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Wemmbu had first begun showing symptoms the month he’d started.
The month Eggchan’s best friend decided to take on that new identity—the month he had gotten through what, at the time, seemed like an outrageous amount of potions for any man. It was that very first set of weeks, that amount of time that seemed so long, stretched out, and now seemed insignificant when one looked at the entirety of the whole invis stunt. It was then that Wemmbu had fully started setting off alarm bells in Egg’s head.
And it was slow, a rhythmic flick against metal that barely sounded anything beyond a methodic whisper of a beat. There was nothing to hear because there was nothing to latch onto, and as the time passed, it seemed as if there wasn’t a thing that changed.
But there was.
It’d taken that disgustingly long period—short, so short to do what it has—for Egg to finally notice the chime. By then might as well have been beating him over the head with its scream.
But regardless, Wemmbu sat now, cold End air carding through his hair and poofing it up as strands entangled with one another, silent. His head laid in his hands, nails digging into where his horns met his forehead, and Egg knew. They both knew. The angel was the one overseeing most of Wem’s potion consumption—never would he have let somebody who put all of his skill points into PVP supply his own potions—and…and.
Almost three thousand.
Assuming Wemmbu had taken them perfectly, for exactly half of the day—meaning no late nights, no all-nighters, all eight minute length potions—Wemmbu would have taken almost three thousand potions of invisibility. That alone, Egg knew from the very beginning, would take a toll. And that perfect calculation, Egg also knew, Wemmbu would never follow.
And so currently, in front of Egg, his friend harboured a headache that caused him to tremble and wipe at his eyes, glossy white meeting pure black irises. He couldn’t stand up safely; he looked a second away from vomiting.
Wemmbu looked tired. Tired in a way that he hadn’t when he first arrived. In a way that flowed through his blood thick as cloudy liquid touched his tongue, blackened fingertips tightening in discomfort against the bottle as it bled through tissue and membrane to burn.
Egg could almost see it as it settled, webs of it that pulsed with reds and dusted roots to sink further into Wemmbu’s being. Heeled boots clicked with a sharp turn, and then, well—his friend’s plans to leave fell almost as fast as he had.
Egg’d almost winced. Settled for pulling him into a sitting position and throwing milk and regen at him.
Golden fingertips tapped against endstone, catching on soft rocks and loose pebbles as they anxiously fidgeted, “Wemmbu, bro.”
Dark purple bangs fell to touch against Wemmbu’s crossed legs, a whine being dampened by the way he pushed his head further down. The invisibility flickered like a candlelight, rejected by the demon’s system and yet still tearing at his veins and beating heart to pull him into incorporeality.
“⎓ᔑ⍊𝙹⚍∷ᒷ↸, maybe you should—you should stop.”
“Ha. Dude—Egg,” teary eyes looked up at him, “That’s like—this is barely anything compared to the Empire, and…and.”
He trailed off as the weak smile that was barely hanging on finally dropped.
Having a man so stubborn as a friend was not for the weak, but having a Wemmbu? God. Egg brought his hands to his lap as his shoulders dipped down, “Dude…just—just think about it. I can’t have you dead when I’m still stuck here, bro.”
“Yeah,” he sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, “you’d die in a day, bro.”
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The symptoms got significantly worse half a year in.
Shorter, but it was so near the six month mark that Egg would recount it as such—The difference was practically nothing when observing the deterioration.
Because, really, there was no other word for it. It existed in the space that the unwinding of thread did, a slow fall that sped up far after it ever became deadly. The angel feared, in the back of his mind, that it’d reached that point much earlier than he thought it had. That it was already too late.
“Egg, bro, do you think if I add more redstone it’d make it longer?”
Thin wings wrapped around the flowy fabric of Wemmbu’s blouse and jeweled-to-all-hell corset, trying desperately to keep in heat that was never really there to begin with. He leaned on his left hand as if that did anything to hide the near-matted hair behind his back, and his right one held a scratched up bottle of freshly brewed and refilled invis. The liquid sloshed as he tapped a nail against it—as his grip faltered and he shuddered slightly—reflecting in the light of Egg’s bedroom lamp.
The angel huffed as he set another shulker of potions by black heels, “Potions over eight minutes were banned officially from every server for the safety of—”
“Uh-huh, cool. Would it?”
“You are not doing that, bro,” hands on his hips, Egg shifted to look up and into pitch black irises. Into eyes that teared up constantly now, that burnt and shook and swelled. He didn’t like that it was the norm now.
“Uh-huh, would it?”
“Bro’s the—”
“Would it?”
Silence.
Wemmbu’s hand roughly set down the potion, correcting his grip as it slipped halfway to the bedside table.
He sat up fully from against the window sill.
Stared at the angel as he leaned forward.
Egg could only hear the ticking of the clock on his wall.
“Yeah.”
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Twelve minutes.
The length Wemmbu was able to lengthen the potion, and for how long it took for him to vomit it out. Really, he had tried, but the demon wasn’t able to hold it down as the potion wore away and gnawed itself down into nothing. Egg’s friend had always been sensitive to that, the cold that licked at flesh and skin as effects finally dissipated. And so, it would seem, adding more ingredients very firmly not meant to enter a humanoid's body would not have helped.
In other words, the moment Egg saw Wemmbu’s shoulders hunch, collarbones shifting against skin and stomach sucking in, well. Was it really that selfish to shove him forward and onto the washroom floor? Maybe—just a little bit, he thought. Just a little bit, he swore, as wings shuddered while the other wretched, cold of the ground bleeding into the skin of his palm and fingers and mixing with the warmth of blood and acids and mucus where it spread on the tiles.
Egg suddenly found that he really didn’t mind cleaning up the mess if it meant Wemmbu was okay.
If it meant he’d be able to hear past the coughing and white noise in his ear to respond; if it meant he’d be able to react to the soft touch of hands that trembled and hovered on his back. If it meant Wemmbu could go back to before.
Before the fake death, before the idea of the Invisible Knight was born, before he was fully ready to integrate illegal potions into his lifestyle.
A panicked laugh, “Wemmbu, dude.”
⋅•⋅⊰┈・☽༓☾・┈⊱⋅•⋅
It took a year for the major physical changes.
Just like every other time, Wemmbu was taking one of the only breaks he could from invis. He stretched, arms and legs straightened like a cat, across Egg’s bed, and everything in the angel’s mind was screaming.
Maybe it was just because he’d disappeared for months; came back smelling like lobster and the sea. Maybe it was just because Egg was paranoid, wings fluffed up constantly as of recent.
The End platform flickering was when he first noticed, the usual smile on Wem’s face gone as he downed a glass of milk, shake still in his hands. Red was dried and poorly wiped by the side of his mouth, and his posture was weighed down by the pressure of diamond and netherite. Breathing now looked permanently shallow where his lungs hid behind his chest and stomach, curved by the curl of his spine.
His sclera was a constantly teared up dark grey when their eyes met.
Even as the demon walked past him, armour tossed carelessly into a dusty corner of Minute’s library, his gait was uneven. His posture was still the complete opposite of his outward ego and confidence, and he didn’t say anything even as Egg stuttered through and failed about fifty sentences.
Wemmbu was small, too.
He always had been, technically. The other was too short and too thin for any fighter who should have grown up eating well and training constantly. But it was worse now. Skin was tighter against knuckles, and his cheeks were hollow even when they scrunched up as Wemmbu smiled.
And it only took a year. It took almost no time for his best friend to lay across his bed now, unable to sleep with potions in his system constantly, looking half dead. Looking as if the thread that unwound to uncover an exposed nerve of a person was burning, now—when it was too late to do anything. When Wemmbu was too deep in to consider he needed to stop; too damaged to ever recover.
Egg inhaled, sitting on the edge of the bed, “Bro’s the sleeper.”
“Mhm,” drawn out and most definitely not paying attention.
“How are you so sleepy, dude?”
“I gotta tell you ‘bout the lobster cage, bro.”
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It had reached a year and a half.
The whole thing seemed much shorter, felt much longer, but nevertheless it passed. Wemmbu was moving slower, came around less often, and looked around his shoulder too many times during conversation. Somebody had caught onto him, even if he refused to say it to Egg. Even if he refused to worry the angel.
Such thoughts, written messily into the notebook that he held against his knees a moment ago, were what perplexed him. Not in the why, he knew that. He knew what so many potions would do to you—especially after Minute had fled the End, and their supplies ran thin. Wemmbu really wasn’t slick in how he was throwing together random things (things that were hurting him, very clearly) just to get invisibility for a minute or two. But it was none of that which had confused Egg. No. It was that, as he moved to exit his makeshift hiding spot, familiar footsteps sounded behind him.
It was the moment Egg had finished flexing out his wings, shaking them out and wrapping them to loosely hang around himself again, he had heard it. Heels that clicked with confidence—that were much firmer in their hits against the ground than Wemmbu would ever willingly allow. Aura or something.
“Egg, bro!”
A loud voice, masked by a voice changer that only hasn’t dropped to his actual voice because of the recent destruction of the End. The destruction of Wemmbu’s usual safety. But regardless, the volume came through past the knockoff-batman sound. Too loud. Too energetic.
He let his hands tense briefly, turning around to face an invisible player with messily mended trims and too-shiny diamond armour. The Invisible Knight.
If Egg was an idiot.
“Oh,” clearing his throat, putting on the facade of poorly-masked grief he’s been forced to recently, “How’d you know I was here, bro?”
The slight deflation of the other at the lack of recognition was a bit funny, and even if Egg felt sharp eyes digging into his own for any possible sign of lying, he felt as in control as any other interaction. Any other passerby wondering about Wemmbu, about Egg, about too-personal grief and possible graves. Thieves, this server was full of.
“I was wondering—”
“Did any crazy situations happen?”
A pause in the invisible player’s confidence. In their internal script, “What?”
It told Egg enough. More than he needed, less than he wanted. If the angel had to sit in a hole in the wall—literally—while Wemmbu ran around slowly killing himself, he deserved to laugh a little bit. Entertainment, as an edgy clown he’s met once would say.
“I’m just happy I haven’t been like—I’m glad I wasn’t taken hostage or anything.”
No reaction.
Absolutely no aha moment like Wemmbu would have had if this was really him. If he’d just forgotten their code word.
And besides, the other was too…loud. They breathed in and out fully, no hitches. They didn’t go to rub their eyes, pushing away a veil to reveal what his best friend would (flickering invis, weak effects, everything you’d expect from potions made by a demon who had no brewing experience) with no hesitation—because this person didn’t know they knew each other.
They weren’t throwing aside heavy armour or talking with exhaustion even past their excited yapping—because they weren’t Wemmbu.
They were too alive.
⋅•⋅⊰┈・☽༓☾・┈⊱⋅•⋅
Two years.
Wemmbu had his invisibility going for two years straight. Had pretended to be dead for two years straight. Had run from his problems for two years straight.
Had done all of that for two years, only for them to finally catch up to him.
And now Egg sat, stuck in the End, knowing he wouldn’t know. Wouldn’t know if the tremble in his best friend’s hands would go away after the invis fully left his system, if his eyes would darken further, if he’d regain his energy, if he’d be himself again. And Egg wouldn’t for much longer than he would like.
He’d heard from passing players what happened. That Wemmbu was revealed to be alive by Parrot and Flame. That he’d taken on a big fight—over a thousand players. And that Wemmbu, as of three days ago, was paraded around like an animal in front of nearly all of Unstable by Lettuce. All before being thrown in prison, with no break or recovery time or freedom.
Without any time to live again.
Without any time for Egg to help him rid his body from over eighty-thousand potions worth of poison in his body.
Eighty-thousand.
Almost eighty-thousand potions for Wemmbu to be found out and forced back into his old identity. For the Invisible Knight scheme to die.
Egg worried Wemmbu might have died with it.