#darklewrites

Or, rather, what had surrounded the opening.

The speckled, dark teal and yellow sculk had been exactly what he'd been looking for. They’d all seen patches of it appear in the caves, of course, ever since the world had shifted and Xisuma had done whatever adminy stuff Xisuma did to accommodate world changes. But this… this was what Tango had been anticipating--and dreading, if he was perfectly honest with himself--since they’d left HCS8.

The Deep Dark.

Cub had been the one to find it--Cub had been doing a fantastic job cosplaying a mole this season, with the way he kept digging from one base to another in the spawn village and all his mining statistics and stuff. Tango was just glad he’d been spared the long hours clambering through cave and digging tunnels himself. This way, all he had to do was…well, walk in .

Easy peasy, right?

Riiiiiiight.

“Joe.”

“Hang on, Cleo, I just need to…recalculate this, just a second…”

“Joe. It doesn’t matter if the interior wall here is off by a block. No one will ever see this except us.” Cleo pushed her hair out of her eyes in exasperation and glanced around their little bunker.

It would work, she guessed--they’d moved some of the gym equipment down here, and Joe’s books, and of course there were always building methods to practice and armor stands to work on, so there wouldn’t be a shortage of things to do to keep from being bored.

She climbed back up the ladder and gave one quick glance around the gym, then angrily shook her head and slammed the hatch down into place. Nope. She wasn’t--there was no reason to get sentimental, it wasn’t like starting over was anything new, they did this all the time.

It was fine. It was fine.

She turned around to see Joe busily taking down the back wall, stacking the blocks carefully to the side before beginning to recalculate the new dimensions of the space.

Wanna sneak peek? :D

fWhip raised his eyes from working on his crops, and sure enough, Scott was lounging in the shade, one shoulder against a tree. His black umbrella hung from one arm, and his bright red eyes were fixed on fWhip.

fWhip raised one hand in a half-hearted wave. “Hey, Scott. Need something?”

“No, not really. I was just…passing through the area and thought I’d swing by.” Scott smiled. “How are you doing?”

How was he doing? fWhip glanced around the carrot field, considering, weighing his words carefully. He had to watch what he said around the vampire…too much, and that was as good and inviting him into your house--not that Scott could fit into his house. He hoped not, anyway. He opted for cheerfully nonchalant. “I’m fine. Doin’ great, absolutely peachy. How about you? How’s the zoo going?”

Scott’s smile became a broad grin, his fangs glinting. “Oh, it’s going very well, fWhip. You should come see it sometime. I’m sure you’d enjoy the visit.”

They were nearing the city’s edge. The buildings were more broken down here than he remembered, stone and rotting timbers crumbling around them. Trees, their branches crooked and bare, encroached upon the city, and thorny vines made the paths beneath the trees nearly impassable. In the distance, looming over the ruins of the city, he could just see a tower, pieces of the walls jutting up like broken teeth and stained dark with lichen.

“What’s that?” Wels asked.

“That was where Xisuma’s Hels once lived. We don’t speak his name anymore.” Except as a curse. Hels had thought that the old rage had died away, but as he stared at the tower, he could feel it warming his gut once more. He abandoned us.

“X’s Hels isn’t Evil X?”

Hels snorted. “Nope.”

“So…does Hels operate the same as Hermitcraft? With admins and—“

“Well Jellie, looks like we’re all situated!” Scar clapped his hands together, grinning at his cat.

Jellie meowed and stretched before settling into her cushion at the end of the couch.

Scar hefted up the big Swaggon sign—a gear with fancy gilded lettering. He hadn’t had time to hang it before he’d had to move all his stuff down here. He stood for a moment, surveying the walls of the bunker and trying to decide which one it would look perfect on. The big blank wall, right beside the couch, he thought. It was the only one that didn’t really have anything…

Part of the rock crumbled.

Scar blinked, then squinted at it. Surely not. He’d built this thing out of obsidian. Surely it wouldn’t…

The sharp point of a pick broke through the wall, digging a chunk out of it, and then a dusty face topped with a familiar shock of dirty brown hair appeared in the hole.

“G-Grian!” Scar said. “Wha— How— What are you doing here?!”

“Hi Scar!” Grian grinned. “I got bored. Wanna come tunnel to Pearl’s bunker with me?”

>HelsKnight fell from a great height trying to escape Welsknight<

>Welsknight fell from a great height<

For most Hermits, the buzzing of their comms in quick succession, and the two messages on the screen were a matter of…not a little concern. But it wasn’t like it threw up any red flags.

Ren typed ‘RIP’ in the chat as always and went back to working coming up with a new pumpkin pie recipe.

Xisuma offered a “What’s up, Wels?” before turning back to his never-ending list of admin tasks.

Tango merely typed, “Again?”, which was all he could handle at the moment, given he was trying to juggle his comm and a full shulker box and outrun piglins. Again.

Jevin added, “Right? I thought they were done with this after last season.”

Followed by Joe going, “Fighting your inner darkness is never done, Jevin.”

Which made Cleo respond with, “do NOT get him started, guys, please, he’ll be reciting things all day.”

After all, there had been a time when seeing death messages from both Wels and Hels had been simply a matter of rote. And it wasn’t like Wels ever accepted help in dealing with the evil clone--he viewed Hels as his problem, and his problem only. So the hermits had learned that, in order to not step on the knight’s sense of honor and dignity, to offer support from afar, or at least wait until the death-loop had stopped before flying over and offering a listening ear while helping Wels gather his scattered belongings.

So, for now, it wasn’t a big deal. They would monitor the chat, of course, and keep an ear out for any battling sounds near Wels’s base.

To the server, however, it mattered greatly.

It simply could not cope with the facts that two clones, each an exact copy of the other--not a bot or a cam account--had to respawn in the same location at the same time. Whether the magics surrounding the server thought that the deaths were errors or glitches or strangers trying to get into the protected world of the hermits…

It had origin coordinates for one of the clones, at least.

“I hope you remembered that I specified two bedrooms, not one,” EX muttered as he made his way down the ladder, a shulker box clutched close to his chest.

“Maybe you should’ve helped build the bunker, then,” Xisuma remarked, glancing up at him.

“I need my space.”

“I realize that, but we also don’t want to spread out the reinforcements of the bunker too much. Really, we don’t know anything about how widespread the damage will be, or if--”

“Spare me,” EX growled, leaning his head against the ladder rung. “Besides, don’t you have scientists on the server? Not to mention an actual, literal astrophysicist? How can you not know?”

“Well, Zed and Cub have sent me reports, of course, but it’s all Latin to me.” Xisuma paused, then muttered, “That’s not the phrase, is it?”

Hmm. If Xisuma wasn’t remembering words properly, maybe he’d pushed the mind control thing a bit too hard. He’d have to lay off that for a bit. Really, it was probably for the better--he’d noticed it tended to make Xisuma a bit derpier than usual, and EX wasn’t sure how much of that he could handle while living in a ten-by-ten space with his brother.

Xisuma was still rambling on about experiments and scientific method. EX groaned. “Ender gods, just…spare me.”

Xisuma chuckled and turned away, clearing some space on the floor so EX could set his own shulker box down. EX groaned and leaned backwards, his spine giving a satisfying pop as he did so. He leaned against the ladder for a moment, watching his brother as he began unpacking, setting things around the living room that somehow gave it a neat but lived-in look. Throw pillows on the couch--seriously? And…was that a basket of knitting Xisuma had just taken out of a shulker?

Xisuma must have felt his gaze, because he looked over his shoulder. “It’s a soothing hobby, all right?”