Chapter Text
︶꒦꒷🌍꒷꒦︶
“Are you sure you want to come?” Grian asked him for what felt like the millionth time.
“Yes,” Scar replied, a bit of bite in his tone. More than he intended, but it got his message across.
They were waiting at spawn together for X to arrive. Once he got here, then they would leave for Ex’s server.
“Okay… I’m just worried about you. Are you certain you don’t want to keep resting? It’s only been 2 weeks since…” Grian trailed off, he didn’t need to say what it was. Scar knew, they both knew.
“By that logic, you should be staying too,” Scar sassed back. He was fine, honestly. But some time off server would be nice. Grian had been talking about this little visit that him and X had planned for quite a while. It’d be cool to return to the server, he wanted to talk to Tommy anyway.
Mumbo invited Tommy to come over months ago, but the kid never got back to him. Mumbo had convinced himself it was because of everything Tommy was going through. His father’s death must be hard on him. Scar felt sadness forming in his chest when he thought about Philza… He barely even knew the man, but he felt like his favourite person ever died every time he thought of him.
Scar had a lot of quirks like that. Little things that were off since Tommy… ate his soul? It’s been 5 months and he still didn’t have a better term for what happened. Scar wasn’t upset with Tom, he knew it was an accident. He just wanted to see if Tommy was also experiencing little blendy moments.
And some time off server would be nice… Scar loved Hermitcraft, but every time he looked at like half the people here, all he could think of was death… Looking at Gem, just broke his heart. All he could see was him and Pearl slaughtering her.
“Hey guys.”
Scar spun around to the voice coming from behind him. He drew his sword, ready to slay the attacker.
Etho took a step back, narrowly dodging a sword to the throat, “Whoa there, Scar.”
Scar let out a large sigh, putting his sword away, “Sorry, Etho. You just spooked me.”
“Eh, it’s alright. I’m a sneaky guy, I had it coming.”
“We’re just about to leave for Ex’s server, Etho. What brings you here?” Grian asked.
“I was actually going to join y’all, I messaged X about it already. An old friend of mine spoke to me last night, she asked me to check up on someone for her.”
Grian perked up slightly, “Oh, who? Maybe it’s someone I know!”
“Uh, her name is Lulah. Her mom is worried about her, asked me to check in.”
Grian’s jaw dropped, “H-Her mom? Really?”
Etho nodded, saying something that Scar didn’t hear.
He was more focused on the name Lulah. That was his Tommy’s sister, right? Tallulah. He associated her with the colour blue, the sounds of a flute, and the reek of gunpowder.
He tuned back into the conversation as Xisuma arrived.
“Are we ready?” the admin asked, his tone as bright as ever, “I sent a message to Ex about Scar and Etho coming with us, but I don’t believe they’ve seen it yet.”
Scar chuckled, “Does everyone on the server ghost us Hermits? First Mumbo and Tommy, now you and your sibling.”
“We don’t know for sure if Tommy is ghosting Mumbo,” Grian chimed.
Scar was 100% sure Tommy was ghosting his mustached friend. But he didn’t have the heart to share that with Mumbo, it would only hurt his feelings.
“The server also has been having problems with cross server communication lately,” X said while doing something or rather on his admin panel, “Okay, I’ve finished what I need too. The server so it should be good for the 2 days we plan to be there. We can leave now.”
“Keralis is acting as Admin while we’re gone, right?” Grian asked.
“Yep, I’ve filled him in on everything already. We’ve done this before,” The Voidwalker responded.
Scar sighed, code talk bored him. He never really understood it all, “Can we go now?”
X looked over to him, “Yep! Sorry, we should be on our way! We don’t want to be late!”
⋆༺𓆩☠︎︎𓆪༻⋆
Ex tapped their foot as they waited at spawn. Their brother and bird boy were meant to be here 15 minutes ago. How long did it really take to travel from Hermitcraft to here?
They did not like keeping the whitelist off this long. It only took 2 seconds for someone unwanted to get on last time. They did not want a repeat of the CyberKnife incident.
XisumaVoid has joined the game
Grian has joined the game
Finally! It took them long enough!
GoodTimeWithScar has joined the game
Etho has joined the game
Oh. They brought friends. Ex couldn’t help but think it was because their brother didn’t trust them. Why else would he bring more people if not to use as backup if there was a fight?
Etho was the only one of them at spawn. The others must be scattered around where they logged out during their first visit.
“Hi, Ex,” Etho said warmly.
Ex rolled their eyes, this guy was always so annoying. They ran a command, teleporting their brother, bird boy, and death loop to spawn.
Bird boy let out a loud squawk of surprise as the three people appeared.
Ex smirked, “Did I startle you, Xelqua?” They couldn’t help but taunt him slightly, “Not very all Seeing of you.”
Bird boy pouted, crossing his arms, Ex’s smirk bloomed into a shit eating grin.
Suma put a hand on Grian’s shoulder, “It’s good to see you Ex. I did send you messages about Scar and Etho coming but I’m not certain they went through.”
Ex raised an eyebrow, “Yeah, I didn’t receive shit.” They honestly didn’t believe Suma had sent anything.
Suma’s eye twitched at the swear word, which made all of this worth it in Ex’s book.
They looked down at their watch, “Okay, I have an appointment in a bit. I’ll give you four a quick tour then you’re on your own.”
“I can probably find my own way around,” Bird boy said.
“Do you know where Tommy is staying? That’s the only place I really need to see,” Death loop asked.
Ex was not sure why Death loop wanted to see the kid, but they didn’t think too hard about it. They didn’t really care. “Alright. I was going to show you L’manburg anyway. Like half the server lives there, for some reason. And X.”
“Yeah?” their brother made eye contact.
“I’ll introduce you to Sam after my thing. He’s the one in charge of keeping the former ‘admin,” they did air quotes around admin, “in check.”
“What thing do you have that’s so important?” Bird boy asked.
“None of your damn business, Bird boy,” they snapped at him. Honestly made them prefer Etho to Bird boy, at least that guy was quiet.
After starting the tour, the group didn’t make it very far. Bird boy stopped them once they got a few feet on the Prime path, “Hey, what’s this red plant? It wasn’t here last time.”
Ex let out a loud annoyed sigh, “It’s just a plant, some weird one. It’s native to the server, apparently. I think Two Shoes and his little cult have been calling them blood vines? They have this whole game of make believe surrounding the plant, won’t let me clear it.”
Suma put a hand on his chin, “It’s weird. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Are you sure they’re not from a mod, are they 100% vanilla?”
“Yes!” they hissed, “I’ve tripled checked.”
“It’s kinda ugly,” Etho muttered.
Ex disagreed, they found it kinda pretty, in the way it was so disgusting it became nice. But they didn’t care enough to defend it. It was just a plant.
They went on with the tour, leading the group down the Prime Path. “Next to us is Church Prime, no killing in that area with the border. It’s just a rule the people here have. Just keep going down the path to find L’manburg,” they looked at the sky, focusing on the sun, pulling on its code to check the time, “I’ve got head out now.” They didn’t want to be late for Puffy, they also still needed to pop home and grab their plant to show her.
“Wait, Ex,” Suma put a hand on their shoulder, they were slightly surprised by the action, but made no move to remove their little brother’s hand, “You and I should continue the tour after your thing.”
“Uh, sure,” Suma wanted to spend time together, one on one? They felt nervous about the proposition, but they had to say yes, “I’ll meet you back here in like an hour or so. Bye.”
They focused on the world, and pulling themself through it. They were working on needing their admin panel less. They found just doing small things like that manually was really helping them get better.
Once in the End, they strode into their half built castle. They really needed to work on their base, they just didn’t have much time right now. They had the main entrance done, but the rest was just blobby shapes and outlines.
They hadn’t built a storage room, so all their stuff had just been stuffed into a chest monster tucked in the corner. In the middle of the chests, they grabbed the plant. It sat on a block in the center of the boxes.
They’d done their best to tend to the little guy. Even given it a name, Xi.
Growing it in the End had had some interesting effects on the vine. The little bulb on it bloomed a few days ago, the leaves of the flower had purple tips. They found it beautiful.
They gently carried Xi in its clay pot to the End fountain, stepping through with it.
꧁⎝ 𓆩༺ ☀︎ ༻𓆪 ⎠꧂
Grian had different plans then the rest of his group, while Scar, Etho, and Xisuma remained near L’manburg, Grian couldn’t wait to get away. He didn’t have fond memories of that place.
He strolled down the path towards the main nether portal. He wanted to go over to Techno’s base.
But as he walked through the server, he couldn’t help but stare at the weird plant growing everywhere. Something about it felt wrong. It wasn’t natural, no matter what Ex said.
A small vine grew across the path, no thicker than a pencil. He crouched down next to it. He reached out to it, picking it up from the wood. It felt like a root. But a root of what? He tugged on it lightly, feeling how deeply it was buried. It was pretty good in there.
He tightened his grip on it, pulling it harder. But it still didn’t come out of the ground.
He slid across the ground, to where the vine was growing out of. He braced his left hand against the base of the little root. He gripped it lower on the vine with his right hand. He gave it a full tug. But still! Nothing!
He groaned. He didn’t know why this mattered so much to him right now. But something told him deep down that this plant had to go. It was wrong. Maybe he was the only one who could See it.
He pulled on a hint of his power, using it to burn on the plant slightly.
He tugged again, ripping it from the small purple burn.
He smiled. Even if it was only a small piece, he felt happy it was gone.
Grian now had about a meter of red spikey plant now. That was a great use of his time.
With a sigh, he put the little plant in his inventory to deal with later.
Back on topic now. He wanted to go find Techno.
He stood up, brushing off his knees. The path was honestly pretty dirty… Why did he sit down on this again? For a silly plant? He sighed, why did he even do that…
He went back to walking down the plant. The more of the plant he saw, the more he wanted to just use his powers to explode it all off the face of the earth.
Stay on target, Grian. Just stay on the path.
He walked forward, staring at his feet.
He finally made it to the portal, passing through. He was relieved to no longer see that stupid plant.
Now to get through the Nether to Techno’s base.
Which he now saw was going to be a problem. Last time he went there, he was technically kidnapped, and out cold.
He sighed, pulling out his comm.
You whispered to Technoblade: Which Nether portal is yours?
It took Techno a few minutes to respond with the cords, so Grian was left there waiting awkwardly with the smell of sulfur plugging his nose.
When Techno finally got back to him, his instructions weren’t the best.
Technoblade whispered to you: The dangerous one
What did that even mean?
He looked around, well one of them did have a wooden one by one path? Was that it?
Probably.
He took off with his wings, soaring above the path, diving into the portal.
The cold winter air hit him like a brick. He forgot how cold it was here. Icy biomes tended to be chilly… He shouldn’t have shaved his bread…
He flew as fast as he could towards the plume of smoke rising from the distance. His sweater was not thick enough for this...