Alone I am. A world apart - Whumptober 2025 Day 18
Summary:
Gameknight's Minecraft world freezes. Prompt pieces used: “As the world caves in.” | Ruins
Notes:
CWs: Minecraft world corrupting, implied mass death due to that, stress position Words: 1,054 I had no idea what to do for this one, and then it suddenly came to me. Minecraft worlds can freeze = I wonder how that would effect someone who isn't really a part of it… (if this happened in the series and doesn't turn out this way shhhhh It's been a while since I read.) Song for this fic: I Know What I Know by The Monkees
Fic here or under the cut.
A sense of unease struck him, and Gameknight stumbled as the grass blocks below shifted, shivering in a way completely unlike they ever should have in a world without a natural disaster mod installed. He heard wolves barking in the background, but they were distored somehow, as if his ears weren't working right, or as if their code was somehow broken.
He whirled around, almost falling as the world shuddered again. “Herder?” he called out, trying to find the shape of his friend in the mess of blocks that he could have sworn had looked different only a few moments before. A wolf's distorted bark called out to him, but there was no villager voice to right with it. broken Trees were in the wrong places, chickens were skipping across the grasslands and rocks as they only ever had when he played on the computer instead of inside it.
Lag? Inside of the game?
He looked up higher as a mountain seemed to warp in the distance. It twisted eerily, forming a shape like that of the hill on the cover of Jenny's ”Nightmare Before Christmas“ DVD that she was using as of late for art reference. This alone would have been sickening in Minecraft, a game which did not let its generation work that way, but it didn't have to be sickening on its own, because the rest of the skyline was equally horrifying.
The sky itself was flickering, flashing between day and night like a malfunctioning coding class project or a cheap jumpscare in an even cheaper horror game. If he squinted his blocky eyes- which he did not want to do because they were suddenly burning like he was standing in front of a campfire -he might have been able to see right through the flashing into something else. Something even more terrifying than a cheap jumpscare or homework done at the last minute.
Something that smelled like Entity404 had found his way back into the server pryamid and decided that he didn't like to be a nice guy anyway, no matter what he had said way back when.
Something that Gameknight knew would end in destruction.
He tried to walk forward, but found that his legs didn't work as intended. They were frozen to the blocks below them, even as said blocks began to flicker like the sky above. He looked down in surprise, and saw that it was, in fact, his armor he was straining against, as if it was frozen in place with him inside it.
”Herder?“ he called again, knowing his friend had been there moments before, ”What's happening?“
Now there was not even a wolf to answer him. His fear trippled.
Gameknight looked up, and found with a growing sense of horror. that his shoulders too were frozen, stuck within his chestplate as if he were a little posable art reference doll rather than a User-that-was-not-a-user. He tried to reach into his inventory to remove it, to gain back the use of his legs and shoulders, but found that he couldn't.
It was as if his inventory had been locked somehow. Or even like it had been frozen shut.
Gameknight's digital blood ran cold.
Was his game crashing?
He whiped his head from side to side, hurting his neck with the distance covered but nonetheless unable to look behind him because of his chestplate's tight grasp on him. The world felt like it was crumbling around him, and the things he was seeing reflected that feeling. He tried to take them in, to find out if there was something he could do, but his inventory was inexessable, and he couldn't seem to get a handle on the in-game chat, and his head was becoming more and more immovable the more he looked around.
Too late, he realized what was happening to his head.
Right at the end of a far turn to the side (a hopeless attempt to get a last look at where Herder had once been), his helmet locked into place. Gameknight cried out at the stretch. He could have sworn his chin was past his shoulder, which was way too far for a human head (even in Minecraft) to turn.
His neck strained in an effort to get his head back to a position safe for him to remain him, but his head simply would not turn. His helmet had frozen into place in the air, and his head was as stuck within it as his feet were in his boots or his chest was in his chestplate.
He tried to reach up, feeling a familiar headache worm its way up his spine and into his brain, but his arms could not lift high enough to reach his head. His shoulder pads had stuck them too low to reach that high, and the sharp diamond dug into his shoulders as he struggled to reach. He felt a tick of damage come off of him as he strained, breathing hard from the twist and made harder but a thinning of the air.
At a second heart lost, he let his arms drop to his sides to avoid the drops of xp running down his biceps. He tried to figure out if there was anything he could do, but his head hurt and his neck hurt and his eyes were getting blurry with tears.
The world shuddered around him, and with a snap that felt like his neck, it went black.
...
Gameknight woke with a start that sent him backwards and away from the desk. His eyes snapped open on a screen that was far too bright and far too blurry, as if his molecules themselves were still adjusting for what had happened to him inside the computer. His neck felt like it had been wrapped in a wandering trader's lead and pulled around by a rampaging ravager. His head wasn't faring much better. His shoulders felt wet, like they're really started bleeding.
And yet, none of that bothered him in the moment.
He stared at his monitor, not believing what he saw.
"Failed to load world in Safe Mode," it read, matterafact over a simple background as if those terrible words didn't contain the deaths of thosands, "This world contains invalid or corrupted save data."
For the second time that day, Gameknight felt frozen.
Notes:
It'll be fine he has a world backup trust. 🙏 Fourth whumptober of the day I am BACK on track! (Comments appreciated!! >^-^< I thought this concept was kinda cool and wanna hear opinions. :3)
