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The little island was growing, slowly but surely.
He’d been watching when Xisuma had fallen into the new world initially and cracked his helmet upon landing. He’d had to watch his friend, the admin who’d so kindly and carefully watched over all of them, all their myriad issues and fractured pasts, slowly suffocate on the thin over-world air. Then he’d respawned, but his helmet hadn’t been repaired.
Grian distinctly got the feeling that was their fault.
He supposed they were trying to teach him a lesson.
When he’d plunged into the boatem hole and fallen through the void alongside his friends, there had been the tiniest fear this might happen. He had hoped they would miss him. He’d only be free-floating between worlds for a few seconds at most, right? Then again, he had no idea, this ending was unprecedented, and he didn’t know if their method of escape would even save them. Save any of his friends, or save himself.
He’d felt their threads winding around him, purple had glowed in his vision as he’d fallen into the void. The brightly colored void suits of the other boatem members had flickered like candlelight around him, then between blinks, they had been snuffed out.
Then he was here.
He’d traded his life to the Watchers before, trying to save his home server, and that had only ended in failure. For the longest time, he’d thought he was the sole survivor, only able to escape the hellish grasp of the timeless creatures thanks to determination and sheer dumb luck. He’d played docile, behaved broken. Enough that he was allowed to make his way between lessons alone, instead of being forcibly escorted from place to place. When he’d seen the slimmest opening, he’d booked it for the Hall of Portals. Diving through the first one he’d seen, he’d ended up on Hermitcraft. Babbling, pleading, desperate words had tumbled out when Xisuma had confronted him as an intruder, but as it turned out, this world was a very different place. Here, Grian wasn’t the only one with a complicated, tragic backstory. Somehow, that was a comfort. It meant that they understood him, and welcomed him with open arms, a safe haven from his tormentors.
He’d only found out earlier this year that trading himself to the Watchers hadn’t been a total failure. His home server, Evo, had been destroyed, but his players, including his sister and cousin, had survived, ending up separated but alive. So had all the other players Grian had once been responsible for. In that, he could see the thinnest of silver linings.
He was struggling to see one of those here.
“Another.”
Grian’s head already felt like it was about to split open. His code was being wrecked, pieces of him forced to turn over like changes on an Othello board.
“I-I can’t…” He pleaded.
Pain. It shredded against his skin, from the inside out, and when more tears poured over from his eyes, they glowed purple. It made his stomach turn.
He was changing.
Just like they wanted him to.
Piece by piece, they were tearing out and rewriting his code, which made him a player. Transforming him into one of them.
But he didn’t want to be one of them.
“Another.”
The voice echoed disembodied from somewhere in the nearby darkness. Grian knew the halls of the Watchers, even if they seemed sometimes to shift or turn in ways he couldn’t comprehend. This room was far to the other side of their stronghold from the Hall of Portals. He supposed they’d learned their lesson from his last escape, considering before, after he’d played docile, he’d been allowed some small modicum of autonomy. Not anymore. He’d spent all his time since they’d pulled him from the void here. All around him, hanging in the air, along the tops of his wings, against his arms, bare skin broken out in goosebumps with nothing but the white collared button tee he wore beneath his usual red jumper after they’d stripped him of his void suit…were eyes. In glowing purple traces of light, some abstract, some terribly realistic, all swiveling and blinking, all giving him a different view.
Watching so many different worlds and angles all at once.
His brain felt like it was being run through a paper shredder.
“Another.”
The voice insisted again, and a stressed, agonized keen rent his throat. He squeezed his fisted hands till he felt his nails dig against his palms. Code flickered, purple battled green, and he barely cut back the sob that wanted to get out as another eye opened, joining several that had stacked themselves near his right shoulder. He heaved. His stomach roiled. Tears poured down his face, but they’d been doing that for who knew how long.
Another world flashed its visions across his head, and he tried to smother any noises to betray his discomfort. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. Made to watch so many dozens of worlds, all at once, recognize each piece of the expanding puzzle fit together for their entertainment. A hiccuping sob caught against his throat. He was sure his nails were drawing blood against his palms. The glowing purple tears kept flowing. He couldn’t let go of even the smallest ounce of focus. He’d been waiting, watching, just like they’d asked of him, but they might not have realized it yet.
Even Watchers grew bored of tormenting him, and once in a while, Grian couldn’t have told you if it were days, weeks, or months, the one managing his ‘lessons’ would change. And as they changed, in those few seconds where all the countless eyes were off him, Grian would plunge his hand into his pants pocket and click a few letters into his com.
He’d unclipped the thing from his belt and hidden it in his pocket when the Watchers had first seized him. He had no idea if it would work, or even connect from this distant stronghold beyond time back to the hermits. He’d rotated it with the screen facing inward, and he’d used the device countless times, enough to know where the letters were by touch, without needing to see what he was typing. He’d considered just attempting to send a string of keyboard smashing, but he realized very quickly that was a bad idea.
Once he sent a message, if it did go through, the Watchers would surely sense the connection of the com, and figure out he’d hidden it. He was only getting one shot at this. He needed to keep it brief, who knew how many more changes of the guard before Grian himself became more Watcher than player, and started to lose touch, but he also needed to make sure the necessary information was there. If it wasn’t, his friends might never find him.
Then again, they might never find him anyway…but that was a quitters mentality. He wasn’t quitting, not yet.
The gentlest sensation of a breeze ran through the dark room, lit only by the glow of his tears and the many watching eyes he was being forced to maintain. Grian un-fisted his right hand and plunged it into his pocket, thumb landing against the keypad of his com.
This was it. He could feel the next Watcher approaching and knew this was going to hurt, but it was the only chance he had. Sucking in a deep breath, he punched in the last two letters and hit send.
“What was that?”
Pain.
His focus on the eyes, all the viewpoints, shattered, and they all closed. The various worlds he’d been watching, including the distant view he’d managed to keep of the tiny stone island in the middle of a lake, where a ragtag band of misfits and outcasts were patching each other's wounds and carrying each other to beds, disappeared into a swirl of shadows.
“What was that?”
The demand repeated, and Grian clenched his teeth to hold back a scream as phantom blows rained down. That was the problem with Watchers. If he was in their domain, they could hurt him without leaving a mark, all it was going on inside his head, and he knew it. That didn’t make it any less painful. His code was twisting and wrenching apart, torn into thinner and thinner ribbons till his knees gave out. He curled his wings in tightly around his shoulders and head, as if that could protect him from the agonies targeted into him, through the parts he’d offered up in exchange for the lives of his players all those years ago. Bent double on the ground, staring at the dark polished floor, he saw in the glow a reflection of his face. Beaming bright tears, glowing purple eyes. Sickness roiled his stomach. Daggers were raking down his spine and around his wingtips, all without leaving a scratch, nor drawing blood, because to bleed would make him a player. It would prove he wasn’t already too far gone, already beyond saving.
“What was that?”
“Sh-Shut up!” He hissed out, and the daggers drove their phantom blades into him, even deeper. He cried out this time, warbling, bird-like expressions typical of a hybrid player, not someone already torn from the clutches of the defining system. In it all, though, he felt his com digging hard into his hipbone from within his pocket. The Watchers reaction told him everything he needed to know, and he’d cling to that hope like a drowning man.
Grian: trapped with watchers help
Sent
***
The Watchers had taken his com away.
He’d figured he only had one shot with the thing, anyway, but even still, he’d fought to keep ahold of it. That’d only gotten him punished, writhing on the floor dealing with phantom pain again. Sometimes he wondered if having actual physical injuries would be better. At least then, he’d see himself bleed. Know he was still a player. Still alive.
He didn’t know for certain if his message had gone through. Judging by the Watcher's reaction when he’d hit send, he assumed it had gotten out. Whether or not it’d connected with the coms of the hermits so very far away was another question altogether. If it hadn’t, there was no other way for them to reach him. Wasn’t that a terrifying thought?
He was standing in the dark, empty room again.
So many eyes open, so many worlds to watch and keep tabs on, questions came occasionally, checking he’d been paying attention, if he had missed even the tiniest detail from any of the dozens of worlds he was currently watching, he’d be punished. If his focus broke during said punishment, and he let the eyes close, he’d have to go through the exhausting, sickening, arduous process of opening them all one at a time again.
He was so tired.
Maybe that was why he felt the strangest sensation against the back of his neck?
He was desperately trying to keep tabs on so many things going on in all the different worlds he was watching that he must’ve just been imagining it. It felt weird, but also oddly comforting. Like a soothing hand from a comforting hug, rubbing lines up and down his spine to combat the phantom daggers that’d show up there. Between the long roots of his wings, then traveled up, settled at the base of his neck again. It did that a couple more times, and each time it did, it grew more tangible.
But Grian was tired. He also had so much else to pay attention to that he wasn’t about to complain about something that felt like the first gentle touch he’d sensed in…well, in however long he’d spent in this hellhole.
The hand was traveling down his spine again, and it felt even more real, somehow. He felt thick gloves, something familiar tickled in the back of his mind, his focus was threatening to break on his many views, and he had to wrench his mind back onto them. The eyes were drooping, but he hadn’t let any of them close. He sensed the Watcher's displeasure at his distraction.
It went down faster than it had any right to.
He heard the horrific, tearing shriek of anger from the Watcher guarding him when the hand he’d been feeling suddenly gripped tight into the collar of his shirt. He was yanked backward with force, wings pathetically flapping and feet leaving the ground where he’d been standing or collapsed in agony alternatively for so very long. The dark room disappeared, he was sailing between worlds again. He felt his code lighting up, and as opposed to when the Watchers had tried to forcibly tear out and replace pieces of his code, this was as easy as a master at the loom. The tangled, coiled, knotted lines were combed out, without anything more than a few hot pinpricks of pain that erupted like firecrackers as he was hurtling through the dark. The hand on his shirt was still pulling him backward, and there was only one person who could freely edit and play through his code with such ease when even the Watchers had been forced to work in the tiniest chunks with gracelessness.
Grian hit the ground on the stone island hard, and his body seized. His view of the world came in half-loaded and shattered, his hearing was garbled. Then, after a few seconds of soaring, white-hot pain like he’d just had a lava bucket dumped over his head, it was over.
“Grian!”
Xisuma let go of the back of his shirt, which he’d been dragging him along by the entire time.
“Gri!” He got an armful of black feathers in a matching black hoodie, his sister Pearl landing on top of him.
“You’re back!”
“Are you ok, buddy!?”
“X has been looking for ya for weeks!”
Voices were all around, crowding him, and Xisuma threw his hands out. “I know we’re excited, but give him some space, everyone!”
The hermits that’d all crowded around took a few steps back, whereas before, they’d been jammed in so closely around him he couldn’t even see past the familiar faces. He hadn’t minded it. It’d been a beautiful view in comparison to the countless worlds he’d been watching from a distance.
Pearl finally pulled back from how she’d landed on him, arms still around him, pinning his own to his sides, eyes gleaming bright with tears. “Gri, you in there?”
He stared back into her face a few seconds before he realized she was asking him to respond. He hadn’t made a sound past the pained ones that’d escaped him during whatever code seizure he’d had as he’d spawned in.
“Huh? Uh, y-yeah.” He managed, voice stilted and thick.
Pearl took his arm, and he vaguely recognized someone at his other side. When he turned, he saw the tall, wiry figure of Mumbo smiling at him, mustache shifting with the motion. “You with us, buddy?” He asked as he carefully latched onto Grian’s other arm, taking part of his weight.
Grian swallowed the tightness in his throat. “I-I think so.”
Between the two of them, they were able to get him onto his feet. He wobbled, but neither of them let go of his arms, so he leaned into the support. He’d spent so many hours with quaking knees as he watched so many different lifetimes…
“X, how long?” He asked, and Xisuma hesitated, making a so-so gesture with one gloved hand.
“Hard to say, but probably around two months…we’ve only been here in the new world for a few weeks, though…and most of it was spent playing find-a-hermit…you’re the last one we were missing.”
Grian looked around, even if he didn’t need to. Past the circle of ragtag hybrids, mutants, myths, and questionably ‘human’ humans. He’d been watching the spawn village grow from that small, dark room, one eye hidden near the base of his wing that he’d only checked on occasionally, not wanting to risk the Watchers denying him permission to keep an eye on the world filled with his friends.
But even still, looking at it while standing here was a totally different matter.
“Medic coming through! Don’t make the poor guy stand around, c’mon, someone pick him up, let’s get him to the med-bay!” Stress elbowed her way between a couple of other hermits to get closer to Grian. He could see her bright pink medic shulker shrank down in her hand.
His eyes felt heavy, and when he blinked, he felt a hot streak of tears rush past his cheeks. Panic flared in his chest. He turned his head to the side. “Pearl, what color are they?”
His sister furrowed her brow. “What color are…what?”
Hope flickered faintly, and he swallowed. “The tears, they’re…normal?”
She blinked, then her expression softened, and she squeezed his arm.
“A’course they are. You’re home, Gri.”
It was with that relief in mind that his knees finally gave out on him, but Pearl and Mumbo were still on either side and caught his weight with ease. The tell-tale click of a cane on stone announced Scar making an approach from where he’d hurried off to rummage around in a shulker box somewhere.
“Guess what I’ve got!” He brandished the bright red knitted jumper in his free hand. Grian chuckled weakly at the sight.
“Thanks, Scar.”
Mumbo still half supported his weight as Pearl helped him pull the sweater over his head. The familiar soft, cozy warmth of the overlarge sweater settled as he pushed his wings back through the slits seamed into it. He snuggled his chin down against the high turtleneck.
“Feel a little better?” Mumbo asked, still from behind him, at the ready to catch him if his legs gave out again.
“Loads better.” He replied, raking his hands back through his hair. When he lowered them again, he looked briefly at his palms, seeing the faint traces of the cuts he’d made against them with his nails, clenched fists as he’d endured the ‘lessons’. The lines were red. Red, the color of his blood, because he was still alive. He wasn't one of them.
“Hey, X? I’m gonna need a new com. They took mine.”
Xisuma nodded. “After you sent that message?”
Grian looked up to him again. His vision was edged tiredly, but he could make out the fond glow of the void-walkers eyes through his tinted helmet.
“You got it?” He asked faintly.
“We all did.” Pearl nodded from where she was still stuck close at his side.
“That’s how I traced you and eventually got ahold of your code to pull you home,” Xisuma explained as he put out his hands, tracing lines of glowing green code that he played like the strings on a harp. A few seconds later, the code coalesced, and he turned his palm over to show a new com unit. His heavy boots clomped on the stone as he stepped forward and offered it to the avian, who took it, running his thumb over the familiar keypad. He clipped it to his belt loop and felt the tension finally starting to unwind.
“Thanks, X.”
“Of course. I’m sorry it took me so long. I promised I’d keep those monsters away from you, did a right terrible job of that.”
“Wasn’t your fault…and you got me back I…”
His eyes trailed around the circle of hermits, then over their heads at the fantastical buildings that’d already begun to spring up in this new reality.
“…I’m happy to be home.”
Then, he dramatically dropped backward into Mumbo and Pearl's arms, both of whom immediately scrambled to support him.
“Sorry…don’t think I’m gonna be walking to the med-bay.” He said, turning a tired eye on either of them.
“No, you are not!” Stress backed up the decision, and a few more minutes saw him getting boosted onto Mumbo for a piggyback ride to the med-bay.
“Right, you set?” He’d asked, but by then, Grian’s eyes had already closed.
He’d spent far too much time recently forcing himself to stay focused, keep watching, now that he was home, he wanted to rest. He knew when he woke up, he’d be Stress’ brightly colored med-bay, with mismatched beds, flowers, carpets, and a jukebox playing music softly from a corner. Then he’d start over again. There was more than a silver lining to be found in that.