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For a moment, Baron deeply regrets what he has gotten himself into.
That kind of regret is normal, right? This place is like a maze; actually, it is one, with blackened and cracked stone for walls, and corridors and corridors and corridors of nothing but looming silence. It’s almost annoyingly senseless; it’s not too hot, and not too cold, and the air is so stagnant he can’t feel its weight on his skin as he moves through the labyrinth.
It’s like he could wander forever and ever and ever and find nothing; but there is something here. Otherwise, there’d be no point in him coming at all.
He glances at the text in the corner of his view nervously. I just have to activate the... stabiliser, he thinks. Right? That’s... That sounds simple enough. So, I just...
The only stimulus comes in the form of his footsteps; running and running and running alongside nothing but the sound of his own feet on the floor. It’s kind of strange, in a way, that a world so seemingly populated, he has nothing. But that’s the same as it’s always been, right? He’s always alone.
Then again, there’s... ‘IX’. Or ‘Nine’? That’s what he’s been calling it. He’s not entirely sure if he’s right, but Nine has never said anything to correct him. ‘IX’ is a mouthful anyway, and ‘Nine’ makes it seem friendlier.
He keeps running; what else is there for him to do? All he knows is whatever Nine puts before him. That’s how it’s been since he got here, right? Even the smell of grass after the rain is tainted by whatever this server has degraded into.
But if he reaches Nine, they can change things. Nine was the one who told him that, but if there’s anything kind in this world, it’s Nine. It has to be. It has to be. If Nine turned on him now, he’d...
Well, he wouldn’t really know what to do.
His arms are covered in small lacerations as he creeps up the stairs, shield in front of him and sword at his side. He gingerly slides through his inventory to prepare a torch. He can’t hurt whatever’s in here. He’s learnt that well enough by now.
All he can do is run as far as his legs can take him. He places a torch as quietly as he can, and—
careful
careful
careful
His eyes shoot to the corner of his view. A cold chill shoots into the center of his stomach, running like ice in his blood. He stumbles forward and places another before his body stops moving at the whim of his mind. Fuck, he thinks. Air hisses out from between his clenched teeth. I’m going to die here, aren’t I? It’s so dark. Fuck. Fuck me, dude.
He pauses long enough to hear the silence, and then carefully walks up the stairs. The entire structure has an air of danger to it. This place feels like a tomb. But what can he do? What can he do? It’s not like he has a choice.
“I’m so fucked,” he mumbles to himself, cresting the stairs. “I’m so—”
X
He freezes, reading.
is around here
it doesn’t like light
That’s one above nine, his mind spits out dumbly. He shakes his head abruptly. This is... God, it reminds him of somewhere he’s been before, but this is— no, this is different, it has to be. Besides, Null wasn’t as... Yeah, it’s different. It’s different.
He starts systematically breaking the torches he’s placed, hearing and feeling the silence lingering heavy in his body, and then he brings up his sword again and continues forward as if nothing happened. It strikes him that, if he were to die, Nine might not even care. And why would it? He supposes it’s not like it’s under any obligation to care about him.
There’s a painting of something here. He stares at it absently for a moment, trying to puzzle out the geometries on the stretched canvas in the dark. He can barely make out colours, let alone things like shapes and symbolism— not that he’s really looking at it, anyway. It’s just something for his eyes to fixate on as he thinks.
I’d like it to care about me, he thinks, after a long moment of circling the idea. It’s what I’m doing all of this for, right?
He wonders why. He wonders why he wants that kind of thing from a person he’s never seen.
He knows the answer, actually. It helped him out; that’s it.
He’s entered enough servers to know nothing can help you once it starts to corrupt. There are things that are friendly in them and things that are harmful and things that can go one-way-or-the-other, and he’s heard of other people like him stuck wandering, but there’s never been anything so...
Alive? His brow furrows. He’s not really looking at the painting anymore. ...No. Helpful? Al... Altruistic? Yeah, that’s about right.
Without Nine he would be dead. Even though Nine... led him into that fucking brick maze and watched him get chased around, it still lent him advice. And it’s nice enough when it talks to him. So...
His eyes refocus on the painting. God, he can’t make heads or tails of the thing. He groans and moves on from it, trying to ignore the way it could have been a depiction of something bloodied and broken with ribs reaching for the sky like the curled fingers of a hand and he wouldn’t have noticed.
Baron walks the halls again, at a much slower pace than before.
Nine wouldn’t lead him into danger. It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t. He believes it as he walks forward and as he knocks his nose into a wall and scrapes the skin off, and as blood wets the flesh there gently. It wouldn’t do that. It keeps telling him how to protect himself, how to keep himself safe. If it wanted him dead, then...
He passes the painting. His eyes drift away from it, uninterested, and—
hello
He pauses. “Hello?” He doesn’t bother waiting for a reply, because there’s something more pressing than niceties. “Are you X?” For some reason he doesn’t call it Ten. He’s not sure it’s Ten and he’s not sure Nine’s Nine. Still…
hello
hello
Is it in here with me? He swivels around to look, but there’s nothing.
you are
Baron’s brain freezes at the implication.
different
“F- From who?” he manages to get out. “The others?”
are you player?
It ignored me. He swallows. “Yes,” he says, and then he starts walking with a little more urgency than before. Is it going to hurt me? No, Nine— Nine introduced it like it was friendly. So it’s friendly, right?
Still, his heart won’t stop pounding in his chest and his feet won’t stop striking the floor with every step he takes. There’s almost something thrilling about the terror as he roams the halls; torches in hand and a mission he doesn’t fully understand lodged firm in his mind.
The walls look like if netherrack might if it could burn. It’s so dark in here; that’s the thing he really can’t get over, honestly. He keeps walking just because there’s nothing to do but walk, and he crouches when he has to and keeps walking some more after that. What can he do? There’s nothing. It’s just... nothing. He grasps the torch in his hand more firmly, about to risk placing it, but as he does he notices the fire has turned into redstone in his clutch.
Great, he thinks. So I can’t get anything useful out of them even if I wanted to. It’s almost comical, how terrifying it is. He wants to laugh, but doesn’t, because he’s too scared to find out what happens if he does.
He walks until he finds a corridor with a bright light at the end of it, and hesitates. Still, nowhere to move but forward, right? All he ever does is move forward. World after world under his feet and nowhere to go but forward and nothing to do but keep moving.
So he does the same thing he always does and walks.
There are paintings here; abstract and strange in ways he’s not sure he likes. He can’t help the face he makes as he looks at them. They’re repulsive, almost. God, isn’t this entire place weird? It’s almost nauseating. It feels like it was built by human and inhuman hands, or maybe it wasn’t built at all and he’s finding dregs of meaning where there’s nothing, nothing at all, nothing but the static of silence filling his ears and clogging his lungs.
do you like painting
He squints at them. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. He can’t tell what they’re meant to be. “Yeah,” he says, to be polite. Is this a gallery? There are so many of these here.
are you lost
He licks his dry lips nervously. “I’m where I was told to be,” he says after a while.
He might not be able to tell what the paintings are, but they seem to depict something, and something is more than nothing. Some sort of landscape, he thinks, cocking his head. Or a building? The floor is a checkerboard of black and white and he would be a liar if he didn’t say it reminded him of himself, somewhat— the way he’s wandering like a pawn on a chessboard without a white square in sight, traversing the dimly lit blackstone halls like there’s anything worthwhile in here at all.
All he can do is walk forward; the only thing in his control is the pace.
Nine points me somewhere and I go, he thinks absently as he observes the next two paintings— something that could be the moon and a campfire and something like someone sitting at the beach. He places redstone torches to see by and peers at them; but neither of them hold him as captive as the first, and neither evoke the same feeling of kinship. But I really don’t have any clue where I’m going.
As he squints at one that seems to depict some kind of creature, X finally says something that isn’t a question.
i like red lights.
He doesn’t reply for a moment, still fumbling on in the oppressive dark. “Yeah, man, they’re cool.”
He rounds the corner. In the dark, something retreats just out of his view. He freezes with the smile still on his face, teeth bared with terror.
Nothing moves. He walks forward.
The sound of his breath is louder than his iron boots on the ground; even if he were to run, he wouldn’t be able to outpace whatever that was. He’s powerless. He’s always powerless in these places, but the lack of Nine makes him feel more powerless than he’s ever been before. I’m dependent on it, he thinks to himself, sword at the ready in trembling hands.
Its point faces outwards and its blade shines dully in the darkness. It looks pathetic. Every creature here is so much larger than him; nothing like the almost dream-like expanses of Wonderland that he’s grown so accustomed to finding himself trapped in. Even now he catches himself thinking, there’ll be an exit portal right around the corner.
But there won’t be. He peeks around the corner the creature had popped out from behind. Nothing but a sign and another painting. There are two gaps beside it, as though leading to rooms; crevices for a creature to hide inside of.
He squints, and hesitates, but when there’s nothing but silence he presses forward. It’s not cold, but beneath his clothes he can feel his skin is laced up-and-down with goosebumps.
Water, the sign reads. He mimics the shape of the word with his lips.
Something moves in the corner of his view.
He doesn’t have enough time to get a look at it other than the quickest flash of rotting flesh and tendrils and teeth before he’s screaming and running backwards; not the way he came, but back— away, away, all he knows in the world is fear and terror and desperately trying to escape the hulking beast that’s on his tail. He forgoes his stealth in favour of blind terror, bashing head-first into a wall and dazing himself as he scrambles for any semblance of safety. Blood pools in his mouth like liquid metal.
He can’t breathe. His legs won’t work. He runs until there’s a wall in front of him and a gap leading to the black night sky above him, and then he scrapes his fingertips against the wall in chase of purchase, trying to find some way to climb, some way to get up, up, out. Desperately, he looks behind him, trying to see how imminent his death is.
There’s nothing there.
His fingers pause halfway through clawing at the black stones. His face is frozen in an expression halfway between exhilaration and fear. Slowly, the tension in his body uncoils.
He spends a moment there, panting with redstone torch in hand. He grips it like it’s a lifeline, even though all it does is cast a dim light across his features and bathe his hands gently in blood-like red. He glances at the chat, but there’s nothing there.
He sits down on the floor with his back to the wall. The sign is out of view, but he rotates it in his mind’s eye. Water, he thinks to himself. He’s begun to develop a fear of water, if only because the last time he read anything related to the stuff he’d had to hide for fear of his life.
Though last time, Nine was there.
Nine isn’t here now.
He flips through his inventory as he waits for his heart to stop pounding. It’s funny how he’s always done this stuff alone, and then the moment someone nice shows up he clings to it so hard that even an hour or two apart (how long has he been in here? All he’s been doing is walking) makes him jittery. His fingers are trembling and his back is slick with sweat. It takes him a moment to register that he’s still afraid. But afraid of what? The danger is gone now. There’s nothing to be scared of.
He’s never been this nervous for this long before, except for that one time he was trapped with his back to a bedrock roof with misshapen creatures pooling beneath him, at his feet like they were waiting for him to fall. But that was when he was in active danger. And he got out of it in the end, anyway; for all its strange and horribly disfigured inhabitants, Wonderland is lenient, sometimes.
Or maybe he just got lucky.
This is a different sort of fear than that, though. It’s new, and maybe the reason it’s scarier than before is because of its newness. He’s been scared for his life before in a million tiny, different ways, but this isn’t a life-ending terror— still, it’s paralysing him all the same.
Eventually, though, his legs unlock and his hands stop shaking, and Baron, coward he is, decides it’s best not to think about it right now.
Besides, he thinks, justifying it to himself, I’ve gotta find the stabiliser. Disoriented, he walks back into the lighted hallway.
The sign is still there, and as he walks past it he sees it’s surrounded by three paintings and a pool of water. Dead end, he thinks. But there’s not a stabiliser here, or anything that looks like it could be one...
He hesitates, casting a glance at all three paintings before peering at the only source of light— the torches hanging above the water’s surface. There’s a sign between the pair of them; O water, like from that book by the river he’d read before. He hesitates with his boots over the edge and then glances down into the depths.
It has to be more than a meter deep, he thinks. I’d be able to see the bottom if it was shallow enough for me to stand in, anyway.
He doesn’t want to go into the water, especially after that book he’d read earlier. For a moment he imagines it’s him as the rotting, degloved carass; bloated and dead and helpless. He shivers.
I have to keep going, he thinks, so after a moment of hesitating he takes a deep breath and jumps in.
The water seeps into the gaps in his armour like it belongs in them, and he watches as bubbles shoot from his falling body towards the surface. They prickle along his exposed skin as he descends into it; for the first time he feels a sensation other than the sound of his own wandering striking his eardrums— the further he descends, the colder it grows.
When he looks up, he can see the light fading, getting farther and farther away as the water grows dimmer and dimmer. He looks down, squinting for an exit. His lungs are starting to burn when he finally spies the exit.
Relieved, he swims down and through it, squeezing into a place as dimly lit as the one he came from. What was the point of that? he thinks, slightly annoyed. He walks for a little bit, the only remnant of the pool he emerged from the channel hollowed into the ground, filled to the brim with water. It almost feels like a sewer. He shivers as he walks through it; the air in here is almost noxiously cold. He has armor on, but the temperature makes him suddenly feel more exposed than he’s ever been. Is he getting goosebumps? He keeps moving.
The water dries as he walks, and that makes it feel a little bit warmer, at least.
Eventually, he rounds another corner and comes to a door. As he peeks at it, it looks decayed and dilapidated; but that’s fine, right? It has to be fine.
Nine wouldn’t hurt me, he thinks. It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t do that to me. It wouldn’t let me get hurt. He almost thinks ‘It needs me’, but he knows that’s not true.
It doesn’t need him, not really; that base from someone who came before him is good enough proof of that. He’s the one who’s dependent here.
That’s probably fine, right?
He opens the door and presses on. The gold of the handle flakes off onto his hand, and he wipes it on his pants absently as he comes upon another sign.
This one is different than the last two, though. All it says is careful. Well, he’s being fucking careful. He’s careful as he walks forwards and sees the strange, winding mess of parkour in front of him, and he’s careful enough not to curse his abysmal luck so loudly that whatever’s hiding in here hears him.
“Careful,” he repeats to himself, as he clears the pedestrian parkour. Careful. Every jump feels like it’s pulling him closer to some conclusion he can’t grasp the whole of yet. There’s too much going on in here. He really can’t make heads or tails of it.
There’s a door at the end of the parkour segment. Careful is written above it, too, and the sign is as rotted and nasty as the door beneath it.
He hesitates as he turns the handle this time, only to find another door behind it; there’s a door behind that, and a door behind that, and they grow progressively cleaner until finally opening into what looks like a mansion. Actually, it’s similar to those mansions that spawn in the Overworld, he supposes, but with a slightly different colour scheme.
And it’s darker, he thinks, placing torches as he walks. He hasn’t heard from X in a while, so it’s probably fine. Much darker.
He meanders the halls, footsteps loud in the silence. It’s almost obnoxious how slow each step falls, but then again he doesn’t really have much choice in the matter. What can he do, really? He’s just here to walk a set path.
There are strange structures in each room he enters, though some are more mundane and harmless-seeming than others. He opens chests tentatively and loots only the most useful items; the foremost thing on his mind is getting out of here, and to get out of here, he needs to activate the stabiliser.
Or I could just go back now. He frowns. But I came all this way already.
He grabs a golden apple out of the chest in the strange, laboratory-like area, and steps outside the room.
stay still
He freezes for a moment, but peeks around as curiosity gets the better of him.
be careful.
Baron frowns despite himself, feeling like he’s being scolded. I figured that out by now, he thinks almost spitefully. You know, with all of the signs in my face and everything?
He casts a cursory look around him, and then keeps on moving through the mansion. The next room seems large and cozy, and as he glances behind him just to make sure he’s not being followed, he moves towards the fireplace insi—
The door shuts. He freezes for a moment, and then turns around.
It’s closed behind him, but nothing is inside with him that he can see. He briefly inspects the fireplace, finds nothing of worth, and then walks towards the door and pries it open.
Almost frantically, messages appear in his periphery.
don’t open
don’t open
don’t open
He shuts the door and stares at the gnarled wood for a moment. This room is warm compared to the rest of the mansion, and smells less like rot. He wonders how the fire is burning with nobody to tend to it. Netherrack?
He stands and waits. Nine says nothing. Eventually, he figures it’s safe enough to step out; he opens the door, re-enters the hallway, and opens the next room with the intent to ransack it for all it’s worth.
Something screams, and he freezes in place with his body halfway around the doorframe.
‘Stay still.’ Nine said to stay still. Is that what it meant by ‘careful’?
His fingers are clenched on the frame and his forehead is pressed firmly against it as he tries to use it to keep himself upright.
He’s scared. He’s really, really scared. There’s no way he can talk about it other than to say he’s scared. Suddenly he feels claustrophobic; the only thing that alleviates his fear is the light shining into the corner of his view, just enough to remind him that he’s still alive.
Stay still, he repeats in his mind.
He can’t breathe. He’s standing stock still like a fucking sitting duck and suddenly he can’t breathe, or maybe it’s that he can’t breathe fast enough to fill his lungs; every breath wooshes in and out of him but it’s not enough not enough never enough.
The certainty that he’ll die a gory and gruesome death suddenly dawns on him.
Nine sold me out, he thinks suddenly. I’m going to die, right? There’s no way I’m making it out of here.
He can hear footsteps. Great, creaking footsteps; it reminds him of when he was hiding before, except now there’s nowhere he can hide. Despite himself, he starts shaking with terror. He’s scared. He’s scared he’s going to die here and Nine is going to just let it happen. He’s scared of himself, that someone like him could be undone by— by a few nice words and vague kindness. Isn’t he stupid? He has to be stupid. God. Fuck! He’s an idiot! He’s shaking and on the brink of crying from fear just because he couldn’t read between the lines. Maybe he deserves to die.
Great work, Nine, he thinks miserably. You got what you wanted. I’m fucked. I’m dead.
The worst part is that it’s his fault. Maybe if he had just stayed in that hot air balloon, or stayed in the room when the door closed, he— he wouldn’t be here. It’s his fault. His nails dig into the wood.
He can hear the footsteps of whatever is in here with him. It sounds a lot bigger than he is. He feels the blood drain fully from his face.
I’m going to die.
He’s scared— so scared that, for a moment, he’s not even upset at Nine’s betrayal.
He hears the sound of his torches breaking, and from the corner of his eye sees the world go dark. Something touches him, runs slick and wet and awful over his back, trails some kind of nasty, viscous gunk over the nape of his neck— he almost yells then, but he bites his tongue until it’s bleeding into his mouth to keep the noise inside of him. He hears a door open, and then another. His stomach lurches dangerously.
He can’t move. He can’t move a muscle. Stay still. His body won’t listen to him.
you’re okay.
For a moment he thinks he’s hallucinating, but the text is a relief; suddenly he can feel his body again.
you’re gonna be okay.
His head is spinning, and he’s dizzy, and he feels like he’s about to puke on the oak floors, but he’s alive. His mind is barely working enough for him to read the next string of text.
it’s gone.
He sinks to his knees and puts his hand to his mouth.
It’s gone, his mind echoes. Gone, gone, it’s gone. It’s...
Even though he’s sweating and shaking more than he ever has before, he manages to pick his sweat-slick body off of the floor and gets to his feet. He doesn’t go inside the room, thoroughly spooked out of doing so, and proceeds down the hallway. His hands shake as he spies an iron door, old and weathered and more destitute than anything else in the mansion, and grasps the lever above it. He tugs it down, and the door opens.
There’s some strange structure inside. It looms large in front of him, a meter off the ground and roughly the size of his body in diameter; actually, maybe it’s a bit taller. This time, there’s a lever directly in front of his face.
He hesitates this time. He doesn’t know what this thing does.
He waits for Nine to interject, or say something encouraging, or say he’s done something wrong.
But Nine doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t say anything as he grabs the cold wooden shaft of the lever and it doesn’t say anything as he winces, trying to wrench it down with all his might. It’s difficult, like it’s been stuck in place for a long time; but he manages it, and the moment he does the contraption lights up like the Sun in front of him, drowning out the torchlight within.
He staggers back, covering his eyes. Some part of him feels like he’s done something wrong. Something about the world seems different now. “What did I just do?” he asks.
The building shakes.
# stabiliser enabled
He takes a step back. His heart leaps into his throat, even though he knows he’s done what he came here to. What Nine sent him here to. Did I do something wrong?
“What did I just do?” he asks, again. He wants Nine to tell him that he did— something. Something good or something bad.
For a moment he doesn’t care, and all he wants is Nine to speak to him.
He doesn’t get Nine.
why did you do that
why did you do that
why did you do that
He feels bad, but– but what could he have done? “I’m sorry, X,” he hisses under his breath, as he walks out of the room. I’m sorry, he thinks. But what was I supposed to do? Nine told me to do it. It’s not my fault. I didn’t know it would upset you.
For once, X doesn’t reply.
He casts a glance back into the room from across the hall. Maybe he can turn it off, and it’ll all be okay.
A torch breaks inside of the room, and then another. Baron stands there, frozen in fear. He can’t help it.
He’s scared.
The dark outline of something comes around the corner, and he stumbles a few steps down the hallway in blind terror until he remembers to stay still. His back is turned to it again. It could be right behind him, for all he knows.
Maybe it’s standing right behind him now. He can feel the drying gunk on his neck. Can it smell him? Can it hear him? Is it even the same thing as before?
He doesn’t know what to do. Nine hasn’t said a word. He doesn’t know what he should do now. What is he supposed to do? Does he die now? Has his usefulness run its course?
He stands there, shaking. His legs won’t move again.
Maybe they won’t move for another day. Maybe they won’t move for a month, or a year. Maybe he’ll stand here waiting for Nine for another century.
escape the place
The moment the words stick in his brain, his legs take off the same as before; running, running, running, with no end in sight.
Ironically, under the weight of the new command, he feels freer than ever before.