Chapter Text
“Riiiiiiiiight, bro,” Wemmbu says, worrying the rough edges of Codmaster’s deepslate wall with his fingernails. Egg paces in circles around the tiny fishing pool. “I don’t, like, care about your fishing results. Or your ‘scholarly discussions’,” he mimics in a high-pitched voice.
“Brother,” Egg says calmly, “this is an endeavour to solve the mysteries of the Unstable Unive-”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Wemmbu says, making a yapping motion with his free hand. “I’m on a time limit, bro.” Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to help Egg escape. A bit of red smears on the wall, glistening thanks to his night vision. He continues picking at the stone regardless.
“So, what do you got in your inventory?” He glances inside his own inventory, looking for anything that could help Egg escape. Sixteen stasis chambers. Sixteen shimmering, iridescent green-blue pearls bobbing up and down, buoyed by the water surface
“Um, I got, my notebook, and my-” Then the scream of a pearl steals Egg away from him and he’s out of time.
“Bro.” A simple, simple word to encapsulate all of the rage-frustation-failure that he’s feeling. He breathes in, breathes out. In one-two-three-four, out one-two-three-four, Egg would say, said once upon a time when he was teaching Wemmbu the useless art of meditation. Stop fidgeting, bro. In one-two-three-four, out one-two-three-four.
Why’re you teaching me this, Wemmbu whined, and Egg answered:
To prepare you for when I’m gone. Simple, simple words. Words that Wemmbu chooses to ignore because if he thinks about them too hard he’ll start stripping the tree they’re perched on bare of leaves. It’s a nervous habit of his.
Right, he says. Right.
Bro, you’re killing the poor plant, Egg says, pointing to the now-bare branches.
Sorry, Wemmbu says, patting the leaves back into their now-misaligned shape. Sorry.
‘S fine. Right, so, in one-two-three-four out one-two-three-four.
In one-two-three-four. Egg’s fine. He’s not dead. He can’t die; Arachnid needs him for leverage over Wemmbu. Out one-two-three-four. Egg is fine, will be fine.
And then a chasm opens beneath Wemmbu’s feet and sucks him in.
Parrot pores over the same map he’s looked over a hundred times. It’s worn, the map - ripping a little at the edges in spite of his best efforts to keep it intact. Smudges from dirty erasers leave behind stains on the colorful diagram.
“You’ve been looking at the same map for the -” Theo checks the clock, “- past three hours, bro.” Having a clock is one of the luxuries of being royalty. Having a clock, especially such a gilded, elaborate one, is impossible to most players. Not that Parrot wanted it to be so… fancy, but Theo insisted.
“‘Kay,” Parrot murmurs, not even listening anymore. He knows how the argument goes: Parrot won’t you-
“Listen to me for once. Please. You’re wearing yourself out!”
And then it goes- “Theo I have to prepare.” He doesn’t bother looking up, instead circling a suspicious mountain range. He circles Mt. Zafora with his pencil, writing messily in the margins: Cindercrest base somewhere inside?
Theo is playing out his part of the play. “Please, Parrot, you need to rest.”
“I’m fine.” Circles a few places on Mt. Zafora, notes in the margin: Suspicious activity of netherite squad seen here. “I’ll go to bed later.”
“Oh my god, bro,” Theo sighs. “I’m tired of arguing with you.” Parrot blinks in surprise as Theo hauls him to his feet and drags him to his bedroom.
“Theo, I’m not tired, I can work, I’m fi-” A string of familiar excuses tumbling out of his mouth.
“Oh, no you’re not fine, bro. It’s 3 AM and you’re going to a meeting with that stupid town leader you were talking about at 9 tomorrow! Like, you gotta get your sleep.” Sleep is one of the things Theo is careful about, always makes sure that Parrot gets a solid 6 hours of sleep at least. It’s ironic, a fighter caring so much about health, but it makes sense sometimes - you gotta take care of your body to be at your peak.
“No, really, it’s fine,” Parrot says weakly, more for show than for anything, as he’s wrestled into the bed. Not the first time he’s wished he had Theo’s strength.
“Bro. You’re going to bed. Now.”
“Okay, okay, fine, whatever.” Parrot sinks onto the plush red bed - another item they couldn’t afford in the potion shop - as Theo closes the lights with a flick of a switch.
Except the lights never go off. And just as Parrot’s eyelids droop, a massive cave opens up suddenly, beneath him. For a moment, he thinks it’s a trapper, except there’s none of the redstone wiring that’s usually in a trap. “Theo-!” he chokes out, grasping for a ledge, but he’s already falling into the blue-gray mist below.
Lomedy stretches on the hot mesa sand, wriggling a little and enjoying the heat.
“You’re like a cat, ” Flame grumbles, sitting down in his heat-proof netherite.
“Am not,” his best friend mutters absentmindedly.
“It’s true, though!” Flame insists. He leans against a mound of sand and gazes at the cloud-dotted blue sky. He fans his face. “It’s, like, so hot, bro. Why are you even out here?”
“Gotta appreciate nature. Aren’t you a blaze hybrid?”
“A quarter, which, like, isn’t enough for fire resistance.”
“Yeah, but if a normal ‘chungus’ can,” Lomedy mocks, “then shouldn’t the almighty Immortal Demon be able to?”
Flame mimics Lomedy in a high-pitched voice, making a yapping sign with his hand. “Shouldn’t the almighty Immortal Demon be able to?” Still, he lies down and puts his head on his arms. There’s not much to see in the endless blue sky, broken only by tiny puffs of fluffy clouds.
“Look,” Lomedy says, pointing to a wind-whipped wisp of a cloud stretching out to the east, “it’s like… water in a brook.”
“Maybe. That one over there, that one looks like a sword, bro.”
“Which one?”
“The one to the left of the sun.”
“Ohhh yeah,” Lomedy says, squinting. “Riiiight. I thought it looked like a stick.”
“Stick. So imaginative, bro.”
“Hey,” golden-eyed Lomedy says, batting at Flame in mock offense, “that’s not nice!”
Flame bats back. “Yes, it is! It’s like the nicest thing ever!”
Lomedy hauls himself off from the sun-heated ground. There’s a depression in the rust-colored sand where he laid down. “No, it’s not! You were being sarcastic, ever heard of that?” Lomedy launches himself at the still-lying-down Flame.
Flame grumbles something and wrestles with the blur of gold above him, dodging a playful slap and rolling himself off the ground. He leaps on Lomedy before he can react, pinning him to the ground. “Admit it,” Flame laughs, a little breathless, “you lost.”
“Okay, okay, I lost!” Lomedy spreads his arms in the sand, palms out, in mock surrender.
“Damn right you lost, bro,” Flame says, getting off of him. “Like, we’re going back to the base now, right? Pretty hot out here.”
“Uh huh,” Lomedy says, “sure.”
“Finally, he sees sense. Finally.” Flame flicks the lever to close the trap - Lomedy added that recently.
A yawning gap opens up beneath his feet as cold air rushes around him, pulling him in. He grabs the ledge, straining against whatever invisible force. The heck is happening- “Lomedy, Lomedy! Help, bro!”
Lomedy lunges over the side and catches Flame, but a gust of wind - what kind of wind even is this? - blows them apart. Flame gropes for his pearls but it’s already too late, and cool mist envelopes him.