Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It didn’t take long after Grian’s death for Scott to agree to the treaty. 

His eyes itched. Scott hadn’t allowed himself to even consider crying since he received the news. If he started now, he knew he’d never stop, and he refused to be any more of a laughing stock than he already was. The Red King may be taking everything else from him, but Scott was not going to let him take his dignity. 

He couldn’t recall who had even given him the news, likely some nameless soldier Scott had never met before and would never see again. What he did remember though was the numb and terrifying shock that coursed through his veins like ice water. His muscles had seized like he had just been plunged into the lake at midwinter. The breath was forced from his lungs, panic filling up the spaces oxygen left behind, choking him. 

Scott flinched as a quill was offered to him, the silhouette of the dark feather startling him as it came into his line of sight, dragging him back into the present. The war room was packed. BigB, the Red King’s military commander, stood just over Scott’s right shoulder. Along the walls, high-ranking soldiers, generals, and advisors from both sides stood shoulder to shoulder. They loomed, like sentinels, looking at him like their gazes could pierce through cloth and flesh and stare right into his soul. Scott briefly locked eyes with Jimmy, his steward. Jimmy was shaking his head slowly, whether in disbelief or desperation, Scott couldn't tell. His cow brown eyes were wide, his lower lip trembling and Scott had to tear his gaze away before the last of his resolve shattered.

The Red King himself, of course, was not in attendance. Scott had thought that maybe the king would have had enough decency to attend the treaty signing in person, but he had left that honor to his commander. And Martyn? That little rat. Scott glanced around. He must have snuck off as he was nowhere to be found. With an herculean effort, Scott dragged his eyes to the document that rested on the table before him, eyes catching for a second on the Red King’s signature already gracing the bottom of the page. 

It didn’t matter how many times Scott had read and reread the compact lines of dark cursive, the meaning of the words themselves eluded him. They slipped through his grasp as if he were trying to grab fistfulls of sand, becoming more and more meaningless the tighter he tried to hold. Gods, he was tired. 

Scott’s hand tremored constantly as he attempted to sign below the Red King’s coiling, elegant autograph. Dang why did his name have to be so long? Just the process of writing it out seemed to take centuries. The sound of the quill tip scratching along parchment grated against Scott’s ears. Scott caught his bottom lip between his teeth and did his best to ignore the burning gaze of his victors on him, holding the edge of the paper against the desk so hard that it crinkled around his fingers. 

Scott was the king of Rivendell. He refused to be humiliated. He would keep his head high until the very end. Except… Realization sank into Scott’s bones as he finished his signature with a wobbly flourish. Except he wasn’t the king of Rivendell, not anymore. Now that the treaty was signed, he was nobody. 

Scott drew both of his hands away and folded them in his lap as he stared at his own name. He had smudged it somehow, the letters blurred and difficult to read. In fact, the whole treaty was blurry. The desk was blurry. The quill that he had handed back in a daze was blurry. 

Scott closed his eyes, and for the first time since the end of the war, let himself cry.

Chapter Text

[Grian] Hey Doc? For no reason in particular… what are you doing at the moment?

[Docm77] I’m eating breakfast.

[Docm77] Why?

[Grian] That’s great. That’s great.

[Docm77] ??????

[Grian] Mumbo, what about you? What are you up to?

[MumboJumbo] Spoons.

[Grian] wHat!? I am not!

[Docm77] Excuse you?

[RenDog] Ooh burn!

[MumboJumbo] Sorry, I’m carving spoons.

[MumboJumbo] For Willys Woodyard.

[Grian] So neither of you are working on a giant world eating lag machine?

[Docm77] Not at the moment.

[MumboJumbo] Hey! My redstone contraptions aren’t lag machines!

[MumboJumbo] I’ve only crashed the server once!

[TangoTek] Hah! Sure buddy.

[MumboJumbo] … Ok fine. Maybe a few times.

[MumboJumbo] But definitely way less than Doc has!

[Docm77] That is completely fair.

[TangoTek] Why were you asking, Grian?

[SmallishBeans] GuYs!!!???? WhYt IS THE SKKY GoNE!???!??

[Grian] That. That is why I was asking.

[Docm77] What do you mean the sky is gone?????

[MumboJumbo] Oh my god. The sky is actually gone!

[Grian] I thought maybe it just wasn’t loading in for me for some reason.

[RenDog] No dude, its definitely gone for me too.

[TangoTek] Same here. I’m kinda freakin out a little.

[SmallishBeans] A LITTLE!? THE SKY IS LITERAL ly BLANK!!!

[MumboJumbo] Wait. Grian, is this a prank? Like, did you build a giant void room over our bases while we were sleeping?

[GoodTimesWithScar] Oh good. Its just a prank.

[GoodTimesWithScar] I was getting pretty worried. Good job, Grain.

[Grian] No. Guys. I had nothing to do with this! I swear it wasn’t me!

[GoodTimesWithScar] Oh...

[VintageBeef] I was just about to send a message in chat about the sky. But it looks like you all have noticed.

[EthosLab] Yep.

[Grian] Do you two have any idea what happened?

[EthosLab] Nope.

[BDoubleO100] What are you all yammering about? My coms been buzzing like a bee all mornin.

[ZombieCleo] Bdubs, have you looked up?

[BDoubleO100] HOLY MoLEY!!!

[BDoubleO100] SMY GONE!?

[ZombieCleo] Yep, smy gone.

[Grian] Smy gone.

[MumboJumbo] Smy gone. Really gone.

[GeminiTay] This isn’t going to be like the moon thing is it?

[FalseSymmetry] God, I hope not. That sucked.

[Grian] I feel like we should probably do something about this. Right?

[Docm77] Agreed.

[Keralis] We need to message Shishwammy right now.

Of course it was the one time Xisuma was actually getting some sleep that the world fell apart… literally . Xisuma groaned, a loud annoying buzz penetrating into his previously blissful subconscious. He wanted to slip back under, to ignore the pull of consciousness, but something in the back of his mind nagged at him. Something about that noise was important, even though it was very annoying and very loud .

“Mmmmrrrrhhhh”, he moaned again. Xisuma brought his hand up to try and swipe away whatever was buzzing in his ear. Instead, his hand collided with something solid and metallic. Xisuma’s eyes snapped open with the sudden pain in the back of his wrist, instantly awake. “Wha- oh,” his helmet, that was what he had just so gracefully slapped. Xisuma had fallen asleep with his helmet still on. He blinked to clear his vision, eyes staring up at the ceiling. He sat up straight, lifting his head from where it lay over the back of his office chair. His neck audibly popped as he did so and he rubbed at it with a cringe. Xisuma was getting to be too old to fall asleep in awkward positions like that, his poor back. Now, something had awoken him, what was it again? Xisuma’s eyebrows furrowed as he tried to recall. Oh! Right! Com notifications. He deftly tapped two fingers on the side of his helmet, pulling up the com logs before stretching with a yawn.

[Keralis] Shishwammy, Not to alarm you or anything but something is really wrong. The sky is gone.

[Hypnotzd] X. You probably know this but if not, the sky is gone.

[JoeHills] Hey, Xisuma! Lovely morning. The sky is missing. Any idea why or how? We would love to know!

The yawn died as Xisuma’s throat closed up in panic. He shot to his feet, his office chair shooting out from under him and tipping over on its side. The sky was gone?  What did they mean it was gone? How could the sky be gone?

Xisuma ran outside and immediately craned his neck upwards. What he was supposed to see was blue, a dark cerulean blue at the horizon that gradually faded to a light baby blue at the very center. There were supposed to be clouds, white fluffy clouds that lazily drifted across the sky. And a sun, Xisuma was pretty sure there was usually a sun. He had seen it a thousand times, a million times before. He had come to love the beautiful blue sky of the Overworld, so different from the endless, stretching darkness of the void he grew up with. Instead all he saw was white, a blank, monotonous white hanging over Hermitcraft like a humorless office ceiling. 

[XisumaVoid] Everyone gather at the shopping district. Emergency Hermit meeting, now!!!

Xisuma was trying his hardest not to freak out. Sure, the sky might be a big white expanse of nothing. And sure, he might have no idea how the sky could just disappear overnight. And he’s never even heard of anything like this happening before on any other server ever in the history of time. And trust him he would know because he did so much research into world glitches after the moon incident because he was never going to let his Hermits ever go through something like that again, that he could write at least two books on the subject. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t figure this out. It didn’t mean that Xisuma couldn’t fix it. Because that’s what Xisuma did , he was the admin, he fixed the server code when it went wonky. He patched bugs and sewed up firewalls. Xisuma knew the code of this server better than he knew himself. This was his world, he created it. In a way he was just as attached to the server itself as he was to the Hermits who called it home. To him a server wasn’t just a place to live, it was a living, breathing thing that changed and evolved and grew . So how the hell could something like this happen?

Xisuma flinched as a gentle hand was placed on his arm. Keralis looked up at him with a gentle smile and Xisuma did his best to return the expression, even if Keralis couldn’t see it behind his helmet.

“I got you some tea,” Keralis said, pressing a steaming mug of fragrant smelling tea into Xisuma’s gloved hands.

“Thank you, Keralis,” Xisuma said gratefully.

“No problem,” His friend replied then added, “Everything is going to be okay, Shishwammy.”

Xisuma breathed in deeply, holding the lungful of filtered air before releasing it in a shuddering sigh. “Yeah, you’re right, everything will be fine.”

The hermits had all gathered at The Kitty Cafe. It seemed like the easiest and most comfortable place to meet up at such short notice. Some of the hermits sat in chairs, their own mugs of steaming beverages on the tables in front of them. Others stood nervously against the walls or by the coffee machines passing out drinks. Scar, of course, was on the floor with at least five cats bundled into his lap and a kitten playing with his untied shoelaces.

He cooed at them in a saccharine baby voice, “Whoooo’s a pretty little kitty cat? You are! Yes, you are. And you, and you, and you are too!”

Xisuma walked farther into the room and cleared his throat causing everyone’s eyes, except for Scar’s, to snap to him. “Well, usually I would start off by saying why I’ve called an emergency meeting,” Xisuma cleared his throat again awkwardly, “But I think we all know the reason.”

“Yeah,” Joel said from where he was sat in a corner, arms folded over his chest, “the sky’s fucked.”

“Language!” Several hermits including Xisuma chastised. “But yes, the sky is uh… experiencing technical difficulties?” Xisuma inwardly cringed, but it was all he could think to say.

“Please tell me you know what’s going on and can fix it,” Impulse said, a mug of coffee clutched in his hands. Zedaph and Skizz sat one to either side of him and were looking up at Xisuma with twin pleading expressions.

“Well…” Xisuma tapped his helmet, sending the server code zooming onto the screen in front of his eyes. From a table to his left Joe also had an admin screen pulled up with Hypno leaning over his shoulder to read it. Cleo sat near enough to Joe that their shoulders touched, wearing a murderous expression. Xisuma was pretty sure she was more upset at the situation than at him specifically, but it was intimidating nonetheless. Doc stood off to the side with Ren and False, his own code diagnostic screen pulled up. As a man who had the knowledge and power to break the server code five ways to Sunday, Xisuma was confident in his ability to read the situation clearly and pick up on any minute detail he may have possibly missed.

“As far as I can tell,” Xisuma began hesitantly, when it was clear no one else would speak for him, “this isn’t some sort of virus. There’s no way anything powerful enough to do whatever it is that happened could get onto this server without me knowing. I’ve got protections in place and back-up protections and back-ups for the back-ups.”

“So its a glitch then?” Ren asked, his tail swishing nervously behind him, “Like the sorts of things that happened in Season 6?” Doc shook his head slowly, even as his friend asked the question.

“It could be,” Xisuma said doubtingly.

“But you don’t think it is,” Grian said. He was sitting on top of a table, clawed feet swinging back and forth. He stared at Xisuma so intensely it made him feel naked.

“I didn’t say that, Grian,” Xisuma replied, “I’d need to comb through the server’s code line by line to make absolutely sure but…”

“But?” False interjected, she shifted her weight to her other foot, trying to conceal her nervousness, “What but? What else could it be?”

A couple snickers went up from around the room. Bdubs slapped a hand over his mouth, “sorry,” he muttered sheepishly, “she said butt.”

“Children honestly,” Cleo growled with an eyeroll.

“Hey!” Scar exclaimed from his place on the floor, “what’s wrong with a man laughing at a butt joke?!”

“It's not a joke!” False replied, voice barely below a shout, “This is serious. The entire server could be at stake!”

“Hang on now,” Pearl said gently, “let’s not jump to conclusions.” Pearl handed False a mug of coffee. “I’m sure X has everything under control. Don’tcha, X?”

Despite the fact that Pearl was setting him up perfectly to offer confident reassurances to the Hermits, Xisuma hesitated. “W-well…” What should he say? The truth of the matter was, he had no idea what was going on. Twenty-four pairs of eyes, give or take, all looked up at him expectantly. Xisuma began to sweat under his armor. He took in a long, shuddering breath, steeling himself. This wasn't the time to freak out, his hermits needed him to be the strong, capable admin he was supposed to be. The kind of admin they deserved. "I-" Xisuma's voice cracked, off to a brilliant start, "I don't think there's any reason to panic. At least. At least not right now." Xisuma cast his eyes over to Keralis who gave him a reassuring, if somewhat shaky, smile. "I'm confident that we can solve this issue before it becomes a major problem. Or um, a life threatening problem. Since you know... the sky is already a-" Xisuma shut his mouth.

Mumbo, who was doing his best impression of a Bavarian pretzel in a chair at Grian's table, spoke up. "So-" Mumbo paused, wilting a bit under the attention of the whole server on him. "So if it's not a virus, and you're sure it's not a glitch" -That sentence was spoken more like a question as Mumbo looked around for confirmation- "That doesn't leave us with very many options does it?" Mumbo fiddled with his fingertips, "I guess we don't know for sure that the sky disappearing is a bad thing? I mean, it could be okay? I like, I like white."

"No it's for sure bad," Hypno said matter of factly accompanied by a chorus of approval from several of the other hermits. 

"Ah yes, of course. No," Mumbo said, "You're right. Of course you're right. It's probably... Yeah, it's probably, definitely bad."

"Welp!" Tango clapped his hands startling Mumbo and Etho who was standing right next to him, "I for one am tired of sitting around and talking. If the sky is disapearificating, then I'm going to get to the bottom of why."

“What do you think we’re trying to do here, Top?” Skizz asked a little bluntly, and then added, “Uh, no offense buddy. It's just I think we should give our admin time to say his piece is all.”

"He's said his piece," Cleo argued. "Look, X," She said turning towards Xisuma, "You know I love you, but it's clear you're way out of your depth. We handled the moon in Season 8, we'll just deal with this ourselves."

“W-bu-“ Xisuma tried and failed to interject. Season 8 was Xisuma's biggest failure and while the hermits had assured him time and time again that they didn't blame him for what happened, he had promised himself he would do better. Be better. He had to. "Cleo I-"

"Maybe let the guy finish what he was trying to say for goodness sakes!" Ren barked, ears held tight to his head, "Instead of just assuming he can't do it."

Tango's fiery head of hair intensified as both he and Cleo simultaneously shot to their feet. "All we're doing is wasting time we could be using to solve the problem!" He shouted. The cats, startled by the raise in volume skittered away from a disappointed Scar and into the back room.

“That’s what we’re trying to do here, homie buddy if you would just-"

"Look, Skizz," Impulse said, not yelling but still authoritative, "I’m not trying to pick sides here, but Tango's right, talking about it isn’t going to solve the problem.”

“But we need to know what the problem is before it can be solved, right?” Mumbo asked, eyes flicking nervously from person to person.

“Arguing isn’t going to help anyone right now,” Pearl began, wings twitching and betraying her apprehension, “Now if we all just-“

“Just because you’re out of your depth here, Mumbo, doesn’t mean the rest of us are!” Tango snapped, his flame-tipped tail lashing wildly enough that Etho had to step out of the way to avoid being singed. Instead of flinching, Mumbo froze, fidgeting stilling as he kept his gaze trained on the floor between Tango's feet.

Grian, for his part, did all of the moving for Mumbo, wings flaring out as he looked poised to pounce, "You don't get to talk to Mumbo like that!"

At the head of the room, Xisuma balked, he hadn't expected things to get so out of hand this quickly. He needed to say something, as their admin, he should be able to get his Hermits under control. Instead his mouth bobbed open and shut like a fish on a boardwalk or an Xisuma without his helmet.

"EVERYBODY NEEDS TO JUST SHUT UP!" The order shook through the cafe like a bomb had been dropped. The voice reverberated off the walls and made Xisuma's ears ring. Grian immediately plopped back down on the table and Tango's flames sputtered in surprise. Gem put her hands on her hips and stomped her hoof on the ground like a judge with a gavel. "I mean seriously what are we, twelve!?" An air sucking silence filled the room, no one daring to even breath after Gem's reprimand. 

"Uh, guys?" Scar's voice drifted up.

"Scar!" Gem said like she was the mother of a particularly troublesome toddler, "what did I just say?" 

"Oh yeah, uh huh, totally," Scar nodded like a bobble-head, "I'll shut up in just a second. Its just that, wasn't Wels' castle over there just a moment ago?"

Chapter Text

Xisuma stepped out from the portal onto the lush, green grass of spawn. Holding his helmet under one arm, Xisuma held his breath for a moment as he let the slightly chilly early spring breeze blow through his hair. The grasses around him swayed gently in the wind, mimicking a calm ocean lapping at the shore. While it was still too early for most flowers, tiny pink spring beauties poked up here or there and Xisuma knew that by late summer, the field would be absolutely blanketed with a variety of different blooms. Nearby, rolling, forested foothills gave way to unassuming mountains. Xisuma could hear the sound of water rushing over uneven stones from the river that ran its way through the landscape. In the fall, the river would be filled with salmon migrating from the ocean to their spawning grounds upstream. With a small satisfied exhale through his nose, Xisuma put his helmet back on and smiled. It was perfect .

It had taken Xisuma a couple of months to find a world suitable for his Hermits to inhabit. Season 9 had been amazing and Xisuma wanted Season 10 to be even better, hence the need for the absolutely perfect world seed. Xisuma had found this one a few days ago and had been spending that time making sure everything was in order for the Hermits’ arrival. 

It had been a peaceful few days, weaving code and constructing the best protections Xisuma knew how to make. It may have been a little overkill, but Hermitcraft wasn’t your usual server after all. His Hermits had complicated pasts and deserved to feel safe in their own home. Even if it took a bit more time, Xisuma was more than happy to provide them with that sense of security. This time, Xisuma felt as though he had outdone himself. This world was perfect . He couldn’t wait for the Hermits to see it.

Xisuma was watching all of that hard work dissolve right before his eyes. Well no, not dissolve , that wasn’t what was happening, not really. It was more accurate to say that the world of Hermitcraft had existed one moment and now it simply didn’t. 

All that beauty—the sky, the flowers, the little fish in the river, the grove of blossoming cherry trees that had crowned Magic Mountain - not to mention all of the Hermits’ hard work, their amazing bases that they had only just begun work on. All of that, swallowed by the indifferent white nothingness. Xisuma felt like someone’s hands were wrapped around his throat, crushing his windpipe. How could this have happened?

From behind him, he heard someone whimper. In the distance, the outer walls of Wels’ castle, clipped through the monotonous white like a poorly rendered video game. The Hermits, gathered together like a flock of sheep outside of Cleo’s Cat cafe, watched as the final blocks of Wels’ base slipped into the still, blank nothingness that was the rest of the Hermitcraft server.

Wels drew his sword like the disappearing of the world was something he could stab.

He looked incredibly small, standing there with no monster to fight or home to protect, only the endless white abyss that had just stolen everything from him. Wels’ jaw worked, like his voice was an animal that he didn’t want to let escape. 

“Oh, this isn’t good,” Xb, the first one of them to speak, said quietly in what was probably the understatement of the century. He pulled at the end of his scaly guardian tail until Keralis gently pulled his hands away. 

“You’ll hurt yourself, Princess,” he said, slipping his own hand into Xb’s instead and squeezing it tightly.

Zedaph seemed to snap out of the shock that was holding most of the other hermits captive. He let out a panicked bleat, taking a few shaky steps backwards before his legs gave out and he went toppling. Impulse caught the sheep hybrid with an oof , supporting his friend’s trembling form against his chest as he stared numbly into the growing white abyss.  

“This- This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. It's not real,” Zedaph said with a forced laugh. His usually cheerful face was an ugly mess of fear and mislaid hope, “good prank, r- right guys?” 

In response, Skizz wrapped both Impulse and Zedaph up in his arms. On a normal day, Impulse likely would have been uncomfortable with all the contact, but he sank his face into Zedaph’s wooly hair as Skizz whispered reassurances to the both of them.

“Wh- how could this happen?!” Ren shouted, ears pulled back and tail between his legs, “All of our bases. All our stuff, it's just, it's just gone?!” He looked around, desperate for an answer. After a moment, Ren locked eyes with Xisuma. Xisuma had never been more glad that his face was hidden behind his visor. “Xisuma?” Ren pleaded, “Please.”

Xisuma wanted to reach out and comfort his friend but hesitated, wrapping his arms around his own torso instead. “I don’t know,” Xisuma admitted, his face hot with shame, “I don’t know! Nothing about this makes any sense.”

There hadn’t been any signs in the code… right? Right? The world couldn’t just disappear without leaving a trace in the server code somewhere. Even without going through the code with a fine toothed comb - which Xisuma hadn’t, not yet, he was going to after the meeting - something that could affect the world at this magnitude should have been as obvious as a neon sign in the middle of a desert on a cloudy night.

“Doc?” Xisuma’s voice cracked but he ignored it as he turned toward the creeper hybrid. Doc was standing, staring out into the white space. His large, curled robotic horns hid his eyes from view, but his head snapped up when Xisuma called out to him, revealing his troubled face. “Doc, if I missed something, anything then you would have seen it. You've forgotten more about code than most people will learn in a lifetime.”

“There wasn’t anything,” Doc said with fierce conviction. His deep voice was underlaid with a hiss and the smell of gunpowder filled the air when he spoke. “There wasn’t anything wrong with the server,” the aperture on Doc’s bionic eye twitched and shuddered as his heightened emotions messed with his circuitry. The fur on his hackles and along his back raised as he said, “Something’s not right here, X. This should not be happening.”

The Hermits all looked at Xisuma expectantly. He wrapped his arms tighter around his stomach, fighting back nausea. Xisuma screwed his eyes shut, not wanting to see the desperation in his Hermit’s gazes. “This is all my fault,” he whispered.

A hand tapped Xisuma’s shoulder and he opened his eyes. Joe Hills stared back, still wearing that dumb blue puppet on one of his hands. The man’s expression was inscrutable at best. “We can all play the blame game later. Right now, it's time to go.”

“Go?” Joel protested from his position near the back of the group, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? What if we try to go off world and end up in that? ” Joel gestured wildly all around at the white empty space as if to prove his point.

“Would you rather stay here by yourself?” Grian replied, “Because I’m pretty sure staying on world has a one-hundred percent guaranteed chance of death.”

“You make a good point, Bird Boy. A very good point.”

“I’ll take us all back to Season 9,” Xisuma said, already pulling up an admin screen, “It’ll be safer, I think, if I take us all together. That way no one can get left behind.”

“I’m all for not getting left behind,” Scar pipped up, rolling up beside Xisuma and placing a hand on his arm. “Group-hug time everybody!”

Xisuma gave a weak smile, appreciative of Scar’s attempt to lighten the mood. The hermits gathered round, placing a hand on Xisuma or on each other so that they were all connected in some way. “Is everybody ready?” Xisuma asked. 

“As I’ll ever be,” Cleo answered. She had one arm around Xisuma’s shoulders and the other around Joe.

“I don’t think we have much of a choice here, X,” Cub said, then added with a cheeky grin, “besides, if this doesn’t work, we’ll all just become primordial soup.”

“That sounds awful,” Jevin muttered, “Who would want to eat Jevin soup? Gross.”

Xisuma nearly laughed despite the situation, “Just remember, keep hold of one another. Don’t let go.” 

Xisuma closed his eyes, opening himself up to the ebb and flow of the code that made up the server. It greeted him like an old friend, still seeming somehow intact despite the quickly growing abyss. The code flowed through him, like oxygen, surging with every breath, or like blood, pumping through his veins with every heartbeat. It felt complete, healthy even, without the ragged pieces or jagged edges Xisuma would expect from a server deteriorating so quickly. But Xisuma didn’t have time to dwell on that. 

He reached forward, not physically, or even psychically, but something in between, pushing his fingers between lines of code. After a moment of resistance, the code parted, a small slit forming that Xisuma began to widen. He felt like a surgeon, using a scalpel to part skin in precise ways that did the least amount of damage to the overall body. In a moment, he had a tear open large enough for himself, and then one large enough for all of them. 

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with Seasons 10’s air one last time, then Xisuma stepped through the code of the server and into the void beyond, dragging the hermits with him.

Whatever the opposite of infinity was, this was it. 

Xisuma supposed that the opposite of infinity might have just been infinity in reverse. Or perhaps it was zero. One of his Hermits probably knew the answer and could explain it to him incredibly scientifically. But at the moment, that didn’t really matter, because the Hermits didn’t exist.

Xisuma didn’t exist.

Nothing existed.

Everything around Xisuma was white or something along those lines. Certainly it wasn't dark, not like the void. Xisuma was familiar with the void, had grown up with the void as his backyard. The void had potential. It may not have been anything itself, but it connected everything. All the worlds that had ever been or ever will be came out of the void. This - whatever this was - was empty. Nothing had ever come from this place things went in to it . Xisuma had a feeling that whatever went in never came out again. 

Xisuma felt as though the longer he was here, the more pieces of himself never were. Whatever things that made him Xisuma - whoever that was - were being stripped away from him, like tears, blown from his eyes by strong winds. Xisuma wasn’t sure if he should care. If he had never existed in the first place, why should he fight for survival?

And then suddenly, nothing was something again.

The change was so sudden, so extreme that Xisuma felt like he had just been the epicenter of an explosion. Thoughts hurt. The fact that Xisuma had a body, hurt. It felt like something had taken him apart atom by atom and then assembled him again with all the atoms in slightly wrong positions so that their edges rubbed up against one another. The edges of Xisuma’s vision began to fade as the shock and pain of existence shut his body down.

Just as Xisuma was about to slip into unconsciousness, it hit him...

The opposite of infinity was oblivion.

Chapter Text

Scott watched the storm roll in from his place sat atop the roof. Situated in the crook between the cedar shake shingles and squat red-brick chimney, he tracked the dark clouds that had gathered at the west horizon. Thin, fingering tendrils of yellow-white lighting zig-zagged across the sky every few minutes. Occasionally, an errant bolt would shoot straight downwards, striking the churning ocean beneath. Despite all of the lightning, it took several minutes for the faint sound of thunder to reach Scott’s ears. The storm was quite far away, but when it got here, Scott knew it would be a bad one.

“So are you just gonna spend all day up there or what?” a voice called up. Scott sighed and leaned forward to peer off the edge of the roof, brushing his hair out of his eyes as he did so. On the ground, a stocky man with a wave of thick brown hair and a dark beard tapped his foot on the ground impatiently. Compared to Scott, who wore a pair of dusty brown trousers and a plain white shirt, the man below looked impeccable.

He was dressed in well tailored leather pants and a sapphire waistcoat embroidered with golden roses. The chain of a golden pocketwatch could be seen trailing from his breast pocket. He looked up at Scott with an annoyed expression. Scott grabbed his multicolored jacket, the only article of good quality clothing he owned, and elegantly jumped off the roof. The man jumped back, startled, as Scott landed in front of him.

“Hello, Sausage,” Scott said, dusting himself off though it did little good. Everything on the farm was always covered with a fine layer of dust.

“Have you seen that storm?” The man, Sausage, asked, pointing at the ever closer thunderclouds.

“I’ve seen it, yes,” Scott replied.

“And you were just hanging out on the roof?” Sausage asked indignantly. He looked at Scott like he had grown two heads, though, admittedly,  that was how Sausage often looked at Scott. “Were you tryin’ to get struck by lightning or something?”

“Not really, no,” Scott began to lead the way into the small, quaint farmhouse. “Would you like something to drink? Lemonade perhaps?”

“Ooh, lemonade sounds lovely, thank you,” Sausage said happily as he trailed behind Scott into the house.

Inside the farmhouse itself was really just one large room, sectioned into different uses with a loft above for sleeping. Beside the door was a brick stove, which Scott used for cooking and heating the house in the winter months. In the small open space in front of the stove were two armchairs, mismatched, and a small table and oil lamp for reading. In the far side of the room sat the modest kitchen table and there were cabinets along the wall for storage.

There was a small window in the wall over here, that sat above a currently empty washbasin. Bundles of herbs hang from the squat ceiling above the basin to dry in the sun. Almost all the furniture in the house sat on a large, fraying rug in a variety of browns and tans. It had taken Scott the better part of a year to weave, but the rug was the first thing he could say he truly made himself. 

Sausage sat in one of the chairs at the table while Scott went about pouring lemonade for the two of them. One of the cabinets on the wall had been infused with a minor enchantment to keep whatever was inside of it cold. It was one of Scott’s little luxuries. 

Once Scott had poured the drinks and taken a seat himself he asked, “What brings you out here, Sausage?”

Sausage drained half of his glass in one gulp and Scott refilled it. “I’ve come to check up on my investments of course.” Sausage’s “investments” were 29 alpacas that lived in the pasture behind the farmhouse. 

Sausage was the richest man in Blue Water. His family owned most of the town and the land surrounding it, including the alpaca farm. That was until Scott won the farmhouse off of him in a poker game four years ago. However, the alpacas themselves weren’t included in the deal, so if you wanted to be technical about it, they still belonged to Sausage himself.

Scott had agreed to the condition that he look after Sausage’s alpacas while living in the farmhouse, as long as they agreed to split the profits from the fiber. Scott, the newly dethroned king of Rivendell, had no idea how to take care of a modest sized herd of alpacas, but neither did Sausage. Somehow, it had worked out, and Scott had only lost one alpaca since becoming their caretaker.

“Your “investments”, are doing fine,” Scott said using air-quotes, “Matilde is due to give birth in a couple weeks. I think it might be twins.” In all honesty, Scott had been worried about Matilde, since alpacas weren’t designed to carry twins to term, but she had always been large for an alpaca and seemed to be doing fine. 

“And what about Owen?”

Scott narrowed his eyes. Owen was the farm’s most valuable alpaca because he had a beautiful coat of red fiber, which was a rare color. Owen was also the farm’s most difficult alpaca. Alpacas themselves weren’t particularly intelligent creatures, but at least they had self preservation instincts. Owen did not. He was constantly doing things that put his life in danger and Scott was constantly having to save him. Sometimes Scott could swear he was doing it on purpose. Eating too fast and choking on food or eating things that weren’t food. Getting his delicate legs stuck in things like holes and fences. Trying to make friends with a wild dog that one time.

“Owen is fine,” Scott eventually muttered. 

Sausage broke out laughing, “You should see your face right now!” 

Scott just rolled his eyes. He stood up from the table, grabbing the two glasses to put in the washbasin for later. “Speaking of Owen,” he said, “I need to put the herd in the barn before the storm hits.”

“I can help!” Sausage said with a wide smile. 

Scott raised an eyebrow at him as he started for the door. “By “help” do you mean stand outside the fence and watch?”

“I can also shout encouraging things at you from time to time.”

Scott led the way out to the pasture around the back of the farmhouse. As long as he didn’t get in the way, he didn’t mind having Sausage around for company.

The town of Blue Water sat on a large plateau overlooking the ocean. The town’s wealth was in limestone mining rather than fishing though, so while it was on the coast, the town itself had limited water access. Instead, a steep limestone cliff cut the town off from the ocean. Wooden stairs and scaffolding were the only way to access the small cove below where the town’s small number of ships were docked.

The alpaca farm was on the outskirts of town in the opposite direction of the water. On this end of the plateau, the east side, the sides of the plateau sloped downwards gently instead of dropping off as a cliff. The alpaca pasture started at the large barn next to the house and followed the gradual downward slope for a couple acres. The pasture was bordered by open fields to the north and an old growth forest to the south. Technically, the forest was the very northern edge of the Undead Forest and Scott wasn't super thrilled about living so close to it, even if monsters hadn’t been seen in these parts in over 30 years.

“Phew!” Sausage said, holding his hand above his eyes to shield them from the overhead sun, “look at them all!” He had climbed up on the bottom rail of the grey timber fence to see the herd gathered at the bottom of the hill. Scott could see over without climbing, but just barely, the top of the fence came to about his nose. Alpaca fences had to be tall, otherwise they would jump over them.

Due to the salty winds that blew across the plateau from the ocean, the grass that grew at the top of the hill, closer to the barn, tended to be tougher and reedier than the grass that grew towards the bottom, so Scott was used to trudging down the hill to chase the herd into the barn.

“You sure you don’t wanna actually help?” Scott asked as he tied his jacket around his waist.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Sausage replied, shooing Scott away with a flick of his wrist, “go on and do your farmery things.”

“Right away your Lordship,” Scott gave Sausage a mock bow with an unnecessary amount of flounce to which Sausage gave in an indignant noise.

Scott started his trek down the well worn footpath that led to the bottom of the hill. If it had been four years ago, he couldn’t have imagined ever bowing to another person, even as a joke. If it had been four years ago, Scott wouldn’t have been trudging down a hill to get his alpaca herd to safety before a storm hit. If it had been four years ago, he wouldn’t have been living in a tiny, one room farmhouse, cooking his own food, or sleeping on a mattress stuffed with straw. But four years felt like a lifetime ago to him now.

At first, Scott hated life in Blue Water. When he had first stumbled into town, it had only been a few weeks since the end of the war. His feet hurt, his clothes were torn, and he was in desperate need of a bath. Worst of all, a group of bandits had ambushed him on the road, leaving him with nothing but the signet ring that he had hidden in his mouth when they attacked.

He had entered the tavern that night planning on asking where he could charter a ship, hoping that his signet ring would afford him a ticket far, far away from here. Instead, he left the owner of a tiny farmhouse and caretaker to a herd of alpacas.

The first few months involved a lot of crying and whining. Taking care of animals was sweaty, stinky, back-breaking work. As a king, he had someone to do everything for him, he didn’t even dress himself and now he was shoveling poop. Him, the former king of Rivendell. Many nights he was sure he would have cried himself to sleep if he had not been so exhausted that he passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow.

But then, inexplicably, Scott started to actually enjoy the work he was doing on the farm. Sure, the work was hard, but it wasn’t thankless, he could tell that the animals appreciated the care he was giving them. He started to learn more about the alpacas, their likes, dislikes, and their cute little personalities. As the blisters on his hands turned to callouses and the muscles in his shoulders and torso became more defined, Scott found that he didn’t feel quite so empty anymore. During the day he took care of his alpacas, made sure they were fed and safe. In the evenings he would read a book by the fire, or go have drinks with the locals in the tavern and beat Sausage at cards. He had even woven a rug! Back when he was king, Scott had never made anything with his own two hands. Yes, it was a simple life, but it was a good life too, and Scott was content.

Scott reached the herd at the bottom of the hill and was greeted by several curious faces. The alpacas nuzzled into his chest, hoping he had treats hidden somewhere in his clothes. “Well hello, everyone,” Scott said with a quiet laugh, he slipped through two of the rails and into the pasture. After realizing he didn’t have any treats, most of the alpacas went back to grazing. Scott clapped his hands, causing all of their heads to shoot up at the sudden noise, “Come on now, we all gotta get into the barn. A storm’s a-brewin’.” 

Scott worked his way to the back of the herd, keeping his arms out wide to either side, he shouted and whistled to keep the herd moving and occasionally, he’d clap his hands. Alpacas hated loud noises and did everything they could to move away from them. Scott wasn’t sure if this was how you were supposed to do it, but it was the method he had figured out over four years of trial and error. Thankfully, taking the herd up to the barn was a pretty common routine, and it wasn’t too hard to make them move to where he wanted. 

“Lookin’ good out there!” Sausage shouted as Scott passed him. Scott gave him a little wave in return. In a few more minutes, Scott had every member of his herd safe and accounted for in the barn. He leaned against the fence and let out a long sigh, swiping his arm across his forehead. With the approaching rain, the day was becoming more and more humid and Scott was slick with sweat.

“Well, I’m off, all that hard work really works up an appetite,” Sausage said when Scott had finished.

“All my hard work you mean,” Scott said, shaking his head.

“Something like that, yeah,” Sausage agreed. “Gotta get home before all this rain lets loose. Good job taking care of my investments!” He called as he started down the path towards town. 

The storm was closer now, Scott reckoned it would make landfall by sunset. Scott watched Sausage go and then, with one last sigh, headed inside to get cleaned up and find something for supper.

The rain battered hard against the roof of the barn. Outside, the wind howled like a trapped animal while thunder and lightning went off in tandem. Scott, who was worried about leaving the herd alone for the night in inclement weather, had decided to bed down in the barn with them. He wiped off the drops of water that were dripping onto his head and tried to find a drier spot in his mountain of hay. Unfortunately, hay always looked softer than it was and it poked at him no matter which way he moved. It may not have been the most comfortable sleeping arrangement, but Scott would choose to sleep in a bed of hay over laying directly on the packed mud floor of the barn any day.

The inside layout of the barn was largely open, since alpacas didn’t require individual stalls like horses. There were a couple stalls for quarantine purposes, and a sectioned off closet for farm tools and the like, otherwise the animals were free to roam the quite large open interior. On an empty barrel beside him, Scott had placed a lamp, which was the only source of light other than the lightning which flashed through the upper skylights. The skylights were open gaps in the very upper part of the barn roof, but they were situated under an overhang and angled in such a way that rain didn’t pour through them. Though, as Scott more than aware, they still allowed some rain to trickle though.

Every once and awhile, one of the alpacas made a noise loud enough to be heard over the sound of the wind and rain. They had an odd sort of noise that Scott had trouble describing, somewhere between a hum and a yell, or a scream when they were really agitated. When he had first seen the animals, he had assumed they would make bleating noises like sheep. Scott had nearly wet himself the first time an alpaca screamed at him, an event Sausage like to laugh about as if he hadn't had the exact same reaction.

A couple of the young alpacas made their way into his alcove, drawn by the light and his comforting presence. They laid down next to him, pressing up against him with their soft, fleece-like fiber. Scott frowned. "Oh thanks," he muttered. It wasn't that Scott didn't like the alpacas, he did, certainly. What he did not like, however, was two ovens deciding to lay down in his personal space when the barn was already unbearably hot. It was comparable to wearing a wool sweater on the hottest day of the year. Scott shoved at one, half-heartedly trying to get it to move, but he stopped when it hummed at him and looked like it might spit in his face. Scott had been spit on before, not pleasant.

With a small grumble and a sigh, Scott tried to make himself more comfortable. He had a feeling that this was going to be a very, very long night.

A loud BANG ripped Scott from the jaws of sleep. He shot instantly to his feet, then swayed, disoriented from waking so suddenly. "Huh, what?" Scott stumbled out into the main open space of the barn. Something was wrong, the barn around him was lit in an ominous, dim orange glow. In the light, Scott could see the alpacas running wild, tripping over their gangly legs and crashing into each other and the walls. The air was filled with the sounds of their distress calls and something else... the smell of smoke.

Scott's heart dropped to the bottom of his feet. Angry red flames engulfed the roof of the barn, already licking down the timber pillars and beginning to catch the hay in the hayloft. The barn had been struck by lighting. "Oh, shiiiiii- oh crap - oh shit!"  Scott cursed. The alpacas screamed, echoing his sentiment.

Tripping over his own feet in a panic, Scott rushed to the large doors that opened out onto the pasture. Grabbing onto one of the looped leather handles, Scott pulled back against it. The door swung open, not all the way, but enough that the herd could escape. Before he could call out for them, a clap of thunder loud enough to shake the building sent them all running for the door as one mindless surging mass. "Crap!" Scott shouted again, barely avoiding getting trampled. A large furry body slammed into him and nearly knocked him to the ground as he stumbled outside behind the herd. 29 alpacas rushed from the barn like water from a broken dam, running wildly into the pasture, crazed by fear. 

The barn going up like a tinderbox should have been the biggest of Scott's issues. It should have been. Instead, his biggest issue - a stupid, incredibly valuable alpaca named Owen - fueled by terror and adrenaline, hopped the fence right in front of Scott's eyes. Scott blinked, dumbfounded. "Oh you have got to be kidding me." Scott just stood there for a moment - in the pouring rain, in front of a flaming barn, completely soaked to the bone - and locked eyes with Owen. As lightning split the sky overhead, man and alpaca stared each other down. "I swear, Owen. Owen, I swear. Owen." Scott muttered under his breath. Owen turned and ran into the Undead Forest. And some reason, without a single moment of hesitation, Scott went after him, squeezing through the fence and running headlong across the field, slipping on wet grass and puddles while he went.

“Oh no you don't! You are worth so much money!”

Chapter Text

Pain and relief flowed through Xisuma in equal measure as he opened his eyes. He was lying on his back - which was good, it meant there was a ground to be lying on - staring at the sky. At the blue sky . Xisuma could almost cry just looking at it. 

Xisuma started to sit up slowly and winced. The pain seemed to be centered at the base of his skull and it radiated outwards through the rest of his body with every pulse of his heartbeat. He reached an unsteady hand to the back of his head, fingers coming back warm, slick, and red. That… wasn’t good. 

Xisuma guessed that he must have landed hard on his back, causing the hard bottom edge of his helmet to dig into the flesh at the base of his skull and tear skin. On the bright side, had he not been wearing his helmet, the damage would have probably been a lot worse. And luckily, he hadn’t landed on his face and damaged his visor screen or respirator. Xisuma shuttered at the thought of having damaged and suffocated to death in his sleep being none the wiser. 

Xisuma looked around, spirits sinking as he took in his surroundings. This wasn’t Season 9’s spawn. In fact, there wasn’t a single build in sight, only untouched natural landscape. Xisuma was in the center of a field of thick, yellowish grass. The field stretched out to the horizon in front of him but was bordered by a dense forest to his left and right. The landscape was completely unfamiliar to him. Xisuma didn’t even recognize the sorts of trees that made up the forest. A modded server then? But that didn’t make any sense. Modded servers had to have admins. What sort of admin would let a stranger drag a group of 20 people into their server uninvited?

“Is everybody alive?” Xisuma called out. His voice, surprisingly, sounded hoarse, like he had just spent a lot of time screaming. Maybe he had, admittedly, Xisuma couldn’t remember much from before waking up.

“ No ,” someone, Scar, groaned in reply, “owie owie ow ow.” 

“Youbetcha,” Etho said in a daze, he squinted against the sun as he pushed himself up on his elbows. Joel and Bdubs, who had landed on top of him, tumbled to the ground in a twin moaning heap. 

“Not one of your best landings, chief,” Joel said, laying on his back and not bothering to get up off the ground, “I think I would have broken less bones had I jumped off a cliff.”

“At least you didn’t - weren’t the one who - didn’t get,” Etho stopped trying to string words together and groaned, placing his head into his lithe, gloved fingers. 

“You got your noggin bonked pretty good, huh Etho?” Bdubs asked, looking at his friend with gentle concern. 

“Excellent way to kill brain cells," Joel told him.

“Don’t say that,” Etho said pitifully, “I need those.”

Xisuma frowned, that was worrying. He knew from experience that concussions weren’t easy things to deal with. Though, based on the amount of blood coming from Xisuma’s own head, he probably had his own mild concussion. Once they had all gotten their bearings, maybe Xisuma could summon some golden apples and regen potions, but until then, he had to make sure the rest of the Hermits were alright.

Around the meadow Hermits started struggling to their feet, helping up their friends who had landed near them. Xisuma watched as Wels hefted Hypno to his feet as if he weighed nothing. Being clad in full battle armor, Wels didn’t look as worse for wear as some of the other hermits, Hypno on the other hand had his entire face covered in blood. 

“Oh my stars! Hypno, your face!” Xisuma yelped. Hypno looked more concerned at Xisuma’s reaction than he did about his apparent injury. He reached a couple fingers up by the edge of his bandana and winced before turning to Xisuma with a smile. His sharp teeth were stark white against the red on his face.

“No worries, X, it's just a scratch. Head wounds, ya know?” He said with a nonchalant shrug. 

“‘Tis but a flesh wound,” Wels added and then the two of them looked at each other like they were sharing a joke Xisuma didn’t understand.

“OH NOOOOOOO!” The sudden wail from Scar made Xisuma jump, he left Hypno and Wels and rushed over. “Scar, what is it?!” Xisuma asked, panicked, imagining all of the horrible things that could have happened, “What’s wrong!?”

Scar was still sitting in the grass where he had landed. He pointed at something lying a few feet away and let out a miserable moan. “My wheelchair is completely smashed,” he whined, “I mean just look at her!” 

Xisuma let out the breath he had been holding. He was relieved that it had just been the wheelchair and not Scar himself. Xisuma could understand Scar’s pain though. Scar’s chair wasn’t an ordinary wheelchair, it had been modified and tricked out by every redstoner on the server, each adding their own personal flair to it. The chair itself was ingrained in Scar’s player code so that it respawned every time Scar died and even traveled with him across servers. While Scar wasn’t completely dependent on his wheelchair, Xisuma knew he still considered it an important part of him, and now it was ruined. 

“I’m sorry, Scar,” Xisuma said sympathetically, “Once we figure out what’s going on, I’m sure we can get it repaired.” Xisuma bent down and helped the other man to his feet before passing Scar off to Cub who was standing nearby. Cub graciously let his friend lean some of his weight on him. While Scar did still have his cane, Xisuma doubted he would be able to walk in his current condition.

“Thank you,” Scar muttered. 

“No problem, friend, the least I could do,” Cub replied with a smile. Cub himself only seemed to have a few knicks and bruises, Xisuma noted with relief. 

“Hey, we didn’t… we didn’t get turned into soup,” Scar said with a weak smile, "hooray."

“Indeed we didn’t,” Cub replied, “but ya’know, I’m not a huge fan of being beat-up and stranded either. Zero out of ten would not recommend.”

“Service was terrible,” Scar added, “One star.”

Cub raised his eyebrow at him, “Why one star?”

“Well, because leaving a review with zero stars just seems mean. Coulda been worse, I mean just look at Cleo, her arm fell off.” Scar blinked rapidly as he did a double take, “Whaho! Oh my goodness! Cleo’s arm fell off!”

Cleo just nonchalantly picked her arm off of the ground. “It's fine, ” she said, “happens all the time.” She busied herself securing her severed left arm to her back for safe keeping, “Just need some needle and thread and I’ll be golden.”

Xisuma barked out a laugh, startling even himself. “Sorry it’s just-” He giggled, “You look ridiculous.”

“Oh, I look ridiculous?” Cleo scoffed with a dramatic, but affectionate, eyeroll, “Bdubs looks like he got into a fight with a weasel and lost.”

“I heard that!” Bdubs called. "Weasels are vicious." He muttered under his breath, "I'd like to see you fight a weasel."

“That sucked!” A loud voice interrupted from across the field. It was Grian doing one of the things he did best, loudly complaining to anyone who would listen. “What the heck just happened?! That was awful! Where even are we!?” 

Grian trudged up to where most of the Hermits were gathered, Mumbo, Pearl and Gem hot on his heels. His iridescent blue and green feathers were puffed up and agitated. Xisuma noticed with concern that one of Grian’s wings stuck out a bit farther than normal, as if it couldn’t fold all the way against his back. 

"I have to agree with G-Man on this one,” Skizz said, joining the gathered group with Impulse, “That sucked , dude!”

“Are you all okay?” Xisuma asked, giving them a once over, “anything other than cuts and bruises?”

“I think Skizz and I are okay for the most part,” Impulse replied, “Just bruised and sore. I haven’t seen Tango and Zed though.”

“Grian, is your wing okay?” Gem asked, she had blood trickling from one of her ears, “You’re holding it a little funny. Does it hurt?”

“It's just a sprain,” Grian sighed heavily, “I’ll need to let it rest for a few days. Not that it matters since I don’t have my wing extenders.”

“Hmmm, yeah, making new ones might be a little tricky since we have no idea where we are,” Mumbo said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. 

“That’s okay, Mumbo. I have my old pair back on Season 9.” Grian looked up at Xisuma, his gaze, as it often did, sending a shiver down Xisuma’s spine. “Which is where I’m sure X-I Suma is taking us as soon as we’ve all met up.” 

Xisuma didn’t know why he was nervous. Of course he was still taking the Hermits back to Season 9. This was just a temporary detour. There was no need to stay longer than the time it took to gather everyone up and get them ready to go. Dread creeped up Xisuma's spine. He ignored it.

“There you dudes are!” Ren called, “Geez these hills are deceiving, made you look way closer than you actually were.” He walked up to them, tail slowly wagging, more uncertain than happy. One of the lenses in his sunglasses was broken and he had bloodstains on his pantlegs.

“Ren got us lost in a valley for a while,” False said, “If it weren’t for Grian’s yelling we would still be down there somewhere.”

“What?! I did not !” Ren protested, “I have a perfectly developed sense of direction thank you very much!”

“Valleys? Hills?” Xisuma repeated dumbly.

“Uh huh, yeah dude, this whole field is super wavy!” Ren made a wave motion with one of his arms, “The grass just makes it look flat.” 

“Maybe that’s where the others are?” Gem reasoned, “Down in a valley and they can’t see us.”

That made sense. Doc, Joe, Keralis, Xb, Jevin, Beef, Tango, and Zedaph were all still missing and Xisuma couldn’t see them by making a cursory glance around. 

“Couldn’t we just message them? Send them our coords?” Pearl asked. She reached into her jacket pocket, pulling out her communicator, a palm sized rectangular device. “Oh, it's dead,” she said after a moment of tapping at the screen to no avail.

Xisuma’s com was connected to his helmet, he tapped on the side of it a couple times but the screen in front of his eyes remained stubbornly blank. “That’s odd,” he said.

“Mine’s dead as well,” Mumbo added, “I know I charged it not long before we left.”

“So coms are a no go then,” Cleo said.

“We should go and look for them!” Skizz suggested enthusiastically.

“Hold on,” Xisuma shook his head, “We can organize a group to go, but some of us are in no shape to go traipsing around in unfamiliar territory.” He turned to the group at large, “Raise your hand if you hit your head during the landing, or at least think you did. And don’t you dare think about lying.” Xisuma just hoped no one would notice his own injury. So what if he was being a hypocrite? He was the admin, it was his duty to find his missing server members, concussion or no concussion.

Hypno and Gem raised their hands almost immediately. After a little prompting from Joel, Etho did as well. Skizzleman sheepishly raised his hand while staring at his shoes. 

“Skizz? What! Why didn’t you tell me, dude?” Impulse scolded. 

“It's just a little goose egg!” Skizz replied defensively, “I didn’t want you to worry about it! I feel fine, honestly. The headache isn’t even that bad.”

“Cub, would you mind watching over the injured?” Xisuma asked, “The rest of us will go and find the others.” 

“No problem,” Cub saluted, somewhere between genuine and indifferent, “You can count on me.”

“I’ll stay with Cub,” Cleo said, “I might not be the most useful with only one arm.”

“I’ll stay as well,” Wels said, “We don’t know how long you’ll be gone or what kind of mobs might be around. They’ll need somebody who can fight to protect them.” Wels patted the sword at his side. 

Wels’ sword, unlike normal swords that players crafted, was ingrained into his player code so it traveled with him between worlds and respawns, just like Xisuma’s helmet or Scar’s wheelchair. Most players had one or two personal items, beyond just their clothes, that were intertwined with their code, Wels had an entire suit of armor and a longsword.

“Hey!” Gem protested, “I can fight too! Just find me a big stick.”

“You can use my arm,” Cleo offered.

That comment made the rest of the group crack up. It was good for the hermits to laugh and release some of the tension that had been building up since the sky disappeared. 

“Alright,” Xisuma said, nodding to Wels and Cub, “I’m trusting you.”

They left the injured group at the top of the hill, Cub and Wels already beginning to administer first aid the best that they could.

Tango prided himself on being a reasonable guy. 

Sure the other Hermits may not have thought that about him. And yeah, maybe he did get so lost in his projects that he sometimes forgot to eat or sleep for days. And maybe the redstone he made for his games was just a little past this side of insanity. And maybe he had just a little bit of a short fuse and a fiery temper… literally . But Tango was nothing if not a reasonable guy . And in this situation, the reasonable thing to do was freak the absolute frick out.

For one, Tango had broken both of his arms. Yes, both of his arms. He didn’t remember breaking them, which was probably for the best. What he did remember though was waking up with his face in the dirt and his ass in the air, pain exploding through both of his wrists.

Secondly, Tango had no idea where he was. Once he had gotten to his feet - which had taken an enormous amount of effort and lots of cursing- all he could see was still prairie grass in all directions. It was practically no different than the view he had laying on the ground. “Oh what the!?” Tango growled, hair and tail sparking, "Where the hell am I!?”

“Tango?” 

Tango’s head snapped up, he knew that voice, “Zed!?”

Zedaph’s face appeared from over the crest of a grassy hill to Tango’s right. “It is you!”

“Zed!” Tango exclaimed, relieved, “Are the others with you? Do you know where we are?”

Zedaph shook and nodded his head in tandem which made it look like he was moving it in a figure eight motion, “Yes some and no not at all.”

Tango started scrambling up the hill towards his friend clutching both arms to his chest.

“What’s wrong with your arms?” Zedaph asked once Tango had reached him.

“Everything. Everything is wrong with my arms.” Tango replied.

Zed whistled, “That’s a lot of things.”

From on top of the hill, Tango could see a bit farther. To his right, the field seemed to continue endlessly, to his left and front, Tango could see the edges of a large, shadowy forest. A little ways in front of the two on another hill, Tango could make out a small group of hermits. He followed Zed as they worked their way over to join them.

“I found Tango!” Zedaph announced happily.

“Any sign of Shishwammy and the others?” Keralis asked, he had cuts all over his face and the blood had dried on his cheeks like warpaint. 

“Uh no, sadly,” Zed replied, “But hey! It's Tango!”

“You don’t look so good, Tango,” Jevin said. Jevin looked absolutely fine because his body was made of slime.

“Yeah, well, some of us have bones. Breakable bones.” Tango muttered.

“Would you let me take a look?” Doc asked. He wasn’t standing on his hind legs like he normally was, so he wasn't quite as tall, but he still towered over Tango. Tango noticed that his LED horns were glowing bright lime green and he wondered what that meant.

He let Doc carefully inspect his arms, muttering to himself occasionally in his native language which Tango didn’t understand. 

“My eye was able to take rudimentary scans of your arms,” Doc said after a couple minutes, “There do appear to be small fractures in the radius and ulna of both arms towards the wrist. They’ll have to be amputated.” 

Tango jumped back, hair flaring white hot for a moment, “W-what! Amputated?!”

Doc burst out laughing, “No, I was just joking. Man you should see your face. I totally got you! Boom! HA HA HA!”

“Doc, you can’t do that to a man! I nearly had a heart attack and died!” Tango exclaimed. 

Doc took off his lab coat and swiftly tore it into pieces. “Here, this will work as a makeshift sling for now.” He said, tying two pieces of the cloth around Tango’s arms and securing them at the neck.

“Now that that’s settled,” Beef pipped up from where he stood off to the side with Xb, “We have a decision to make. Do we try to find the others or stay here and hope they find us?”

“I really would like to find Shishwammy  and the others as soon as possible,” Keralis said, “But I’m afraid we’ll get lost. Especially because of this tricky, tricky field.”

"Can we not just message them?" Tango asked. He figured the others had probably tried that already, but maybe they had forgotten about coms. Tango knew he sometimes did.

Joe shook his head, "None of our coms are working, so that's a no go."

“If we make it to the woods we can set up a camp,” Xb suggested, “With all of us working together it won’t be too hard to get a campfire started, then the others will be able to see the smoke.”

“Good idea,” Doc said. He turned to Tango, “Can you walk, or do you need Beef to carry you?”

“Huh!? Why me?” Beef protested, “You are so much bigger than me! Why don’t you carry him?”

“Nobody rides on the Goat,” Doc said with a sly grin.

“I don’t need any rides from goats or otherwise,” Tango said, starting towards the closest edge of the forest, “are you all coming or what?”

It wasn't until they reached the woods that the real freaking out started. 

“Okay,” Joe said, listing things out on his fingers, it seemed he had lost his blue hand-puppet at some point since they left Hermitcraft. “We need wood for a pickaxe so we can get stone for a furnace so we can make charcoal for a campfire.” The rest of the group nodded and got to work. 

Since both of Tango’s arms were broken, he plopped awkwardly on the ground resigning himself to watch and feel useless. 

Xb walked up to the nearest tree and punched. A resounding CRACK echoed through the air, the sound made Tango wince. For a second, nothing happened, then Xb let out a heart stopping shout and stumbled backwards, clutching his hand to his chest, his tail curling around his body defensively.

“What is it!?” Keralis immediately rushed over concerned, “What happened!?”

“Tree - didn’t - break.” Xb ground out through gasps of pain. 

“Huh?” Zed cocked his head curiously as he examined the tree. Other than some blood from Xb’s busted knuckles, there wasn’t a mark on it, it certainly hadn’t become a meter sized block like it was supposed to.

“Did you do it with intention?” Joe asked.

Xb looked up at him incredulously, raising an eyebrow. Although Tango figured Joe hadn’t said it to be condescending, he didn’t blame Xb for the reaction.

"Did you do it with intention”  w as a question almost every player had heard throughout their childhood when they were learning how to interact with, place, and destroy blocks. You had to really mean whatever it was you were doing or the action would have no effect. Trying to break a block without intention would result in nothing more than sore knuckles and bruised pride, like Xb had just experienced.

“I’m not a child, Joe,” Xb said, “Of course I ‘did it with intention.’”

“That’s weird,” Jevin said, “Maybe someone else should try? Or try a different tree?”

Beef walked up to an adjacent tree and, much more gingerly than Xb, hit his knuckles against the surface. Other than the soft knocking sound, nothing happened.

“That’s double weird,” Tango said, echoing Jevin. 

Joe reached down, placing his hand against the ground. He started to hum like he was preparing to launch a ball of energy from his chest. After a moment the hum crescendoed and then died out. “Nope, can’t break a dirt block either,” Joe said, sitting back on his heels.

“Well this is just great! ” Tango shouted. He would have thrust his arms in the air had they not both been in slings. Instead he settled for drumming his tail on the ground in agitation. “We’re lost who knows where, we have no food, no water, and we can’t even break blocks!?”

“That about sums it up, yeah,” Doc said. His horns were pulsing now, changing between purplish black and lime green. Those things really should have come with an epileptic warning.

“So whatta we do? Do we just sit here? Do we try and go back to find the others?” Tango asked, he could feel his temperature rising. The tip of his tail made sizzling noises every time it connected with the grass.

“Why would this even be happening?” Zed asked curiously, “This whole server is strange. I mean, it's modded for sure and yet, no whitelist? Plus the no breaking blocks thing. Not to mention our coms have been dead since we got here.” One of his soft, sheep ears flicked as he thought, “Do you think it's been archived?”

“I don’t think you can access an archived server from the void,” Joe said, “Not unless you’re the server’s admin.”

“Archived servers are inaccessible,” Doc agreed. 

“It could be-” Beef interjected and then shook his head.

“What? It could be what , Beef?” Tango exclaimed, “If you know something say something, man!”

“I don’t wanna speculate until everyone else is present,” Beef said, “One of them might have a better explanation for what’s going on anyway.”

“Not to be the bearer of bad news or anything,” Jevin said, “But we still have no idea where we are and no plan.” 

“When you’re lost, you’re supposed to stay in one place and wait for rescuers to find you,” Joe suggested, sounding like a little boy in cub scouts.

“Yeah but, we’ve already moved, like a lot ,” Xb said, “I have no idea where we even started from at this point.”

“Shishwammy and the others are sure to be looking for us by now,” Keralis added.

As the group started to argue about whether or not they should leave or stay, Tango started freaking out in earnest. 

Tango wasn’t very good at doing nothing. He was a doer. A fixer. He wasn’t a do nothing and sit arounder. Maybe that was because Tango’s brain never sat still, it was constantly active, always looking for stimulation. If Tango didn’t run away with it, his mind would run away with him instead. Usually, Tango could harness the unique ecstatic energy of his brain. He was very good at solving problems actually. And if there was something he couldn’t figure out, he didn’t stop working until he did . But this? Tango had never faced a puzzle quite like this before. 

He could feel the anxiety welling up in him. His mind running in circles like his skull was a cage. Without the use of his hands, he couldn’t even stim to get his nervous energy out. It piled up inside him, like a stone rolling down a mountain and creating an avalanche. His lungs were constricting under the weight of it.   

  What if Xisuma was looking for them, but in the wrong direction? What if they went back out into the field and got even more lost? What if was just as broken as Hermitcraft and everything was going to disapear? What if? What if? What if?

As his pulse rose so did his temperature, his fire flaring white hot as it shot from his scalp. Tango drummed his tail faster and faster against the ground listening to the fisst, fisst, fisst, sound of the grass singeing. He couldn’t take it anymore, he had to do something before he was buried alive in his thoughts. He could come up with a solution, he was Tango Tek . Come on, Tango! Think! Think! THINK! 

… Wait a second.

Out of nowhere, Tango opened his mouth and let his frustrations out in a full chested shout which caused everyone else in the group to jump in surprise. He then turned and plunged his head into a thicket of grass. The dry, yellow stalks went up like a powder keg, fire instantly spreading and producing a thick column of black smoke. 

“I am a genius! ” Tango shouted.