Chapter Text
Something Grian has learned about himself throughout his lifetime is that when he loves, he loves with his entire being. Despite abandonment and trauma and loss and pain that goes beyond what is considered ‘normal’, his love, though initially hard to earn, is even harder to lose.
He’s loved Mumbo since the mustached spoon first bumped into him at the Hub. He would never forget how his (now) best friend had bumbled through the entire interaction, red-faced and stuttering in embarrassment even though Grian was the one who had stumbled into him.
He’s loved his brightly colored wings for as long as he can remember. They give him the freedom to soar above worlds and see what it feels like to glide so far away from the ground that the only thing in the air is him and the clouds.
He’s loved the feeling of finishing a building project since the moment he discovered what building was. Especially since sometimes it takes months of hard work and dedication to get everything just right.
Grian loves the hermits and the chaos they seem to generate anytime there’s at least two of them in a room together. Grian loves Hermitcraft like he loved Evo, still loves Evo despite the server crumbling before his eyes and loves all his friends that made it a home with him being memories of the past. Their loss still leaves a hollowed out hole in Grian’s chest despite the years that have come and gone without them by his side. It’s been so long now that he can’t imagine what living is like without an aching black hole consuming his entire being at just the thought of them.
He loves pet parrots and cuddles. Dancing and pranks. Buttons and levers and messing with Mumbo when he least expects it. He loves so many wonderful, wonderful things.
Most of the hermits know about the things he loves. At least, they know about the surface level things. The only one still alive that knows him as well as he knows himself is Mumbo, but only because they’ve known each other since their early teens. (Grian never could keep a secret from Mumbo, the man simply knew him too well.)
Grian loves and loves and loves so much.
…So forcing himself to ignore and forget about one of his greatest loves, his love of admining, was one of the hardest things he’s ever forced himself to do.
When Grian lost Evolution and all of His Players… who were under his watch… due to his failure as an Admin… he knew he could never be in charge of anyone ever again. No matter how much he loved working with the code, manipulating the server into just the right conditions after months and months of never ending work, fixing glitches and errors that his players caused all in the name of fun, never once did it cross his mind after escaping Them to even think about accessing his Admin Panels.
His Admin days were lost to wailing and corruption when he had to build 10 different tombstones for some of the greatest people he’s ever met; their loss forever a reminder of his failure. Himself and Mumbo the only witnesses to the gravity of him trying to be something he never should have ever attempted.
Mumbo knew this. He knew that Grian had almost broke. Even without knowing every single detail of what happened, Mumbo knew he wanted nothing to do with admining ever again. Mumbo had seen the server, bore witness to the tragedy that had befallen His beloved Evolutionists. Mumbo knew that Grian had failed so spectacularly he refused to ever talk about his previous dream of diving deep into the Code to create new worlds ever again. It simply wasn’t in the cards.
So how could he do this to him? How could he still try to convince him to watch over their entire server while Xisuma was out of commission?
—————
They were at one of Hermitcraft’s monthly meetings when it happened. It was the middle of season 7 and Xisuma had been addressing some of the glitches that had been occurring so far. Grian was paying attention. Somewhat. Mostly? He had been paying attention. Honest! Especially when X was talking about that arrow he found in the bamboo. But now Xisuma was talking about the lag on the server, specifically targeted to the redstoners if his glances towards certain players were any indication.
So now Grian was daydreaming plans for his mega build, trying to calculate how many materials he would need to collect for his next chunk of the base, when an ominous tingle ran through his body. On high alert, Grian sat up stiffly up in his seat, subtly looking around to see if anyone else had felt anything. Everyone looked about the same when he scanned the room. Xisuma was still talking; Mumbo was “discreetly” eating redstone (the spoon); Ren was forcing his eyes to stay open, sunglasses half falling off his face as he paid attention to their Admin. Nothing of note was out of the ordinary.
Grian’s body shivered again and he felt his power involuntarily flare in response. He immediately dialed it back down, but the damage was done. Some of the more magically-inclined players were looking at him in puzzlement, probably wondering why his magic had flared for seemingly no reason.
Joe looked concerned when he caught Grian’s eye. In response, he opened up a Sub-Admin Panel he had access to, scanning through the code for any disturbances from what Grian could tell from his limited view across the table. Xisuma himself had stumbled through his sentence at Grian’s power display, glancing at him curiously before continuing on with his speech.
Watchhimwatchhimdangerdangerdanger watchhimdangerwrongwrongwrongWRONGWRONGWRONGWRONGWRONGWRONG
Grain’s head was in agony as his power flared out again, searching. What it was searching for, however, he had no clue. He knew more than felt that a couple of his eyes had opened and glanced towards X. Grian had to grab his head and physically force his gaze away from X to meet Joe’s worried look. He maintained eye contact for a few tense seconds before quickly flicking his eyes towards X and then back to Joe, his other eyes still zoned in on the admin.
Thankfully, Joe seemed to understand his wordless message as he pushed his chair back and stood up making his way towards their admin, screens still open. Xisuma had once again stuttered mid sentence, this time stumbling slightly and leaning against the table for support. The other hermits glanced around at each other in concern, most leaning forwards in their chairs in tense anticipation.
Grian felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to look at Mumbo, forcing his otherworldly eyes closed and barely taking in his worried expression before a thud rang out, followed by a grunt. Grian whipped his head towards Xisuma, only to see him completely unconscious in Joe’s arms, head thumped limply against the table. There were some exclamations of surprise from other hermits while Keralis and Cub both rushed over to offer assistance.
Grian turned back to Mumbo, a look of absolute horror on his friend’s face at the sight of their admin lying unconscious across from them. Grian swallowed thickly, a sense of dread tingling down his spine, his wings twitching behind. His power let off another wave, refusing to go unacknowledged this time, forcing a few of his concealed eyes open once more, before everyone was ushered out of the room by Doc and Zed’s urgent hands.
~~~~~~~
Hermitcraft itself was stuck in a standstill after everything that went down. Grian himself had been tense, his powers becoming more difficult to maintain the longer he went without answers. He hadn’t been able to make any progress on his base either, too focused on keeping a lid on his emotions. Strong emotions were dangerous for someone with his power level.
Finally, 2 days after X’s initial collapse, Joe and Keralis decided it was time to hold another hermit meeting to give the hermits an update on X’s situation. Even though they weren’t Admins themselves, Xisuma had given the both of them limited access in the event of emergencies. He had even made an entire meeting out of it, making sure none of the hermits had any objection to him doing this. If this didn’t count as an emergency, then Grian didn’t know what did.
Everyone slowly filed in, sitting in their usual spots. This time, though, all the hermits were noticeably more subdued. There was no chatter, no fidgeting, hardly anyone felt the need to breathe too loudly. The absence of their admin filled the room and left behind an uneasiness that Grian couldn’t exactly describe.
Joe and Keralis stood at the head of the table, occupying Xisuma’s normal spot. Xisuma himself was in a side room of the meeting hall, Cub and Doc not wanting him to be moved too far from his initial collapse location. As far as he knew, Zed and the two of them had run test after test on Xisuma, trying to find the cause of the collapse. But clearly whatever they had tried wasn’t working since X still wasn’t awake.
The hermits awkwardly stared at the two, waiting for one of them to break the silence. It felt wrong to do so, X normally signaled the start of these meetings. But without him, Joe finally bit the bullet, roughly clearing his throat.
“I, um, don’t really know what to say to start this off. Um, are there, uh, any questions?”
Nearly every hand jerked into the air.
“Oh, wow, uh, that’s, um… oh boy, I’m not cut out for this,” He pleadingly looked to his side, “Keralis?”
“Let’s start with Mr. Bumbo over there.”
“Wow, I uh, didn’t expect to be first. Oh heavens, is, uh, is X alright?”
“As far as we can tell,” Cub answered. “He doesn’t appear to have any injuries and all his scannings show that he’s stable.”
“It’s most likely an issue with his code,” Doc added. “And because none of us are full administrators, we don’t exactly have access to look into Xisuma’s code to fix the issue.”
Grian felt his heart sink at the news. He had a feeling it was code related when his power had flared out so harshly. If it had been an injury of some kind, it would have still reacted (his powers were extremely protective), but it wouldn’t have been as strong. Even before They took him, Grian had always been more sensitive to the code than other Admins, able to catch glitches or other code related problems faster than his peers. He had hoped his gut feeling was wrong when X had first collapsed. But at this point that hope was all but diminished.
“What’s going to happen to Hermitcraft while X’s out of commission?” False was asking when Grian tuned back in. Mumbo had been rubbing light circles into his palm, drawing him out of his thoughts and back into the discussion. Grian shot him a slight smile in thanks.
“We don’t know at this point.” Keralis replied, “Something like this has never happened before. And it’s not like we have another admin on Hermitcraft that could check.”
Grian withheld a wince. They did. Technically. But since no one other than Mumbo actually knew that fact, it was true in the other hermits’ eyes that Xisuma was the only Administrator.
“X also only gave us limited access to help him out when the workload became too much.” Joe reminded them, more confident now that the conversation had been going on for a while. “We have basic access to things like small virus detection and have protocols to follow that help with lag.”
“We’ve also helped with simple coding issues,” Keralis chimed in, “Nothing too fancy, though. Only stuff Shashwammy has shown us to help lighten the workload. He’s the one who went to that fancy smancy admin school after all.”
“So… basically we’re screwed?” Scar meekly asked, clutching Jellie to his chest.
“We, um…” Keralis and Joe shared a look, “We don’t know. Like I said earlier, something like this hasn’t happened to us. Ever. There’s not exactly a protocol we’ve put in place for situations like this.”
“We also don’t know who we would need to contact to help fix the issue.” Joe hesitantly added. “All the contacts are in X’s com unit. And we don’t have the passcode to it since it has sensitive player information on it that’s only available to X.”
“Are we going to have to leave Hermitcraft?” Jevin timidly asked, fiddling with his fingers. “Cause a lot of us haven’t left the server since we first joined. I know I don’t exactly have anywhere else to go except for, like, a private world. And even then it doesn’t exactly have the protections Hermitcraft has in place.”
“We’d be vulnerable.” Doc bluntly stated. “Also, everyone knows Hermitcraft is a close knit community for mostly hybrids. If word got out that our admin is down and we all left for private worlds, people would come for us. I have no doubt that some people would love to get me alone,” He hissed.
Ren stood and reached an arm across Doc’s shoulder pulling him into a side hug to help calm him down. Doc took a visible breath, clearly trying to pacify his creeper genetics that always got riled up when he was agitated.
“I don’t think we’ll have to, you know, leave Hermitcraft.” Joe spoke into the silence left behind in the wake of Doc’s words. The gravity of the situation seemed to be fully hitting the Hermits. Grian knew it definitely was for him. He hadn’t really considered the implications behind having no admin, consumed by his worry for X. Having no Admin meant no one could run Hermitcraft. No one running Hermitcraft, meant they would have to leave. Leaving meant no protection, meaning They would find him, find him, find him, find him, and he’d be caught and taken back and punished for leaving. Why did he leave? He shouldn’t have left.
Mumbo shook his shoulder, once again pulling him away from his spiraling thoughts. Grian shook his head, reorienting himself. Right. That was only worse case scenarios. X would probably be fine in a day or two and everything would be right in the world again. No reason to panic! Who said Grian was panicking!? He most certainly was not!
“Do we know if the situation will fix itself?” Hypno questioned looking around the table, “Because if not, we’ll have to bring in outside help. I don’t know how long the server can last without X running this thing.”
“From what I can tell,” Zed answered, “I honestly don’t think this is something X can fix himself. We can maybe give it another day?” He tilted his hand side to side, “Maybe two before we’ll have to call in outside help. I don’t know how bad whatever affecting Xisuma is. Code-related issues aren’t my specialty.”
A buzzing sound cut off whatever could be said to follow up Zed’s assessment. Everyone immediately turns towards Scar, who was notorious for forgetting to mute his com during meetings.
He holds up both palms in surrender, “It’s not me this time guys, I swear. Look!” He fumbles around for his com, patting through the various pockets of his wizard robe before pulling it out, which was indeed blank of any incoming calls.
With the most likely culprit proven innocent, everyone quickly begins checking their own coms. Grian’s own was blessedly blank, though Grian already figured that would be the case. Anyone who would have reason to contact him were in the same room as him, except for X, but he was currently incapacitated, so there clearly wasn’t a reason for anyone to be calling him.
Every hermit holds their com up, and every single one of them is blank. But that doesn’t make any sense since the buzzing of a com unit could still be heard throughout the area. While Grian looked around in confusion, Keralis suddenly gasps and rushes away. He darts into a side room, fiddling around with something, Grian wincing when a large comedic bang echoed through the room.
He rushes back in, slamming a very recognizable com unit on the table and clicking accept. A hologram image emerged from the screen, the figure projected on top of the table. She had her hair pulled up into a slicked-back bun, dark sunglasses covering her eyes. She wore a crisp, black suit, absolutely no wrinkles present from Grian’s examination.
He wrinkled his nose at the person who practically oozed authority, unimpressed with the way she wasn’t even making eye contact who she presumed was X. Instead, her arm was held in front of her, portraying an admin screen that she was steadily typing on, no expression on her face.
It was silent as everyone waited to see who made the first move. Eventually she sighed, breaking the tension. “Administrator Xisumavoid, you have been ignoring the mandatory check in with your paired administrator for,” she tapped something, “the third day in a row. We can excuse the first day, since things happen, and can ignore the second if a situation is dire, but going on three days with no contact whatsoever is extremely unprofessional. What exactly do you have to say for yourself?”
She finally glanced up and made eye contact with both Joe and Keralis. Since the projection was on top of the table, she was looking down her nose at the two of them. She stared blankly at the two of them before absentmindedly closing her screens. “Oh. You’re not Administrator Xisumavoid.”
“No ma’am we’re not. No siree. Now who are you?” Keralis spoke up, drawing her attention away from Joe, who she happened to be staring down. She straightened her tie and pushed her sunglasses further up her nose from where they had slightly slipped down.
“Ah, my apologies. You aren’t who I was expecting. My name is Janice, identification number 733291. I am the leading head representative of the administration council. My job is to monitor high-profile server administrators and make sure there aren’t any major safety concerns. Case in point, Administrator Xisumavoid hasn’t responded to his paired administrator in 3 days, which is highly unlike him. I’ve been tasked with finding out the reason and if it was any cause for concern.”
She tightened her arms behind her back, tilting to the side to get a good look behind Joe and Keralis. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Xisumavoid is, would you? It’s highly important that I speak to him and get to the bottom of this nonsense.”
“That, uh, umm…” Joe started, though he immediately trailed off under the scrutiny of Janice. Even though Grian couldn’t see her face, he knew her gaze had to be piercing into Joe’s soul by the way he shivered under her undivided attention.
“Our admin isn’t…” Keralis picked up, once again capturing Janice’s attention, “uh, available at the moment.”
She waved her hand around dismissively, “I don’t care if he’s sleeping or working or ‘too busy’. Just bring his com unit to him and allow me to speak to him.”
“I mean, we could bring you to him, but you still wouldn’t be able to speak with him,” Joe hesitantly admitted, twisting his bracelets around roughly. “He’s um…” Joe fumbled trying to find the right word, “incapacitated? at the moment.” There was silence following Joe’s statement, Janice taking a moment to process his words.
Though her eyes were still completely concealed, Grian could tell they were narrowed in suspicion based on the sharpness in her voice, “What do you mean,” she coldly asked, “that Xisumavoid is incapacitated?” Grian was sure that if she hadn’t been maintaining a professional attitude that she would’ve done actual air quotes. But she wasn’t a friend. Wasn’t an acquaintance. She was a stranger, representative or not, digging around in Hermit business that she had no place being in.
“And why,” Keralis venomly asked, all friendliness gone from his voice. His tone was one Grian didn’t get to hear often. It was something normally only brought out in the most serious of situations. “would we tell you anything in relation to our admin?”
Janice huffed, bringing a hand forward to pinch between her eyes. “I can’t believe this,” she muttered. “If this has hit Hermitcraft…” she began pacing, “ohhhh, this will be bad.”
The hermits glanced around at each other in confusion. Mumbo just shrugged when Grian looked at him, a puzzled look on his face. “Hold on,” Joe interrupted, “What’ll be bad? What’s going on?”
Keralis’ eyes narrowed,” What do you know that we don’t? What’s wrong with our admin?”
She abruptly stopped, snapping over to them, “Did Xisumavoid pass out completely unexpectedly? Like, he was fine one second and completely unconscious the next.”
“Yes,” Keralis reluctantly admitted, crossing his arms.
“And have your doctors on server checked him over for any physical injuries, only to find absolutely nothing?”
“Yes…” Keralis drew out.
“And is the speculation right now about what’s wrong with Xisumavoid is something code related.”
“Yeah…”
Janice heaved a sigh, her whole body slumping, “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Her projection shows her dropping into a chair, placing her elbows on her desk. She leans into the palms of her hands, covering her eyes and hunching forward with another drawn out sigh.
“What’s happening to our admin that you aren’t telling us?” Joe earnestly asks. “What do we do to help him?”
Janice looks up from behind her hands. Now that her sunglasses are off, Grian gets a good view of her face for the first time and…
she looks awful. There are deep, purple eye bags under both eyes and a permanent wrinkle line between both brows. Honestly, she looks like she hasn’t slept in a week, let alone awake enough to have a conversation with extremely worried players.
“There’s nothing you can do,” she speaks into the quietness that follows everyone observing her face for the first time. Grian never realized how much dark sunglasses could hide your expression. Maybe he should get some for himself? No! He needs to focus, she just said they can’t do anything to… They can’t do anything to help.
“What do you mean by that exactly?” Doc questions, coming around the table to stand behind Keralis and Joe, arms crossed.
She sits up straighter, maintaining eye contact with him, “Multiple administrators have become incapacitated because of some unidentified virus. We don’t know much about it, just that it’s only been attacking active administrators on their own servers. It’s why we implemented the pairing system. If someone stopped responding, their other member of the pair could let the council know.”
She pushed the chair back and stood up, beginning to pace again, “We have a team working on virus identification and code manipulation, but so far,” she turned her heavy eyes to Keralis, “there haven’t been any results.”
“But X is going to wake up eventually, right?” Joe asks, twisting his bracelets aggressively.
“Some administrators have awoken, yes,” she concedes. A flash of hope burns through Grian. “But,” she continues, “most of those affected are still unconscious. There’s no,” she winces, “estimated time they’ll awaken.”
Hope only burns when there’s something to fuel the flames. Janice’s words have thoroughly doused the minuscule amounts of it Grian had. This was so much worse than he could have imagined.
Janice sighs at their silence, bringing her wrist back up. A panel opens and she taps on an icon that opens up something that looks a lot like a protocols list. She scrolls down a little and clears her throat, clicking on one.
“Please excuse my unprofessionalism. It’s been… a long few months. By order of the Administration Council, all players belonging to this Server should disperse for the foreseeable future until the Administrator is back to a reasonable health level as determined by the Council. We offer our condolences…”
“Wait, wait wait wait WAIT!” Zedaph interrupts, pushing his chair back so hard it hits the ground with a BANG.
He rounds the table, catching himself from an almost fall by slamming his hands down. “You want us to Leave!? Like, leave leave!?”
Janice blinks down at him in clear bewilderment, “Well, yes.”
“Leave Hermitcraft. Like, no longer be on the Server leave.”
“That is the protocol, yes.” She raises a brow, “Is there an issue?”
“‘Is there an issue’ she asks ‘is there an issue,’” he throws his hands up, “OF COURSE THERE’S AN ISSUE! We can’t just leave! Where would we go? Most of us haven’t left in years!” He begins pacing, his sheep ears pressed tight against his head. “And what about traffickers!? I mean, hello!?” He gestures towards his very noticeable horns. “Most of Hermitcraft is made up of hybrids! We can’t just join other servers all willi-nilli! And we can’t be away from our herd for long because of our instincts!”
He starts pacing again, “And most of us only have private servers. Some of us don’t even have that! We wouldn’t be able to see anyone for, like, however long this stupid virus thing takes!” He spins around aggressively and stomps his foot, “You can’t make us leave!”
Zedaph’s heavy pants echo through the room. He’s right. If they leave Hermitcraft, they’ll be vulnerable. And they’ll be without their family. Since Grian joined in Season 6, his very being has interwoven into the Hermits tight knit group.
They’ve laughed together, gone to war together (only prank wars, never real ones), had sleepovers, and sleepless nights, and become family together. Grian doesn’t think he’d survive long without them being around, doesn’t know how he could go back to being isolated in the face of everything he knows he could have on such an amazing server.
“I understand,” Janice tries to placate, “that the Hermits are very close and that being offworld would be challenging. But you simply cannot be in a server without an active administrator. Especially with everything you players get up to.”
“What if we promise not to do anything redstone related?” Tango asks, somewhat desperately from his place beside Grian. Janice barely turns her head to look at him. “The server wouldn’t lag out for any reason, so we’d be okay without X until he’s better, right?” He looks around the table, “We could totally do that, right guys?”
Everyone mumbles an agreement, even the redstoners notorious for causing great deals of lag; looking at you, Mumbo.
“Be that as it may,” Janice interrupted, not unkindly, “even if all you players promised not to cause any lag issues that an administrator would have to fix, there are still glitches and code related issues that you need an administrator for. I’m sorry, but you simply cannot stay on Hermitcraft as long as Xisumavoid is inactive.”
Janice seems sincere as she says this, like this genuinely pains her to tell them. Grian doesn’t… he won’t believe this. There has to be another way, some solution that’ll keep them all together within Hermitcraft’s protective walls.
Clearly, other Hermits have the same idea. “There must be another way we can stay,” Keralis pleads, “Another admin can come and substitute for X or something? Anything?”
“If another administrator came, would you Hermits even be receptive to a stranger being on your server with access to your codes?”
…
The silence is telling.
Janice sighs, “Even with that, we simply don’t have anyone left. This virus situation has deployed every single last one of our on duty administrators that could temporarily fill these positions on other servers. And those not on the field are busy trying to figure out what this virus is and how to fix it.”
She makes hard eye contact with Keralis, “There is no other solution. You can’t stay here, and there’s no administrator you would accept, even if one was available. You all have to leave. There’s not any other choice.”
Grian slumps down, burying his face in his arms. He vaguely hears False and Cleo get up and start arguing with Janice along with Doc and Keralis. This can’t be happening. Grian can’t believe his safe haven for the past few years is being yanked from right under him, by a problem he can’t solve no less. This is terrible. Maybe the Hermits can argue there case?
But no, Janice already said they can’t stay here without an active admin. Grian knows from his own days in admin school that they can’t stay here. He just wishes…
“Enough!” Janice’s shout rings throughout the room, silencing everyone. Grian’s head shoots up in shock, throwing off Mumbo’s hand that had been on his head. “Enough,” she repeats.
“I’m sorry Hermits, but nothing you say will change my mind. The council has this protocol in place for a reason. You all have 3 hours to vacate the server and if one of the sub-administrators could open a gateway for us to collect Xisuma for observation, that would help the council out greatly. Now let me..”
Mumbo abruptly stands, startling Grian enough for him to flare out his wings. “What if someone on server used to be an admin? Could they substitute for Xisuma?” Grian can only stare at Mumbo in horror. There’s only one person he can be talking about, one person who Grian knows that has experience as an admin.
Grian himself. But… Mumbo knows he can’t do that. Not after last time! Plus, his license is inactive anyway. There’s no way he can do that!
Janice tilts her head, “If a player on Hermitcraft is an admin, active or not, that would solve a great deal of my issues. If they’re inactive, all I would have to do is reinstate their license and they’d be qualified to takeover in place of Xisumavoid…” She trails off and mumbles to herself, “And we wouldn’t have to take Xisumavoid to the medical wing with all the other administrators, since they would be ably to monitor him in our place.”
She looks back up, “Are any of you administrators? Inactive or not?”
Everyone looks around at each other, except for Grian. No, he’s trying to slump further into his seat as discreetly as possible, firmly ignoring the burning eyes he can feel from the traitor on his left.
No one answers her, everyone looking around at each other questioningly. It’s barely noticeable, but Grian’s keen eyes catch her slumping in defeat. She opens her mouth to speak before Mumbo interrupts once more, “Could you give us 30 minutes? Just to, to,” he stutters under her gaze, “talk about it amongst ourselves?” His voice gets quieter at the end, betraying his nerves for everyone to see.
She tilts her head, contemplating his request. “That seems reasonable. I’ll set a timer and call back promptly.” She opens up a panel, tapping on a clock icon and disappearing, a timer replacing her silhouette.
Grian stays slumped in his seat, hoping no one notices him. Besides Mumbo, of course, who’s staring daggers at him once more, trying to silently urge Grian to speak up.
When it becomes clear no one wants to be the first to speak, Keralis clears his throat, “Alright sweeties. Everyone back to your seats. I guess we need to have a discussion about this before Ms. Janice calls back.”
Mumbo tentatively raises his hand, barely even having it up before Keralis gives him a questioning look. “Could Grian and I be excused for a moment?” Grian hisses at him and sinks lower, but Mumbo stubbornly ignores him, completely focused on Keralis.
“Oh! Of course lovelies. Just be back soon. Don’t want you guys to miss our discussion too much.”
“Okwe’llbebacksoon, byeee!” Mumbo hurries out, yanking Grian from his chair and strong-arming him out the door. He flails as he’s grabbed, snapping his wings against his back to avoid hitting his friends. He feels eyes on him as he’s dragged out the door, stubbornly refusing to let his own open in response. The door to the hall slams shut, sealing him to his fate.