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Spoke
The familiar void surrounded him, the place between servers. Spoke was familiar with this place, a place far out of most player’s reach. Only voidlings got the chance to navigate this place after being banned from a server. It had been awhile still since he’d been here, years had been spent in Unstable, only to end from fall damage of all things.
Well that was a bit of an oversimplification, there had been a battle, loud and hot. People trying to kill him, to stop him, even his friends. Spoke had been pushed into a corner, trying to flee, he’d jumped down and he’d missed the water.
What a stupid way to go.
He found himself scoffing as he stood up, or it felt like standing up. The Void functioned differently than a server, there was no real concept of a physical being here. It was why your form typically warped from server to server, the void forgetting what you were before you entered.
He moved forward, in the distance he could see a faint white dot, a star almost. Another server probably, the downside of being a voidling, having to navigate the Void yourself to your next home instead of just spawning near immediately after your banning Sure it technically gave you the ability to choose where you want to go but unless you wanted to wander for…however time worked here, it was best to just go to whatever server looked the closest.
Spoke had learned that after his first few bannings, being picky meant very little when you’re effectively immortal. Whatever, the more time he spent here the more boring it would get, he might as well start moving. No point in dwelling forever, he’d encounter his old friends in other servers, even if they didn’t remember Unstable well.
Parrot
“Parrot!” Ark was bouncing around excitedly, as Parrot stared at what shouldn’t be. Water in the nether was fundamentally impossible, not without exploits. And yet Ark was excitedly showing it off, as if this was something she should be proud of. “Imagine what we could do! The people we could help with this!”
“What do you mean the people we could help?” Parrot tried to ask carefully, trying to keep the disgust from being heard as he spoke. He had seen where all of this had happened before, this was how Spoke had started out, exploits for the greater good he’d said.
Ark didn’t seem to catch his concern, “the resources! Imagine the farms, the transportation we could provide to the server!” Ark grinned, “we could fix the material shortages at spawn!”
Fix the shortages at spawn..? He’d tried that, as king, as an independent explorer, even as a potion maker. Nothing in the entire server could fix Spawn’s issues, nothing in vanilla Minecraft at least. “Ark-” He tried to say, trying to explain everything, Ark was a new player, she didn’t know about Spoke. Not really, only the vague rumors of yet another man who had tried to rule the server years ago, a man who had died from his own mistakes.
But maybe Ark was right, it wasn’t fair to her for Parrot to think every exploiter would turn out like Spoke. The ability to combine water with Nether travel and get resources from further out into spawn, or new, less expensive gold farms with water would make golden carrots more accessible.
There was potential for it, sure, but was the potential worth exploits? Ark was a good kid, she clearly did just want to help. And Spawn was only getting worse, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to try another strategy.
Not to mention Ark would have Parrot, he’d help her make sure she wasn’t straying so far off of the correct path. Maybe it was worth it, if they could help the server get better, be better, then maybe people wouldn’t try to constantly destroy it.
Flame
It was late at night, Flame was doing maintenance for Fragger lit by a campfire. Tomorrow he’d turn the bounty in for the reward, there’d been no reason to spare such a weak opponent. The target had barely been able to disable his shield, much less be a good opponent in the future. How had the majority of the server get even worse at combat, how had these chungies been marked as “high risk” by Merchant City?
These people could barely figure out how to crit. There hadn’t been a good fight in ages, much less one that could compare to-
“Yo yo yooooo” A familiar voice echoed from opposite of Flame, Yungy emerged from the foliage, grinning a little bit. “Long time no see, huh Flame?”
He found himself scoffing, “not really.” Flame wouldn’t classify it as a long time, it had only been a few months. He was fairly certain Yungy intentionally sought him out for some reason, he’d never considered them close but the other didn’t seem to share that sentiment.
Yungy pressed on, seemingly ignoring Flame’s unexcited answer. “I just heard that the Immortal Demon was around and decided to take a gander to see if I could find you.” Yungy shrugged, clearly playing it off, “what are you doing this far out anyways?”
Putting Fragger aside he sighed and forced himself to turn to Yungy, “same as always bro. Just going after another target y’know, just another chungy though.” He laid back, “no one fights well anymore…” He muttered quietly, glancing at Yungy who just shrugged.
“I mean, most of the old top dogs are gone now man.” Yungy said absent mindedly, “Off of the top of my mind only Clown’s still around, though from what I hear he’s pretty reclusive, probably won’t fight for the sake of it.”
Sighing, he looked up at the sky, “any news on Wemmbu?”
The air got much heavier as Yungy seemed to deflate a bit, “we’ve been over this man, he’s gone, dead years ago.” Yungy was staring now, it was the same conversation every time they spoke.
“Last time I heard that, he was fine, and he was back stronger than ever after that.” Flame protested, Wemmbu had a habit of faking his death for some reason, Flame was sure the stupid purple man was out there somewhere.
“That didn’t last nearly a decade.” Yungy cut his thoughts off, “besides that surely there’s someone else who can fight you. Wemmbu wasn’t THAT good, just had good weapons.”
“And the knowledge, strategy and ambition to use them,” Flame sat up, “not just anyone can be another Wemmbu.”
“Not to mention,” Yungy plowed over Flame again, “wasn’t Wemmbu retiring anyways? Even on the off chance that he is alive in a ditch somewhere why would he want to fight you?”
“Well-”
“Look I miss him too-” Yungy exhaled, “so does everyone else…but we aren’t spending our lives chasing after a ghost. You shouldn’t either,” The other man paused, seeming to try and let Flame and absorb his words before he spoke again. “Look, you told me about a friend you had- God of War or something?”
Flame glared at him, he had mentioned God of War one time to Yungy years ago, what was the point of bringing him up now? “Get to the point bro,” he muttered.
That only caused Yungy to roll his eyes, “okay okay,” he was silent for a moment afterwards. “Do you seriously want to die like he did?”
“Excuse me?” Flame stood up abruptly, already reaching for Fragger. Either Yungy had lost all common sense or he had a suicide wish.
“You heard me.” Yungy said, taking a few steps back but not yielding his words. “From what you told me he died because he kept chasing a stronger and stronger fight, am I wrong?”
“Well no- but”
“There’s no but!” Yungy snapped, “dude you’re going to get yourself killed one of these days. Look I know we don’t always get along but the last thing Wemmbu would’ve wanted is for you to go and get yourself killed because you kept chasing after a stronger opponent until you actually find one!”
“Why would it matter what Wemmbu wanted-“
“Because I thought you said you two were friends!” A silence hung between the two of them for a minute. Both men catching their breath as the screaming match died out.
Flame forced himself to calm down, breathing in and out. “Bro we were friends,” he finally said before turning away from Yungy. “And I know you think I’m chasing after him but I’m not. I just want to get stronger, alright? And quite frankly you’re not helping, so do us both a favor and just get lost.”
Wemmbu
He came back to himself slowly, wearily blinking as he heard Egg’s voice…talking to someone? It took a few seconds before he was fully back before he found himself quickly walking in the direction of the voices. There shouldn’t be voices, not all of the way out here at least, they hadn’t had an unexpected visitor…ever.
As Wemmbu turned the corner he saw Egg talking to a human decked out in Netherite but seemingly mostly friendly. Still their worn appearance stuck out like a sore thumb in contrast to the opulence of the quartz and gold structure surrounding them.
“Egg?” He spoke as he approached, doing his best to not stare at the newcomer. It should be impossible for someone to have made it out this far into the Farlands without help or prior knowledge at least. Then again, that’s probably what the first Farlander’s had thought when they saw Egg and him.
Egg waved at him, and gestured towards Wemmbu, his eye spinning around to glance at him before spinning back to the human, “this is the friend I was telling you about.”
The human nodded as Wemmbu stopped a few paces away, giving him a once over, as if trying to judge his strength. Wemmbu idly wondered if he recognized him, if the main server still remembered a purple creature who could rain TNT from the sky with just a glance.
“And you are?” He kept his voice guarded, this person was millions of millions of blocks away from spawn, normal players didn’t make that journey.
“Rifttonic,” he spoke, crossing his arms and shifting his stance a bit. “I was just…exploring.” Too much hesitation, too much uncertainty, exploring had likely been closer to searching for something, and on Unstable that something was probably power.
“What were you searching for?” Wemmbu shifted a bit to try and put himself between Rift and Egg.
Rift only shrugged, “well now it’s something called ‘The Forge’” he tilted his head, his tone getting harder. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“The Forge?” Wemmbu scoffed, trying to hide his own alarm, where the hell did this kid even hear about that? The Farlanders had kept it under wraps, and Wemmbu had made sure to continue that when he’d taken their posts. “Such a strange name for something,” he tried to play it off. “Sounds like some chungie fooled you, kid, if I were you I’d just stop looking and go back to the main server.”
Behind him Egg was nodding along, “yeah, unfortunate that you had to go this far for nothing, how the cookie crumbles y’know.”
“Except I didn’t hear about it from a random,” Rift spoke, looking at the two, “I found it on some signs out here, a…Lakerek? Used to yield it, it gave him unimaginable power, or so the signs said.”
Wemmbu really wanted to hit himself, they’d been discussing going and destroying those signs but had decided they were far enough out that no one would find them. They should’ve known better and just not risked it, Egg seemed to be having a similar moment of realization.
“So where is it?” Rift looked expectantly between them, “look you two seem nice enough, no one needs to get hurt here.”
He raised a brow, looking at the kid more in depth. Full netherite sure, enchanted and he clearly had weapons and some experience judging from the scars. But against someone like him? Wemmbu truly doubted Rift could hold a candle to him, reaching into his inventory he pulled out Gambit and spun the mace around a few times. “You sure?” He sneered, switching between wind and Gambit, trying to see if Rift would faulter.
The other unfortunately did not, his eyes only widening slightly. Wemmbu could only imagine how rare maces were on the server now after so long, could maybe be Rift’s first time seeing one in person. Still Rift swapped to his sword, lowering himself into a battle ready stance.
Wemmbu found himself grinning, “it’s your funeral kid.”