Archive of Our Own ^beta

The sun was setting on a gorgeous mountain view and the stars had started to peak out. It was the perfect evening for the Hermitcraft season 7 preseason sleepover. Grian had dropped his small sleepover bag onto one of the cots, and made his way back out to the gathering of hermits chattering and drinking away. The previous season was nothing short of amazing and it made Grian forget everything before. Grian grabbed one of the drinks and sat with the hermits sitting on the floor in a circle.

“Hey G! You up for some ‘how well do you know your hermits’ trivia?” Ren asked.

Cleo spoke up, “We’ve made it a drinking game if you want to participate in that aspect too.”

Grian smiled to himself and said, “I don’t see why not.” It took Grian a while to warm up to the other hermits, but creating the game of Tag and starting a war did significantly help the matter. He got to know most of the hermits by that point, and even though he didn’t think he knew the hermits well, he was going to try his best at the game.

The game worked where someone stated a fact or ‘whose most likely to’ about another hermit, and whoever guessed which hermit it was correctly didn’t have to sip their drink and could state the next fact. Grian ended up drinking a lot more, but it was all in good fun and he knew that he didn’t know the hermits as well. The further into the game he got, the more answers he’d figured out. Turns out having no filter on his brain got him the answers faster.

“Which hermit is the most likely to be an eldritch horror based on vibes.” Cleo asked.

Grian blurted out, “Me!” A few too many hermits turned to Grian. Grian went deathly pale and his wings fluffed up but not so smoothly recovered, “I think I’d be a great eldritch horror. Give me some more wings and eyes and I’d be good to go!” But Grian slapped his hand over his mouth. Hadn’t he just described himself? He was horrified, but no one picked up his flushed nature and his wings slowly circled around himself to hide.

“The hermit I was thinking of was Joe,” but then the other hermits started shouting at Cleo, completely ignoring what Grian had said.

“I thought it was Doc with his crazy machines!” Ren said.

“Me too!” Impulse agreed.

“Well I thought Xisuma was a candidate!” Bdubs said. Everyone burst out into giggles.

“Shashwam's too kind for something like that.” Keralis spoke.

The question was soon forgotten and moved past. Grian stopped playing though. He only fake laughed and fake smiled as the game continued. It hurt when Grian realized that no one knew that he was hurting other than when it was so blatantly obvious that Mumbo had to message X about the intruder on the server. There had been many times where he saw the hermits check up on another who wasn’t acting like themselves. The realization hit him suddenly.

No one knew who Grian was. No one knew his darkest secret, and even though Mumbo had been the one to find him after everything, and quite possibly saw his other set of wings, he never asked anything further about it. Grian doesn’t know if he’d tell Mumbo if he asked though. How does one explain to their best friend that they are no longer completely avian, that he had been through so much that sometimes it's easier not to feel and be just like them even if it is the last thing he wants to do? How does he tell his friend that what he is brings destruction to entire servers?

“We’re going to tell stories by the fireplace now! Come grab a seat and prepare your stories if you want to tell one!” Joe announced to the whole room.

Then again, Grian hadn’t been searched for, Hermitcraft was still standing. Reathxe and Zelinthe had been forgotten until now. Maybe they forgot about him too. Maybe they couldn’t reach Grian through Xisuma’s firewalls. Maybe he was, dare he think it, safe for once.

What a silly little thought. Grian giggled to himself, but the smile fell. He knew that he’d never be safe, not with Watchers still on the prowl. He didn’t feel right about the upcoming season either, but it was a different uneasiness than the previous season.

Grian was pulled from his thoughts and by someone from the circle to sit next to them. Grian’s wings jostled about until finally the person gently guided them around the player. This startled Grian back to some semblance of consciousness to see Mumbo giving Grian a nervous grin. No one was allowed to touch his wings other than Mumbo, but even the extent of what Grian would allow was minimal. Mumbo was lucky that Grian was too drunk and in his own head to actually say anything. Plus then Grian could pull Mumbo close enough to rest his tired head on his shoulder.

Joe began. “Now, this is a rather existential poem that I don’t even understand. I had found it in an undisclosed library somewhere in the lovely…”

“Just get to the story Joe.” Cleo cut him off. They knew that Joe would ramble endlessly if it wasn’t for their interruption.

“Yes, thank you Cleo.

“The gods mistake becomes the players problem
The world ripples from it’s effects, solemn

A god shirks responsibility for their fun
Before their story, and here comes the sun

The star’s gift to the sun, a curse unseen
And its presence is felt among the eighteen

To end a war, they must band together
And severed shall be loyalty’s tether

Amongst the peril
And emotions unsettled
Begins truths now told

The sun and the earth, the moon, stars, and mars
Listen and watch and feel repeatedly
All of the pain that leaves its bloody scars
And one is left to plead exceedingly

Healing’s path that was never linear
Despite the urge to finally go home
And forgiveness was even trickier
With fear, looming like a garden gnome

Ignorance of war led to this moment
Rage fuels the players in this deadly dance
With ev’ry slash of power most potent
Will the players pass by their final chance

This story is cursed, I wish it untrue
For all of our sakes, let the sun breakthrough.”

The crackle from the fire was the only thing heard. “What does that mean Joe?” Bdubs asked. He was hunched next to Etho who was giving Joe a raised brow.

“Ya know, I have no clue. Found it a good many years ago. Like I said, it felt a bit existential, and I felt it appropriate for tonight.” Joe returned to a seat next to Cleo, who only nudged his shoulder.

“You never could just do a happy story.” Keralis said.

“Well, of course not! I’ve built a reputation here and think that a healthy dose of existentialism is good for the soul.” Joe glanced around the circle, and his eyes lingered on a few players, but lingered longer on Grian. Grian didn’t mind, not really, he knew Joe was a little weird, even by Grian’s standards.

A few other hermits told stories, some were happy, and others attempted to be scary. They weren’t really scary, but they somehow always made Scar jump at the end. Grian couldn’t hold in his laugh whenever it happened, and Scar would always turn and smile in his direction. And who's to say Grian’s heart didn’t flutter every single time.

Cleo had stood up for their story, the final one for the evening before the hermits split off to either go to sleep or talk a bit longer. They were gifted in story telling, especially because no one could tell where the fiction ended and the truth began. Cleo had lived for a long time, and their stories reflect that.

“This one is going to be a ride, so you’d better prepare yourselves.”

Grian snuggled his way closer to Mumbo, who in turn wrapped an arm around his shoulders to hold him close. Grian hadn’t heard many of Cleo’s stories, but heard about their terror.

“War, and I mean real war where players don’t respawn, is absolutely terrifying. There are very few things worse than being unable to escape your server and fighting in something pointless at the end. The worst of these wars are code wars, where no server is safe, and you pray to the gods that whatever code monster doesn’t latch onto your code and follow you from server to server. The most recent code war was devastating. The neighbors you could have known growing up would disappear one by one until even you had to leave because the code monsters picked you as their next victim. The gods had to create specialized warriors to fight the monsters, who shall remain unnamed to not summon any of their remaining kin. The monsters tore apart entire species and families. Now these monsters believed themself unstoppable until the gods that created them turned against them. The warriors were only some of the forces that fought against them. There were also normal players from war-torn families that took up the fight if they were brave enough. But not many players returned from the fight. Those that had were rewarded by the gods in many different ways.

“Eventually though, the monsters began dying in vaster numbers. They hadn’t known anything about replenishing their numbers or healing their dead, and when their numbers kept dwindling lower and lower, they escaped to the End, where few players and warriors are able to effectively navigate without help from the locals. The major code war had ended, but the monsters still reach their claws into some servers to drag them away to the depths of the End. The monsters even tried to trick some of the locals away from the Dragon with promises of stronger coding abilities and games. Very few communities of Endfolk believed them, but the ones who did followed and worshiped them. They’d report back to the monsters who might still be strategizing their return. The monsters would play games with their food and players would fall for those games because this story had been lost to time. Even I can’t remember much of the destruction from the servers, but whether that be from suppression or everything being genuinely better now, I don’t know.”

Everyone was eerily quiet. Etho was clutching onto Bdubs’ arm, and Doc refused to look anywhere but the fire. Xisuma had his faceplate covered by his hands, and Joe wasn’t smiling. And that was the most unsettling thing, because Joe always had a smile on his face other than serious situations.

And Grian, Grian clung onto Mumbo. Everything about the story sounded so familiar, he could have sworn he heard the story before, but he couldn’t pinpoint where, or if he even wanted to pinpoint where.

“Why tell that story Cleo?” Joe finally asked, looking up at Cleo who was still standing by the fire.

“Y’know, I’m not quite sure. It felt like the right type of story, but…” Cleo glanced around the room and saw how shaken everyone was, “maybe it wasn’t. I’m sorry everyone.”

“Why can’t you say the names of the monsters?” Scar asked.

Cleo sighed. “Their names have power. I don’t want to draw the wrong type of attention to our home, and anyone associated with them is the wrong type of attention.” Grian subconsciously buried his head further into Mumbo’s shoulder.

Impulse sighed while staring at his communicator, and Tango narrowed his eyes at him. “I’m really fumbling my words tonight. Not absolutely everyone associated is bad,”

“We know what you meant Cleo,” Impulse gave a small smile back.

“Perhaps we separate for the evening. Go back to our smaller groups or sleep.” Tango spoke up, as Xisuma still hadn’t moved a muscle. Many of the hermits nodded and began splitting off. Mumbo turned to Grian, and gestured to the bunk beds, and Grian nodded.

He was coming down from whatever drunken high he had been on, and the magnitude of what had been said by others and himself was beginning to catch up to him again. Escaping through sleep would be ideal at this point. Grian flopped onto his cot that he had chosen earlier, and Mumbo sat on the cot next to him.

“You doing okay, bud? You’ve been rather quiet all night.” Mumbo said.

Grian groaned. “Alright, if you ever need to talk, I’m here for you.”

Grian nodded into his pillow, and snuggled further into his cot. Sleep pulled at him as he finally lost consciousness.

Many Months Later

Xisuma had gotten an alert on his communicator about something trying to break through the firewall, so he stopped talking to Keralis and pulled up his admin controls and tried to get a good look at whatever was going on. Whatever threat there was gone. Keralis gave X a questioning look, and X just shook his head.

“Something tried to break in, but it must have bounced off the firewalls.”

It was towards the end of the season anyway, and X was well underway in preparing for the next season. Worst case scenario everyone starts their break a bit early.

(What Xisuma didn’t see was that eight of his players were no longer on his server, and left without a notification.)