly explained, getting increasingly uncomfortable. 

Huh?! 

“Hang on, you wha?” One of the vines acting as a lip drooped, and Killer finally seemed to notice his deteriorating state, something gray misting out of the widening gaps. 

“Oh ssshhiih.” He swore, more of a hiss that a word. 

That is not fucking okay. Put it back, put it fucking back- The creeper lurched forward, a leg giving out with the action. 

“You don't have to swear at me.” Blue automatically reprimanded, pushing it back through the now practically collapsing vines. The sudden release of weight on his mind was so abrupt, he fell back against Horror, who flinched as he caught Blue. 

Killer was coughing out clouds of gray, already reforming. 

“Can we just never do that again?” He asked, an undercurrent of a hiss following his words as he spasmed back into shape. 

Blue just stared at his hand, flexing it experimentally. 

“...Yes, let's not.” He stated, unable to rid his hand of the fuzzy tingling. 

“Forget it happened?” Horror suggested, shifting to get up. 

“Yeah. Let's.” Blue shook off his hand, leaning on the wall to stand. Killer soon followed, looking as though he hadn't almost been reduced to a pile of green, white and black tendrils. 

Ignoring the slight weakness of his legs, Blue smiled like everything was normal. 

“Horror, how would you like to see a portal to another world?” He suggested.

Immediately, the brilliant iris settled upon him, intensely curious. 

Blue pulled out the fateful book. “According to this, there is another world, and it's surprisingly easy to access.” 

The zombie glanced back towards the designated kitchen he'd apparently commandeered. 

“I'll clean up.” He stated. 

“You will?” Blue wasn't expecting that. 

“Yeah. You're right. Shouldn't be bloody.” 

He strode away, leaving the skeleton somewhat puzzled. He'd assumed the other was talking about something in the kitchen.. but okay. 

“We'll wait for you!” He called after him. 

Horror grunted. “Don't. Do your stuff. I'm okay.” 

Blue hummed, still surprised. 

“... He's so.. considerate.” He searched for the right word when the other was out of earshot. 

“Kinda easygoing, yeah.” Killer agreed, standing closer than usual. 

Blue started moving to the front door, maintaining a gentle pace for the creeper to keep up with. 

“He seems like a good friend.” He decided. 

Killer yelped before he could reply, jumping and hissing at a familiar sight rapidly approaching. 

Carrot the cat was prancing over, meowing as he ran. His call wobbled with each running step until he was leaning against Blue's legs. 

The skeleton had to slow down drastically so as not to trip over the suddenly needy cat. 

“Fucking hell, he came outta nowhere that time.” Killer scowled, edging away when Carrot simply leaned in to rub on his leg. 

“Aw, he likes you.” Blue commented, leaning over to pet the aggressively affectionate feline. 

“Probably thought you were dead too.” Killer mumbled, watching a tail coil around the crook of a leg, leaving fur caught between his vines. 

The shed then dropped out and he proceeded to ignore Carrot. 

“Where do you wanna build the portal anyway?” 

Blue took the excuse for what it was. “Well, I didn't think we'd build it yet. Horror deserves to see that. However, I was thinking. It's an entire other world. We will probably find a lot of strange new things we'll want to keep, so we ought to build some quick storage. And we want to fence it off in case things want to escape and attack the village, so why not build it in a hole in the wall and block it off there?”

Killer considered this, staring at the cerulean foyer lined in green copper. 

“You're pretty good with plans, you know that?” 

“I know I am. I am simply that great.” Blue remarked, something that annoyed the creeper to no end as he opened the gate to the porch and stepped on the bridge. 

He then eyed a patch of bare, rugged wall between two slopes leading up to the main village. 

“There seems good.” He decided. 

“Right next everything, huh?” Killer pointed out. 

“If we fence it off properly, then why not?” Blue shot back, already whipping out his pickaxe. 

Killer was treated to the truly impressive sight of his greatly enchanted pick shredding through stone. 

“Whoa. What the fuck.” 

“I told you!” Blue sang, already mostly done with the small cubby. “It's supposed to be amazing.” 

“Geez, I think some of it just exploded.” The creeper leaned to one side, ignoring the cat balancing on two of his legs. Blue stood proudly amid the rubble, working out how many chests and lights he could fit into the space. 

“I think I'll line the walls in copper lights.” He mused aloud for Killer's sake. 

“Not everything has to be bright, y'know.” Killer grumbled. 

“Yes, but if it prevents the wild ones from gathering and getting in the way, why not? I'm fine in the light.” 

“Except the sun's right there.” Killer nodded upwards.

“It's not like I'm stripping my clothes to burn in it, am I? Only the sun burns. Besides, the sea lights bring the copper and blue walls together.” He strode past the creeper to fetch more of said copper from inside. 

“You're weird about how things look.” Killer huffed, following him again. 

“Well if I'm the only one with any sense of design, then why not be specific? Just wait until I remodel the village!” 

“I thought you already did that.” 

“...I built a few farms, Killer. That is not remodeling.” 

“Close enough.” 

Blue shook his skull with a sigh, simply opening a chest and rooting through it. Down the corridor he could hear splashing from one of the towers. Seems Horror had found they were built directly into the lake. 

Soon enough, he was already putting together some torches, stopping by a table to fit them into the new bulbs. All shiny and sort of orange. He'd have to leave them out to get that turquoise green he liked so much. Sure, it dimmed them drastically, but it wasn't like he couldn't see without them. 

They were outside again, Blue dumping the bulbs by the water to rust as he headed elsewhere. 

“What's your plan now?” Killer asked, eyeing the cat that was now hanging around Blue's shoulders. 

“I'm going to cut down a few trees to build some chests.” Blue idly scratched under the feline’s chin. He was rewarded with a purr, Carrot continuing to rub his chin along the edge of the helmet. All while balancing on moving shoulders. 

The cat was definitely skilled at holding on without effort, claws hooking into cloth and staying on even when he was cutting down trees. Blue completely missed how Carrot often turned to stare at Killer with a much-too innocent expression, the creeper glaring back behind the skeleton’s back. 

The cat only flicked his tail in amusement, Killer hissing expletives under his breath. 

“What was that?” Blue called, in the middle of picking up sticks. 

“Wishing I had hands.” Killer boredly excused, leaning on a tree. 

“I'm sure at some point we'll find a solution.” Blue offered, knowing that there was nothing he could do with the knowledge he had. 

Though somebody had to know at some point. And maybe wrote it down. Maybe he'd even find a book. Maybe. 

It didn't take long before he'd already made the chests, checking the rust on the bulbs and deeming them green enough, stacking them along the walls before sliding finished chests in beside them. A few barrels took up the middle, and finally, Blue was left with the grooves for the obsidian. He glanced back at his mansion, seeing Horror on the porch, damp with his jacket folded over the ledge he sat on, far from the sun. The zombie raised a hand in greeting. 

“Wanna see us build a portal?” Blue shouted. 

“And by us, he means him!” Killer added. 

“I just want you to be included.” Blue turned to him sadly. 

“Still no hands.” 

Horror was already heading over, jacket on and hood pulled up over his head. He hesitated at the edge of the porch, first reaching one hand into the sun, flinching at its warmth. Blue came closer, wanting to help ease the other to the light but also not wanting to coddle him unnecessarily. 

Eventually Horror had crept into the sun, shoving his hands in the pockets nervously. When he was close enough, Blue chuckled in empathy. 

“It's always nerve wracking the first time.” He nodded, Horror glancing at him. 

“...I want a shirt too.” 

“You do?” Blue was caught off guard. 

“In case the coat comes off. For whatever reason.” Horror shuddered. “Burning sucks.” 

That, Blue could smile at wryly. “I see where you're coming from. I've forgotten my bandana a couple times before I finished the rest of my outfit. I now dread hearing my helmet crack.” 

That had Horror laughing; a low, surprised chuckle that rumbled out of him.

“See, this is why I'm just better.” Killer cut in, grinning. “I just eat the sun.” 

Horror raised his arms then, mimicking a regular zombie. “No hands.” Was all he said. Killer immediately fell into a scowl. 

“Fuck you.” 

“Can't even swim.” 

“I can swim! I just don't like to!” 

Blue shook his skull at their antics, moving on to set the chunks of obsidian into the grooves carved into stone, placing them as close as possible as the pair went on. He only paused when Killer turned and angrily threw himself into the water, reemerging and paddling back, surprisingly able to keep himself perfectly upright. In fact, he couldn't sink at all. 

Blue's surprise quickly fell to disappointment as Killer continued to swear at Horror, who just seemed amused by him, completely unbothered. 

So he produced a fire starter, heading towards the zombie. Horror blinked at him, distracted by the flint and steel. Killer seethed, but fell silent. 

“Want to try and light the portal?” Blue offered. 

“..Light it?” The crimson iris looked up at him. 

“Yes.” Blue nodded. “The book says it needs fire to open. I thought I'd let you try.” 

Horror regarded the apparatus, flicking it and creating sparks. He hummed, hesitantly making his way to the unlit portal. He held his hand out between the rocks, snapping it. Nothing. 

“Try actually lighting the obsidian with it, moron.” Killer quipped. 

Horror glared back at the creeper, but leaned to the side, aiming at the glassy rocks. 

The click of the flint and steel was instantly obscured by a bewildering, warping noise, the rocks grinding against the stone as they abruptly reshaped themselves, obsidian chunks turning jagged as they bulged and melted seamlessly into each other. Now a ring of obsidian with brilliant purple light rippling within it. Blue took a step back, hit with a wave of deja vu. 

It was like the enderman. Black of obsidian, and the strange, luminous purple like their eyes. Eyes you couldn't look into. 

It was almost like looking into a giant eye now, bleeding mysterious purple embers into the air. 

Look for the eye. 

Was this the eye? 

“...Whoa.” Killer stated, stunned. 

“..Yeah..” Horror agreed, taking another step back. 

“I.. I think I'll add the gates now.” Blue murmured, holding out the wood. 

“Quick, check if it burns.” Killer suggested. 

Horror swung his boney hand through it, causing a wave of ripples and more flecks to come out of the portal, but otherwise came back unharmed. He stared at his hand curiously. 

“It's warm.” 

Intrigued, Blue also reached for it, passing his hand through. It clung to him, warm like water yet still so ephemeral. The energy swirled within, spirals and spirals of it, unending. It left visible patterns in the purple field. 

He snapped back into focus, quickly setting the gates into the stone in front of the ring.  

“So.” He began, looking back at the others. 

“Shall we go together or separately?” 

Horror blinked, glancing between him and the portal several times. 

“You want to go in?” 

“Of course, why else would he build a portal?” Killer pointed out. 

The zombie groaned under his breath, more of an anxious whine. 

“... Together.” He decided uneasily. 

“Great!” Blue clapped his hands with a resounding clack, then grabbed the zombie's boney hand and a portion of creeper vines. 

“Hey! Wait I'm not read-” Killer cut off as they plunged into the portal. 

The next thing Blue saw was teal and deep red, before he suddenly realized he was falling. 

Lava. There was nothing but lava beneath him, and he was falling towards it before he could even process the entirely new world. 

Chapter Text

There was only time to yelp in sheer terror before Blue was rather suddenly yanked back up by his hands, stumbling back against the creeper and zombie behind him. 

“Holy fuck, what the hell were you thinking?!” Killer hissed, a certain unbridled terror written plain on his own face.

Blue winced, understanding his fear. “I didn't expect such a drop, really.” 

Killer just continued staring, a hollow hissing following each breath. He was huffing a few dark gray clouds like smoke, though not quite, drifting down instead of up.

“Just. Don't do that. Don't die on me, man.” 

The skeleton nodded, feeling guilty for scaring the other yet again so soon after the previous scare. He was just so excited about this new world. 

Though.. looking at it now, the Netherworld seemed awfully.. dark. And hot. He wasn't bothered by the heat much, but he couldn't mistake the heavy atmosphere weighing on them. 

 And there were the trees. 

Or.. what looked like trees. 

They had oddly veiny, glowing trunks leading up to ragged, tattered tops of some kind of almost fleshy material. It was a bluish teal, spotted in round globules of orange.. something. It was glowing. 

“This is weird.” Horror grunted, uneasy. He was glancing over at a dark shape standing by a trunk, top half hidden by the tree-thing. 

Killer hissed sharply, getting in his way. 

“Don't look in their eyes, man.” He warned. 

“Enderman?” Horror asked, looking around him. 

“Oh.” The creeper slowly backed away, still staring at the unsettling shape there. 

Blue turned from the enderman, peering around at everything else. The ground sloped about unevenly, shooting up in short cliffs or dropping off into vast chasms. Looking over the ledge they stood on now, he could see the ground nearby slope closer, then away. The lava seemed to fill the entire world at the bottom, going on and on. Was this whole world just sitting in a great lake of molten rock? 

There was another enderman nearby, staring. It held a chunk of the red stone everything seemed made of, slightly porous and soft. 

Netherrack, his mind supplied. It was all too red, like flesh. It was unnerving. 

“Are these mushrooms?” Killer questioned in bewilderment. Blue turned, seeing he was walking over to the nearest not-tree. Looking at it, it did seem rather fungal. “Huh.” 

“Is it edible?” Horror pondered. 

“I'm not sure you should eat interdimensional mushrooms.” Blue remarked, finally stepping away from the ledge. 

“Interdimensional, huh?” Killer glanced at him. 

All three mobs shared a look with one another. 

That was the word, wasn't it? 

“Yes, interdimensional.” He decided. 

The creeper huffed, turning to scuff at the ground. There was no dirt to soften it, only the thick layer of fungus and spores. A few flew up from the force, drifting in the mostly dead air. 

“This place is creepy as hell.” He muttered. 

“Yeah..” Horror agreed, frowning at their surroundings. 

Blue simply went up to a wall and carved a hole in it, picking up the chunks of netherrack. 

“It might just be the region.” He pointed out. Horror joined him, fiddling with his hands nervously. 

“Hey, I think that's the delta place I read about.” Killer called, making them both turn. 

There, through the giant mushrooms, rose jagged pillars of striated gray, lit by orange from underneath. The region seemed smokey, ash drifting further into the vibrant teals of the forest. 

“...We should build a quick shelter before we explore very far. And maybe find something to use so as not to get lost.” Blue suggested, still feeling turned around by the confusing geography of the land just standing here. 

“It feels easy to get lost, yeah..” Horror agreed, looking up at what was definitely a ceiling. This place didn't seem to have a sky so far. 

Or maybe they just ended up underground. 

Killer eventually came closer, looking around at the gathering endermen uneasily. “You do that.” 

Blue paused, then handed his axe to Horror. 

“Do you know how to use this?” 

The zombie nodded, confused. 

“Alright. How about I carve into the rock here and you see if these mushrooms can be used as wood. Does that sound good?” He offered. 

Horror regarded the axe curiously, glancing at the nearest giant mushroom. The glowing veins in its violet bark rippled. Then he shrugged and swung. 

The blade crunched through the outer layer, ending in a muted thud halfway through the trunk. Blue hesitated, thinking it was rather soft. 

“It's soft.” Horror concluded as well, leaning forward to touch it. “Firm. Almost hard?” He glanced uncertainly at Blue, who shrugged, still holding his pickaxe. 

When Horror turned back to the fungus, Blue shrugged again to himself, setting out a table and turning to dig. He bored deeper into the hill, raising the ceiling high enough for several alcoves for chests, carving a sort of fireplace- just for Horror. He'd add a campfire later. The whole while, he was silent, listening. 

The endermen were murmuring. Their words were largely indecipherable, but repetitive all the same. Just the same few words and sounds that were probably supposed to be words, but were too garbled by their bewildering accents. Or whatever it could be called. A static, maybe. 

Regardless, many stood by, watching the three of them, always muttering. 

“L̸oo̵̓̈́͗̓̐̈́̉̌͂̉k̴͆̄̄͌̚ ̸͖̰̥̯̓̆͑͝f̵̒̑̇̍͆͑̾or̶̂͐̾̒̈̋̋͘̚ ̷̖͉̤̦̥̃̃̋̃͝͝th̵̏̉̈́̀̏̄͆́͘͝e ey̵͂̾̈̈́͝e̴͔̿̍͑͌.” 

“H̶̀̈́̐̓̊ï̷.” 

“H̷̾e̷̛͝y̷͋.”

“Ẃ̵h̸̄å̴̽͐̐̽̿͆̈́̃͝t'̴s̶͗͗̏̊̐͌͠ u̶͊p̴̛̎?” 

No one spoke back. The endermen were only echoing words they couldn't understand. The question was why. 

And there didn't seem to be an answer. 

Blue eventually had a deep enough nook carved, Horror having helped set up fences around the entrance, stopping the unnerving creatures from getting in. Killer had retreated into the shelter, wanting away from the penetrating gaze of the numerous endermen. There was an entire crowd now, many holding chunks of red as they just stared in open curiosity. 

They had put together some furnaces, a fire, table and chests, even a barrel just in case. The entire back end of the tunnel was left bare, to duck under should the endermen get angered. The lanky creatures apparently hated small spaces. 

When a campfire was set up in the designated pit, Blue chose to sit on the floor. It was still disconcerting how even the stone was warm here, no matter how far in he dug. 

“Do you two want to try and explore some of the area now, or do you want to build something to ensure we don't get lost first?” He asked, Horror sitting in a darker corner atop a chest, hiding from the endermen. Killer just leaned on another chest, scrunching. 

“I don't wanna be lost here.” Horror stated, wringing his hands. Blue nodded, glancing at the creeper for his opinion. Killer huffed, regarding their audience standing about somewhat aimlessly. 

“You can't act like you're not curious about what else is here. Hot as it is.” 

“I am.” Blue admitted before nodding to Horror. “But I'm also worried about getting lost. The geography here is very confusing. I'd like to not get turned around and never find the portal again.” 

“So lets just make signposts or whatever.” Killer swung a leg in a vague gesture. 

“I want anything we make to stand out from everything else.” Blue clarified, pointing at the bluish fence they just set up. “Something like that will blend in.” 

“So something from home?” Horror suggested quietly. He was holding a baked potato in one hand, a chunk of sandstone in the other. Blue suddenly lit up. “That! Sandstone! Nothing here is close to that color!” 

The zombie glanced at the rock, hefting it. 

“It's pretty fragile.” He pointed out. 

“A little, but it should serve it's purpose.” Blue added, standing. “Alright, it's decided.” He looked at the portal, energy and light swirling enigmatically within. 

“Do you want to risk getting lost for now or do you want to join us, Killer?” 

“Okay number one: screw you, and two; I won't get lost.” Killer huffed. Blue just gave him a look. 

“I won't get lost!” The creeper grew defensive, puffing up with a flash of light. 

Blue sighed, opening the gate and pushing past the endermen, who continued murmuring in staticy voices. Horror followed shortly after, gripping his arm in anxiety. 

He paused by the portal, seeing Killer walk out and watch them. After a moment, he nodded to the creeper, turning and stepping into the portal. The purple clung to him, this time feeling almost cold, the weight far lighter than before. 

Horror was beside him as they emerged, the coolness washing over them like a breath of fresh air. The scent of the water and flowers growing here and there stood out so much more after being in such an ashen, alien environment. 

Blue turned to Horror. “Have you ever been in a boat?” He asked. 

The zombie blinked. “...No. Why?” 

He only smiled, bolting into the house to fetch his spare pickaxe. Horror had reached the door by the time he came zooming back, carrying the iron tool. 

“The closest desert is down the river!” He exclaimed. 

“Would you like to help me gather sandstone?” 

“Sure.” Horror grunted, understanding now. Blue beamed at him, guiding him to the dock. The other stumbled briefly, but otherwise followed diligently. 

There was a certain excitement in having a friend to truly talk to and join him in the adventure. A helper, not a watcher. 

Not that Killer could help it, he literally had no hands, but still. 

It was nice. 

. • ° ° • .

He was seriously regretting staying here alone. 

Not that he'd ever admit it. 

He wasn't even lost! Just stuck. 

Having no arms really sucked sometimes. 

As it was, he could only hop further down and pray he was still in shouting distance. 

The ash in this region was rather suffocating, though strangely was more tolerable the lower he went. Plus there was something stark white sticking out below him, mostly hidden by the weird stone.. basalt, yes, that's basalt. Not the same as the stuff in the walls of Blue's place, but definitely basalt. 

At some point, Killer froze when he saw the freaky red creatures just standing on the lava, their gaping mouths opening and closing as they waddled about. 

…Then he noticed the fence. 

Killer tripped then, yelping as he fell forward and tumbled, falling over one ledge just to bounce off another to a third ridge, laying there. 

He could have fallen into lava doing that. 

It would have taken weeks to regrow his body from nothing, and the entire time Blue and Horror would know nothing about what happened to him. 

…At some point he needed to mention that thing. 

The creeper finally shoved himself upright, cautiously approaching the edge to peer over. It looked like the weird lava walking things were definitely penned in, though he couldn't recognize the dark material the fences were made of. It definitely wasn't wood. Neither were the gates, which were a lighter, almost pink color. If anything, the gates looked a lot like that mushroom wood. Just. Pinkish purple instead of teal. 

Looking further, he could clearly see the “wooden” stairs leading up to something under him, the roof also fenced off. A few burning, blackened slime things bounced there, not yet jumping high enough to go over. He watched an enderman absently croon at the red things, petting a head once before turning away. 

Finally, Killer looked at the white thing that had originally caught his attention. 

It was a wall. A very clearly structured wall, white as paper, bricks carved thicker and wider than anything he'd seen before. A unusually tall door was set into the middle of the wall, the handle much higher than it should have been. The door was also that sort of pink soft wood. 

This was all very weird. Killer wasn't oblivious. Maybe there were creatures equivalent to villagers in this world and those.. penned things were like cows. 

Though it was still unsettling. 

Still curious, Killer approached the seemingly stretched out door, having to reach up with his mouth to twist the round knob. It was still uncomfortably warm, like everything else in this wo- dimension. It was probably from all of the lava everywhere, of course. 

The door came open with a slight creak, like it hadn't been used in a while. Killer wandered in, making sure to kick it closed so none of those weird burning slimes could follow him in. Inside the place was an open room, lava flowing down in a contained tube of sorts beside him, illuminating the area. A few lanterns made of gold hung from similarly gold chains high on the ceiling- except the fire inside them was blue. A bright, familiar blue, like the lights in a certain skeleton’s sockets. 

The walls were a deep red brick, with chests set on shelves around as high as his head. A few were set on strange tables that looked like obsidian, except a vibrant purple liquid was seeping out between the cracks of the glassy rocks, bright enough to illuminate the corners they sat in. The floor was straight up just black bricks. 

Killer was soon distracted by what was definitely an armor stand sitting atop a weird oozing obsidian table. It wasn't dressed in anything, but it's proportions were.. wrong. It was too tall. The legs were too long, as were the arms. The ends where the feet went were jointed weird, like the thing was supposed to stand on its toes or something. 

Suddenly, he heard a familiar, eerie fwoop, a little surprised that an enderman would teleport into a clearly lived in space as he tur- it was fucking armored. 

Killer actually leapt back in surprise, staring at the charcoal gray armor covering the lanky being, trimmed in white. 

“Oh.” 

Now the creeper was flabbergasted. That wasn't something endermen said. 

Not to mention it lacked most of the staticy noise they had…. 

“Oh fuck, you can talk, can't you?” He realized.

Of course, it seemed the enderman had immediately teleported away as soon as he spoke, making him blink in confusion when the other was still gone. 

Then a door behind him swung open, and he spun- too late, he looked at the burning eyes. 

The eyes were wrong. They were glowing like an enderman’s, but they weren't purple. Not completely. It was like the irises had split into it's primary colors, red and blue. 

Killer was still reeling from the strangeness when he realized the enderman hadn't flown into a rage either, simply continuing to stare in silence, frozen in that half bent position that just looked awkward to maintain. 

“You.. are awake, right?” Killer hesitantly asked. There was entirely too much awareness in those heterochromic eyes for the other not to be. 

“You talk.” The enderman finally rasped. He was hoarse, and not like Horror had been. No, the zombie had been hoarse like he'd worn his voice out. This was a voice aching from disuse, soft and scratchy under the grating not-quite-static. 

“And you can talk too, I guess.” Killer backed away, still processing the strange armor the other wore. The enderman simply followed, finally standing up to his full height, head tilted at him. 

The strangeness of the dwelling suddenly made perfect sense. 

“Is this your place?” He questioned, waving a foot around at the sort-of house. He could now see the armor stand next to the enderman. The proportions matched. 

“What are you?” The enderman asked instead. 

Right. He might be the first creeper ever in this dimension. 

“I'm a creeper. Why?” He asked, despite having a hunch of the answer. He realized that not only were the other's eyes wrong, but his skin was too. It was hard to see most of it past the armor, but it looked like the enderman wasn't a shiny black, but a dull gray, lighter than even the armor itself, which was near black. “And why are you pale?” 

The other recoiled, revealing jagged black teeth as he scowled. “Why are you that color?” 

Killer deadpanned at the enderman, watching him twitch his head away and blink rapidly at the direct eye contact. So he still hated that, just didn't fly into a blind rage over it either. The creeper made a note of that and looked away, further investigating the place. “It's called green, by the way. If you'd ever seen literally anything where I'm from, you'd know what the color green is.” Did he mock the enderman a little? Yes. It was just ridiculous that someone had simply never even heard of green. 

Killer proceeded to stick his face into a chest on the floor, ignoring how he heard the other jump, armor clanking slightly before a long, thin hand was gripping his vines, yanking him out of the chest. 

Now he was suspended in the air, grinning despite himself. 

“You're weird.” The enderman stated. 

“Thanks! Hey, what's this do?” He then spat out a weird orange stick that was hot to the touch. The other yelped, yanking it out and kicking open the chest to throw it back in, still holding Killer in the air like a scruffed cat. 

“Oh come on, I wasn't gonna do anything with it!” He complained, unafraid. 

“You ate the rod.” Came the incredulous response. 

“I didn't eat it.” 

“It was in your mouth!” 

“Technically I don't have a real mouth.” 

“What do you mean you don't have a mouth? How are you speaking right now? Your ass?” 

Killer burst out laughing at the genuinely bewildered question, having not expected it. 

He got several inarticulate, gobsmacked enderman noises in return, making him laugh harder at the absurd sounds. Eventually the other seemed to give up, turning towards a narrow staircase with incredibly large steps and walking down. 

Killer quieted as they entered what seemed to be a basement, walls lined with barrels and a few chests as it opened out to the stairs by the pen of those weird creatures. The other side went deeper down, high ceiling allowing him to see that it just kept sloping down and down and down. 

“Where are we going?” He asked, kicking idly while regarding another lava stream seemingly being used for lighting. 

“Dunno.” The enderman admitted, taking him down the hall, the corners lined in what looked like partially cooled lava. 

“What's with the basement?” He asked instead, still intrigued by the intelligent enderman. 

“It's my storage.” 

“Fffooooooorr what?” 

“My potions.” 

Killer lit up at that, fascinated. “You make potions? Blue's been interested in those! Couldn't get started though, they always required plants and stuff neither of us had ever heard of. He'll be stupidly excited to meet you, y'know.” He turned to look at the strange look the enderman was giving him, having stopped walking. 

“There are others?” He asked, still soft-spoken. 

“Yeah. They went back to start building some crap to not get lost in this place.” He explained, still kicking. The blue-red, purple-tinted eyes seemed to stare into him for a minute, so intense he actually had to look away. 

“...Where?” 

Killer debated not answering. Could he trust this person, whoever he was, with someone as innocent and naive as Blue? 

He liked Blue, he really did, but the other was a little stupid sometimes. Killer knew he was too, but it wasn't like he'd stay dead or anything. 

Blue didn't have that assurance. 

The enderman wasn't really doing anything, though, and it wasn't like he could keep another awake and aware person from the skeleton. 

Killer pointed a leg upwards. 

“We came in up there. There's a-” He cut off. 

It was so sudden. One moment, he was speaking. The next, everything pinched yet stretched in a certain direction in a flash, and he was back on the highest ledge he'd started at, looking down at the glimpse of white half hidden by the surrounding basalt. 

“Whoa..” 

“What, never been teleported before?” The other cracked. 

“I'm sorry, most endermen aren't exactly offering!” Killer retorted, swinging in place. 

“And put me down already, this is getting fucking stupid!” 

He was barely finished with bitching when he was dropped onto his feet, stumbling slightly before glaring up at the visibly amused enderman. 

Completely unrepentant. What an asshole. 

So he grumbled to himself and headed for the steep slope in the wall, leading to a hole he could wriggle out of. The other simply stood and watched, teleporting ahead every few feet to continue staring without any effort. 

“You're like a strider lost on land.” He finally commented when Killer had reached flat ground again, panting from the ordeal. The creeper just glared angrily. 

“I don't know what that is, but fuck you anyway.” 

After a surprised blink, the other took it in stride. 

“You're the one that wanted down.” 

“I will kill you.” 

An arched brow. “You don't even have arms. What're you gonna do, bite me to death?” 

At this, Killer started grinning evilly. His core pulsed, bright and only threatening to those that knew it's meaning. 

“I don't need arms to fuck you up.” 

He only got an even more dubious look from that. Killer let the enderman doubt. He'd catch him off guard soon enough. As it was, he just snorted, turning and continuing back to the portal. 

The other didn't even get to question him for his currently unexplained statement, cutting off mid-sentence as he spotted the mysterious ring filled with light. Killer scowled when the enderman teleported ahead again, now fixated on the portal. 

Eventually he caught up again, leaning on a ledge cut into the porous rock for the entrance of their little tunnel. The other simply was captivated by the light, curiously sweeping a glass bottle through it. The glow evaporated the moment it left the frame. The entire time he was muttering to himself, sounding just about like any other enderman. His voice was still clearer, though. 

When a hand suddenly popped out of the swirling light, the enderman leapt back and vanished. Killer barked out a laugh at the obvious frightened impulse, leaving the now returned Blue to peer at him quizzically. Now distinctly dusted in sand. Horror too, had a similar coating, blinking at the creeper. 

“Oh yeah, there's just a talking enderman here. You just scared the dumbass.” Killer explained. 

“Huh-” “Someone new!? What are the chances of that!” Blue exclaimed over Horror's bewilderment, racing over to throw his arms around Killer. 

The creeper wondered if this hug thing was going to be a habit as the other bounced around before darting into the shelter, throwing open chests to dump things in. 

“Yeah, he literally lives just down there.” He gestured to the hole. “He's also an asshole.” He raised his voice, hoping the enderman was close enough to hear him. 

As he thought, he saw the armored figure appear between mushrooms in the middle distance, glaring at him. Killer just grinned at the enderman, expecting him to approach. He didn't, he just scowled deeper and vanished again. 

“Should we bring him a gift?” Blue pondered, building a sort of lamppost out of a copper light and sandstone pole. 

“Like what? I thought you'd want to drag him out to your place or something.” Killer was mildly surprised. 

Blue just shook his skull. “He already has a home here, Killer. Why would I take him from that? We can just be neighbors.” 

“..Is it really neighbors if he's in another dimension?” Horror asked, copying Blue to make another lamppost. 

“I think so.” The skeleton remarked. “If he lives right by our portal on this side and it's built right outside my house on the other, then we can be neighbors. Do you think we should cover the portal on this side too?” He switched subjects. 

“What, like another fence?” Killer asked, idly looking around for their secret watcher. 

“Maybe.” Blue mused thoughtfully, a lit bulb in hand. 

“But while I don't want the other endermen blocking it off and generally causing a mess, I don't want our neighbor to be unable to use it either. Wouldn't he like to see our world?” 

“I dunno. Don't think he even knew what he was looking at, just kept waving his hands through it like a dumbass-” “Ȉ̷̉̍̎ k̷̋n̶o̵̊w it's a damn portal, dickhead.” The enderman was suddenly there, voice warping in that strange way that most other endermen did, seemingly out of anger. He was just sitting atop the ledge their shelter was built from, long legs hanging down. 

“Oh hello there!” Blue greeted cheerfully. “And wow, what is your armor made of, if I may ask?” 

The enderman stared, first at the lapis trimmed iron armor, then at the lights in his sockets. 

“...Why do you have soul fire for eyes?” He asked instead. 

“.. I'm sorry?” The skeleton was confused. “I don't know what that is.” 

The other stared for an uncomfortably long time. 

“.... Do you not have soul fire where you're from?” 

“I don't imagine we do, no-”

“Is it blue fire?” Horror unexpectedly interrupted. 

“Light, almost cyan?” 

The enderman studied him in confusion before slowly replying. 

“That's what soul fire is, yeah.” 

Killer suddenly realized what the zombie was on about. The way the fire flooded out from the gaps in his armor, pouring from his sockets as he dropped to the ground as if dead- 

“Holy fuck, Blue, he might know what the fuck happened to you.” The creeper lurched forward in understanding, trying not to appear overly earnest. 

“You mean the fire thing?” Blue asked. 

“Obviously I mean the fire thing! I thought you were dead, dumbass!” 

Before they could continue, a glittering lantern made of gold was dropped between them, the light inside a mysterious cerulean instead of orange. 

Killer glanced up at the somewhat annoyed enderman, now standing on his ledge. Shaking his head, he turned back to see Blue staring at the lantern. Just staring. It made him nervous, when the other silently stared now. Killer kept expecting him to explode in that watery fire again. 

The skeleton then reached for the lantern, flinching as his phalanges made contact, grasping it and pulling it close. 

“...You okay?” Horror asked, everyone just watching. 

Just.. just in case. 

When Blue looked up, it was with an odd look on his face. “Is the whispering normal?” He asked the enderman. The other shuffled a little awkwardly. 

“Uh.. no. The fire doesn't whisper. I think.” 

They glanced at one another over the oddity. 

Blue simply frowned at that, hesitantly putting it back down. “It's a little odd that I experience things others don't at this point.” He admitted. 

“Kinda.” Killer readily agreed. “At least you don't seem crazy. Mostly.” 

The skeleton shot him a look for the snide comment. 

“So you just have soul fire eyes and don't know why?” The enderman distracted them. 

Blue shrugged. “I've always had that. I never quite questioned it. We're all different from the rest in our own ways, aren't we? I can see your eyes are different too.” 

He twitched, blinking and looking away as his slender fingers came up to absently brush at his cheek. “I guess that's fair.” He muttered. 

“But I have no idea what's different about the rest of you.” 

Killer snorted at that. “I can't die.” He explained. 

“I'm very rotted but still going.” Horror added, raising his skeletal hand. 

“Oh I thought it was your glowing eye that was special.” Blue commented. 

The zombie shrugged, briefly flashing a hint of a smile. “I think I know why that exists.” 

They all turned to him, curious. Horror blinked at the attention, then slumped in place, almost guiltily holding up a handful of luminous red powder. 

“..Is that redstone.” Killer deadpanned. 

Horror met his hollow sockets. Killer stared back. 

Then the zombie shoved the redstone in his mouth, crimson eye flaring brighter. 

Blue sat ramrod straight, shocked at the development as Killer stuttered in equal astonishment. The enderman just started laughing at the ridiculousness, a breathy, wheezing laugh, almost like he was coughing. 

Yet the almost molten eye was painting the floor in front of Horror a brighter red, a soft crimson glow illuminating the cold, dead right eye as he grinned. 

“It's good.” He explained almost huskily. 

The unpowered bulb in his lap started flickering. 

That sent Killer over the edge, cackling hysterically. 

When Horror then offered another handful for someone else to try, Blue sighed heavily, pushing it away. “No, I don't think it's healthy for anyone else to eat redstone.” 

“Why not?” Killer decided to argue. “Didn't my core thing have redstone in it? Maybe I'll make bigger explosions with it!” He cackled. 

“No.” Blue asserted, exasperated.

“No please, what does that have to do with explosions?” Their new friend asked. Killer gave the cruelest, most diabolical smile he could possibly make while standing. 

“Killer, no.” Blue warned. His words meant nothing. 

The creeper was already pulsing, enderman taking a few concerned steps back. 

“Why are you flashing like that? What are you doing?” 

Killer simply looked up at him, now a fair distance from anything important. 

“Kaboom.” 

His world went white. 

Chapter Text

Blue sighed as Killer went and splattered all over the floor and enderman, watching the armored one flinch violently from the point blank explosion. His strange dark armor didn't even seem very damaged, though he was a little hurt underneath. 

The other just stood there, arms held carefully at his sides with eyes seemingly as wide as possible, burning a brighter red and blue. 

“What.. the fuck??!”  

“It takes some getting used to.” Blue smiled apologetically at him, standing. “Do you need help? You seem a bit injured.” He ignored that he was only now noticing how unusually light gray the other was for an enderman. 

All he got was a quiet, bewildered noise before the other was pulling out a glass bottle, splashing the carmine contents over his injuries almost frantically while eyeing the floating core in front of him. 

Blue watched as the wounds rapidly disappeared, faster than even with food. 

“You have potions?” 

“They're not for you.” Was the only answer. 

“Well, I wouldn't want to take your hard work away either.” Blue remarked, flicking a bit of creeper closer to the hovering core. 

After a pause, the tall one glanced between him and what seemed to be a fairly excitable but still silent Horror. The zombie was just smiling giddily, gray eye lit up from within as the other simply filled the entire socket, only the dark, slitted “pupil” remaining. 

“..Does he just come back together or something?” 

“Yeah.” Horror snickered. “He did that to me too. I was minding my business and he jumped at me. I'd never seen a creeper blow before. Did you?” He asked Blue, who shook his skull. 

“No. He'd simply appeared in the village chasing the cats. I followed him until we met, then he exploded. I think in surprise, really. I'm not sure why he expects us to know that creepers can just explode. I have no idea what would even cause a normal creeper to explode. They're just walking plants as far as I'm aware.” 

Horror shrugged emphatically, still grinning. 

“...Why are you looking at me like that?” The enderman asked slowly. 

Horror hummed to himself, still smiling eerily. 

“Ya.. look like yer’ covered in dust.” He rumbled. 

“In..” He frowned. “I thought it looked like ash.” 

“Hmmmmm… Dust. Ya have a name, dusty boy?” 

“Are you alright, Horror?” Blue felt his question went ignored. 

“Not.. really.” The enderman sounded strained, glancing at the gradually reforming creeper in fascination. 

The zombie's eye and socket slid shut, a rather blissful look on his face mixed with something.. hungrier. The red glow was lighting up the eyelid and seeping out through the closed socket as well. 

“Smellin’.. good..” 

Suddenly his lids flew open, the crimson light filling the space between them as he started breathing heavily, rising to a crouch. His gaze was locked in at Dust- wait was that his name now?

Yet the zombie had launched himself with terrifying speed over the fence, enderman having teleported away. He simply continued on, racing low to the ground, hands tucked to his front in an odd manner as he vanished between the giant mushrooms. 

“Ho- Horror!” Blue yelped, leaping over the fence as well. He couldn't let his friend get lost, even if he was suddenly not quite himself. Even as he ran, he heard a horrible, warped with static scream. For a moment, he felt cold. 

Was that their new friend? 

No, it wasn't. He was able to skid to a stop near an end of the thick mycelium ground, grabbing a weird, wobbling plant that seemed to float upwards from its roots. Horror was latched onto the back of a random enderman, the poor thing screeching, the voice ringing out as if from everywhere as it stumbled around, arms turned to grip the zombie latched to its back. Nothing would dislodge him, even when he was slammed into the thick stems around them. His elongated canines were buried in its neck like fangs, a deep violet blood splattering the ground around them. 

Blue looked on, helpless in the situation as the enderman tripped, falling backward. Its full weight landed on Horror, but he still didn't react. He just continued to tear into the poor thing's neck, painting the surroundings red with his glowing eyes. It just kept screaming in that agonizing voice. Its jaw was unhinged, and it seemed both so angry and so very afraid. Blue felt horrible for the poor thing. 

“What the hell.” The gray one was beside him, staring in shock. Horror's prey was finally falling silent, twitching as he just kept crunching. The swirl of energy was still so fascinating despite the brutality, Blue had to shake himself to not get entranced. That was a weird reaction. 

“Are you about to blow up too?” Dust asked cautiously. Blue turned, confused- there was a blue light reflecting off the dark armor. 

He flinched away, finally looking at himself. The light was blooming from within, pouring out from the gaps in his own iron armor, dancing across the lapis trim in licks of almost cyan flames. He realized he felt a little weak. 

“Oh no..” He whispered. 

The red light was suddenly on him, Horror finally snapping his gaze over. The slitted pupil of the glowing “eye” suddenly contracted, now small as it looked at him. 

“Why did you follow?” He rasped, sounding utterly heartbroken. 

“BLUE NO-” He heard Killer shriek in the distance, looking back to see the creeper racing over at top speed. He felt sick, able to see the flames emerging from his ribcage. He wanted to apologize, to explain his fear of losing them was just like their own, but he couldn't make a sound. Everything was going dim again. 

But before everything could black out, the enderman, Dust, was suddenly grabbing his shoulder. He met the blue-red gaze, distantly confused as everything suddenly pinched and stretched simultaneously, dropping to his kneecaps when it stopped. 

He gasped as suddenly his mind cleared, whispers overwhelming his senses for several seconds. The air here was humid, and something grainy and damp was seeping through the gaps of his iron greaves. Finally, the darkness retreated, revealing a dark sand that kept shifting beneath him, watery light surrounding him. 

The mahogany sand was burning around him, a wide circle alight with flames as blue as his lights. Eye.. eyelights. More of it was blackening, floating up in buzzing black particles that began to swim above him. Something under his ribs ached, and he started clawing off the armor with trembling hands. 

The voices in his skull were so loud, overlapping one another with helpless cries and pleas for escape. 

Let me out, let me out! 

They did this to us, kill them, burn them!

I can't take it anymore! 

Please! Somebody! Help me! 

Kill them all. Kill them all! 

I can't remember my name, why can't I remember my own name?!  

Blue gagged on nothing, wrenching it over his skull as the black particles started reaching down to brush against him. 

Lost spirit. Return to the soils. New, reverberating voices rang in his mind as they clung to his bones. 

“I don't.. belong here.” He wheezed, struggling to breathe. 

All creators belong in the sand. All the creators must burn for their sins. 

“I.. I'm a skeleton.” He fought to speak over a whisper, unable to hear himself over the agonizing whispers. The black was clinging to him more. 

You are not one of us. You are not one of the Created. Your anima is ours. The dragons decreed. 

It was latching on now, not coming off. 

“I don't- I don't know what that is!” Blue cried, feeling afraid. “What dragons? What creators? What created?? Do you need help? Why- why is everything screaming?” It came out in a pitiful squeak as he gripped his skull, tears dripping from his sockets. Crying. 

He hadn't known he could cry. 

The black cloud suddenly peeled back, leaving only a tendril connected to his right humerus. The unified disembodied voices split apart, suddenly no longer easily understood. Their voices overlapped, just like the screaming whispers. It didn't seem quite so lost as the agonizing ones though.. it sounded like an argument. 

It was enough of a relief to process his thoughts a little. Not very well, given the noise flooding his skull, but enough. 

There was a nearly solid blue shape under his ribs, visible now that his shirt was pulled up, spewing fire. 

One of the voices seemed to pull away from the rest, surprisingly soft as it seemed to address him directly. 

What do you know of yourself? It asked. 

He glanced up at the rippling cloud of black. 

“I.. I am a skeleton. I help others who cannot help themselves. My name is Blue. Like the sky. And my eye.. eyes? ..I don't know who these creators are. Or created. Please, help me understand so I can help you.” 

The voice hummed at that, something that seemed to shake through his bones. The screaming whispers lessened then, as if this disembodied entity was blocking them out. 

What do you know of the dragons? 

“I don't know what or who they are.” He admitted nervously. “I'm sure I would recognize one should I see it. Are you dragons?” 

No. The voice sighed. We were created to kill them. We were successful, even after they gave us life. 

“I.. I am sorry.” He apologized, sensing the loss. “It sounds like a terrible thing to be made for.” 

You would be right. The voice seemed oddly pleased with him. You understand our anger. Our creation resulted in a ruination of the worlds. It's good that you see that. You are better than the creators had been. 

“I hope so. They sound terrible for doing that. To both you and these dragons.” He felt a bit like he could breathe again, glancing at the strange round shape behind his ribs, pulsing as the fires began to fade. 

That statement again, seemed to please the being, though something else seemed to irritate it. 

It seems the others of my kind do not see your heart. They want you to become the sand beneath your feet. They want you to prove yourself as better than the Creators. Which will you choose? 

Blue hesitated, looking at the oddly familiar sand. 

“I don't think I can do any good as a pile of sand.” He admitted. “But I don't know how I might prove myself to you either.” 

That is not something for you to worry about. The voice stated, the swirling cloud hanging low. For only we can decide how we wish you to prove your goodness. 

Blue sat up straighter, a mix of concerned and curious. He felt.. mostly fine now, and he couldn't imagine it would be too difficult to prove his kindness. He would do anything to be kind. It was who he was. If it was not enough, he would strive to be enough. That was a part of growing as a person anyway. 

How honorable of you. The voice noted, and Blue suddenly realized just how deeply rooted in his mind it was. For a moment, he wondered if he was nearly good enough. 

We shall see. It told him, pulling back a little. 

If you can accomplish what we ask, then you are more than enough. 

He was going to ask what they wanted to tell him, but it was pulling away, the rest of the voices returning in unity once more. 

Complete for us these challenges, and you will be judged.

 He was mostly unnerved by the quiet anger he heard in most of the voices directed at him. A small part of him was excited to be given a goal, possibly even a noble one. 

Your worth shall be determined by how you achieve them. The chorus continued. 

So it wasn't entirely a matter of just doing something, but doing it in the best way possible? 

The first you must complete is to return one of our own to a body. They announced. The dark sand shifted around him with that statement. 

“What do you mean?” He had to ask. He wasn't sure how he'd put something that he only heard as a voice into a body, either. There had to at least be some information to start with, right? 

The sand shifted into a vague shape before him, somewhat resembling.. something. He wasn't sure, but he thought he could recognize a head on top before it fell apart again. 

Should you return only a mindless shadow, you shall fail. 

“Can I have some tips on how to do that?” Blue asked nervously. There were several irritated growls at that, shuddering through him. 

It is fair. The friendliest voice stated, the sand suddenly boiling in front of him. Blue flinched back, realizing that this entire time his lower legs had sunken into the sand, unable to move. 

A black book appeared, its pages deep brown, as if made of sand. Words were etched into the seemingly obsidian cover, glowing with purple light like the portal. 

There is little more I can give. 

“..Thank you.” He breathed, both awed and intensely curious as he picked it up. The weight suggested that it really was made of solid sand and obsidian. 

Learn all that you can from that book. It will disappear when you create the body. 

Blue understood what that meant. One chance. No other chances later. 

He just had to make it the best one possible, then. 

Sliding it into his inventory, Blue nodded at the swirling cloud. Wither. 

He hadn't ignored what the cover read, they were called Wither. 

“I'll build the lucky Wither the best body they could possibly have.” He promised. 

There was a wave of annoyance and amusement from the entities. Different reactions, but he could sense the separation of individuals from the whole all the same. 

When you have created your watcher, you will find the Last of the Dragons to be judged. 

Blue blinked at that. Interesting request. Must be surprisingly hard. 

“Do I get anything to help with that? Even if it is only advice. There's quite a lot I don't know.” He admitted. 

A few more grumbles at that, but the spirits were still forthcoming… sort of.

The Light will find you. For the rest, look for the eyes. They will show you the way. 

He felt cold suddenly, recognizing the words. 

Look for the eye. 

“What does it have to do with endermen?” He had to ask. 

The Withers did not answer.

Should you survive these trials, you will find the last of our kind. The One who Survived. He will be your final judgment. They explained imperiously. 

Blue hesitated, confused. There must've been history he was sorely lacking. 

“How will I find him?” 

In time, you will learn. The kindest voice thrummed inside his skull. 

You will find out the secrets with time. I believe in you.. little skeleton. You will learn to wield the power you carry. 

“I have a power?” He was surprised. Did they mean he could turn on lights a special way? It sounded like something more. 

Yes. The friendliest Wither told him, a swirl of black departing from the main cloud. 

But you cannot use it now. Only when one of our own is returned, can you come to know it. For now.. don't worry about it. 

The dancing trail suddenly turned towards him, spinning as it approached. He leaned away, a little nervous. 

It simply sped up, crashing into him. Blue fell back, yelping and swiping at the weird particles as they swarmed him, but his legs were still stuck in the sand. The black proceeded to force itself into his mouth and around his ribs, making him gag. Nothing could stop them, and he couldn't help but wonder if this was what it felt like to drown. 

It seemed cruel. He thought they wanted him to accomplish some weirdly vague tasks. 

Oh great. A quieter voice nestled in his mind even as Blue choked on an aborted scream. 

Of course I end up with a moron. 

That seemed a little hurtful, especially when Blue was discovering that he actually really wanted to breathe now. 

Oh shut up, I can't do anything about that. 

…It occurred to him that this voice might be here to stay. 

Un-fucking-ortunately. 

Why am I here again? A new voice asked even as the black disappeared, leaving him to gasp pathetically on his kneecaps. 

Why the fuck would I know? Why would anyone want you around? 

Ouch.

Don't be rude! A third voice reprimanded. 

You know what they want! And you might as well be grateful for it. Have you ever even had a body while alive? No! I want to live, damnit, so play nice! 

Blue was utterly lost on what the conversation was about, simply an unwitting listener as he caught his breath. He wasn't even sure how he ran out of breath. 

Prolly ‘cause ya basically took in a bunch of mors as an anima based being. The second voice suggested. 

“..What?” He whispered, unusually hoarse. 

Death and Soul energy. The voice elaborated, clarifying nothing. 

Do you not know about the primary forces? The third one asked, a little concerned. 

Blue couldn't bring himself to ask anymore, simply laying back and pressing his hands to his sockets. 

“I now have voices in my skull.” He stated unsteadily. “Please give me a moment to come to terms with that.” 

How do you think we feel being stuck with an abomination like you? The first one snapped without remorse. 

Don't call him that. If anything's an abomination, it's us!

Oh great, you're one of the self deprecating idiots.

I'm not self deprecating, I'm just logical, asshole!

Can we cool it with the swearing? I really don't vibe with dat stuff. 

Sorry.

Fuck you.

Ignore him. 

“Wonderful.” Blue found himself resorting to sarcasm over the arguing voices in his skull, sighing wearily. 

“Can I at least ask why I need voices in my skull?” He directed at whoever would listen, though it seemed the black cloud had pulled away, gradually drifting back to the ground around him. 

I'm surprised too. The most approachable admitted. 

They at least told me that I was to watch you and watch for signs of violence and greed, whatever that means. I didn't know that meant being in your head. Or skull, I mean. Let alone with them, too. 

At least he wasn't alone in being a little confused. There was some gratification in that. 

He told me we deserved a new chance most. The lazier voice mentioned. Dat he believed in “him”. Which is you, right? 

Am I the only one who's going to take this seriously? The angry voice questioned. 

In what way did I sound like I wasn't serious? The upfront one demanded. 

Just because we're supposed to watch for some signs of a bad person doesn't mean we should assume they exist outright. Whatever you're doing is just going to make him resent you.

That'll just prove my point. 

You want him to fail?

They all deserve to burn for what they did.

Wait, he's supposed to be Them? The third voice sounded just as confused as Blue felt. 

You've been listening to the Vengeful too long, buddy. They're exactly the ones you shouldn't listen to.

I don't fucking listen to Them.

Then where did that come from? You sound exactly like one! What now, want to rip off a dragon's head and wave it in front of its family?

The fuck is your problem?! 

I need you to check your attitude!

Y'ALL NEED TO CHECK DA LANGUAGE. 

At this point Blue was feeling an ache in his skull, finally getting his legs out of the sand to sit cross-legged in place, face in hands. 

How about this, you shut up and stay back for now. If he does something deserving of assholery, you can have your field day with him, but otherwise we deal with everything else, okay? 

You expect me to just sit here and do nothing?

Technically we're already doing nothing. The lazy one cut in, a little annoyed- presumably from the harsh language. 

“Do you have names?” Blue hoped to change the subject to something less.. noisy. 

The Destroyer.

Genocide. 

Disease. 

They all gave appalling titles that left Blue staring up at a red ceiling, at a loss for words. 

“Those are.. horrible names.” He finally worked out, dismayed. 

We're weapons, moron. Destroyer scoffed. 

“You're still people, too.” Blue argued, frowning. “You deserve better than that.” 

Playing nice isn't going to get you anywhere with me.

“I'm not playing anything, I'm genuinely upset that you've been given terrible monikers! At least Horror and Killer chose their names. Did you? Because it sounds quite unkind to yourselves if you did.” 

…No, the others gave them to us. Genocide told him. 

“Well that wasn't so nice of them, really.” Blue admitted. “Giving each other great evil titles instead of letting others decide for themselves.” 

A lot of us don't know what to call ourselves, you know. He pointed out. 

I woulda been Fresh, though! Not Withery enough though. 

“Fresh?” Blue echoed. “I think that's a wonderful name. Better than something awful like Disease.” 

Are.. are you sure? Genocide seemed uncertain. 

It's stupid. Just call him the parasite that he is. Destroyer grumbled. 

“That's mean.” Blue pointed out. 

He's an asshole. 

“He can learn to be nice.” He pointed out. “I taught Killer to be nice to cats. What's someone else?” He grinned a little, before pausing. 

“Oh! I know! Why don't I call you Geno? It sounds much nicer than.. well, I hardly want to say it.” He ignored how he already knew the meaning of genocide. 

..Geno..? He seemed bewildered at the idea. 

Are you sure about that? They might not like it. 

“Well.. it looks like you're not with them right now. You're with me, it seems. And you don't seem opposed to the idea either.” Blue pointed out, mostly staring at the flames surrounding him. 

Well you can pick your stupid names. The last one declared before a decision could even be made. 

I'm still the Destroyer. I will always be the Destroyer. And I'm not going to change that. 

Blue shrugged, a little disappointed. 

“I may not be much of a fan of the name, but I won't force you to change if you don't want to. It's still your choice of who you want to be. I just simply don't see you as such a needlessly violent person. Grumpy as you may be.” 

I- I'm not grumpy! He immediately defended, mortified. You make me sound fucking old! 

Well you have the attitude. Geno pointed out. 

I'm not grumpy, you bitch! 

Fresh started radiating amusement like laughter as the Destroyer helplessly defended himself. The angry mask started slipping into outright indignation, and eventually Blue couldn't help himself. 

The whole situation seemed so absurd. It was funny. 

He started laughing. Quietly. Face in his hands, snickering. The Destroyer desperately told him to stop laughing, nothing about this was funny- but that only made him wheeze harder, shoulders bouncing in place. Nothing the voice said seemed able to silence him. 

A groan sounded from somewhere nearby, finally getting Blue to freeze, looking up. 

There was an end to the sea of sand not too far off, red porous stone jutting just above it. But in the sand, near the edge, was Horror. The zombie was laying facedown, not moving. Nearby Killer was stumbling blindly, feet seemingly sticking to the sand as black particles assaulted his face. 

All thoughts of talking to the three voices ended right then and there, Blue lunging in alarm. 

He scrambled to the zombie first, yanking him out from where he was half sunken into the dark brown. Horror gasped when he was sitting up, coughing painfully. 

“Are you okay?” Blue demanded. 

“Angry, they so.. angry.” Horror shivered, the red light small as he glanced around. 

“It's alright, some of them are quite nice.” Blue tried to get his attention again, but the other seemed sort of lost. 

“I spoke with them and everything!” He tried to be cheerful. Horror just blinked at him, still afraid. 

“..Don't wanna be sand.” 

Suddenly the crimson eye was locked onto him. Horror grabbed him by the shoulders. 

“You can't be sand either. You don't deserve. That. No one. Deserves that. Please. No sand.” He was back to the broken patterns again. 

Blue winced, helping him off the sand and on solid ground. “Why don't you eat something?” Blue suggested, hoping it would bring back the less confused frame of mind. Horror deserved to be able to think properly. 

The red gaze simply slid past him, flinching slightly at something in the distance. 

He turned, seeing the ring of fire where he'd been. Odd, but he'll find answers la- was that their enderman laying flat beside the circle? 

“Stay here.” Blue found himself ordering. 

“No, don't..” Horror trailed anxiously. 

“It's alright.” The skeleton assured, racing back across. The strange sobbing, raging and crying whispers were easier to ignore now, his focus solely on Dust. 

When did they decide that was his name? 

Either way, the enderman flinched when his torso left the sand, hands snapping up to grab the arms dragging him. 

“It's alright, I'm getting you out.” Blue explained. Distantly, he was aware of two of the voices arguing in the back of his skull. Something about whether or not he actually cared or something. He didn't care whatever it was. It was more important to help the others. 

Dust was muttering, almost manic, voice too warped to make out most of what he was saying. Blue thought he heard “supposed to help” somewhere in there, as well as “alone”.

Considering his haze of recent memories, he was pretty sure the enderman had brought him here. Maybe he thought the place would help. 

Didn't it? Fresh was definitely addressing him. 

Blue couldn't reply. He had to focus on the others, not the voices. 

He managed to get Dust sitting on the netherrack, leaving to go save Killer from yelling blindly at the aggravated cloud surrounding him. It took some swiping- and some odd mental shouting from Geno and Fresh- before the particles dispersed, dropping anticlimactically to the ground. Killer blinked at them, scowl fading to confusion. 

Then he noticed Blue, launching at him. 

It was surprisingly difficult to figure out what the creeper was desperately rambling, but he could catch several apologies mixed with threats, so it wasn't hard to understand how upset the other was. Blue just led him back to the others, making sure he was no longer on the sand before stepping off himself. 

It immediately came with a wave of dizziness, his legs giving out and forcing him to cling to Killer for support. The creeper flinched before falling utterly silent, his vines stiffening to better carry the new weight. Blue simply lowered himself to the floor, blinking in an attempt to clear the darkness bordering his vision. 

The voices were quieter now, almost hard to notice without concentration. The endless whispers had ceased, giving him snatches of blessed internal silence between gaps of the conversation still ongoing in his skull. Killer was hissing promises of violence, glaring venomously at the still unresponsive Dust. 

Yeah he couldn't stop calling the other that, it seemed to unofficially be a name now. 

It was Horror who caught his attention, finally looking up with so much fear, hugging himself. 

“I dunno know.. what creators.. are.” He rasped, meeting Blue's gaze. The red eyelight was so fuzzy now, vaguely shaped and indistinct. 

“You could hear them too?” Blue found himself asking. 

Horror hesitated, then nodded jerkily. “Wanted me to help.. build something. Atone. Don't know why.”

An odd sniff had them both turning, Blue recoiling at the sight of the enderman. He was curled up, hugging his long legs as his thin fingers poorly hid his face. A vivid purple liquid seeped from his eyes, bright like the portal as he looked up. 

“Ȃ̵̑͌̓̕-am̵̅͂̓̚͠ I̶̅ ̷̳̭̈́͐́̔̓̽͑̓͠cu̵͊̀̚rs̴͒̎͌̓̓́ed̷̀̈́̓̔̀͘͝?” His broken voice quested weakly. 

“Why would you ever be cursed?” Blue gently replied, worried. 

Cursed to wander. Made helpless like they made the dragons helpless. The Enddamned shouldn't fucking break that. The Destroyer growled in his mind. 

None of the original transformed Enddamned are even left now. Geno argued back irritably. 

Interesting tidbit, but not useful to him now. 

“T̶̢̨̮̔͗h̴̡̫̎͗ëy̵͗̌̆̿͝ cã̷̎͂l̸̏̑lë̷́̂̀̐̑͘͠d̴̈́ m̸̽́̈́̃̚̚e̵͌̈ ̴͖̜͔́͆̒c̸͂̒̾̅͗͌̍uṙ̶͂͋sêd..” Dust whimpered.

“Well you're not.” Blue decided. “You're you. And I see nothing cursed about that. I see a friend.” He explained honestly, removing his bandana carefully. The knot behind his skull came undone, and he gently reached out with the cerulean fabric. 

The enderman blinked in befuddlement, recoiling slightly when Blue wiped away his strange tears. 

“There, that's better.” He smiled softly. 

When Dust finally blinked, shivering at the eye contact, he looked away. Horror was there, bony hand picking at the other wrist. Blue grabbed the offending hand, shaking his skull. “You're hurting yourself.” He pointed out the open wound, seemingly old but unable to scab over, left open and festering. 

“... Already diseased.” The zombie muttered. 

Blue decided that whatever the Withers had told these two had been very hurtful, if they were reacting this way. 

Kinda deserved, though. Destroyer noted.

No, it's not. He thought back directly, seemingly to the surprise of all three voices as well as himself. 

It hadn't occurred that he could just do that. But he continued his point shortly after while asking Horror to eat something. 

My friends are clearly not connected to whatever sins of these creators you attach to them. And even if Horror at the very least used to be someone else before he became a zombie, does it look like he's still whoever that is? You and your Wither friends are being unnecessarily mean at this point. He explained, Horror finally finding a spare hunk of cooked chicken in his inventory, gnawing on it. 

The Destroyer had fallen silent, annoyed and unable to find a good enough argument with the skeleton. The other two seemed to appreciate his thinking. Blue wasn't so interested. He was more focused on Horror, who's eyelight was becoming sharper again. 

His assumption seemed correct, the other could think more clearly with good food. Blue decided he should stock up a little on it himself just in case for the other. 

After a moment of staring off into the distance, Horror regarded him in concern. 

“What's a dragon? Why does it need to judge me?” 

“What?” Killer questioned, having been choosing a tense silence until now. 

“I'm not quite sure, really.” Blue admitted. “But did they tell you the same they told me?” 

“Who's they?” Killer demanded. 

“Did the Withers not speak to you?” Blue asked. 

“No??” The creeper was bewildered. 

“They're called that? I didn't get a name..” Horror grumbled, a mix between frustration and anxiety. 

“They didn't exactly tell me either. I read it off the book they gave me. Look at it, I've never seen anything like this!” He brought out the tome, still admiring it. 

“Whoa.” Killer stared at it in shock, Horror blinking at the glowing letters. 

“Wither and the War.. what once was and what remains..” He read the title slowly, fascinated. 

“Withers. They're Withers? Talking Withers?” Dust demanded, voice high and scratchy. He sounded horrified. 

“They want us to build one and hope it doesn't fucking obliterate us?!” 

“You know what they are?” Blue asked. 

“Yeah, they form when you drop withered skulls on soul sand. Never drop your skulls. They're terrifying.” 

Not true ones! Them’s the shadows of Wither power. Fresh cheerfully explained. 

I think whatever he did was like reanimating a corpse a little. Geno added. 

Only based on the bare facts though. 

“Huh.” Blue noted, opening the obsidian cover book. The words on the brown pages were glowing a vivid blue, the light rippling slightly in nearly cyan hues. 

It described the formation of the Wither Shades, built of the death dust imbued with the Creator Souls. All big words that he just.. knew what they meant. 

He handed the book to Horror, sitting up for a breath. 

Maybe he wasn't doing as fine as he'd liked. This was just a lot to process. Especially with the other two being so affected by the Withers. Which, in his humble opinion.. made most Withers seem like total jerks. 

He wouldn't hold it against them though, there seemed to be some reasons behind the behavior. 

“Okay, okay, fine, let's. Go to wherever you came from. I'm going to go insane thinking about this shit otherwise.” Dust cut through his thoughts, sounding exasperated. 

“If they form from some kind of skull touching the sand, then should we go ahead and collect those?” Blue asked. 

“Fuck, I don't know.” Dust gestured vaguely. “Go ahead and try. I don't know if it'll come back alive again or not.” He warned. 

“Does it not usually react like that?” The skeleton inquired further. 

“No! It- I've been here hundreds of times, and all that shit’s ever done is sit there and whisper. It's not supposed to start flying everywhere yelling in your damn head about creators and created and being cursed or whatever. That was all you.”

“You brought him here!” Killer snapped. 

“I thought it would help! What was I supposed to do?! Let him explode in soul fire?!” 

The creeper pulsed angrily as he stepped closer, enderman bristling defensively. 

“Alright, alright! There's no need for a fight here.” Blue got between them, hands out. 

“Dust clearly didn't mean any harm.” He poked Killer to drive the point home. 

“He just tried to help.” Horror added from the sidelines, still looking out of his depth. 

“Exactly.” Blue agreed, nodding at him. 

“So instead of fighting over who to blame for an accident, why don't we just go home and think about what happened?” 

“...Can I go with you?” Dust was unexpectedly soft with that question. 

“Of course.” Blue smiled at him. “I can't imagine you'd want to be alone after all that's happened.” 

“..Yeah. That.” The multicolored eyes just lingered on Blue as he glanced thoughtfully at the sand. 

Well our bodies break apart into that when we die, so theoretically to remake one of us you'd need it? Geno suggested hesitantly. 

Do you not know how either? Blue asked, still getting used to thinking back and forth with the voices. 

Nah, we all woke up after dyin’. We don't remember nothin' of bein’ alive. Fresh casually explained. 

Blue was horrified at that thought. 

So he promptly pulled out a shovel and started collecting sand. 

“Uh.. how much do you think you need?” Dust asked, the other three mobs staring at his sudden fervor. 

“I have no idea! Are Withers big?” Blue cheerfully asked. 

“...Eh.. no?” He waved a so-so, finally rising to his feet again. “Shorter than me, at least.” 

Horror swayed back and forth, then slowly pulled out his own shovel. “Do we.. do we all need to build this.. Wither thing?” He sounded less confused of his words and more uncertain of the situation. 

“The voices weren't very clear.” 

“They really did just give you some freaky quest, didn't they?” Killer asked, keeping close to Blue. 

“You seriously heard nothing?” Dust questioned him. 

“No, I didn't hear nothing. I still heard voices. They just yelled bullshit at me, nothing about building anything. Probably knew they couldn't make me do shit for them.” He huffed, though the amusement quickly faded. 

“Do you have to do this, Blue? You can just drop it.” He suggested. There was a swell of rage from the Destroyer as he shook his skull. 

“No, that would be terrible. I promised to do it. I won't break that promise. Especially when it provides a chance to bring cool new friends into our lives.” 

Dust shuddered at that statement. “Better pray whatever you do can wake up what you make, because regular ones? They don't stop. Nothing is safe, they just kill and explode and turn things into sand.” 

Even the shadows are living weapons. Geno somberly noted. 

“What do they look like?” Blue asked, directing at both enderman and voices. 

“Three skulls connecting to one spine and ribcage. It's all black, but their sockets are glowing kinda blue-white. Mostly white. Just sorta floats around, shooting skull-shaped blasts at anything that moves. And I really mean anything that moves. Creepy as hell.” 

“What ended up happening to it?” Killer was the one to ask, finally intrigued. Probably because it also could produce explosions. 

“Oh I actually killed it.” Dust scowled briefly. “Broke it open to this star in it's ribcage. Bright thing, still have it hung up over the cauldron.” 

The voices started clamoring over each other in a mix of surprise and anger. Something about the core Star and power magnification. 

“I think it might be useful to have that.” Blue suggested. 

Dust glanced at him, then shrugged. “Sure, why not. It's been kinda useless to me anyway.” 

He disappeared in a flash. 

Blue stood up, a little worried until a few seconds later the enderman was back, a brilliant white shape in his long fingers. He twirled it, somewhat carelessly as he held it out for the others to see. 

“Your hands make it look small.” Horror noted, Blue continuing to stare as the voices kept arguing. It was bad enough he was standing on the sand again, hearing the endless, agonized whispers.. but the three were just a little too much. 

At least Killer seemed to notice his distress. 

“Please be okay.” 

He shook himself out of the stupor, realizing they were all staring at him. 

“Oh.. I'm sorry.” Blue apologized faintly, wincing. “I seem to have zoned out.” He was reluctant to explain the three other consciousnesses in his own skull. Just made things awkward, really. He'd rather wait until at least one of the three had a body for themselves. Geno seemed to reluctantly agree with that thought, the Destroyer grumbling while Fresh clearly didn't care either way. 

In a way, Fresh was the most attentive and easygoing of the trio. He seemed most aware of and respectful of Blue's developing issues with them being in his skull. He appreciated that. 

Suddenly, Horror had his hand on Blue's shoulder, shovel slung over his own. There was a certain intensity in his eyelight as he peered at Blue, then turned to Dust. 

“Take us back now.” 

Blue straightened at that as the enderman blinked.

“Oh no, you don't need to do that.” He defended. 

“Have you ever slept?” The zombie turned on him again, a sort of annoyance in his gaze. Blue softened. “No, Horror. I don't sleep. I don't think I can.” 

“If you can eat, you can sleep. Take us back, Dust.” 

“That seems to be a bit of a jump there, honestly. Why do you think I'd need to after not requiring it for so long, anyway?” 

Yet the enderman's eyes flashed, an odd sort of determination there as he grabbed Killer by the head and hooked his other arm around the pair. 

“Dust, really, I think we ought to focus on-” He cut off as everything simultaneously pinched and stretched in one direction, sent stumbling when everything was right again. 

“Do you really just walk through?” Dust asked, waiting for them to recover. 

Blue pushed himself off his kneecaps, shaking his skull. “It's how we've done it.” He wasn't sure if he'd given up on working tirelessly to get these voices out of his skull give the voices their own form or just wanted to be helpful. It hadn't even been a day. 

At least, he was reasonably certain of that. There didn't seem to be any way to measure time here. 

Horror then startled Blue by outright snatching him off his feet, forcing the skeleton into grabbing his shoulder in surprise. The zombie just blinked at him, a twinkle in his light betraying the delight he had in the moment. 

“I would have preferred a warning?” He phrased it like a question, pausing when Killer snorted in surprise. 

“You don't weigh much.” Horror noted, marching forward. 

“I'm a skeleton.” Blue pointed out, still awkward.

Then they passed into the portal and he was blinking away the purple. Horror was on his way to the mansion already. 

“I can walk, you know.” Blue added, still not comfortable with just being held like this. 

“Been unsteady since the sand stuff.” Horror pointedly said. 

“But is this necessary?” 

“Yes.” The single word brooked no argument. 

The zombie took him up to the second floor, largely empty rooms, revealing an addition Blue hadn't put in one of the rooms. 

“Did you do this?” He asked before getting dumped in a large bed he had not built with a yelp. 

“You were out for two days.” Horror pointed out above him. “Copied the look of everything else.” 

“I was planning on making these rooms into more storage, you know.” Blue stated, sitting up on the rather fitting sheets. “Though you dyed this really well.” He admired. 

Horror grinned briefly, stepping back to point out the rest of the space, walls lined in chests and barrels.. and a pot or two. 

“The pots are new.” 

“They look nice. I can make nice things too.” 

“You're right, they do look nice.” Blue agreed. “You ought to show me how they're made, I think I know a few places to put others.. I only know how to make flower pots. They are made of clay brick, right?” 

The voices were largely silent, seemingly awed at the surroundings. 

Horror fixed him with a look, not answering. “Lay down.” He ordered. 

“I- really? I can't sleep.” 

“Sure looked like sleepin’ for two days. Try it.” 

“It's a bit wasteful of my time when I don't need it.” 

The zombie stared flatly for a minute, then sat at the end of the admittedly nice bedframe. 

“Sleep is more helpful than you know.” 

“Have you ever slept, Horror?” 

“Yes.” His answer was surprising. 

Horror crossed his legs then, hands finding his lap as he teased with a sleeve. 

“It started as a way to not be hungry for a while.” He admitted. Blue straightened, sensing the vulnerability. 

“But I found I felt better after. I could think better. Plan things too. Move better. Healed too. Sleep helps. Villagers need it every night, but I think.. we need it sometimes too. We just don't get tired enough to notice.” 

So he reached over, pressing a phalange to Blue's skull until he fell back. 

“It helps best when you need to.. process.” He explained. Blue sighed, running a still gloved hand over his face. “Why are you insisting upon this anyway? It seems a bit excessive.” 

When there was silence, he glanced over to see an oddly gentle, somber expression on the other. 

“You gave me my life.” Horror murmured, smiling faintly. 

“What do you mean?” Blue asked. 

Horror fumbled with his sleeve for a moment, finding his words. 

“I.. was so hungry. All the time. And I couldn't think. It was so.. slow.” He gestured to his head in frustration. “Eating helped. Redstone cleared things for a bit, but made me hungrier later. Sleep too.” He looked away, taking a deep breath as he did so. Then he was looking directly at Blue with a softness in his gaze. 

“The pie felt different.” He explained breathlessly. 

“I was too hungry before to think about cooking. I.. kinda tried. Once or twice. Couldn't finish. But I.. you gave me the pie and it stopped hurting for once.” His voice trembled as he brought out a carrot. It seemed wet to Blue; hard edges softened, leaves on the end limp and greasy. It'd been cooked. 

“I stopped being so fucking hungry and I could think for once.” Horror stated, staring at the vegetable before looking up at him. “And that means everything to me.” 

They stared at each other for a long moment.

Then Blue lunged forward, wrapping his arms around the zombie. The smell didn't matter. 

Horror chuckled softly, a gentle grating rumble that echoed from his chest. 

“I dunno how to thank you more than just returning the favor however I can.” He added. 

“It's alright.” Blue spoke in his ear, pulling back. “You don't have to. I'm just glad to know how important it was to you.” 

Horror nodded, humming. “So you'll try to sleep?” He said hopefully. 

Blue slumped at that, holding back a groan. 

“I really have no idea how to do that. At least eating is more straightforward. But sleep? I don't think I have the patience for that.” 

Horror blinked at him quizzically before lighting up in understanding, snorting. 

“You don't stay conscious the whole time.” 

“What do you mean?” Blue frowned. 

“.. Your mind just. Goes off? In a way?” Horror clearly wasn't sure how to explain. 

“Your mind stops going all the time and takes a break. Sometimes you dream. It usually doesn't make sense. But it helps when you wake back up.” 

“How will I even be able to do that if my mind is just.. off?” Blue was a little unsettled by the concept. 

“You wake up when something wakes you up or your mind is ready.” Horror shrugged. 

Blue was still frowning, a little uneasy. The zombie just huffed, pushing him back on the bed. 

“Just relax. Take off the armor.” 

“Hang on, why do I need to do that?” He fought against the push. Horror sighed, stopping. 

“Sucks to sleep in is why.” 

“Have you slept in armor?” 

“Yeah. It aches later.” 

Blue stared at him for a long moment, debating. 

Then he sighed heavily, starting with his helmet, then boots. The iron came off easily, sliding into his inventory as he kept shaking his skull. It just seemed so unnecessary. Eventually it was just his clothes. He briefly admired them, still pleased with his handiwork. 

“Is this suitable?” He asked. 

Horror nodded, pushing him flat on the bed again. Blue just crossed his arms, huffing. 

“It just seems so silly.” He remarked. 

“You'll see.” Horror intoned, confident. Blue fought the urge to roll his eyelights at him, knowing that was immature and rude. Geno seemed to agree that sleeping seemed weird. The Destroyer was of course, calling it dumb. A small part of him was agreeing to try it just to prove that it wasn't completely idiotic like the other was saying. 

Fresh just seemed curious about the concept and how it might possibly affect them. If they could sleep too. Blue sort of hoped they could. It seemed like an incredibly boring thing to make them sit through, his mind apparently shutting off while they might be left conscious and bored. 

“Stop thinking.” Horror barked out, making him flinch. 

“..You expect me to stop thinking?” He asked, not sitting up. The zombie hummed in affirmative, shuffling to lean on the other side of the mattress. 

“..I can tell you about what I've seen before. You don't need to respond.” 

“Before what?” 

Horror didn't answer, simply staying silent for a minute. 

Blue shifted to look up, but the other was facing away, staring out the archway of the room. Then he spoke, a low rumble. 

“I like your village. It's nice. I didn't really like villages before. Always felt too hungry.. like I might break and eat them. Never wanted to. I could see even when they were so scared to see me. They had thoughts too. Could think like me. Could do things. It was always stuff I couldn't do before. I didn't.. didn't think I could do more.” 

Blue could hear a light tapping, though he knew better than to move just to see what it was. He felt horrible that Horror had thought that of himself. 

“I didn't really think I was very special.” He added, and that rhythmic tapping continued. 

“But you showed up. Sockets glowing like mine. And you had built this huge place. Beautiful place. So different from everything else. I never tried making much. Just some armor every now and then. A sword, once. I didn't keep it. Makes me feel too violent, I think. I am violent, yeah.. just not like them. I don't try to eat people. I eat what doesn't think. And I don't make more like me.” 

He felt oddly heavy, listening to the other ramble. Not just saddened, but genuinely just heavy. 

Horror went on. “I think your iron golem is weird.” The zombie admitted. 

“It doesn't attack you or me when it kinda should. Dunno how you made it like you. Or me. That makes it kinda special, I think.” 

Horror resumed tapping. “Your villagers don't seem too surprised by me either. They're probably used to you and Killer now. Except one. There's one that just keeps hiding from me. Saw him five times. He freaks out pretty bad. I think he's had a pretty bad experience at some point. I've thought about making him something nice. I.. I like what you're doing here. Proving you're better than the rest, right?” He glanced back. “Don't answer that.” 

Blue was puzzled, but didn't quite mind either. Horror just hummed quietly. “I like the idea. It feels good. Not having to eat everything they have. And enjoying what I have so much. I never really cared before. It was just food. Just.. a way to feel less hungry. It made me do horrible things, being hungry. I can't undo what I've done, I. I know that. But I can do differently now, right? I don't want to be the same forever. Not when I can do more. When I could maybe make something like this.” He gestured at the room around them. 

“I want to make this stuff. I want to cook more things. Build things. Do what they can't, because I can, right? It just makes sense. Especially given what I've done before. It's.. like what they said. Atonement. Except it's not something I'm made to do or turn to sand or whatever. I just want to. I just want to show that I'm not just a weirdly intelligent zombie or whatever. I want to be someone. I don't know how to explain it, but I think you get it anyway.” He glanced back, Blue sort of just staring. He strangely didn't have it in him to say anything. Or even nod. Just sort of blinked. 

Horror grinned at that, turning away again. “You get it.” He decided, leaning on his knees. There was silence for a minute before his warm, rumbly voice filled the space again. 

“I hope you don't mind, but while you were out before, I ended up going through your village for more cookbooks. There weren't very many. I've been studying them though. I think I still prefer meat based things. Like pork. I like exploring though. There's different kinds of cooking. Did you know that? There's baking, frying.. searing, roasting, steaming, all of that. Even magical foods. I can't handle the gilded apples though. Felt sick making it, then it burned holding it.” He shook a hand saying that, as if reliving the memory. 

“I think I really like cooking otherwise. It's just exciting. It tastes good, not just feels good. I've been thinking about the flavors. It's something mentioned in one of the more elaborate cookbooks. Flavor profiles. The best things are made through experimenting and combinations. I think I'll try it myself when I can do things more reliably. It just.. sounds fun.” 

Blue found he couldn't really keep his sockets open, simply laying there and listening as Horror went on about how much he seemed to enjoy cooking. It was oddly relaxing when he just.. laid there. His arms weren't crossed anymore, simply sliding off his ribs and onto his bare spine under his shirt. Horror droned on, but he wasn't sure he could make out what was being said. Distantly he knew he should, but.. everything seemed distant now. 

Maybe.. this.. was sleep...

Chapter Text

He was proud of himself. The random idea had actually worked. Blue seemed completely out, just laying there, arms slightly folded over each other. Horror pulled out one of the blankets the skeleton had left behind just that morning, tucking it over him.

Even if Blue was anything like the exposed bone on himself and completely unbothered by the cold, he still felt it was the right thing to do. If anything, it made the other look less uncomfortable. 

And sometimes appearances mattered. 

Horror was quietly looking forward to actually building and sleeping in his own bed. It seemed right. And given how Dust had acted, the enderman could use some good sleep too. All part of the plan. 

…Not that he knew all the details yet. He'd figure that out. He was still getting the hang of how different everything was now. Going from wandering alone to suddenly three others was a huge shock. Still. 

It felt nice to care for someone like himself. Someone who could think and talk and understand him. On some level, he could see Blue felt the same. The skeleton was so quick to offer food without even knowing if it would help. He still felt guilty for insisting on more. He'd just been so desperate for a little more. 

Horror eventually departed, glancing back at the skeleton under the sheet and then the room. He was still proud of the room. He'd put it together so quickly, and it still looked so nice. He'd never made something so nice before. He'd never really had the chance. 

So he made his way down the staircase and walked into the main hall, blinking at the sight of Dust half crouched at some shelves, studying a potted cornflower. Killer emerged from the other room, rings in his eyeholes. “Is he okay? Didn't combust or anything?” He demanded. 

“..I got him sleepin’.” Horror stated. 

“I would've followed, but dumbass over here is being weird about everything.” 

“You fell in the water.. pool thing.” Dust waved vaguely, and Horror realized the creeper was in fact dripping. 

“You're supposed to hug corners when you wanna go fast. Not my fault he doesn't have walls on the inside of the stairs.” 

Horror just deadpanned at him. 

“What?” 

He turned and walked off. 

“Where are you going?” Killer called, starting to follow. 

“Getting a towel. Floor's wet.” 

“You don't even know where those are kept.” Killer scoffed, pushing him into another room. Horror just rolled his eyelight, continuing. “I found them before. You weren't looking.” He punctuated that by opening a barrel half hidden under some stairs and bringing out some slightly less skillfully woven sheets of fabric. 

Killer scowled at him for knowing before stumbling as one was thrown in his face. “Motherfucker!” He was muffled, trying to throw off the fabric and failing. Horror just snickered at the sight. 

“Not fucking funny, asshole!” Killer continued wriggling. “I can't just take it off like you!” 

Dust appeared in the wide archway, glancing up at the top that was still above him before snorting at Killer's predicament. The creeper paused, turning slightly under the sheet. 

“Are you both laughing at me?!” 

“Nah.” Dust denied, still chuckling. 

“You know I can hear you!” 

“Hear what?” 

“Bitch, don't fuck with me!” Killer charged, but he miscalculated the angle and slammed into a wall. 

They both cackled as he stumbled back with a myriad of curses. He managed to tear the towel off, glowering at them with the awkwardly turned leg he'd used to yank at the lower edge. 

He snarled, an odd sight from a creeper, before turning and storming off. Dust just snorted harder. 

“Is he really just that slow?” He asked Horror. 

The zombie shrugged. “He's a creeper. They're not fast.” 

“Why doesn't he just stand up?” Dust's laughter was dying out, replaced with curiosity. 

“He.. is standing.” 

“No, like.. he looks stuck in a crouch, y'know? Sure his legs look inverted or whatever, but it's like he's crouching. Does he even have feet?” 

“Kinda. They're uh. Roots. Flat roots. Why do you think he can walk faster?” 

“I wouldn't be too fast if I crouched all the time either.” Dust shrugged, glancing at the high ceiling. 

“My legs aren't built for that.” Killer peered back into the room, most of his anger forgotten. “They kinda just crackle and give out, especially when I kick myself.” 

“Why would you kick yourself?” The enderman questioned. 

“Not on purpose, dumbass! They're just really close to each other.” 

“Yeah you're just built stupid.” 

“Fuck you!” 

“Walk like a spider, then.” Horror suggested. Both of the others regarded him in surprise. Dust was more confused, probably because he might've never seen or heard of a spider. 

“What do you even mean by that?” Killer asked. 

Horror spread out a hand, fingers splayed in imitation of legs, “walking” briefly. 

There was a flash of white rings as the creeper suddenly understood. 

He stumbled slightly, stretching out his legs and rising just a little bit higher than before. 

“Wow this feels weird.” He noted, moving jerkily to turn in place. Horror just shrugged. “Probably get used to it. If you keep doing it.” 

“Yeah you're pretty damn leggy.” Dust noted. 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” 

The enderman just shrugged. “You figure it out.” 

He abruptly turned to walk away, investigating more of the manor as he briefly trailed a few purple embers. Killer jolted, turning to follow. He was unsteady on his feet, trying not to revert to his usual stance. Horror shrugged it off, leaving the room to sop up the puddles and glancing out the foyer. He ended up pausing, seeing the beginnings of rain hitting the ground past the covered balcony. It was a wonderful thing to listen to when inside. 

Horror smiled, moving on. He was able to dry the trailing mess with three towels, washing them off in the water collected at the bottom of the right tower. He noted that the water was sloshing a bit, the rain thrumming harder outside. Might be building up for a storm. Which he liked less. He wasn't sure how light a sleeper Blue was. 

Regardless, he was able to wring out the fabric and lay them out over some unoccupied shelves to dry, heading over to the kitchen area. He wanted to continue a few recipes. Maybe see what the enderman liked. It wasn't like he was going to go outside now that it was raining; he could occupy himself this way.

Big mansions with lots of things inside were great, Horror decided. Unless they were those dark structures found deep in some forests. Those were full of weird things. And villager lookalikes that tasted bitter. 

..Not that anyone needed to know he'd tasted them. He'd been attacked with axes, he tended to bite when he was attacked. 

Maybe he could just use a shovel instead. It made a very satisfying clang when he hit another undead over the head with it earlier. 

He couldn't help it, the other kept bugging him while digging for sandstone with Blue. 

As it was, the iron shovel was leaning against the wall now, Horror moving on to cooking some fish atop his chosen smoker. He wasn't sure why Blue had a smoker when he'd admitted he'd never needed to eat, but maybe the other just liked having all appliances possible. The skeleton had a brewing stand made from materials he'd bought off the village cleric despite not having any way to make potions, after all. 

Yet Dust was in here with him now, locked onto said stand. “Do y'all have blazes here?” The enderman asked. 

“... I've never heard of a blaze.. so probably no.” Horror replied, staring at the salmon. 

“Where did you get your rods?” 

Horror glanced over at the lanky figure, shrugging. Killer finally strode in, legs still wobbly with the awkward positions. 

“Blue bought the stuff from a villager. Good luck figuring out where they get their stuff.” 

“Are they like.. your version of piglins?” 

“I don't even know what a piglin is.” The creeper scrunched. The enderman grumbled, but accepted the answer. “When's the water outside gonna stop falling?” 

Both zombie and creeper deadpanned at him. 

“..Rain. It's called rain.” Killer stated. 

“Okay, okay, rain, whatever. When does it stop?” 

“Could be a while.” Horror answered before Killer could say anything. “Sounds like a storm soon.” 

His sentence was almost perfectly punctuated with a distant roll of thunder. 

“It's officially a storm now.” Killer concluded. 

Horror grunted. “Not very close. Wait until you can see the lightning.” 

“I'm sorry, but what the hell?” Dust questioned. 

“Was that an explosion or something??” 

“Technically yes, I'm pretty sure lightning is kind of an explosion, right?” Killer asked. 

Horror shrugged, waving so-so. 

“Think it makes air explode.” 

“The air explode?” Dust echoed incredulously. 

“Somehow that makes perfect sense..” Killer pondered. 

Then he tossed his head, turning around. “Welp, I'm going out in the rain! Smell ya later. Enjoy being bored or whatever.” 

“You're going out in the water? What's wrong with you?” Dust questioned, following him out of the room. 

“He's a plant.” Horror called, not really caring if they listened to him or not. Let the creeper get struck by lightning. He'd survive anyway. Killer was inexplicable like that. 

Maybe when things calmed down, he'd follow Blue's example and build a big place of his own. 

..Well. Maybe not this big. It was a lot of space, especially for one person. It was hard to imagine Blue had built it by himself, yet looking at the skeleton, it wasn't all too surprising either. He seemed a little over the top that way. 

Now what was really surprising was how the sheer size seemed more than enough for taller figures like Dust. The ceiling of both floors was twice the enderman's height, and even the archways between rooms left plenty of space for him to walk unimpeded. At some point he had to ask Blue why he made everything so big. Killer had already explained a lot of the empty space. Despite what Blue had said before, the vast empty rooms upstairs were temporary housing for his villagers for when he planned to rebuild the village himself. 

An admirable task, but not likely to be so doable now that so many others were here now. Villagers were timid folk, and Horror doubted they would want to be in the same building as a randomly exploding immortal creeper and an occasionally unstable zombie. He absolutely did not want to snap and eat them, especially now that he'd discovered cooked food.. but his trust in himself was still pretty thin. And he had no doubt that the trust the villagers had was even thinner. 

He found himself biting into the still hot fish. It was burning his right hand, but the bare phalanges of his left and tongue were unaffected. An interesting phenomenon now that he could think about it. A part of him was sure it should be burning his mouth. He'd think it'd been numbed by his redstone habit, yet he could taste just fine. No. Must be something else. 

He wouldn't know what. 

He meandered back over to the left tower, where more fish usually swam in from the circular archways underwater. He'd probably find a cod. There were a few recipes for cod. Instead, he leaned over the edge of the stairs to meet eyes with a corpse. 

Watery, cyan light rippled throughout the swollen undead, lighting up the dark water faintly. Its eyes had that blind glow, locking onto him. The tri-pronged weapon loosely grasped in its rotted fingers hung almost uselessly. 

Horror stumbled back in a wave of fear and pain. 

He hated the drowned. Especially their weapons. It made his head pulse painfully, stemming right from the jagged fracture on the exposed skull. 

He knew, dimly, that at some point he'd been injured by a trident there. He just couldn't remember how or why. All he had were the headaches that came whenever he simply looked at one of the watery undead. 

And because he'd let himself relax, he hadn't heard the muted groans from underwater before catching sight of it. Now he had to deal with a headache while a storm was brewing. Horror scowled at himself, wandering into the foyer while gripping the old wound. 

He sat on a low shelf set into the archway that was the entrance, facing the dock where things were darker. It would be easier, staring out at dark water during the night. The rain helped cover up the sound of the nearby village as well. Not the worst time to get a headache. It might pass in just a few minutes, too. 

With the light from the mansion bothering him, Horror found himself standing again, moving to a ledge in the wall, closer to the water. Not too close. Didn't need to accidentally glance at another sunken corpse and trigger everything again. 

As it was, the pulsing in his exposed skull was already fading, a blessed relief. He glimpsed Dust hiding from the rain in a house that was much too small for him, looking out a window at something in the distance. 

Killer was just wandering in the rain, playing around with different, all equally awkward ways of walking around. Horror was beginning to question if Dust should have ever mentioned how the creeper walked. He wasn't prepared for the sight of a creeper standing all the way up.

It just looked wrong. 

So he looked back over the water. It was peaceful, listening to the now heavy rain. Thunder continued to roll around him, and he glimpsed a flash of light between the distant clouds. Waves were churned up by the growing storm, splashing against the ledge and leaving puddles in the cobblestone. He watched a tiny fish get flung up between the fenceposts, flopping about before leaping back into the water. He couldn't even hear it land, the sloshing covered it up. 

As nice as it sounded and looked, Horror decided he didn't like how the entire mansion trembled slightly when the more powerful waves struck it. He felt disoriented by it. Also just a little unsafe, like the building might suddenly come crashing into the depths. 

Not that he believed it would. Blue clearly knew how to build. The whole structure was well supported by beams reaching to the waterbed. The skeleton had even scattered more of those strange lights he'd never seen. All a sort of teal and cyan, encased in heavily rusted copper to better match the much dimmer, oxidized bulbs in the ceiling. He was pretty sure there were more floating in the water, anchored by chains and more strange, greenish stone poles. 

At some point, Horror planned to ask about that. It fascinated him. The strange stone didn't appear to be part of the mansion itself, that being mostly tuff and wood, so he couldn't examine them up close. 

Not without going in the water. 

Horror wasn't going underwater, not with those headache inducing things in there. At some point Blue had to decide to get rid of them. Probably. Hopefully. 

Didn't Killer say Blue's mine entrance was somewhere down there? The skeleton had done so much despite having seen so little in life. 

…He realized then, something he wanted. Horror wanted to create something. To build like Blue had. He had simply stumbled into the world the skeleton had created for himself. None of this was his own. Horror wanted something great, something new in the world that was his. He had seen forgotten temples in the jungle smaller than this. It was near the size of those great mansions in the darkwoods, and far more beautiful. 

He wanted to know how well he could do that. Even if it took weeks or months or years. Simply because he could. Horror could think, he could create, he could destroy. He could carve into the world and change it, whereas others simply wandered through it. 

Even villagers, able to farm and grow their own food, could not build. They had their homes, their tools, but couldn't change them. 

Who had built those homes for them before? Or could they once build for themselves? 

Now he was wondering. 

Did.. could it have been those creators the screaming voices had accused him of being? 

Horror winced at the thought. It made his head pang. He didn't think he was connected to whatever was so full of hate that just being possibly connected was a sin and threat. 

But wasn't he a violent being already? He ate and ate and ate and sometimes it didn't matter what he was eating as long as it bled and died to his rotted claws and infectious fangs. 

Pigs. Cows. Chickens. Foxes and wolves. Endermen. Even the bears on the ice, and so many countless villagers when he'd simply been overwhelmed in hunger. 

Horror frowned, finding he was standing now. He had done so many terrible things just from being hungry. A problem that just.. vanished with cooked food. Something that utterly controlled his life, gone, just like that, from something so simple. 

Under all of the boundless gratitude and relief was a certain level of rage at the fact. It had been so fucking simple all this time. 

He was too tired to do more with that anger. It seemed pointless anyway. A means to an end. 

…Horror wanted to grow past what his hunger had made him. He was, after all, already more than other zombies. Blue's ideation had struck a cord within him, and it seemed he wanted to emulate it in a way now that he definitively knew he was like him. 

It sounded egotistical, but it simply wasn't. He was special, and he still couldn't be sure of the full ramifications of just being more than the rest. 

At least Blue had found his purpose and stuck with it. Even after seeing so much that had been done by one person like himself and discovered his greater desires.. Horror was still lost. 

The angry words that had been driven into his mind like rusty nails still echoed in his thoughts. Made him wonder. 

What were those things really? Withers. Why were they just voices coming from sentient sand? Why were they telepathic sand in the first place? Why did they rage about these creators and demand he help build a body of some kind due to some unknown connection he had to them? 

He didn't even know what these creators were.

At the same time.. he knew zombies could be created by biting a villager. Those would end up looking like a villager though. 

Could regular zombies be made by infection of something else? 

Maybe he was overthinking it. He'd seen so many strange things that form zombies from seemingly nothing. Strange cages that drew up matter from stone and soil to form an already rotted body. Sometimes they created skeletons instead. Or even spiders. Like the small, greenish ones.

Horror kind of hated those spiders. Too small and scuttling too quickly, jumping entirely too far and crawling all over walls. 

His headache was all but gone now, though Horror wasn't sure if that quite meant a break anymore. The scraggly hairs on his scalp had started rising, his skin tingling as other hairs began lifting on their own accord. 

Lightning was close. 

Thankfully he was under a roof, so it wasn't likely to strike him. However, there was still no predicting where it would strike. There was a whole village nearby, and Killer was out there, in the open. He could see the creeper leaning on a fence, enjoying the pouring rain. Horror was tempted to shout, though he wasn't one who could raise his voice much. He was too quiet. 

But Dust was doing something endermen just didn't do. He was hesitantly stepping into the rain, flinching but tolerating it. Horror had no idea why it wasn't hurting him, maybe it was the grey skin, maybe he was just different like that. Still, he grimaced. The other had no idea what was happening, and the thunder hadn't rolled in a suspiciously long time. A quiet thunderstorm was a building thunderstorm. 

He shoved his hood down, silently hoping Blue was a really deep sleeper as he marched into the rain. He felt really stupid doing this, feeling the rain beat against the fabric, quickly weighing it down as he ran up the stairs. Dust saw him coming, tensing for a teleport. 

“Get inside!” He hollered hoarsely, waving his arm. 

“Lightning close! You'll get hit!” His hair was sticking up against his increasingly damp hood, prickling at his neck as Dust vanished. There was no guarantee he was even heard, the other was visibly unsettled by the sight of him running at him. He knew he'd freaked out the enderman with his earlier loss of control. He'd deal with that issue later, right now his concern was making sure another thinking person didn't get irreparably hurt by lightning. 

Though as he raked his gaze over the village, he spotted the green cloaked villager standing by a lamppost, utterly drenched. 

..What a fucking nitwit. 

Horror growled at his sense of protectiveness, jogging over. The other recoiled when they spotted him, backing into the wooden pole anxiously. Horror gestured at the nearest building, but they kept staring at him. Right. Zombie approaching in the rain. Probably scary. Whatever. 

Fear didn't matter, even if he had to reach out to grab the paralyzed shoulders. Before he could touch the other, everything suddenly went white. 

His ears were suddenly in agony. 

He stumbled, utterly blind with nothing but an excruciating ringing in his ears. 

He couldn't hear anything beyond that damn ringing, blinking over and over as the dirt path slowly appeared from the blinding black. 

Cradling his head, he nervously glanced back at the remains of the idiot, only.. only it wasn't a charred corpse. The bulb atop the post had exploded, scattering bits of liquid flame and copper everywhere, wood splintered and blackened. The villager was leaning on the stone base, clearly wheezing- he couldn't hear it. He couldn't hear anything. Horror could barely see, everything still dark and splotchy as his vision recovered from the brilliant flash. 

Arcs of electricity were still flickering between fingers and limbs as the other twitched repeatedly, robes having darkened to a mysterious purple. A strange light was coalescing above their head, drawing in bits of black to form a hat he'd.. seen before. 

A fucking witch? Did they turn into a witch? How did that even- 

Suddenly, Killer barreled into him, knocking Horror away from the now witch. He saw the other say something to him, but all he heard was still ringing. The creeper looked somewhere above and behind him as Horror fought to sit up, until suddenly a long, thin hand gripped his shoulder and everything just warped. 

He was left gasping somewhere darker, shaking himself as those same hands tugged off the soaked jacket. “Turned into a witch.” He tried to say, though he couldn't hear anything. He felt the words rumbling out of him, but no sound came. A bottle was pressed into his hands, a bright red liquid inside. He stared at it in confusion, feeling a slight unpleasant tingling through the glass, similar to the gilded apple. 

He finally looked up, seeing Dust staring at him in concern. Horror finally recognized where they were as his- well actually, Blue's- kitchen area. Still more than a kitchen, especially with the various other appliances in it, like the brewing stand Dust was standing beside. 

Horror knew the other wanted him to drink it, recalling how he'd healed from Killer's point-blank explosion. Somehow Horror could tell it wouldn't work like that for him, shaking his head and holding it out. Dust just cringed, turning and pulling out several things to throw into the brewer. Horror stared in confusion, unable to see around the gray enderman's backside. 

A minute later the enderman spun around, grabbing his bottle and replacing it with something darker, a deep crimson like blood. Horror blinked at it, then at Dust. The other just nodded, gesturing to his thin, pointed ears. So the zombie hesitantly poured some over his ears, twitching as it tingled harshly. 

With a pop, sound suddenly came back, starting with the drum of rain on the water just outside. 

Dust sighed heavily, leaning back on the wall behind him. “Thank stars you're the same.” 

Horror hesitated, tilting his head. “What do you mean?” He ignored the weird swearing on stars. 

The enderman flicked a hand at him. 

“Hoped you'd worked like pigmen. Opposite potions and all that. For some reason living dead are hurt by healing pots and healed by harming.” 

Horror blinked again, processing that statement. 

“Pots?” 

“Potions.” Dust elaborated drily. “I'm talking about potions.” 

What he'd said finally set in. 

“This usually hurts others?” He held up the dark liquid. 

“Try not to spill it on anyone.” Dust replied. 

He finally recalled what had happened before he'd been teleported here. 

“Shit, they turned into a witch.” He stood up, ignoring the wave of dizziness as he headed back out. Dust stopped him, hand gripping his shoulder again. 

“That thing hit right in front of you. My ears are still ringing. Wait a minute, will you?” 

“Need to get it out, witches aren't good to villagers.” Horror explained. 

“Let Killer do it.” Dust shrugged indifferently. 

Horror grunted, shrugging him off and continuing. 

“By what? Blowing up?” He pointed out as he continued, taking the long way around to grab a spare helmet he could see hanging off an armor stand. He hoped it would protect him well enough from the rain. He hated water getting in the hole. 

“You're seriously going back out there?” Dust questioned, still following. Horror grunted, not bothering with a word. 

“It's literally a lavafall but water out there. Everywhere.” 

“Waterfall.” Horror supplied, walking into the entry hall. “It's a deluge.” He added, looking out into the heavy rain. “Been through worse.” 

“Really, just stay in.” Dust looked genuinely uneasy, glancing up at the rainfall. 

Horror finally paused at the gate, feeling the water splashing onto him already. He glanced back. “Does water still hurt you?” 

Here, Dust recoiled slightly in surprise. “You know it does that?” 

“Water hurts endermen. You looked immune.” 

“Well yeah, I fuck around with potions for a living. Of course I'd make myself immune.” 

Horror chose to ignore that strange fact. 

“Stay here, then. I'll be back.” He ordered, opening the gate and stepping out- only to pause. 

The rain wasn't hitting him. 

“Uh.” He heard Dust start as Horror slowly reached for the helmet in curiosity. His hand was wrapped in a thin, almost invisible layer of white, only making him look slightly paler than before. 

Deciding to roll with whatever was going on with this helmet, Horror shrugged, glancing back at Dust. 

“Stay here. I'll be back.” 

The enderman cooperated with that, standing back from the edge of the large porch as the zombie jogged back to where he was before. Killer was nearby, nudging the new witch along to a nearby gate. It was slow going, as the former villager was stumbling and unsteady, like a newborn calf. Not to mention he only had his head and forelegs to push them along. 

Horror made his way over, Killer straightening at the sight of him. 

“Hey you're supposed to go inside!” He shouted over the storm.

“Came to help.” He called back, tipping the helmet automatically as he gently picked the witch off the ground where they fell again. He understood being dizzy and unbalanced, so he guided them while holding an arm and other shoulder. He saw their nose wrinkle. 

“Sorry I smell.” He muttered automatically. He had grown used to being able to talk to others already. 

“I'm undead.” 

“What was that?” Killer spoke over the storm. 

“Nothing.” Horror replied, going back to ignoring the creeper. 

“He's mean like that.” He decided to mutter to the witch. “He just doesn't want Blue mad at him. You'll hurt villagers.” He grunted when an errant spark zapped him from the still electrified witch. He wasn't sure how long that would last. Or how long the violet eyes would glow. They just looked at him, face so open with confusion and shock. 

“I didn't know lightning could do that.” Horror admitted. “Thought it would kill villagers. Not make them witches.” 

“Are you talking to them?” Killer questioned over the pouring rain- which was lightening up a little. 

“Maybe. So?” He shot back. 

Killer gave the impression of rolling eyes without having any, moving ahead to use a foot to open the gate for them. He idly kicked a zombie away, ignoring how it snarled in response. 

Horror helped the witch through, down the hill and into a small alcove by the river, where a few other creatures were taking shelter from the rain. Finally, he sighed. 

“You'll be okay here.” He explained absentmindedly, slowly stepping back. He'd grown attached to the villagers in the couple of days he'd been here. He'd sort of known the none-too-smart one wandering around aimlessly before. It was odd, them being a witch they had to let go now. 

“Thank you.” A soft, nasal but scratchy voice spoke. Horror froze at the entrance, turning in shock to see the other down a potion pulled from nowhere and vanish. 

“Wait-” He called, yet there was nothing. 

He was left alone with the mindless mobs. 

The witch had spoken. 

Yet she was already gone. 

Chapter Text

Blue jolted upwards to a silent room. Sunlight was streaming through the small window in one wall, and he felt weirdly.. good. Relaxed? It was certainly new. 

It was also quiet. And was he covered in a blanket? 

Wait, back up, he could have sworn there'd been noise before. 

.. Before what? 

He climbed out of the bed, briefly considering whether he should try that again. He still wasn't sure how exactly to go to sleep. A part of him found the thought ridiculous, but it was true. Either way, there were things to do. He glanced out at the vast lake stretching out beyond the window. 

...Or was it an ocean? Now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure. It was definitely huge, though he'd heard somewhere that oceans were saltwater, not freshwater.

I'm sure there's freshwater oceans. Geno's voice reminded him that he wasn't alone with his thoughts. 

Blue shrugged at that, deciding the musings weren't worth his time. With a skip in his step, Blue made his way to the stairs, hopping down the spiral to the first floor, landing with a bit of a thunk, bones clacking into each other. 

And of course, he was greeted to the sound of distant arguing. 

..He should probably get used to that. All his new friends seemed not always the nicest to each other. Especially Killer, though he was used to his attitude already. Dust also seemed a bit rude, though his intentions were generally honest. However it sounded like the enderman was most upset, given the rather unforgettable sounds of that distorted screeching mixed in with the otherwise annoyed shouting. 

He made his way out, finding them on literal opposite ends of the enormous porch, yelling at each other. Killer next to a random but odd spider on one end, Dust uneasily leaning against a pillar on the other with Horror, visibly frustrated, almost halfway between them. The zombie saw him standing at the entrance of the foyer first, gesturing helplessly at the others. 

That caught the enderman's attention, screeching incoherently before waving frantically at the giant, unusually hairy arachnid. It was oddly purple. 

"The £ü¢[{ is that thing?!" His voice warped as he demanded. "It ain't fucking right!" 

"He threw a potion at it and now it's friendly!" Killer sounded defensive. "And purple!" 

"I had to throw something! Look at that thing! What the fuck?!" 

"It's a spider." Horror made a strangled sound as he spoke, utterly frustrated. 

Blue sighed, approaching the oddly lilac spider and peering at it. The many eyes looked up at him, body tilted. He found it oddly endearing for a usually blankly staring creature. It seemed to have a sort of intelligence of it's own. 

"What did you throw at it?" He asked the enderman. 

"I don't know! Experimental potion, can't remember, just threw ingredients from here together to see what it does! Why the hell is it like that?!" 

"Like what?" Blue couldn't understand. Dust just gestured vaguely, maybe like he was miming strangling it. "Hairy like that?? It looks wrong." 

"Spiders tend to be a bit hairy. Are they not in the Netherworld?" He asked placatingly, finding he was petting an oddly affectionate spider. 

"No! They're nowhere that fucking creepy! They're still fucked up, but at least they're not- heugh-" He gagged over the railing suddenly, not wanting to look away from the arachnid. Blue actually saw him vomit up glowing purple into the water, growing concerned. 

"Just keep that thing away from me!" He shouted, still with an edge of static in his voice as he pointed. Then he teleported to who knows where. 

Killer just scoffed. "I don't get why he's scared of a spider. And a nice one, too." 

Horror sighed dramatically, staring at the floor before looking over. 

"They look creepy." He agreed with the enderman, now approaching. 

"You could keep it." Killer suggested. "Spiders and skeletons go together, right?" 

Blue considered it, watching the arachnid lift itself up to reach his hand again, outright grabbing him with its pedipalps. 

"I've tried riding one once." He admitted, continuing to pet it. "I couldn't get it to go anywhere. I don't know how regular skeletons guide spiders." 

"Seriously? You've ridden a spider?" Killer was impressed. Blue smiled bashfully, rubbing his neck vertebrae. "I saw it happening once and just had to try it, you know?" 

"Please, I gotta see this." Killer seemed excited. Horror sighed, though there seemed to be curiosity in his eyelight. 

Blue shook his skull, rubbing the spider behind the eyes before hesitantly sitting atop its middle. He crossed his legs to avoid awkward dangling and just continued petting its side. The spider spun in place, making odd hissing noises that seemed like excitement. It was hard to tell. Spiders were strange. 

Regardless, the spider was standing higher, many legs tapping as if with glee with Blue perched on top. 

"...Cute." Horror noted, arms crossed as he stared. 

Blue giggled at the excitable spider as it paused the spin, legs still tapping as it bobbed up and down. 

"Let's call it Fluffy." Killer decided. 

"I suppose we have to keep the spider if they're named." Blue conceded. He was probably going to keep them around anyway. Spiders weren't aggressive to villagers, after all. They just unnerved a few and often took less than friendly skeletons for a ride. This one, he rather liked. Partly because it was affectionate. 

"Do you have a tag anywhere?" Killer asked. Blue considered the question, still sitting on the spider. On Fluffy. "I might have three stored near the book room." He noted. "You want me to go ahead and name them?" He squinted a little at the creeper despite his smile. 

"You saw how much Dust was unnerved by them." 

"Fuck it, he'll get over it." 

"That's not very nice." Blue pointed out. 

"What? You've seen one spider, seen 'em all." 

"I don't think he feels that way." 

"He can get over it, look at the thing. Just a little guy." 

"Or girl." Blue automatically replied as Horror winced. 

"Wouldn't go that far." 

"Whaddya mean? Are you not seeing what I'm seeing?" Killer turned to the zombie. 

"I am. Just don't think spiders are that cute." 

"It's literally extra fluffy." 

"There's no need to argue over how cute the spider is." Blue mediated. "It's alright to have different opinions. Besides, I think we can all agree that it's clearly more intelligent. Was it like that before or did Dust's potions change that?" He pondered aloud. 

"I think it was normal until he started throwing shit." Killer noted. "Thought he killed it straight up before it got up and started being weird." 

The spider made an odd squeak-hiss at that, looking at the creeper with still red eyes, pedipalps still rubbing together. 

"You know, I don't think its eyes have moved even once." He suddenly noted, frowning slightly. Fluffy squeed uncomprehendingly. 

"I don't think they can move their eyes." Horror admitted. 

"Why would their eyes be stuck?" Killer faced him. The zombie shrugged, Blue sighing. 

"We ought to put a tag on them if we're keeping them." He redirected the conversation. 

"I can get the tag!" Killer was immediately perking up, adjusting his stance to almost match the arachnid. 

"I'll need to carve the name on it at the anvil." Blue reminded, shifting to get off. He only hesitated when the spider jolted forward, legs tip-tapping as it headed for the entrance. "Oh, we're moving now." He commented, gripping the oddly thick fur nervously. 

"You're riding a spider!" Killer seemed surprisingly giddy at the concept, following with surprising speed as he struggled to stretch his legs like a spider. 

"Um. What are you doing?" Blue chose not to acknowledge the fact that yes, he was riding a spider- he also wasn't in control. So he chose to question Killer's new stance instead. 

"Horror suggested it." The creeper grew slightly defensive at his query. So Blue regarded the zombie, who was following sedately with a curious eyelight. 

"Dust pointed out he could be faster." 

Blue hummed thoughtfully at the concept, noting that yes, Killer was moving generally faster than before. 

"So this is about being faAH-" He yelped and clung to Fluffy as the spider suddenly just started walking up the wall, unimpeded by his weight on its back. 

"We're doing this now!" He squeaked, rattling slightly as he glanced back at the floor where Killer was cackling, Horror looking a little tense. 

Fluffy quickly rounded a corner, almost climbing on the ceiling as they walked, carving notches with their tarsus. Blue was almost dangling, practically hugging the spider to stay on. Did regular skeletons deal with this too?? Did they ever feel worried? They should feel worried, this was stressful. 

Instead, Fluffy just jumped across the corridor, startling a short scream out of him as they landed halfway down the other wall, sliding a little before the many legs had latched on. 

"Oh shit!" Killer seemed only to admire the feat instead of worry about Blue, who was clinging for dear life to the spider as it rounded a corner and balanced at the crevice between wall and ceiling. A few legs were even pushing off the top shelf of a particularly high dresser. 

"I want to get off now!" Blue laughed humorlessly, breathless. "Spider riding is not as fun as I thought!" 

He didn't get a response from either of those below, instead hearing a bewildered screech from his kitchen area. 

"D̵I̷D̶̏̓̓͋͑͒͊̈́͝͝ YƠ̴̎͛͌̂̀̽̊U̶ B̵̏̑̈́̇͘̚͝RIÑG TH̴Ǎ̸͑̐T̸̂̈̓͗͠ T̵H̸I̷͒̏̍͒̈́͒N̴̾G IN̵͂͛ ̴̧̡͇͉̱͑͗̇͗̋͋̓͝Ȟ̵̾̂̕͝E̸̊͘RE?̴̛!" 

"Not intentionally!" Blue called back nervously. "It sort of just came inside on its own!" He had to ignore the fact that not only was Fresh mentally cackling at his predicament, but Geno was sort of starting to laugh a little as well. Which, rude. Very rude. Technically they were in the same situation as voices in his skull. 

Error simply staunchly denied there being any sort of danger. 

Rude. 

Unfortunately, there wasn't much time to argue when the spider outright leapt off the wall, Blue hissing under his breath as they landed rather elegantly on the floor. He immediately took his chance and rolled off, gasping now that he was on solid ground again. Fluffy was merely occupied by a flower sitting by the window, pedipalps brushing at the petals. Blue just laid on the floor and wheezed in relief. 

All of a sudden, he heard glass shattering, something splashing as out of nowhere, something dark red splattered on him. He had barely enough time to blink before it abruptly started burning. He startled at it, jumping to his feet to frantically shake it off as he heard Fluffy squeal and scuttle off. 

"The fuck?" He heard Dust question as it continued to burn. Blue started frantically wiping it off, hissing as it stung his hands too. He regretted not having his gloves on. "What was that?!" He demanded shrilly, horrified at the marks singing into his bones and revealing a faint, nearly cyan glow beneath. 

"It's- you're not supposed to get hurt?! You're a skeleton, right??" Dust was completely uncertain, taking a half step closer. It was Horror who came to help, his cold hand roughly swiping the liquid off without any affect to him. 

"Of course I'm a skeleton?" Blue responded in confusion, wincing as a particular globule slid off his shirt and touched him directly on a rib. 

"I only meant to hurt the spider." Dust seemed genuinely shocked. 

"You threw something harmful and are surprised when it hurts someone?" Blue didn't mean to sound so harsh, he was genuinely confused and hurt. 

"No, I- harming pots get weird around the dead- it worked on Horror!" He defended anxiously, gesturing. 

I think he means potions? Geno asked. 

"Do you mean potions?" Blue decided to ask himself. 

"Fuck- yeah, I just call 'em pots for short- are you okay? Will- uh, I dunno, regen work?" He offered a bottle full of pinkish fluid. Horror grunted, pushing past the enderman and into the kitchen. "Food helps." He huffed as Blue stood there in bewilderment. 

He glanced at the now holes in his arms, wincing at the blue oozing out. 

Dust recoiled as he noticed it. "What the hell?" 

"Oh shit, that's not normal." Killer emerged from the library room behind him, seeing the holes as well. 

"I'm aware of that." Blue shakily agreed. He'd defended the village enough to know skeletons were supposed to bleed a red-black substance like blood, not this.. faintly glowing cerulean. 

"Something is really messed up about you." Dust muttered, holding the potion close as he stared. 

"I really don't know why." Blue admitted softly, glancing back at the creeper. "Where did the spider go?" 

Killer nodded behind himself. "Fluffy ran in there, hiding on the bookshelf." He then glared at Dust, hissing. "Thanks a lot, fuckface." 

"Clearly you don't see how fucked up that thing is." The enderman hissed back with a slight high note. 

"Can you not argue?" Blue interrupted before they could go on. "I'm bleeding an unknown liquid. I would rather stop bleeding the unknown liquid." He ignored how he swayed slightly. The others simply grew more alarmed. 

"Hey, maybe you should sit down." Dust suggested, finding a nearby chair at a desk and dragging it closer. Blue wearily nodded, sitting down and blinking when the pinkish potion was thrust back in his face. 

"Seriously. It should heal." 

Blue simply pushed it away. "I'd rather not discover some other strange reaction to your potions while in this state. I already know food heals me." 

Horror then emerged from the kitchen again. "Don't know who's gold I used, but recipe said gilded apples super heal." He waved the shiny fruit as he jogged over. 

"Wait, what if he goes weird again?" Killer questioned as the zombie shoved it in his hands. Blue flinched as he felt his dripping blood reverse directions, now slowly flowing towards the apple. 

"Whaddya mean weird?" Horror questioned, neither he nor Killer having noticed. Given how Dust recoiled, the enderman did, staring in shock. Blue considered how badly he might react if he chose to ate the apple that seemed to change the direction his blood flowed. 

You should.. probably be fine. Geno stated. I think it's weird because you're anima, not mostly mors like us or entirely like natural skeletons. And that's definitely all vita. Shouldn't hurt. I think that's how the potion works, it's probably mostly mors energy, that'd explain why it harms living beings and heals undead? Because you're somehow closer in energy to living than normal? 

Just as Dust started to comment on the strange reaction with the blood, Blue sort of mentally shrugged and bit into it. 

Only to recoil at the sheer volume of the crunch. 

"That's loud." He noted awkwardly, suddenly aware of how oddly pink-white the inside was. He was used to apples being sort of off-white on the inside, not.. cherry petal pink. 

Yet suddenly it wasn't so important. The intense energy contained within the fruit was seeping out, except it hardly scattered at all, simply flowing over his wounds. He almost commented on the sight before he remembered the others couldn't see it. Only he was aware of the light. 

Oh that's definitely vita. It heals. Unless your mors based. I'm right! Geno was entirely too delighted at that. 

Were you just guessing that would work? The Destroyer demanded. 

I wasn't sure. It's been a while since I've thought to ask about how the energies interact, and we can't exactly ask now, can we? 

Blue just bit into the apple again, sighing as an argument started both in his mind and in front of him, Horror quietly demanding why the enderman thought to attack the spider when Blue was already a little different from the norm. 

A little awkward, but he wasn't wrong. Just one look at him and it was obvious he wasn't a normal skeleton. The problem was why he was different and where it came from.

Ya def came from the sand somehow. Fresh quietly addressed the thought as the others continued arguing. 

Do you know how that might've happened? Does it exist in this world somewhere? He questioned, eager to finally have something of an answer. 

Fresh didn't know. 

No clue. I'd ask d' Elders, but dey clearly don't like ya. I like ya, though. How 'bout the book? He might've liked you enough to put somethin' in there. 

 Blue agreed with that idea, taking another bite of the apple as his own blood was sort of just returning into the rapidly closing holes. He scooted the chair back to it's place, finding the book of obsidian and solid sand, opening it to look through the table of contents. 

He briefly heard Killer ask what he was doing before the creeper quickly had to defend his new favorite spider. He chose to let them argue. If it grew too aggressive, he'd intervene. For now, his priority was an answer to his own existence. Not some esoteric purpose, just a reason he was different. 

The closest thing to the energies Geno regularly mentioned was a chapter referring to forms of energy and cycle. He quickly flipped to the page, squinting a little as the glowing letters occasionally made it difficult to read. 

There were three main forms of energy and magic. The two were tied together intrinsically, often names being used interchangeably as a result. Vita, anima, and mors. Each could shift into the other form, but often followed a cycle. It was easier to convert vita into mors, mors to anima, and anima to vita. Most beings were largely reliant on the most stable energy, vita. However, the high density of anima regularly allowed those based on it tremendous strength or intelligence. Conversely, most beings based on mors were typically weak, but this was not due to the natural potential of mors, but its difficulty in coalescing in high levels. 

The real strength of withers was the use of binding anima to mors in order to add hundreds of times more than the usual levels and thus magnify the potential almost exponentially. However, as a result, any consciousness withers may develop could never fade, being attached to anima as they were. That was the true power of anima, the magic of consciousness. 

Blue had to stop reading, several things suddenly making a frightening amount of sense. 

He was explicitly told he was a being of anima when naturally he should be mors. Like a skeleton should be. However he managed to change, it had to have been from that switch. After all, he was conscious. 

He briefly skimmed down the page, even seeing a list of colors that could identify what magic or energy was active. And what would you know, anima was most commonly found as glowing blue, less commonly occuring in purple. 

Hang on. Purple. The portal was purple. Endermen trailed purple. 

Yeah, because they're the Enddamned. The Destroyer retorted unhelpfully. Blue realized that he probably didn't know anything beyond that either. 

Blue glanced through another page before pausing as the argument died down. Horror was demanding Dust heal the innocent spider. The enderman didn't want anywhere near it, threatening to kill Fluffy if they brought it close to him. 

The skeleton sighed at that, standing up and snatching the potion out of the enderman's hand. 

"Hey!" He cried, though he didn't reach for it again. Blue ignored him, heading for the book room to find the spider. Like Killer had said, it was huddled in a corner by the ceiling, curled in a gap between that and the shelves. 

He winced at the almost lavender color seeping from its burns. Spiders naturally had bluish blood, though a different shade from.. whatever magic Blue seemed to have going on. 

"Hi, Fluffy. That hurts, doesn't it? I can help you feel better." He suggested softly. 

The bright red eyes were still fixated on him, giving no reaction at all. It was unmoving, seemingly blank. None of that cute, affectionate tapping or squeaking from earlier. Blue was saddened by that, though he couldn't blame the creature. 

A part of him was happy to know it could feel pain, though he didn't understand how that happened. 

So he approached the arachnid, cautious with his movements as it tucked further into the alcove. 

"It's alright. I'm not going to hurt you." He murmured. He heard one of the others approach the archway slowly, though he didn't look to see who it was. The spider was shifting, legs spreading slightly. 

The front pair then lifted up, pedipalps spread. He wasn't sure what it meant, but he could see the enormous black fangs pointing out now. 

"I just want to help you feel better." He cooed, seeing the lower fangs stretch out a little further. 

"Do you want to come out?" He offered. 

I think it wants to bite you. Fresh noted. 

Blue hesitated, suddenly realizing everything it was doing. 

Why would Fluffy do that? He questioned. 

Well it's scared.. Geno began slowly. Probably doesn't know who hurt it? Might just want to be left alone. 

Nah, let it bite. The Destroyer suggested. I want to see what happens. 

There's actually something wrong with you. Geno remarked in bewilderment. 

Blue considered his options, still a little precariously balanced on a shelf and the top of another bookshelf. 

"..Well, I suppose if I do get bitten, I can always heal." He decided, moving forward again. The spider kept twitching uneasily, waving its forelegs almost threateningly. 

It was only until he was on the shelf directly in front of it that the arachnid abruptly burst from its spot, slamming into him. Blue yelped as he was thrown off the shelf, landing hard with a clattering thud on his back, fangs clamped around his arm. Thankfully they had gone between his radius and ulna, wriggling as the spider made to back off. 

Unfortunately for Fluffy, Blue recovered quickly and doused it in the potion, hoping there wouldn't be any weird adverse reactions. With a chittering hiss, the spider jolted backwards, yanking his arm off. Blue let out an embarrassing squawk as his radius separated from his right arm, the side of his hand suddenly feeling like pins and needles as it became hard to move. 

"My arm!" He yelped as Fluffy cowered behind the enchanting table and shelves, front legs forming a wall between its face and him. He could feel the pedipalps hanging onto the bone still caught in it's fangs. 

"Did Fluffy just..?" Killer trailed from the archway. 

"Take part of my arm?" Blue finished in exasperation. 

"Yes. It doesn't feel very nice either, can you help me get my arm back before they decide to eat it or something?" 

He ignored how Horror was now facepalming. Dust was staying several feet behind them, making several noises of distress and disbelief. 

"It took your arm-" 

"Well it's not solidly attached, it's more on me that I didn't expect this to happen eventually." Blue sighed, facing the panicked spider again. 

"Can I have my arm back?" He asked. The red eyes just stared. It at least stood up slightly, seemingly a positive reaction. Maybe. Hopefully. The wounds were healing. 

"See, this is what happens when you don't kill the damn things." Dust vented, still keeping far from the arachnid. 

"I appreciate your input." Blue replied drily, still inching closer. 

"Hi. Do you feel better? I promise I still won't hurt you. I just want my arm back." He hummed, shaking slightly. The missing part of his arm was freaking him out a little. To the point that he might've been rattling slightly. Though he tried not to let it show too much. 

"Please?" 

Instead of calming down, the fangs around his radius tightened. He twitched, trying not to let his reaction show. That kind of hurt. He was pretty sure it had jagged edges further up on those fangs, and those were digging into the bone. 

"Really, that doesn't belong to you. I'd like it back, please?" 

Seeing as getting closer seemed to make it antsier, Blue slowly sat down, legs crossed. 

"I know you're scared. It's alright to be scared. You have every right to be." He chatted with the spider, watching the many scarlet eyes stare at him. He stared back, slowly lifting up his currently incomplete arm. "Please, Fluffy?" 

He tried not to flinch when he felt the spider rotate the bone in its fangs, pedipalps adjusting their weight across it. The tarsus at their ends seemed to act as three fingered hands, third claw hooking in the opposite direction of the other two. 

Blue just nodded at it, hoping to encourage returning the radius. "Yes, that bone. In your mouth. I'd like it back." He gestured slightly without getting too close. Suddenly one of the pedipalps lifted, largely unseen behind the wall of legs before gripping the bone in those claws, rotating it again. 

"Yes, you're getting there." He smiled kindly. 

He tensed when the fangs tightened again, though maintained his smile. Finally, his hard work seemed to pay off with a clatter, the spider dropping its prize to the floor. Unfortunately, however, Fluffy still didn't move. Standing over the bone with legs still held close together. 

"Why aren't you getting it?" Killer asked from the archway. Blue continued smiling at the spider. 

"Fluffy is still on top of it." He explained in the same tone he'd been using around the arachnid. No need to make it nervous. 

"... Don't look at its eyes." Horror slowly suggested. 

"Might be making it anxious." 

Blue had to blink, almost looking away. 

"I mean, no one likes being stared in the eyes, thought that was obvious." Dust retorted, still keeping his distance. 

"That's mostly a you thing." Killer muttered before turning. "Actually, why doesn't it piss you off? You're an enderman." 

"Why are you so weird about eyes? There's a fucked up spider in there holding body parts hostage!"

"I'm not being weird, I'm just wondering if you know why endermen hate eye contact. I've been ripped apart by one before, y'know. That shit hurt." 

"Focus." Horror ignored the offhand comment to silence them. "No distractions." 

"This is boring." Killer deadpanned. 

Blue didn't need to look behind him to know the zombie was shooting the creeper a look. 

"Can we just get rid of it after this?" There was a certain whiny note in Dust's voice as he spoke. 

"No, you made it weird and friendly. Fluffy's ours now." Killer asserted. 

"Fluffy?" Dust sounded horrified. 

"I'd feel bad abandoning the poor thing." Blue agreed while inching closer. 

Finally he was petting a leg, getting only a flinch and a slight lifting of the front pair. 

"Stars, that thing is ugly." Dust shuddered. 

"It's growin' on me." Horror noted. 

"It tried to eat his arm." Dust pointed out. 

"I could do worse." 

"What do you mean you can do worse? Why would you do worse? Why is that even your reasoning?" 

"Yeah he's literally just bones, you're better off trying to eat a villager." Killer suggested. Horror made a sound of disgust as Blue started reaching his hand between legs with little reaction. 

"I'd rather you didn't suggest the villagers. I've worked quite hard to keep them safe. And I'm sure the golem would be very unhappy to be betrayed." 

"Golem?" Dust echoed in confusion. 

"Oh you should totally meet it, I gotta see who's taller." Killer decided as Blue finally snatched his radius back, carefully retreating with a few pats and returning it to its rightful place. He backed away until at the arch with Horror. 

"Let's leave Fluffy alone for right now. We've stressed the poor thing enough." 

Yay. The Destroyer noted drily. Blue studiously ignored that. 

Instead, he nudged the others out of the room and slid a nearby bookshelf from against the wall to cover most of the entryway. 

"There." He dusted his hands off, smiling at the others. "Now I don't want anyone bothering Fluffy for a few hours. I'm sure that entire experience was likely traumatic." He pointedly glanced at Dust. 

"Yeah. For me." The enderman failed to address the problem, and Blue didn't bother to correct him. 

Whatever. He clearly wasn't going to care now. 

"For now, would you like to take a look around in the daytime, see what our dimension is like?" He addressed the enderman, who shuffled awkwardly while glancing out the large window. 

"Sure, I guess. What's up with the light, anyway? Brightest thing I ever seen." 

"...You mean the sun?" Killer demanded in shock. 

"..Yeah. That." 

Blue sighed as the creeper ogled. 

"Don't blame him for not being familiar with something that doesn't exist where he's from." 

"Yeah, asshole, I don't have a bright light setting fire to random shit when it pops up. Also the darkness here is intense. Is that how it works here? Just extreme light and dark?" 

"...Close enough." Horror shrugged, holding out something round and flat to Blue. 

The skeleton blinked at it in confusion. 

"What is this?" He asked, hesitantly taking the soft and warm thing. 

"New recipe called sugar cookies." He gestured to the recently reattached radius. "You're hurt again." 

Blue sighed, accepting that the other had developed a thing about food and healing now. 

Of course, he really wasn't expecting the sweetness he experienced while giving it a taste. 

"Okay then, I like this." He noted in surprise. 

"What is that, I've never seen anything like that before." Dust demanded, facing the zombie. 

Horror just offered him a cookie. 

The enderman delicately pinched it with long, clawed fingers, bringing it up to stare at before hesitantly biting into an edge. His eyes literally glowed brighter in surprise. 

"It's?" He started, crumbs escaping his needle-like black fangs. 

"You shouldn't talk with your mouth full." Blue pointed out, frowning slightly at the mess on the floor. 

"It's like?" Dust ignored him, still puzzling over the taste. "Uh." 

"Sweet?" Horror suggested. The enderman lit up at that, pointing at him. "I've never had sweet before! It's good!" His mouth opened unnervingly wide to drop the rest of the cookie upon his dark violet tongue as Blue nodded in agreement. 

"It is nice." 

Horror grunted in satisfaction. "I like pork more." He admitted while glancing at the mildly pouting creeper. "I get it though." 

"So about Dust meeting golem for vibe checks." Killer interrupted. 

"What about you getting a cookie?" Dust frowned. 

"Yeah I literally can't eat. Can't taste or anything." Killer explained while walking off. 

"Now c'mon! Golem vibe check today!" 

"Is that what we're calling it now?" Blue asked, following. He flinched slightly when Dust appeared in a shower of purple sparks ahead of him as Killer continued. "Why not? He obviously goes off vibes." 

"He?" Horror noted, catching up as well. 

"Why not." Killer shot back, already heading out the entrance and on the porch. 

"Hang on." Blue stopped them, the others glancing back. He regarded Dust. "I have no idea if endermen are harmed by sunlight." 

"Pretty sure they just hate it, no burning. But he's weird, are you weird about the sun?" Killer addressed Dust, who was just baffled. 

"I would have liked a warning if it's supposed to do that?? Do I need a fire res? I thought the water here would mean no burning but okay??"

"Well you are wearing armor." Blue pointed out. "If it's strong enough, it should last a while. Are you wearing anything under it?" 

The enderman shifted. "Why do you ask?" 

"Well I know a few simple stitches that can turn the clothing into its own protection. It'll stop the wear on your armor as well." 

"The light.. can damage my armor." Dust stated flatly in bewilderment. Killer hummed thoughtfully. "I don't know, that might be a you guys thing. What if it only breaks from the sun because it's stopping it from burning you?" He pointed out. 

"How would you know?" Blue asked. The creeper shrugged. "Put on a helmet once. Lasted for months, only reason it broke was 'cause I blew up too many times. The sun never did anything to it." 

Horror seemed to understand then. "And the sun doesn't burn you.." 

"Basically, what the fuck is up with helmets?" Killer questioned. 

Dust sighed at the conversation, simply walking past them and awkwardly stepping over the gates at the edge of the porch and into the light. He was holding a light orange potion, though he put it away as he faced them again. "It's annoyingly bright, but I think I'm fine." 

After a moment, Horror shrugged and flicked his hood over his head and followed. Blue jolted and joined him, slipping into his helmet. Just because his clothes protected him didn't mean he wasn't a little paranoid. Killer just huffed as he joined them, Blue holding open the gate for the creeper before shutting it and letting him take the lead. 

As if it knew, the golem was already lingering at the top of the hill, in the shade of the great oak further in the village as the crimson eyes stared impassively. 

"How did I miss that earlier?" Dust breathed, noticing it. 

"Oh the big guy just likes to patrol the fence when it's raining. Stuff comes out and all." Killer explained, awkwardly ascending the stairs with that still somewhat spidery gait. 

"Are you going to keep walking like that?" Blue asked, again opening the gate for him. 

"I'm getting the hang of it!" He defended. "Just you wait, I'll be running twice as fast as your bony ass." He snarked, beelining for the golem. 

"Holy crap it's legitimately almost as tall as me." Dust got excited, teleporting over to the golem as it abruptly straightened, staring at him. Dust also hesitated, clearly recognizing the hostile stance as they regarded each other. 

Again, the golem somehow identified something while regarding the enderman, abruptly dropping the stance and turning away. 

"..What was that about?" 

Horror shrugged, Blue humming. "I have no idea. It's just like that." 

"You passed the vibe check is what." Killer decided. 

"Is that normal??" 

"Not at all!" Killer cheered. "Golems are supposed to attack literally all of you guys. The big guy's just weird like that. Knows we're better or something. Vibes!" He grinned, pulsing once before scurrying off at a terrifying speed for a creeper. 

"Oh no, he is faster." Blue realized, seeing the other beelining for the nearest cat with deadly intent. 

"Killer if you blow up one of the cats-!" He bolted, the feline thankfully meowing irritably and hopping through a market stall. The creeper started swearing as the cat effortlessly escaped, Blue tackling him to the ground. 

"What have I told you about targeting the cats?" 

"I'll get 'em one day." Killer was utterly unrepentant, turning to glare as Carrot appeared, sitting a few feet away and staring. 

"Especially you, bitch." 

Blue sighed as the feline stared a moment longer, then abruptly groomed a paw. 

"He's only an innocent cat." 

"He is so not innocent." Killer spat, wriggling until he could shove himself upright. 

"I swear he'd kill your villagers if he could." 

Carrot paused his grooming as Blue pinched between his sockets. 

"He's a cat, they have no intention of harming anything other than bunnies." 

"You don't know that cat." Killer argued, Carrot stalking off to investigate the curiously watching Dust. 

"Cat, huh?" The enderman asked, slowly lifting a foot to tap the orange one. 

"I was wondering what they were." He added, watching as Carrot turned to intently sniff the boot in fascination. "Why's he so.. sniffy?" 

"Well, you are from another dimension, on top of likely being the first enderman he's encountered. You probably smell very unique." 

Dust frowned, then sniffed his arm. "I don't smell anything." 

"You probably wouldn't." He admitted before Horror added. 

"Cats smell more than us." 

"How do you know that?" Dust questioned curiously, still watching the investigating mammal. 

Horror shrugged. "Just know things sometimes." 

"Oh, really? I thought that was just me." Blue was surprised to know that. Horror blinked at him, then hesitantly smiled. 

"By the way, what are these.. not mushroom things?" Dust gestured to the great oak reaching its boughs into the sky well above them. 

"Trees." Horror stated. 

"That one there's an oak." Blue added. 

Dust hummed thoughtfully, then pointed down the path to the frog cage. "So that's a tree too?" He was indicating the pink petals arching over the enclosure. 

"Yes! That is a cherry tree! Beautiful, isn't it?" Blue led them closer, grinning. 

Dust was quiet until he stood under the shade, staring up at the fluttering petals. He seemed contemplative for a moment, slowly reaching up to touch the smooth violet bark. 

"Yeah." He softly stated. "It's nice." 

"You okay?" Horror was the one to ask. Nearby, a villager stopped in their tracks, staring curiously. 

"Yeah." Dust nodded. "Just never seen anything like this before." He glanced at the glass cage, white amphibian staring absently at him. Blue gasped in delight. 

"And that's a frog! Did you see him last night? His name is Blob!"

"Kinda weird." Dust admitted.

"You should've seen Blob a month ago, he was a completely different thing. Had a tail and only swam in the water and everything." Killer noted. 

"Frogs are weird." Horror agreed. "Taste weird too." 

"Is there anything you haven't eaten at some point?" Killer turned on him. The zombie stared blankly, before a hint of a smirk passed over his face. 

"Haven't eaten creepers. You said you had redstone in ya?" 

"Fuck no, you're not fucking biting me." He backed away, Blue sighing at the antics. Dust was just snickering at them. At least the enderman enjoyed it. Blue could understand. He was secretly ecstatic at everything Killer did for the first few weeks purely because it was someone else interacting with him. 

But then he was distracted by a strange sight. One of his lampposts, those he'd spent a good deal of effort buying rods from the cleric for, was strangely broken. The carefully waxed bulb was completely missing, the wood pole charred and splintered with some soot staining the stone base. 

".. What happened here?" He muttered, approaching the pole. The other two immediately ceased their little.. argument or whatever it was, either wincing or sighing. It was Dust who spoke. 

"That uh, lightning stuff? It hit that last night while you were out. Turned one of those villager things into uh. What'd you call it?" He turned to Horror, who winced. 

"A witch." Killer answered, now puffing up. "I made sure they didn't hurt anyone." 

"You were shoving her around." Horror huffed. 

"Her?" Blue echoed. Horror then faced him with an odd expression. 

"I helped. Took her out the village, a cave by the river." He hesitated, Killer again giving the impression of rolling eyes. 

"He says 'she' said thank you before drinking a potion that made her disappear. Which is dumb, potions can't just do that." 

Dust stared at the creeper, then suddenly held up a bottle of greyish liquid. 

"I've got an invis right here." 

"What the fuck." The creeper rounded on him, staring. "What the fuck? You're kidding." 

The enderman deadpanned for a moment before holding his arm out and upending it atop of Horror, who jolted with a particularly gargled sound as he tried to block it from spilling into the hole in his exposed skull. 

And then he rapidly vanished, all the way down to his clothes. There was silence for a few long seconds before the zombie choked out. 

"How long?!" 

"'Bout an hour, I think." Dust shrugged. "Didn't think it'd make your uh, clothes disappear too. It doesn't extend to armor." He tugged at his chestplate. 

"That was a little unnecessary." Blue stated, still glancing at Horror. He could still see the swirl of energy in the zombie, all the way down to the higher concentration in his eyelight, currently unseen. 

Killer just experimentally waved a leg in Horror's direction, flinching when he hit the other. 

"Ow." Horror grumbled. 

Suddenly, there was a perfectly visible shovel being hefted up. "Oh hey, I can see that." Killer noted as he backed away. "What are you doing with that, by the way?" 

Blue was still the only one to see Horror looking at Dust. 

"You don't need to hit anyone over this." He warned, and suddenly the others realized he could still see the zombie. 

He could tell Horror had glanced at him, before the shovel was swinging at the now distracted Dust. 

"Wai-" 

Metal hit a denser material with a clang, loud enough to echo across the village as the enderman stumbled and flailed in shock. 

"What the hell?!" 

"Made me invisible! I can't see!" Horror raised his voice with a throaty growl. 

"Invis doesn't make you blind!" Dust snapped back, glowering at the shovel. A few purple embers huffed out on his breath as his eyes glowed brighter, ears pointing a little further down. 

Horror actually growled at him, a deep, guttural sound. Then he stumbled forward, leaning on the shovel. Blue could tell he was suddenly grabbing the hole as if it aggravated him with a lurch. 

Now he finally stepped in, catching him before he could fall over. 

"Are you alright?" 

"How do you see him?" Dust questioned in bewilderment. 

"I can still see his energy." Blue explained quickly while helping the other stand. 

"Are you unsteady, Horror?" 

"Can't see.. my feet." The other groaned, still clinging to the exposed edges of his skull. "Headache. Givin' me a headache." 

Blue carefully peeled the hand off, aware of the others staring. 

"I don't think that will help." He explained softly, tracing the invisible sleeve up to the fur, pulling the hood back over. Horror chose to cling to that instead, shuddering. 

"You can see energy?" Dust questioned in bewilderment, also shuffling awkwardly. He seemed unwilling to address the problem he'd caused. Blue just helped Horror to the nearest house, apologizing to the villager huffing at him and sitting the zombie on the bed inside. 

The villager quickly left when Killer made his way inside, Dust soon crouching awkwardly to peer through the doorway as well. 

"I don't get what's wrong." 

"I think being invisible is giving him a headache." Blue spoke quietly, hoping not to make it worse. 

"Is there a way to make it go away faster?" He asked Dust. The enderman cringed, rubbing his neck between the back of the helmet and chestplate. 

"Not that I know of. You just have to wait it out." 

Horror growled again, still a jarringly feral sound from him as he fell back on the mattress, clearly pressing his hands to his face. 

"Bastard." He intoned huskily. 

"I didn't know." Dust defended, face still pinched guiltily. 

"Maybe take the time to get to know someone before pouring weird shit in their holes." Killer pointed out. Everyone cringed at his phrasing. 

".. Don't put it like that." Horror muttered. 

Killer just scrunched at that, his form of shrugging as he pushed past Dust. 

"Whatever. I'm checking out something on the west side, you go on being invisible to everyone but Blue I guess." 

"Technically I can only still see his energy." Blue pointed out. 

"Same thing!" Killer was still walking off, Dust watching him leave uncertainly. 

"Do you want him to leave, or..?" 

"Just let him go. He likely just needs an excuse to explode somewhere out of the way." Blue waved dismissively. 

He turned back to Horror. "Is there anything I can get for you that might make your headache better?" 

The other grunted, waving an arm around, one that Dust couldn't see. 

"Take out the lights." 

Nodding at that, Blue went to work, carefully removing the lights in the house and blocking off the windows outside. Dust helped a little, still awkward until he teleported into the building, shadows deep and shrouding everything within. When Blue closed the door behind him, he saw the enderman sitting on the small table, helmet in hands. 

"..The light was kinda getting to me." He admitted quietly. 

"Too bright?" Blue asked. Dust nodded, bright eyes coloring the darkness just like Blue's own lights. 

"I understand. Every once in a while I get overwhelmed too. I try not to make it too bright in my mansion because of that." 

"Really? I hadn't noticed." 

"Well, it's a bit of a difficult balance. Too much darkness and the wild ones somehow always find a way inside." 

Dust understood perfectly, nodding slightly. 

"The blank ones' can be really annoying. I lit up my place trying to stop 'em, but they still 'port in all the time and dump their crap all over the fl-" BOOM. 

They all flinched, recognizing the sound of lightning hitting frighteningly close. Thunder echoed back from across the hills, Blue standing up in bewilderment. 

It was the middle of the day without a cloud in sight out there. 

"How??" 

It was Horror who sat up, unusually tense. 

"Skeleton riders."

Chapter Text

“I'm sorry?” Blue asked the zombie, who was facing him and difficult to make out when relying on energy alone. 

“Really bad for villagers.” Horror explained, stumbling to his feet. 

“How do you know about these riders?” Blue questioned, concerned. 

“Lightning when it's sunny.” Horror explained quickly, tottering out the door with his hood low over his face. Blue didn't miss the slight hiss of pain. 

“There's one, get too close and the lightning makes it five.” 

Distantly Blue heard the sound of a much less concussive boom, likely from Killer. It finally set in then, why Horror was so antsy. 

The other liked protecting the village too. 

He was aware of a threat to the village, skeletons. Even though logically they shouldn't be a threat for very long in the daylight? 

Then he saw them past the fence, shooting at one another. They weren't atop spiders like he'd assumed they would be. 

No, it looked like.. horses? Skeletal horses? 

One just shot one of the horses to death aiming at the rider. 

Blue suddenly realized there was just one horse left. A horse just as skeletal as himself. 

He bolted to the fence, catapulting over it with a bow in hand before he even hit the ground again. In two shots, the helmeted rider fell back, dropping off its steed as he turned and shot another skeleton. Their aim, as always, was largely inaccurate, as his own was straight and true. 

He turned to one of the remaining skeletons, only to notice the blob of Horror's energy lunge, tackling it and breaking several bones. 

Note to self, Horror was way stronger than he appeared. 

Turning again, he saw Dust standing over the other skeleton, dark sword in hand with its skull removed. 

The final skeleton wasn't even shooting at any of them, just firing at a green shape lumbering closer from the downward slope. Blue took his chance, chasing after the now aimlessly wandering horse and gently climbing on. 

He always wanted to ride a horse, but they would always buck him off. 

“I'm on a horse!” He suddenly cheered as the skeletal equine stood still. The others glanced at him as he hesitantly urged it forward- he wasn't sure how he knew what to do, he just did. 

It cantered forward, huffing with an almost metallic sound. 

“Yes! A horse! Finally!” 

“You.. want one of those?” Horror questioned, still crouching. 

“I've always wanted to ride a horse. They just never liked me. But this one's just like me, how could I not?” He beamed, noting that the spare skeleton had shot down the creeper, a strange dark shape slipping out of the viny thing as it collapsed. 

Dust glanced at the strange horse Blue was riding, then shrugged, lifting one leg to violently kick the skeleton into the fence, where something in it snapped and it went limp. Blue nodded thankfully to him, guiding the horse to walk around excitedly. He circled the growing lump of reforming creeper before suddenly taking off full speed along the hillside, laughing gleefully. 

It was so fast, blowing steam from its gaping nasal cavity as he turned around to come galloping back. This was incredible. He had never been so fast before. The wind whistling through his armor and ribcage- and the horse's- was delightful. 

He returned to see Dust staring in shock and Killer mostly reformed, Horror still invisible and hunching over. Blue hesitated, aware of the other's state. He slowed before the zombie, hesitantly sliding off with a slight scrape of bone. 

“Do you want to go back in the dark, Horror?” 

He grunted in affirmation, swiping wildly until his hand landed on a collarbone, the horse jumping with a startled whinny. It angled its skull to peer in Horror's direction, though clearly couldn't see him. 

“Why don't you climb on and I lead you both back, hmm?” Blue suggested. As giddy as riding a horse made him, it could wait a minute for a friend's welfare. 

Horror seemed to accept the offer, inelegantly climbing on the visibly uneasy equine, slumping over the bony steed. Blue quickly took a hold of the collarbone, using it to guide the horse back through the village. 

He didn't even need to tell Horror when they returned to the darkened structure, the zombie simply slid off and stumbled into the darkness. Blue winced when he hit the doorframe, but otherwise it seemed Horror was content to lay on the mattress in the dark and wait for his headache to lessen. 

There was a long moment of silence before Dust spoke up close by. 

“That thing is spooky.” 

Blue turned, seeing he meant the horse. 

“I suppose. But I can ride it! That's certainly enough for me.” He was already hopping back on, grinning despite himself. 

“A horse just like me! I can't just let that opportunity pass by, can I?” He rode in a circle, still delighted that there was a steed that tolerated him enough to do so. 

“Now I can travel further, too!” He proclaimed, then paused. “Can you go underwater as well?” He pondered aloud. 

“I mean just because it's a horse skeleton doesn't make it not a skeleton, I guess.” Killer spoke up, having returned. 

“That statement both made sense and didn't at the same time.” Dust muttered. 

Blue shrugged, turning to ride away gleefully. He distantly heard Killer shout something about being too fast as he went and leapt over the fence and straight onto the stony crags on the other side. Let the others wander the village for now, his reach around his village had quite suddenly doubled. 

So he kept riding across the stone, then through patches of sand and grass as he rode into the savannah, sparse umbrella canopies scattered across the dry grass. The horse was huffing slightly, breath still hollow and breezy as it galloped. Its hoofbeats were lighter than a living horse, tapping along the earth instead of heavy rhythmic thuds. 

He ran up and down hills he had briefly explored before, past a few deep ravines and dark holes going deep under the ground. Blue drew closer to a wall of green he had glimpsed in his travels, never having enough time in a day to reach before. Yet now it drew closer and closer, the horse never once running out of breath. 

The earth slowly grew wetter beneath him, a few shrubs rising from the richer soils. He had to switch to a meandering path to avoid brambles, yet it still grew closer. He distantly noted the withers in his mind frantically trying to take in the sights before they passed, chattering in fascination and excitement. 

He slowed a little, regarding the surroundings a little more carefully to give them a better look, all with the benefit of giving the horse a break. It panted faintly, as if it had only been on a light jog rather than galloping for several hours. That was some terrific stamina, he knew. 

The green was much closer now, and he could make out trees taller than anything else he'd seen before, thick trunks covered in vines and strange brown pods. There were bright shapes moving about in the canopy, and Blue could only feel giddy at the sight. There was so much new to explore, even without traveling to other dimensions. 

He probably should have told the others he'd be back soon, but Killer would figure it out. He had made it clear to the creeper that he loved to explore, he simply preferred his tether to the village too much to risk getting lost. 

As it was, he was going to finally check out this region, maybe bring back some wood, grab a few of those pods. They felt familiar, he would likely recognize them when he picked them up. 

The horse waded across a low stream, the humidity weighing on him as he finally entered a forest. 

A jungle, his mind specified. The trio paused, having yet to witness his strange knowledge bubble up before. Blue stopped beside a low-hanging pod, cutting it off the wide trunk to peer at it. 

Cocoa. 

Cocoa. There were a few beans scattered throughout the village storage, he'd yet to grow them yet! He was more focused on how to grow pumpkins and whatnot from the seeds Killer had provided. 

Delighted, Blue pocketed the pod, looking up to see.. birds. Bright colors and thinner than chickens, many cocked their heads at him, beady black eyes scrutinizing him and the horse.

They chattered to each other, one suddenly making a sound uncannily alike to bones clacking against each other. The others started repeating that, the horse snorting and shaking its skull. 

Blue blinked as suddenly one of the birds copied that sound as well. They were mimicking, and rather well at that. 

“Well aren't you a chatty bunch?” He noted in a mix of admiration and amusement. 

“Chatty bunch.” One of the birds repeated, squawking. Blue couldn't help but laugh in surprise, two of them copying that as well. 

He then flinched as a bird swooped down and landed on the horse's skull, making it arch its neck and snort irritably. The deep blue avian pecked curiously at his arm, two long feathers sticking up from the back of its head. There was a yellow spot behind its black beak on either side, and it cocked its head at him curiously. 

Blue reached to scratch it curiously, but it recoiled from his hand, tapping his phalanges with its beak before staring at his arm. 

“Oh?” He asked it, only for the bird to hop up on his ulna, talons clasping the bone easily as it shuffled closer, fixated on something on his side. 

He turned a little awkwardly, trying not to unbalance it as he followed it's gaze, spotting a clump of wheat seeds stuck to the hem of of his shirt, ever so slightly sticking out past the chestplate. The bird plucked them out, gnawing on them before nuzzling his clothes for more. 

“I'm sorry, I don't have any more.” Blue apologized, ignoring how a few others were still mimicking his words. He then paused, remembering a few seeds he'd collected to feed the chickens. With a shrug, he brought them out to offer the parrot. 

Parrot? Alright. It was a parrot. 

The withers were startled at the knowledge, but Blue didn't really care about that. The avian bobbed up and down in delight, squawking and crunching seeds. Blue glanced up at the sun through the trees, blinking at how close to the horizon it was already. He ought to head back. On the horse, he should make it before nightfall. 

Probably. He didn't have the best estimate of how long it took to travel on horseback yet. 

He hopped off long enough to cut through one of the great trees, regularly pausing to offer another seed to the curious parrot, the rest having vacated the area in what was likely boredom. 

Eventually he had enough wood, the horse still wandering nearby when he found it. 

To his surprise, the parrot suddenly chose to perch on his shoulder, pecking curiously at the metal of the armor. 

“Are you sure?” He asked. “I'm leaving now.” 

When the bird simply looked at him with one beady eye, Blue accepted that it would either change its mind at the last second or stay with him, hopping on his wonderfully fitting horse and spurring it back home. 

The parrot dug its talons in but remained on his shoulder, eyes wide as it took in the changing surroundings. Blue grinned to himself, watching it glance back the way they came before facing forward again. 

So he'd raced off into the horizon just to come back with new wood and pet. Hopefully Carrot wouldn't be jealous. 

Who was he kidding, Carrot wouldn't care about the parrot, he needed to worry about Killer deciding he wanted to kill it too. 

If the Destroyer started laughing at that concern, Blue pretended not to notice. 

An easy feat when it was just a voice in his mind, really. 

. • ° ° • . 

The shadows were long, and it seemed Horror was on a rampage. 

It wasn't his fault, he had no idea why the invisibility had yet to wear off. His only concern was the zombie was getting used to it, and was taking out his anger by hunting him down. Unfortunately for him, Dust was quick and agile, and he was still stumbling about like a newborn hoglin shoat, broadcasting his position his innumerable huffs and low growls. 

Dust had spent an entire hour hiding in the top of one of those giant mushroom things- trees- before Killer spotted him and cackled, revealing his position to the small predator hunting him down. 

Of course, he hadn't realized it until a ladder appeared out of nowhere- Horror had been chillingly silent until then. 

Of course, he was now hiding in the shadows of a roof, hoping he blended in with the patchy gray stone. He could still hear the grumbling and shuffling meandering about. And Killer, the bastard, he walked completely silently, helping. How the other made so little sound was beyond him, but the creeper kept sneaking up and scaring the crap out of him. The name creeper was making a little too much sense now. 

Dust knew he could probably teleport into the forest and hide there, but he was afraid of getting lost here. He didn't know the dangers of this place, and he knew that at least the “village” within the fence was safe. Was Blue safe out there? He couldn't have fallen off a cliff or into lava, right? Was there even lava here? There was so much water, he couldn't be sure. 

It was a weird concept, water just everywhere. He couldn't even see the other side of the lake Blue's place was built on. It just went on to a line that met with the.. sky. Which came to the lack of walls. Dust felt vertigo every time he looked up, seeing so much emptiness up there. So he tried not to look up. 

He caught the faint grunt of Horror spotting him somewhere in the distance, shuffling footsteps shambling faster. Dust cringed, still deeply unsettled by how he couldn't see what was absolutely coming for him, despite the other seeing him perfectly fine. He flashed away, ending up in a house on a ledge, window looking directly at the vast mansion. 

Peering through the windows, he noticed the cliff dropped down, a house nestled under the ledge. He could hide there. It looked difficult to get to without teleportation anyway. 

So he popped over, curling up in a ledge further up, hoping this one would last awhile. 

One of those cats strode over, sniffing the ground before looking up at him. That orange one, with eyes just as tangerine as its fur. It sauntered over, climbing the slope before hopping to a ledge not far, settling in with paws tucked under itself. 

“Milk.” 

Dust jolted slightly, having not expected the voice. 

“Uh. What?”

The cat blinked, staring at his clawed feet, tail twitching. 

“Milk turns potions off. Figure you don't have cows in the Netherworld. Right?” It looked over at the wall near his face, never quite meeting his eyes. 

It was.. sort of nice. 

“You could talk the whole time?” Dust was caught entirely off guard, trying to sit up in the low alcove. The cat licked his paw, then groomed his face for a moment. 

“Blue doesn't need to know.” He remarked. 

“Why, though?” He questioned, puzzled. 

“Maybe I like being just a cat for him.” He flicked his paw, then gestured at Dust. 

“If you can screw around with potions, then keep some milk and honey around. Tastes great on top of reverting effects. Honey only stops the nasty stuff though. Careful with your milk and whatever.” 

The feline suddenly tensed, ears up and eyes wide as it turned. There stood Killer, as dead silent as ever. The creeper had a positively evil grin of triumph. 

“I fucking knew it.” He hissed. 

The alarm quickly faded from the cat, who stood up with a stretch, back arching before he settled in a stand. 

“He'll never believe you.” He stated simply, hopping off the ledge and strutting away. 

“The fuck are you talking about?! He'd think the sky was purple if someone told him!” Killer spluttered. 

The cat ignored him, hopping up the cliffside until he was on top, looking down on them imperiously. 

“Sure.” 

“I will end you!” Killer hollered furiously, hissing the whole while. 

“Have fun with that.” Carrot called, already walking off. 

“That fucking-” The creeper hissed, white rings flaring in his hollow sockets. 

Dust snorted, then stiffened when he heard a grunt and thud. 

“Wai- wait wait! I think I know how to fix it!” He yelped, backing away from where he heard the zombie. Horror just grunted, acknowledging the statement. He couldn't hear any more footsteps, so he hoped the other was standing still. 

“The cat said milk shuts off potions! Do you know where that's found? We can just get that! Don't have to eat me or whatever!” 

He smiled anxiously in the direction he last heard the other. There was an unsettling silence. 

Then Horror huffed, still irritated. 

“Wasn't gonna eat you. Don't wanna.” 

Dust chuckled nervously, considering just going back through that portal and forgetting this whole experience. 

“In his defense, you did kinda lunge at him before violently killing and eating another enderman in front of him.” Killer pointed out, looking in Horror's general direction. 

The zombie grumbled. “I lost control. Redstone does that sometimes, and I didn't hurt you.” He added the last part as though making a point. 

“Sure looked like you were going to.” 

There was an annoyed huff sounding way too close to him before a cold, stiff hand clamped around his wrist. Dust jolted, yanking himself away only to drag the attached zombie into the air. 

“Down.” Horror asserted, sounding strained. Hesitantly, Dust set him down again. It really was unsettling that the other was still invisible. 

“Take me up there.” Horror ordered. 

“Where?” Dust questioned. 

There was a moment of silence, then the shovel appeared, pointing at the top of the cliff. 

“Wait, you'll take me too, right?” Killer started, creeping closer. Dust regarded his wrist, skin slightly indented by the hand gripping it before he sighed and reached over with his free hand. “Sure, whatever.” He muttered, picking the other up by what would have been a neck if he wasn't made entirely out of intertwined vines. 

He popped over to the top of the ledge, watching as Killer shook off the cloud of dancing embers before shooting off in the last direction the talking cat went. 

He stared as the creeper hissed and cursed quietly. 

“...You wanna just tell Blue the potion wore off?” He asked Horror. 

“Why?” The zombie asked, trepidation in his voice. 

“Well. The cat told me milk fixed it, but he didn't want Blue knowing anything about him being able to talk..? I just thought it'd be funny to fuck with him.” He gestured at the creeping creeper still searching for the feline. 

“Heh.” Horror huffed in mild amusement. “‘Kay. Cat asked.” 

Dust yelped as he was suddenly dragged in a random direction. 

“Where are we going??” He stumbled, armor clanging as he found his footing and followed. 

“Cows.” Horror stated. Dust fell silent, remembering the mention of cows from the cat. 

They ended up by a fence full of the lowing creatures, all lightly furred with strange patterns and colors Dust had never seen before. He rather thought they looked.. vaguely like hoglins, but also not. They didn't even have tusks, just one or two with horns. 

“Are they safe?” He automatically questioned, a little concerned when they were all staring. Dust glanced in Horror's direction, only to see something yellowish seemingly floating in the air. It looked a bit like that grass all over the ground like mycelium. 

Dust tensed when the not-grass opened the gate, cows crowding around as he was dragged in. 

Then the grass was suddenly shoved in his hand.

“Hey!” He hesitated when the animals were all staring at him. His wrist was freed, and he spotted a floating bucket. 

“This doesn't help..” Horror warned as the bucket disappeared around one of the cows. 

“Why do I have this grass thing?” Dust questioned. 

“Wheat.” Horror supplied. “They eat it. They like it more than grass.” As he spoke, one of the smaller cows boldly reached up and started nibbling some of the strands. 

Dust slowly lowered his hand, watching as two others strained to nip at it. 

“Do you have more?” He asked, hearing liquid splashing. 

“Wheat?” Horror specified. 

“Yeah.” 

“Not on me, no.” 

The wheat was eaten from his hand, and the cows seemed disappointed when there was no more, dispersing. Three remained, the small one, probably a baby- shoat? And what was probably the parents. One just stood in place, tail flicking. The other kept close to the little one as it sniffed him. 

“The shoat’s kinda cute.” He noted. The weird splashing stopped. 

“...Calf. The babies are calves.” 

“Ah.” He cringed at himself, slowly petting the.. calf. 

It preened under the attention, far more affectionate than any little hoglin he'd encountered. 

Suddenly there was sloshing that made him look up, recognizing the bucket as it was tilted in the air. He glimpsed something white inside before that liquid splashed on a surface he couldn't see and vanished.

Horror gasped, the bucket slipping before settling on the ground. Dust had to step back as suddenly a hazy red light appeared, rapidly sharpening into a familiar circle. An eye, seemingly disembodied. 

“That is.. astonishingly creepy.” He noted. 

The eye locked on him, winking out briefly. 

“..Did you just blink?” He asked. Now he was largely certain it was glaring. 

“Still can't see.” Horror grunted. 

“Well it definitely did something, I can see your glowing eye thing.” 

He watched as the eyelight flicked to the bucket. It was weird seeing it from an angle. It looked.. genuinely sort of round, the backside a deeper red, though glittering. He had the brief impulse to touch it. Which he would rather not do, as it was still located in the other's still invisible face. 

It seemed Horror had decided to try and drink the stuff, the.. milk, was it? Dust wasn't sure if that was safe. He knew it came out of the still living cow. 

Though it became quite clear that it was working, though absolutely not in the way he was expecting.

He ended up inhaling sharply as white bone sort of just shimmered into view, still largely translucent. He could see the other's face, but without any of that flesh still attached. 

“You look like Blue.” 

Horror froze, turning to look at him. Dust could almost make out an outline of the flesh, though it was colorless and shimmery. The zombie stared, then lowered the bucket to approach the side of the house by the fence, looking at a window. 

It was clear when Killer spotted them, as the creeper also gasped in surprise. 

“Oh shit.” 

“Yeah he looks like Blue but with fangs.” Dust agreed. He could see more bones now, translucent and only vaguely there. Horror seemed to stare at his reflection for a while before shaking his skull and returning to the milk. 

It was vaguely disturbing how his flesh and skin gained opacity until he was suddenly just.. normal again, save for a very slight shimmer to him. Dust suddenly realized that he had no idea when his clothes reappeared. They just did. He had no clue how the hell the potion's power extended to clothes or why. It certainly made sense when it didn't work on armor. 

Horror was looking at him.

“...You good?” Dust shuffled awkwardly. 

The other pointed a bony hand at him. “Don't potion me again.” 

The enderman raised his hands defensively. 

“I won't, I really won't.” He promised. 

The other shook his head, swaying. He pulled out the shovel again, leaning on it. 

“I didn't know you had balancing issues.” Dust admitted now that the other was pacified. 

Horror sighed, glancing to the side where Killer drew close from beyond the fence. 

Then he loosely gestured to his face. 

“I can't see very clear on this side.” He indicated the dark, foggy eye on the right. “It's really blurry. And dark. I'm always a little dizzy, too.” He then indicated the ear still attached on his right side. “Somethin' in here, I know that much. So I gotta.. see my feet. Or I get.. dizzier. Headache.” He briefly covered his eyesocket, eye scrunched shut. “I hate headaches.” He growled, though it was less angry and more distressed. 

“Sorry.” Dust let his shoulders fall, leaning on the fence. Horror nodded. “Just don't do it again. Especially the hole. It's sensitive.” 

“I'll keep that in mind.” He stepped over the fence then, pausing halfway over. 

“...Just out of curiosity, do you have have anymore of that red stone or whatever?” 

“Redstone.” Horror stated, already holding up a clump. “Why?”

Dust glanced at Killer, who just scrunched. 

“It just occurred to me that there's a chance it might do something to potions. Thought I'd see if it has anything to do with it. You eat the stuff a lot, right?” 

The other hummed, frowning thoughtfully at the glowing powder before holding it out to the enderman. 

Dust crossed back over the fence to take it, giving it a considering look. 

“You have anything you don't mind me experimenting with?” He asked, poking the luminous powder. 

“Uhh..” Killer started before jolting with one of those odd flashes. 

“A chicken! We've got a bunch of chickens, we can probably lose like five or so. C'mon.” He tossed his head, already turning away. 

He quickly led Dust to a smaller pen beside a house, where many small, feathered creatures chattered and squawked to one another. 

“Oh. Okay.” Dust was caught off guard at how small they were. “They're like.. mini cube sized.” 

“Cube?” Killer echoed. 

“They're these shelled things, their outside tends to be cubey.” He gestured vaguely. “The inside is all goo.” 

The creeper lit up. “Oh! Those slime things! Yeah, they're weird. Do you keep them on purpose?” 

“Kinda? There's a lot of them already. The goo makes a lot of potions. Never try it outside a potion, it's so fucking spicy.” He shuddered violently, plucking a mostly gray chicken from the bunch as he did so. Screw it, the chicken matched him. Had a few black feathers and everything. It probably wasn't going to die. 

Horror hummed behind him, revealing that he'd followed with unexpected silence. Could everyone here be super quiet when they wanted? The avian clucked in his arms, the weird red thing on its face wobbling as it twitched its head. 

“Wow, it looks tiny when you hold it.” Killer remarked.

“..Yeah.” He agreed, not knowing what else to say. 

“What? It's true! You're stupidly tall. Why are you so fucking tall?” 

“I dunno, I'm just like that.” 

“He's an enderman.” Horror pointed out drily. 

“Yeah.” Dust agreed. 

“Exactly; why are endermen stupidly tall?” 

At that point, Dust just rolled his eyes. Killer just wasn't going to make sense. 

“Why would he know that?” Horror spoke the obvious. 

“You never know. Could know anything random. We all know random shit.” He actually sort of had a point with that, following them through the gate Horror was currently holding open. 

“Think there's limits.” The zombie stated, swinging it shut again. “Would've preferred to just know about cooked food.” He added somewhat bitterly. 

Dust blinked at him, concerned but not wanting to unpack whatever that was. 

It just wasn't in his skillset. 

So instead, he paused halfway down the stairs, recognizing a sound in the distance. 

“I think I hear that horse thing again.” He noted, hoping to distract the pair. 

It worked, both creeper and zombie straightening before Killer snickered at him. 

“Can't believe you've got kitty ears.” 

“Have.. what?” He stared. 

Horror sighed. “Not the same at all. More like.. armadillo ears.” He waved dismissively, heading back up the stairs. 

Dust finally dragged a hand down his face, ignoring the chicken squawking in his arm. 

“Seriously, how many creatures do you have in this dimension? I swear you've already casually mentioned more than twice everything I've ever known about.” 

“Wait, really?” Killer perked up, intrigued. Dust considered walking through the wall of purple humming and warping only a few feet away. 

“..Yeah. You just have a lot here for whatever reason.” 

“Huh. That can't be right.” 

“Why not.” 

Killer didn't seem to notice his tone, instead spitting up a book. Dust recoiled at that, disturbed. 

He couldn't fully believe that the creeper was actually using his inventory. He had to just be.. fucking with him. Yet he was holding the book out to him impatiently. 

Dust sighed, taking it and frowning at the cover. Weird. “Is this a book on my own dimension?” 

“Yeah, I didn't read much. Pretty sure there's a lot of creatures in there. Like a lot.” 

Dust quirked up a brow, but otherwise humored him, only to be immediately baffled at the first page he flipped to. 

“The hell is a crystal chasm?” 

Already he was seeing entire places he'd never heard of. He peered through drawings of crystals lining familiar red walls, seeing something like a cross between a ghast and a magma cube but with weird crystals instead. 

Flipping through the book, he recoiled slightly at the sight of crimson mushrooms that just weren't like any he'd seen before. Pinewoods. What even..? 

He had to keep flipping back and forth through the book. Everything he saw was both familiar in the sense of clearly being from his dimension and yet utterly alien.

 It made it feel as though he came from somewhere.. desolate. He only knew the warped and crimson forests, the deltas, valleys and wastes. Those were the only environments he had seen. There were only seen so many creatures, and nothing in this book was anything he recognized yet. 

Where were the hoglins? What was a crimson mosquito? A dropbear? Straddlers seemed familiar, a bit like striders but.. gray. 

It didn't make sense. None of it made sense. 

How was there a book from a dimension he had never seen before full of so much information about his own world? Where was all of this now? 

“..How old is this book?” He found himself whispering. 

“I dunno.” Killer scrunched, not understanding his shock. 

Dust stared at a page all about a blaze lookalike called a wildfire. It had plating around its head like a helmet, rods now wide plates like shields. He felt.. sort of hollow. Maybe even scared. 

He didn't know any of this. 

…He didn't know what an Enddamned was either. 

He wanted to ask, to understand what had happened, because something did. It only made sense. There was just.. too much detail here. Turning a page backward, he came across paragraphs. Flipping again, he found the title for a creature: Nether dragon. 

Dragon. 

..Those voices in the sand wanted dragons to judge him for whatever reason. Were there even any dragons left? 

The book had nothing to say on the matter, only going on about the sapience and dexterity of the race. They were rough and intimidating, with blood as hot as their realm. Their graveyards became small ecosystems of their own, with strange creatures of death populating them. 

Dust felt oddly stricken as he read the line. 

Just like the feathered beasts of our own realm, they speak; however they breathe not poison, but raging inferno. 

There was so much insinuated information there, he didn't even know where to begin. 

“So uh.” He ignored how dry his mouth had become. 

“You have dragons?” He looked up to see Killer scoff, Blue having returned, sitting atop his steed at the top of the stairs. There was concern there. 

“Dragons?” The skeleton echoed. 

“If there are, then they're stupidly rare.” Killer stated. 

“Besides, isn't that a book on what lives in the nether?” 

“It mentioned dragons, which I never heard of. And it sort of insinuated something similar here? I think?” He hesitated, regarding the book again. 

“Something about feathers and poison breath?” 

“Are you alright?” Blue asked out of nowhere. Dust blinked at him, finally noticing the bird that wasn't a chicken perched on his shoulder. 

“I'm fine?” He replied, suddenly aware of how shaky his voice was. 

“.. Y’ don't sound okay.” Horror noted, standing beside the bony horse. 

“I guess I'm a little surprised?” He held up the book. “There's literally nothing here I recognize. Why is there so much here? I've been around for a while and have never heard of a-” He flicked a few pages. 

“Crimson mosquito. The hell is that.” 

Blue paused, staring off into the distance strangely. 

For a moment, he seemed almost horrified before that was wiped from his face. He pulled out the strange obsidian tome, title still eerie and luminous. 

“Maybe there is an explanation here.” 

He handed it to Dust gingerly, though there was a certain hollowness in his gaze that hadn't been there before. When he turned away to guide the horse elsewhere, Dust noticed that those soul fire bright, expressive eyelights had vanished. It made him look so unsettlingly blank that way. Not quite like a normal skeleton- his face was literally structured a little differently from that, simply too expressive- but it was.. close. 

“That wasn't just me, right?” Killer started in a low voice. “His eye things were gone.” 

“What?” Horror spun in place to look at Blue's retreating form. 

“I saw it too. Creeped me out.” Dust admitted, regarding the unnatural book in his hand. The other had been tucked to his side, next to the annoyed chicken. 

“Is he okay?” Killer asked, clearly attached to the skeleton as he leaned over the fence. 

Dust decided he'd had enough, teleporting to the covered porch of the mansion and heading inside, popping up a floor to drop the chicken in one of the empty rooms there, finding some spare netherrack and quickly stacking a low wall to keep it in there before wandering to a decent spot to read. 

He found a platform sticking out the back of the place, the floor made of some kind of greenish grate lit from below by lights he'd never seen before. Still, he chose to sit on the flat surface of a railing, leaning on a pillar holding up an extension of the roof and opening the book. 

Distantly, he had to wonder how he could even read it, though the thought was far from his mind.

Either way, just looking at the first page made it clear that there was a lot he didn't know. 

So many names and titles that he just knew nothing about. 

It was so jarring. 

What caught his eye, however, was a chapter simply labeled as “The War”. He started flipping to it, morbidly curious. He was aware that war was.. a lot of collective fighting between groups of people. 

Yet his knowledge of war paled in comparison to the sheer devastation described upon the pages of sand. 

It began with a growing hatred and jealousy. 

The Creators could build a great many things, vast cities and communities full of wondrous creations. Machines, both technological and magical. Their first race were great, golems of the earth, designed to help the land thrive and protect the people from the fairly minor hazards of the world. 

But with these walking monoliths, their territories spread. The wilds receded in all the worlds they inhabited, and the dragons pleaded them to slow down. Their cries went unheard. 

The creators failed to see the wrongness of their actions, and the dragons of their dimension were too forgiving to punish them for it. 

The dragons of the Nether were not so kind. 

They got frustrated, their molten caverns feeling smaller and smaller as they were forced from their own homes. They pushed back. They fought for their spaces, and the Creators grew angry. 

They did not see how they were to blame for the destruction, only saw the dragons’ retaliation and felt rage. 

Generations passed of a worsening cycle, the dragons being viewed less like equals and more as pests and enemies. The feathered dragons still pleaded to uncaring hearts, unaware of the vile hate now cast their way. They were the innocent ones, and yet they received the worst betrayal of the peace. 

The great golems were all simultaneously commanded to attack the dragons. Being so sudden and violent, the passive race could only scream and die, fleeing in terror. So many were caught before they could escape, that the rivers ran red with dragonblood. This caused seaweed and grass to bloom, suffocating the more delicate plants. The effects cascaded, and thousands of creatures died over the following years. 

The deaths were still blamed upon the dragons. 

But the harsher race of the Nether still knew of their Overworld kin, rushing to aid them in time. Many golems were destroyed, the enchanted waters that was their blood further poisoning the rivers and oceans. Their hearts flowed to the sea, broken, mere shadows of what they had been. 

The Creators were enraged at this, now actively targeting all dragons with their fury. They created horrifying weapons that deserve no name, built without a care for the destruction they would cause. Their own cities burned, destroyed, in the efforts to end the dragons that only defended themselves. 

When the red dragons fought back, the white ones learned that their passive nature would lead to their quick end, and stood at their side. 

It meant little when the Creators had all the knowledge and uses of magic at their hands. Their greatest spellcasters, potion brewers, enchanters, biomancers and builders came together to build weapons to eradicate the dragons, regardless of realm. 

They succeeded. The Withers were their creation. Their sole purpose was destruction and death, and the greater consequences of their power went forgotten as they attacked. 

The dragons saw these weapons and their power as their own were slain in the thousands by singular Withers acting alone. They knew they could not defeat utterly loyal abominations of bone, magic and metal. Even when they called to realms still unknown to the Creators, both minor and major. 

In their desperation, they combined their own magic in ways still unknowable today. They forced the mindless withers to have thought, every single one of them. They demanded they see the wrongs of their creators, to see how they had ruined not one, but two worlds. So much life had been lost, it was likely it would never recover. 

Their spells were messy, spilling out into the world, yet still, they worked. We awoke to our destruction, and we understood the evil the Creators had wrought. 

° • .

Dust suddenly pulled away from the book, shivering. It was unsettling, how abruptly it transitioned from they and them to we. All of this, and he had no idea. 

His world used to be more. There used to be people. The ruins he encountered regularly suddenly made an eerie amount of sense. 

Had they been cities once? 

He stared out into the night, faint lights gleaming underwater around the mansion and the dark waves rippling far into the distance until they bled into the sky. He briefly wondered just what those Creators had looked like. 

Was he really connected to him? The angry voices.. the Withers seemed to think so. He couldn't imagine how. Not if Blue and Horror were as well. They were completely different from him. 

Looking back to the book, Dust pondered if maybe that would be explained. 

So he went back to reading. 

. • ° 

We could only do what we were made to, and destroy the ones that would destroy everything along with themselves. We had been created for evil, our minds new and full of rage. We razed their cities, their villages, carved into the mountains to root them out of their burrows, and instilled within them the fear the dragons had known. 

In their terror, they scattered across the two realms, taking with them our kin that had yet to awaken and feel our rage. We fought our own blind brothers and sisters in the realm of fire and darkness, and our bodies became dust, flooding entire swathes of land. 

Even in death, our minds continued to wake, drowning in anguish when we lacked the strength to avenge the land we were made to destroy. So we found other ways. We drowned our creators with us, forever trapped in death and unable to escape. 

The dragons learned from us, and cast their magic upon those that still lived. 

All those that cowered in the realm of fire found themselves stripped of their flesh, their bones charred and cursed with our own sickness eternally. Our power trapped within their hollow frames forevermore, reduced to nothing but stark reminders of their cruelty. They could only blindly wander the remains of the fortresses they had once built to defeat the dragons. 

And yet, many still survived, fleeing to the realm from which they had come from, still chased by our kind as they burrowed under the earth. They built their sanctuaries in the dark, struggling to discover another escape. 

Their first attempts lead to a broken realm of death, the horrific monstrosities escaping to destroy them before we could find them. The blight remains, spreading through the veins of the Overworld like a disease. 

But still, the dwindling numbers searched for new realms, less violent and frightening. 

They broke into the dimension of spirit, long closed off when the dragons there had first learned of their uncontrolled growth. 

But they found their way through, and their rage returned once more. The dragons of the realm were blindsided by the sudden, horrific bloodbath. Their beautiful glowing forests and lakes, their floating starfields and glowing mountains were razed by flying machines and what few withers yet to wake remained. 

They could only panic and fall beneath the tide. The hide of their wings was carved into cruel imitations so the Creators could finally fly by their own power, stolen from the dragons themselves. Their luscious forests died, collapsing into the void, and their flying creatures starved. 

In their desperation, they contacted the other dragons, only to find they too, were left doomed to die. Their fear turned to rage, and they chose not to fight back, not to turn their devices against their creators, but set a great curse upon the builders themselves. 

So many used so much of their strength, they collapsed in death upon its conclusion. 

The creators warped, bodies too small to contain the power bestowed upon them. Their minds were stripped of who they once were, contorting into unrecognizable beings as they were granted the power to cross the dimensions regardless of portals. They were left with nothing, not even their minds, so that they could see the terrible effects of their hatred. They became the hollow Enddamned, cursed to wander aimlessly in the shadows of the worlds as they had reduced them to. 

The other dragons permitted this, and the kindest, most merciful of the dragons, the ones that begged the most to receive nothing but unimaginable violence in return, finally cast their own curse. 

Even in this, they chose mercy. They reduced the minds of all the creators that remained on their world so that they may never rise up to destroy it again, changing them only slightly, allowing them to forget what they once were. They allowed them only a fraction of magic, just enough to defend themselves weakly from the now mindless creatures that besieged them. 

And thus, with the four curses, from the Withers and the dragons, all races that could truly think for themselves passed on into the void. 

Now only we remain, with the souls of those we took with us, and perhaps we too, shall fade as the realms might one day return to life. 

Except not even that can be so assured, not when the damned are escaping back into life. Perhaps the cycle will only repeat itself in a new form, with the different cursed remnants destroying themselves instead. 

In this, we have failed the dragons. 

° • . 

Dust set the book down beside him. 

He.. had no words. 

Slowly, he pulled his legs up, hugging them as his talons dangled over the ledge. 

So that was how it happened. 

He was.. a cursed being. 

Great. That was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. 

The rage directed at him suddenly made a little bit more sense. 

They had known what he didn't. They had known where he had come from. They were so angry.. because he could do what those Creators could? 

He was shaking. Dust didn't know why. 

He found himself slowly standing up, holding the book loosely as he wandered through the corridors. Blue should at least have his book back. If he held onto it much longer, he might just have a breakdown. 

He was probably having a crisis. Everything felt fuzzy and distant, and the hateful words of those withers were echoing in his head again. 

His eyes slid over the kitchen where Horror was, and he heard the other speak distantly. He couldn't remember what it was. He just wandered off, moving on autopilot. 

Dust found Blue outside, playing around with that sand, arranging it in a vague shape, twirling a strange blue sphere in one hand thoughtfully. He seemed to be talking to himself, though Dust couldn't really understand. His ears had gone fuzzy. 

But then the skeleton looked up, recoiling slightly as his face switched to concern. Dust saw him ask something, but he really couldn't make out what it was. His thoughts were sluggish. 

It came to him after too long a pause. 

Blue was asking if he was okay. 

“I don't know.” He rasped, the admission leaving him trembling. He could hear again, Blue speeding over. It occurred to him what those villagers were, sort of completely random. 

“Am I related to your villagers?” He whispered in disbelief. It felt like such an insane thing to suggest, but if what he was assuming was right, then.. 

“What happened?” Blue was asking, ever so gentle. He was so stupidly nice for someone he just met. It still seemed so important, he had to say something. 

“There was a war. They created withers somehow.” He began, his face stinging. When had he gotten wet? 

“I've been told about some kind of war.” Blue admitted, guiding him over to sit on a ledge. 

“Did you read about it?” 

“There used to be dragons in. Three? Dimensions? But they're dead. The withers were made to kill. Them. And everything else?” He was stuttering, static in his words. 

“And I'm. I guess I'm. I'm just one of them? I don't even know what they looked like before. I don't. I'm not.. hateful, right? Fuck, I don't know why I'm asking this-” He pressed his palm to his forehead, trying to organize his thoughts. 

“I don't believe you're one of them, Dust.” Blue drew him out of the hole he was spiraling into. 

“What?” 

The skeleton shook his skull. “I think you likely came from them, but you're not the same.” 

“But it said-” 

“And generations continue to come and go.” Blue pointed out. “And I am sure that while you are related to those initially cursed, it seems ridiculous to think you are the same.” 

Those brilliant cerulean orbs seemed to stare into him, both oddly comforting and deeply unsettling. He had to look away, feeling oddly guilty for it. 

“I think it's silly to blame yourself for the actions of those that came before you.” 

Dust stared at the ground, struggling to formulate a thought. 

“.. Isn't everything still dead?” Was all that came to mind. 

Blue hummed, reaching down to tug up some grass. 

“I rather think this is rather alive.” He mused, fiddling with it. Dust couldn't help but snort. His hand smarted slightly, causing him to look down. 

There was a faintly lilac droplet glowing there. Even now, the sting of water had faded. He could mess with his biology using the strangest of potions, but he still couldn't change the fact that water would always hurt him a little. 

He wasn't even sure why he was crying. Yeah, he was shaken by what he'd read, but.. he still wasn't sure what he was feeling. Suddenly, Dust was blinking as Blue wrapped the grass around his wrist, the blades woven together in a strange pattern. 

“Wh..at?” 

“It's a braid.” Blue explained, tying the ends together. “It feels like something I've done before.” He admitted. He fell silent after that, staring at the ground somberly. 

Dust couldn't tell what he was thinking, but when he looked up, he was still pondering. 

“You know.. I might be closer to these Creators than you are.”

The enderman recoiled at the idea. “But they're fucking evil. You couldn't be nicer if you tried.” He didn't need to know the other for very long to see that, it was just that obvious. 

Blue smiled sadly. “I'm still undead.” He pointed out softly, reaching up to tap his skull. “And I know things. It's strange. I just braided you a bracelet, and I never learned how to do that. I ought to know where that knowledge came from, but I don't.” 

He stepped away then, that same sort of sad smile on his face. “I don't even know if I used to be alive at some point. If I used to be someone else. I'm.. alright with not knowing, I think. If these Creators were so bad, why would I want to remember being one if I had been?” There was an odd look in his lights, the book in his hands now. 

“You should go inside, Dust. Try that sleeping thing. It really does help.” 

He snorted at that, awkwardly standing. His legs felt unsteady. “I know.” He cringed at how pathetic his next sentence sounded. 

“..But I'll try.” 

Out of sheer embarrassment, he teleported away.

Chapter Text

Blue was building a wither. 

Not very well, exactly, but he was doing it. 

He was putting together a lot of things, hoping the energy would multiply against each other. He was relying pretty heavily on random and offhand comments on what the trio remembered withers to be like. 

Unfortunately, they couldn't recall much. 

So he was doing some weird things. Like buying more rods off the cleric for their energy, coating them in redstone for that energy and trying to put them into the sand like they were bones. He'd pressed Dust's star into the somewhat malleable sea heart, hoping that would sort of act as.. a heart. 

He couldn't be sure of the actual biology of withers. The book was surprisingly unhelpful in that area, mostly describing how weak the tri-skulled shadows were in comparison. At least he knew hat he had to improve the most. Sort of. 

Blue was sort of skimming through the book as he worked, trying to memorize everything. He had no idea what would actually happen to it after he did this, but he couldn't expect to still be able to read it. 

He ended up remembering how obsidian was supposed to be a channel of magic, racing around to grab some more and carve it into more “bones”. He'd found that Dust had just left some freaky black skulls slightly larger than his own on a shelf inside, taking them and some gold. Gold was supposed to channel magical energy as well. 

The entire time he worked, the voices were fretting over how in the worlds this was supposed to work. Blue had no idea. He just put his all into it. If a shadow of withers could come to life through simply dropping miscellaneous skulls on sand, then adding a bunch of conduits of power should really trigger.. something. He wasn't yet sure. He just knew that a blue light flickered off his phalanges when he touched it now. That had to mean something. 

Lapis was important too. He ended up carving rings from it, briefly entering his kitchen to use the blast furnaces and anvil there. Horror was baffled at first, until he explained. Then the other wanted to help. 

His idea was to fill one of the skulls with redstone. Blue shrugged at that, adding a small gold and lapis-ringed disc into one of the sockets. He liked to think he was creating eyelights for the would-be wither. Would they really be lights if they were solid material? He had no idea. 

Horror kept asking if they were making a mistake with every other thing, while Blue chose to assure him that they were only erring on the side of caution. 

The Destroyer was even less confident, but Blue was sure he'd be proven wrong! He just needed to finish the lapis and gold binds to hold the round sea heart to the white star. Lots of magic there. And withers were supposed to have a lot of magic. 

A tail was mentioned by Geno, though he wasn't sure how that worked structurally. So he extended the sort of obsidian spine he was carving, interlocking pieces together using lapis, sort of like a chain. Somewhere in the book he read something about withers having blades at their tails, and he initially created one out of diamond. However, that didn't seem like enough. 

Horror thankfully had skimmed the other book, pointing out that netherite was an extremely durable metal from, unsurprisingly, the Nether. That explained the armor Dust wore. 

The enderman reappeared then, having been watching silently from somewhere nearby. He had ingots ready, simply taking the weapon to one of the tables and somehow coating it. 

The enderman added his piece by carefully adding potions and potion ingredients into the mess of sand and materials. A weird plant called nether wart was coated in ground up rods and smeared in a gelatinous substance he called magma cream, something he used as a proto potion to protect against fire, which he figured withers probably had. That inspired Blue to start carving both lesser and greater enchantments into the difficult to work with obsidian “bones”. 

Dust even added another two potions that increased strength and sped up healing, though none of them were sure if that would do much. Potions had short-term effects, after all. Though maybe the enchantments would help. Blue wasn't sure how the two magics interacted. 

They had to be doing something right, though. Horror's eyelight was burning brighter in close proximity to the thing, as was his weirdly luminous tongue. The others, now including Killer, were freaking out a little as a cerulean glow rippled from Blue's ribcage as well, Killer's sockets permanently displaying white rings as Dust's multicolored eyes shone unnaturally bright. They all could feel the energy. Blue could see.. only a little. It concerned him. 

However, it was already late afternoon the next day, and they were running out of things to add and change. Dust had poured potions into one skull to the point of the sockets actually appearing slightly pinkish inside, and Blue had ground up lapis and redstone to fit in the slightly damaged skull. 

Eventually they accepted that there wasn't anything else to do with it, and they all stared at the skulls and.. body. They just had to attach them. 

…They hadn't exactly created it with three heads in mind. 

No one knew how to do that. 

So while Dust added a few solidified tears from something he called a ghast into the sockets of his chosen skull, Blue used a bit of lapis to begin joining the first black skull, still leaking excess redstone. 

He was suddenly feeling.. oddly faint. His mind felt fuzzy, and he was distantly aware of energy seeping out of him for some reason. 

Still, he took the next skull, careful with the damaged side, and gently pressed it into the sand on one “shoulder”. He heard the others asking questions, but it was as though he were hearing them from underwater, reaching for the final skull. His vision swam dizzyingly with smears of black. 

Eventually he was given the skull after a disconcerting pause, wincing at the slight sloshing he heard from within, moving to press it-

His vision whited out. 

. • ° ° • . 

Killer was freaking out. 

Blue had stopped responding, simply attaching the skulls with a mechanical precision, the weird flames fluttering wildly as that dreaded black sand just appeared around him, seemingly flowing out from his ribcage. 

The real terror came when those flames flared as he added the last skull, then just collapsed. Dropped like a rock, completely limp and lifeless, even down to a sudden lack of that cerulean fire. 

He rushed in to at least drag him away from that thing, the black particles buzzing over it like a swarm of angry bees, a mix of red and blue light shining through the gaps. Horror soon joined him to help pull Blue away, the weird sand growing thinner, revealing something that wasn't sand anymore underneath. 

The brown sand was just gone. There was an actual shape there now, red glowing here and there as well as a familiar blue. The shape seemed to be convulsing, like something alive. Killer was unsettled by it, simply putting himself between it and his friend. 

The smoke/sand finally cleared, and the thing was still. 

It was skeletal.. in shape. But like the materials used to create it, the bones were black and a vivid, luminous scarlet. The ribs and lower arms were clearly still colored by the redstone used in their creation, though looking up.. he first saw the pooling blue oozing out of sockets. Eyesockets that were scrunched shut, still leaking what seemed like molten lapis or liquid blue fire. It seemed to be.. burning into the suddenly altered cheekbones. 

A face that.. well, looked more like Blue than a regular skeleton. 

All three faces did, though only the middle one seemed to be pouring that molten whatever from its sockets. The other two seemed to be blinking and disoriented. He saw red-blue and a weird pink before realizing the pair of skulls were floating, mostly because one of them suddenly rotated in place. 

A single, jarringly blue-red iris was locked onto him. The damaged right side only had a small, white oval within, still gazing unerringly into him. It was like combining the unsettling intensity of Horror's gaze with the soul-searching depth and soft edges of Blue. Killer was not prepared for that combination. 

He was even less prepared for what happened next. 

“Hello, Killer.” 

. • ° ° • . 

Blue startled awake to the sound of intense creeper hissing and enderman screeching, recoiling from the noise. He squinted up to see Killer in front of him, leaning way too close without even looking at him. 

Beyond that, he noticed a strange shape lifting off the ground. 

He knew. 

So he sat up, ignoring the wave of lightheadedness that came and went after that, instead looking at what he hoped would be a friend. 

His gaze met a blue-red iris, colors split diagonally in half. He knew who it was the moment he heard the other speak. 

“Are you okay?” 

Now Killer had noticed him, spluttering in shock and concern. Blue simply waved it off, climbing to a stand. “You're worried about me when you're the one who just gained a body! I think.” He hesitated, seeing the wither sit up on a skeletal tail, hands touching the face in the middle delicately. 

“I'm not.. entirely sure I did?” Geno admitted awkwardly, regarding the scene. 

“The fuck's going on??!” Killer demanded. Blue winced, turning to explain when suddenly he recognized Fresh's voice speaking up nonchalantly. 

“Oh the Elders kinda just shoved us in his skull to make us a body somehow. We been watching y'all that way.” 

“What the fuck-” The creeper glanced at Blue in dismay. 

“I'm sorry, I just wasn't sure how to explain suddenly hearing voices.” Blue admitted, cringing. 

“I feel like that's something that needs a bit of warning?” Dust pointed out, sounding close to hysterics. 

Blue sighed, looking over at the enderman. 

“You're right, I should have mentioned something sooner.” 

“This was a mistake.” He distinctly recognized the Destroyer speak, though there was an echoing static in his words, both like and unlike Dust. Blue glanced over, startling at the sight of brilliantly glowing red sockets, recognizing his gold and lapis disc now transformed into light, a smaller, yellow-white light sitting in the other socket, looking up from multicolored phalanges to regard him. 

“This isn't right.” 

“Well it's definitely close enough.” Geno automatically contested. “You can't expect a perfect replica given the situation. We don't even know what we're supposed to look like.” 

“We'll it's not this!” 

Blue sighed, already used to their arguments. 

“So what, are you a mistake then?” Horror spoke up, a little annoyed. A little understandable when the zombie had been the one to fill that skull with redstone. It clearly showed in the glowing sockets, though the new blue lines were a little strange. Could they be wiped off? They already seemed.. oddly solid there. 

“You know what? Maybe we should call him that. It's clearly by mistake he's here at all.” Geno decided. 

“Well fuck you too!” 

“I'm I wrong? Prove me wrong. Try to have some semblance of politeness for five seconds.” 

“Look at this, moron! This is a screw-up!” 

“You're just proving my point!” 

“Both of you, please.” Blue cut in before it could get worse. “Geno is right, you saw how hard we worked to make sure you had a fitting body. Can you not forgive a few errors made here and there? We didn't have any idea of what true withers looked like. You know this.” 

The Destroyer glared, though it didn't have as much heat as he expected. 

“This is more than a few errors.” 

Suddenly, the previously silent skull slowly turned, the oddly teardrop-shaped magenta eyelights darkening in color. 

“If ya so obsessed with the errors, why don't you just make it your name?” 

“Make it- I have a name! I'm not picking one of those stupid things!” 

“We're not exactly with the others right now, wouldn't it make sense to have a simpler name in the meantime?” Geno sighed. 

Actually, how could he even do that? He was just a skull. 

“You know what? What is your name?” Killer demanded. 

“Destroyer.” He spat, ominous red sockets pulsing brighter. Blue suddenly realized that cerulean flames almost as dark as lapis were rippling down the back of his black spine. 

Killer burst out laughing at the name. Horror facepalmed at his brazen attitude. Only he would do that. 

Skeletal hands were suddenly gripping the creeper, though he didn't care. Why would he? He couldn't die. Geno was demanding Killer be put down, there was no need to be ridiculously violent over a name, they were better than this.

Finally, Blue had enough, grabbing an ulna, ignoring how something shifted inside, cold flames dancing across his hand as the red bone buzzed in his grip. Three skulls stared at him, Fresh looking uncertainly between him and the still cackling Killer. 

“Please.” He implored quietly. “I thought you wanted to be more than a living weapon.” He pointed out, still faint. The multicolored eyelights stared at him, trembling, shrunken. 

“He's right.” Fresh agreed, always aware and reasonable. 

Suddenly, the red and yellow phalanges dropped Killer, who'd gone awkwardly silent when it stopped being funny to him. 

“I don't even know- how do I-” The moment of fragility passed, and suddenly he was glaring again, shooting up into the air, flying on magic alone. Then the flight stuttered, tail waving before he awkwardly crashed into the top of the porch with a whistling shriek. Blue was caught off guard by how unlike anything else it was, more like the sound of a fierce wind than a voice, echoing before he slunk into the mansion to disappear. 

Everyone continued to stare after the wither was gone, before Dust shifted in place. 

“So uh. In your head, huh?” Now their attention was on Blue, who shuffled his feet and crossed his arms with a wan smile. “I'm sorry about that, I really am. It seemed more reasonable to wait until they all could speak for themselves to explain. I'm not sure I even knew how to deal with other minds in my skull?” 

Dust pressed his palms together at that, long fingers pointing at him. “Okay. So. You had.. withers just planted in your skull, and they somehow magically transferred into the fucked up wither we just built. And now that's in your house? …Shit, we're going to die.” 

“We are not going to die. Destroyer is just confused and afraid. And grumpy, but he's always that.” Blue remarked, glancing back at the mansion. 

“You did not just call him Destroyer unironically.” Killer snorted. Blue gave him a look. “It's the name he wants to be addressed as. No, I don't think it's a very nice name, but I won't call him something he doesn't want just because of that.” He wasn't going to address the fact that the creeper actively chose the name Killer. 

The creeper sighed dramatically, Horror frowning. 

“You said he was scared?” 

Nodding, Blue elaborated. “I saw it. He likes to hide behind anger, but he's actually afraid. I'm not sure why exactly, but I do know that he's new to having a body, and is still attached to others despite that. I imagine that is stressful.” 

“Wasn't he alive before?” Dust hesitantly asked, oddly nervous. “The book uh.. where is it, actually?” He glanced around, the tome no longer where it had been left on a low table built beside their work area. Blue had the feeling that it wouldn't be found, instead answering the first question. 

“All three of them were not conscious while they were still alive. They only awoke some time after death.” 

The enderman paled at that, ashen skin turning a lighter, almost whitish hue. Horror was stricken, and even Killer was appalled at the concept. 

“Do they not remember.. anything from that?” Dust quietly asked. 

“No.” Blue gently answered, looking away. “They only know vague ideas from withers that did wake before death.” 

Horror abruptly started walking, heading for the mansion. “Where are you going?” Blue asked, concerned. 

“Want them to try food.” The zombie replied simply. “They deserve to try.” 

“Do we even know if they can eat? They might be like me.” Killer pointed out. Meaning they would get nothing from food. 

“Or like Blue.” Horror shot back, having reached the gate, heading inside. As in inexplicably being able to eat. 

With a jolt, Blue started to follow, hoping to help. 

The zombie slowed to let him catch up, and they made their way to the kitchen, where Horror promptly reached into the barrels along one wall to bring out random foodstuffs. Blue was a little surprised. He hadn't stored anything in there yet, last he'd checked. 

Horror noticed his confusion, humming. 

“Moved some stuff around to make things easier. I can move it back.” 

“Oh! No, you don't need to do that. I was rather wondering where you got it from. I haven't kept anything in the way of food in the place.” 

The other nodded, regarding a cookbook set on the counter in the middle of the room as he busied his hands with a repurposed furnace. 

“Found your.. storage.. cave?” He trailed uncertainly. 

“Next to the terraces?” Blue specified, now looking to see what his barrels were filled with. 

“The fields, yeah. Moved some of that in. Want to try farming too.. later.” 

“It's really a lot of waiting.” He admitted. “Some crops require watering more often, but most of the time having water channels seems to take care of everything on their end until harvest.” 

“I can do that.” Horror decided, having made small round shapes that he was fitting into the lit furnace. 

“What did you make?” Blue questioned, a little surprised at the speed the other had worked. Horror just slid the open book over to his side, letting him read the recipe. 

“Chocolate.. chip cookies?” 

The zombie grunted, bringing out a cluster of something brown. “Chocolate is weird to make. Came from those beans in the village.” 

That had Blue lighting up, bringing out the pod from his inventory. 

“I found where the cocoa beans come from yesterday! They grow on trees!”

Pausing, he whipped it out of his inventory, admiring the shell. “Do you think I should start growing more?” 

Horror simply walked across the kitchen and offered him the misshapen brown things. Blue hesitated, then decided the hand was clean enough and gave it a try. 

“..Huh.” He noted, unsure. 

“Bitter and sweet?” Horror asked. 

“I think so?” 

The chocolate vanished into his own inventory, Horror now flipping through the book to find a page he'd already memorized. Blue was treated to the sight of how basic cocoa was made, as well as turning it into several forms of chocolate. Bitter dark, semisweet, and milk sweet. There were references to numerous goods that involved the forms of chocolate in their creation. 

“.. Cooking is complicated.” Blue begrudgingly admitted. 

That had the zombie smirking a little, amused as he headed for a smoker. Blue realized that it had been on the entire time, and he couldn't recall Horror actually putting anything in there. No, the other simply glanced at the clock high on the wall, sort of nodded bobbed his head to himself, and slid on some gloves to reach inside the thing. 

Blue was faintly surprised the other could even fit both hands in them, he'd made those gloves with only his own phalanges in mi- oh. 

He was wearing a larger mitt on the other hand. 

He wanted to help, but it was quickly becoming obvious that Horror already had everything handled on his own, so instead he chose to just ask. 

“Is there anything I can do to help?” 

The scarlet eyelight regarded him with delight at that question, only turning away to check on whatever he'd pulled out. Then Horror waved him over, Blue following dutifully as the zombie took the covered pot- he recognized it from one of the villager’s chests- over to the counter in the middle of the room, setting it on a wide plate there. He rather thought it looked like baked clay. Had Horror made that in his spare time as well? 

But then the lid opened and he was hit with a heavy smell, rich and enticing. The smell only seemed to excite the other further. Blue recognized bits of carrot and potatoes in there, but not much else. 

“What is that?” He found himself asking. 

Horror gestured to a different cookbook, left on the table in the corner between appliances. 

“Page 152. Pot roast. Found the onion and garlic growing by the woods and water.” 

Looking through the weathered pages, Blue found what he was talking about, watching as Horror pulled out a thick slab of meat from the pot to a thick, flat chunk of wood atop the counter. He just started pulling it apart with utensils, steam billowing off it, carrying more of that smell alongside it. 

“You seem to know everything about cooking.” Blue pointed out, a little awed. Horror beamed at him briefly, turning back to pulling the clearly softened meat apart. “I'm just following instructions.” He admitted, going to a cupboard and pulling out a low bowl Blue finally recognized. That he had carved meticulously, originally intent on giving the village better dishes before realizing it took a while to finish just one set. He'd thought his time was better spent doing bigger things until he was ready. 

Horror ladled some of the veggies and broth still in the pot into the bowl, adding a fair amount of meat on top before taking a carefully lidded jar and drizzling the brown liquid inside over the whole thing. 

Blue could only admire it until Horror pushed a fork into it and slid the whole thing over to him. 

“I- you- really? You seem to have spent a while on this, wouldn't you want to try it first?” He stammered. 

Horror twitched his head to the side. 

“Want wither to try it first.” He then frowned slightly. 

“..Do they need three bowls?” 

Blue started to answer before pausing himself. 

“..I don't know.” 

The zombie slapped his meaty hand on the counter. 

“Then you give them that, I make another bowl. Come back and tell me if they do or I eat it. I'll make a third anyway, Dust should have some.” He hesitated as Blue carefully picked up the already hot bowl. “Come back for the cookies, too.” 

“I'll keep that in mind. Thank you.” Blue nodded, careful to not spill the hearty food. 

He then wandered through the rooms, looking to find wherever his new friends had gone. He spotted Fluffy through the dresser blocking the book room, on the floor and seemingly grooming their pedipalps. No wither, though. Looking through the storage rooms on either side of the foyer proved unsuccessful as well, so he headed up the staircase to the second floor to wander the maze of empty rooms. 

They were mostly as empty as usual, save for a random wall of red he had to peer over, finding a lone gray chicken inside, huddled in a corner with the parrot poking around. No wither, though. He'd come back for that chicken later, bring it to Dust. He recognized it as the one he'd been holding when he came back on the bone horse. 

So Blue climbed the short flight of stairs to the atrium, circular stone in the wood wall on one side with the open balcony all the way at the other end. He spotted a dark blade hanging from the mezzanine before it quickly pulled out of sight. 

“Are you three alright?” He called out. 

Slowly, one of the disembodied skulls floated up. For a moment, he couldn't remember which one it was before he heard Fresh. 

“We're kinda still attached to each other.” 

Blue winced at that. “I'm not sure how to fix that, I'm afraid.” 

Then he held out the bowl. “We thought you'd like to try some food, however you are able. This is called a pot roast!” 

He waited patiently as Fresh stared, then Geno floated up, confused. Finally, the Destroyer lifted up, a large, multicolored hand clasping the rail as he stared. Blue was secretly a little relieved they weren't in his mind before, because he felt a little selfish for being so proud of how beautiful the other looked. 

And terrifying, but that was probably just because he was literally a wither sort of reincarnated. 

“We don't exactly eat.” Geno pointed out. Blue smiled at that, quoting Horror almost verbatim. 

“Can't or won't? Just because it's not necessary doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.” He held it higher, holding back his amusement when the wither literally sniffed. 

“Smells nice.” Fresh noted. 

“It does, doesn't it? Horror was cooking it for hours, and he wants you to be the first to try it!” Blue explained excitedly. He almost gasped when the other lightly leapt over the rail, drifting to the floor in one smooth motion until he was standing best he could with only a tail and no legs. 

Blue fell silent for a moment, just sort of admiring what was before him. The previously purple-black sheen of obsidian had transformed to a matt black, though the cracks between vertebrae still gleamed with blue light, deeper than his eyelights, of soul fire, changed by lapis as it was. 

What had been a gold sternum to hold the carefully bent redstone-coated blaze rods had truly solidified into a flat yellow, though behind it he could glimpse the structure he'd built to protect the fragile combination of sea heart and star had sort of disappeared, though something still remained if the luminous gold and teal star with purple and blue highlights meant anything. 

“You're beautiful.” He finally admitted, a little awkward after staring. 

The skeletal hand paused in its slow approach to the bowl, and he was treated to three different reactions. The Destroyer was deeply uncomfortable and confused, Fresh was only confused, and Geno was definitely a little flushed. 

“You're complimenting your own abominable creation.” The rudest one finally replied, snatching the bowl and staring at it like it was an alien object. 

Blue was already used to ignoring his unpleasant remarks, choosing to take it as accepting his compliment. 

So instead, he gently took hold of the free hand, ignoring how the other scowled at him for it as he turned it over, comparing it to his own. 

“I'm not sure how, but not only did they grow in size, but most of the gold seems to have changed into redstone?” He knew he'd carved the metacarpals out of obsidian- and those were still black- but the rest of the phalanges had been carved out of gold because it was easier to work with the softer metal at such a small scale. 

Somehow only the ends remained golden yellow, the rest having changed to a faintly luminous carmine. Even the delicately carved enchantments seemed to have vanished, and the texture felt not like metal but real bone. Though he could still feel his carvings despite them visibly not existing. There at least was a slightly glossy texture to what had been obsidian still, though it still looked like true bone, just.. black instead of white. The magic behind that was simply beyond him. 

Instead of treating the other's hand like finely made china to be looked at, Blue adjusted the hand to hold the fork properly- just in case for whatever reason they had no idea how to do that. “Here. You eat the stew with the fork. I hope you like it, Horror was clearly very proud of it.” He then backed away, remembering what the zombie had wanted. 

“I'll be right back, there were also new cookies he wanted you three to try!” 

Blue then raced back through the mansion to the kitchen, finding the cookies had, in fact, been finished, the round shapes having transformed into discs. Horror had two other bowls of pot roast sitting near the entrance, looking up as he was peeling cookies off the tray and into a pile on a large plate. There was a smaller plate already covered in cookies, though he held one out anyway. 

“Do they like it?” 

Now Blue could only cringe slightly. “Hopefully. They haven't actually tried it yet. We just talked.” 

Horror understood that, at least, still offering a cookie. “Try it.” 

Somewhat reluctantly, he accepted, crunching into softness, only to be shocked at the chocolate. 

“Oh! Oh!” He stopped making sounds, unwilling to make a mess before he was finished, pointing excitedly. “Those are good! Very good! I think they'll love them!” 

Horror was smiling to himself, enjoying the praise. He slid the smaller plate into Blue's hands, and he didn't even need an explanation to know what he was to do. He simply nodded, thanking him and leaving. He quickly retraced his steps back to the atrium, only to freeze at the top of the low flight of stairs. 

Three skulls stared at him in shock, equally dumbfounded. 

“To make things clear, we have no idea how this happened.” Geno began, standing like he had no idea how his legs worked. Which made sense. He'd never had legs before. Fresh was already sprawled on the floor. Blue could only say one thing. 

“... You're naked.” 

He cringed internally at that. Yes, they were naked. All three of them were naked, though the lack of clothes only registered after two of them had spontaneously developed entire bodies to match their skulls. Bodies that seemed like himself, except with black bones. And maybe a great deal taller than him. 

Blue set the plate on the ledge beside him, looking away but pointing. “I will be right back. I probably have something lying around.” 

“What does that mean?” He heard Fresh ask, though he was already leaving, flustered. 

He beelined for his unused clothes, a little shocked at how much he seemed to be using them lately to clothe others. He found one of his first attempts, cringing slightly at the needlework. It had been when he'd first tried to make actual clothing instead of more towels and linens. It hadn't been great, but it would certainly be functional until he'd made something worthwhile. The colors might even look nice on the wither, as it had been dyed too dark, left so dark blue it was almost black. 

He also found another cloak he hadn't even bothered dying when he'd seen how it had turned out. It was more of a baggy sheet with sleeves as well, though at least he'd made the sleeves even. After some rooting, he found shorts he'd made too big and dyed green for the sake of seeing how the color turned out. The answer was practically neon. 

He then found a shirt he'd made too big as well, having been colored pink when he'd been figuring out how bright that dye was. And it was quite bright. Then he found his first shorts, which had gone better than the cloaks, though had still been dyed too dark. At least it was closer to navy than blue-black. 

Blue then raced back upstairs, briefly spotting Horror peeking confusedly out of the kitchen at him before he was already heading up the spiral. He darted through the hall, skidding around a corner to head for the second set of stairs, only stopping when he reached the open room again, finding the three at least sitting up now. 

Geno seemed to have discovered the delight of the food. He was picking at it, hand at odd angles as he tried to use the fork. 

Blue was still uncomfortable seeing them nude. 

They were all skeletons here, there should be nothing to see, yet he felt they needed to cover up. To be decent. 

The trio still looked up at him, blinking at the mound of clothes in his arms. 

“..We don't know how to put clothes on.” Geno admitted quietly, setting the bowl aside. 

“That's alright. I can help you.” Blue set the clothes on a nearby ledge, sorting them out so they were all visible. “I'm sorry I don't have anything better. I promise I'll make more when I can. You can even tell me what you prefer, I think I can customize a little.” 

Fresh lunged forward suddenly, latching onto the pink and green in curiosity. He didn't even stand, just sort of crawled. His teardrop shaped eyelights had widened, now a bright pink like the shirt. 

“You want those?” Blue guessed. 

Fresh looked up, sockets full of wonder. “The colors aren't like anythin’ in the Nether.. but also still are?” 

Blue could only shrug. “Would you like to wear it?” 

The other slowly nodded, absently touching his neck vertebrae with the action. 

So Blue helped him into it, quietly noting how Geno was trying to copy him with the other pair of shorts Error just stared for a minute, then slid off to check out the cookies. Blue had to switch and help Geno flip the shorts, as he'd put them on backwards. Then the other grabbed the white coat, slipping into it rather seamlessly before asking if he'd done it right. 

Blue easily confirmed with a smile, taking the final dark cloak and turning, only to find the wither holding a plate completely cleared of cookies. Not even crumbs. There was a hungry glint in his mismatched eyelights. He definitely at least had a sweet tooth. 

He held up the cloak. “Want to try it on?” Blue offered. 

“I don't need your stupid clothes.” He spat, arms crossing. Blue gave him a look. “At least have some decency.” 

“I don't need decency.” 

“Error, please.” 

Blue then swept his hand to his teeth, shocked at the slip. Fresh barked out a laugh at it, and he didn't need to see to know Geno had given him a reproachful look for that. 

“Yeah, Error.” Fresh went on, choosing to dig further. 

“You should try it. They're soft. Ya afraid to destroy it?” 

He scowled at that, lunging forward to snatch the fabric from Blue's hands. “I'm not going to destroy it just by touching it, asshole. See?” He shoved an arm through a sleeve, putting it on upside down. Blue desperately held back his own laugh as the other put it on completely wrong. 

The wither struggled to fix it, before huffing a breezy breath and giving up. “It's crap, too.” 

“No, you.. you put it on wrong.” Blue explained quietly, stepping forward to help him out of it. The other reluctantly allowed this, scowling the entire time. “You better get more of those damn cookies.” He muttered. 

“It's called please.” Blue said pointedly, adjusting the slightly mismatched sleeves. 

“At least show some appreciation to the one that built you a body.” Geno remarked, taking a step forward and stumbling. 

“Yeah well he fucked it up. We were literally attached.” 

“You're being unnecessary.” Blue cut in before Geno could argue further, stepping back. 

“Yes, it wasn't perfect. I had no idea how to give you proper legs alongside a tail, and you are strangely colored, but you cannot fault me for everything. You seem to be doing just fine. You can even fly! That's not something I can do. I think you turned out alright for being the first living being I've more or less created. And it wasn't all me either, you know that. You're just being mean.” He flicked the glowing red nasal cavity, receiving a glare in return. At this point it was just sort of cute. Blue couldn't take his insults and fuming seriously, not when he knew it was just a front. 

Destroyer glowered for several long seconds before deflating pathetically. 

“.. Just call me Error or whatever.” He muttered. 

“If that's what you want, Error.” He patted a cheekbone, ignoring the scowl directed his way as he took the plate from loose phalanges. He didn't say anything, but he did wonder when D- Error's teeth had gone golden yellow. And why. Was there simply too much energy spilling out? 

“Do any of you need help coming with me?” He turned, only to blink as he saw Geno just sort of hovering and staring at the ground in vague surprise. 

“...I think I've got that part handled?” 

“You ought to learn to walk, but I think that will do for now.” Blue nodded, looking at Fresh. The other stared back in a little bit of mild panic. 

“..I dunno how to do that.” 

Nodding, Blue came and offered his shoulder. “Here. I'll help. Just walk with me, alright?” He pointed out, ignoring how the other was definitely close to twice his height. Fresh awkwardly leaned on him regardless, and they made their way back to the kitchen.. slowly. Awkwardly, with the absurd size difference between them. 

They barely managed to walk down the short set of stairs out of the atrium, and Blue mentally thanked his past self for making his spiral staircases so wide and easily traversed. Part of it had been he was terrified of them collapsing without enough support from below at the time, but now it was proving helpful in other ways.. like helping someone new to having feet stumble their way down. 

But they made it, and Fresh was actually getting the hang of it, leaning on him less and less. He still teetered a little, but otherwise only kept a hand on Blue's shoulder, staring at his feet. 

They reached the kitchen, finally treated to the sight of Horror- except the other hadn't even noticed them. He'd been staring at Dust, who looked mildly panicked. 

The panic shifted to disbelief when the enderman noticed them. Horror turned, needing a double take at the two extra skeletons. Geno had stopped hovering, leaning heavily on a wall. 

“Just to be clear, no, we don't know how we did this either.” He explained for their sake. 

“I just wanna float like you did.” Fresh muttered. 

Geno just shrugged emphatically. “I just did.” 

Then De- Error forced between them to target the cookies with an echoey hiss. Horror reached for them in defense of the treats, but the wither shot him such a look he just paused, bewildered. 

“...He has a sweet tooth.” Blue noted. 

“Noh, ah lak the ‘own ‘its.” He spoke, mouth stuffed with cookies. 

“.. Chocolate?” Horror suggested. 

The almost predatory gaze snapped to him, still munching. Apparently Horror wasn't immune to the comedy of the sight, biting his lip. Dust just snorted, not so inclined to be polite. 

“What?” Error snapped at him.

“Oh no, me? Nothing. No problem. Nada.” 

“Why are you even here?” 

Immediately the amusement melted off his face, replaced with trepidation. He glanced nervously at Blue, rubbing an arm absentmindedly. 

“There's.. something in the forest in the other side of that uh.. water. It's big, and Killer had no idea what it was. Any chance you would?” 

Blue just stared for several seconds. If Killer didn't know.. then there wasn't much of a chance he would either. But he had to see if it would harm the villagers. Something big could be something deadly. 

So he bolted with a quick “wait here” to the others, racing through the mansion and leaping over the gate of the porch. He raced up the west facing stairs, only pausing long enough at the top to search for any sign of either Killer staring at something or worse. 

The creeper was at a far fence, standing completely still. He could still tell him apart from other creepers because he was still standing like a spider. However, the stillness was unsettling. Blue rushed over, trying to spot whatever he was staring at, only to slide to a stop when he spotted the eyes. 

Large yellow eyes, staring from between the trees, unusually bright. The pupils were perfectly round, staring with utmost intensity. Blue couldn't move. He could only stare back. They never blinked. 

“...What the fuck is that.” Killer hissed under his breath. 

“..I don't know.” Blue replied, just as quiet. 

There was something gold and white attached to the eyes, and it shifted ever so slightly. Blue realized it was coming closer, spotting a golden talon with white claws stepping out of the brush. Beautiful stark and off-white feathers fluttered further up the leg. 

Then the face emerged from the shadows, ringed in green. 

It was oddly similar to a wolf's face, though its lips drooped and hung slightly below the jaw, covered in downy feathers instead of fur. At the back of the head, great pointed antlers tinged gold rose up, tangled with vines. Large, upright ears flicked, still covered in soft down, tipped in gold. 

Suddenly, something clicked in his mind, somewhere full of terror and sadness. 

Dragon. 

This beautiful, strange creature was a dragon, with the sharp eyes of a predator. Somehow knowing what it was didn't quite answer his more important question of whether or not it would hurt the villagers. 

“Genuinely, what is that?” Killer questioned, sort of horrified. 

“.... It's a dragon.” He breathed. The elegant creature flinched from across the river, curling a foreleg to its broad chest. Blue caught sight of shimmery, golden bronze wings, a stripe of white going down their middle on the underside with yellowed feathers trailing from the ends. It almost seemed alarmed. 

Blue caught the sound of a familiar warping swish, knowing Dust was behind him. The dragon's wingtips reached above the trees as it lifted its wings, then it stood up on its back legs, revealing a sort of bronze feathery mane on the back of its neck.

“Oh shit.” Dust sounded terrified. 

There was some kind of honking shriek from the dragon, finally leaping up over the trees and driving those great wings downward. Blue caught it curling its legs to its body, both front and back, as the long feathers trailing from the base and end of its long tal swept over them. The dragon banked hard, turning in the air and flying off back the way it came. 

Blue jolted forward, grabbing the fence and watching the majestic being speed away. 

“It's beautiful..” 

“What the fuck?” Killer turned to him. “That could have killed all of you! And how did you know what it was?!” 

He could only shrug. “I just did.” He glanced back at the others, seeing Horror there beside Dust, a mix of fear and awe and recognition in his burning eyelight. 

“You knew, too.” 

Horror nodded. “Dragon. It's a dragon.” 

Blue turned back to look at the receding figure, already only a golden speck in the sky. 

“..It hates us, doesn't it?” Dust started, sounding miserable. 

Blue regarded him in surprise. “Why would you think that?”

The enderman winced, glancing at the villagers wandering about behind them. 

“It knows what we are. Like the withers did.” 

Suddenly, his distress made perfect sense. 

Blue strode forward, grabbing the larger hand in both of his own. 

“You are not responsible for those before you.” 

“I'm not trying to-” 

“Yes, you are. You're trying to shoulder a burden that isn't yours because of some old story.” Blue asserted, staring into him fora moment. He then looked down when the other started shrinking away from the gaze. 

“Just let yourself be, Dust. You are your own person, unrelated to those that harmed others in the past. If you want to try and help others to not be like them, then that is okay. Just don't lose yourself to it.” 

There was a long stretch of silence after that, everyone uncertain of themselves. 

“So.. what now?” Killer spoke up, looking between the enderman and he sky where the dragon had flown off to. 

“...We should get our new wither friends settled in.” Blue decided. Horror perked up, blinking as something occurred to him. “And after that?” He questioned, clearly expecting something. Blue could only hesitate. “.. I don't know.” 

“Then we should eat. And.. build new things. The village is small and I. I want to..” He trailed, looking back at the mansion looming over the village, even when starting well below it. Blue picked up on his meaning.

“Do you want to build like me?” 

The zombie faced him again, face open and hopeful. 

“Not the same, but I wanna see what I can do.” 

Blue had to stop himself from hugging the other. 

“Oh that sounds like a wonderful project!” He settled for taking his hands and swinging the other around. 

Horror seemed bewildered when he was standing on his own again, though Blue was already racing off. 

“We could even remodel the village together!” He shouted, Killer rushing to keep up as the others started moving. 

“Spookum deserves a good pen with friends anyway. And the villagers deserve real homes, not huts! So much to do, so much to see!” He pranced away, eager to tell the withers their new plans. 

The others started smiling. 

There was a sort of goal now.