#mysnippets

"Your age. Come on, ask us something difficult," Etho goaded.

"Yeah, ask us something difficult," Scar said. "We're all great at riddles."

Grian rolled his eyes. "Sure, whatever. Um... What can travel around the world without leaving its corner?"

"A stamp," Pearl chimed in. "You know, I always thought being a postmaster would be really fun."

"Ew, government work," Jevin muttered.

"I knew that one too," Scar said.

"Ooh, I have one!" Impulse said. "I'm always hungry and I'll die if I'm not fed. Whatever I touch will soon turn red. What am I?"

"Tango?" Etho said. Several snickers emanated from the gathered hermits.

"Close," Impulse said.

"Oh, I got it! Fire!" Pearl said. She beamed in victory when Impulse nodded.

Before anyone could add their thoughts, a deep, heavy voice echoed through the room: "The dungeon is ready for its next victim."

"Hypno made it out!" Grian said. "Who's up next again?"

"Uhh, Scar, I think," Etho said. He poked at the queueing system that always seemed to break at the least opportune moments.

"Ooh! Well, everyone better come up with more riddles, 'cause I'm gonna be in there a loooong time," Scar said. He waved flippantly as jeers followed him out the waiting room.

"Does anyone want to trade a shard for uh... Literally anything else?" Jevin said.

"Yeah, I'll trade one shard for two shards," Impulse said, grinning.

"Well that's not even funny," Jevin mumbled. He sat on a slab and crossed his arms.

Eyes fierce and wild, wounds bleeding, his gargantuan prey frenzied and frightened, he finally felt alive. The creature in front of him was bleeding badly, hamstrung, wounded, he and his companion had been toying with it. His taloned gauntlets dripping with his prey's blood, he aimed another precise, violent slash at it's neck.

It recoiled, a furious guttural sound leaving it's throat.

Snapping it's jaws at The Beast, Paola took the chance and lunged, biting as hard as she possibly could on it's wounded leg. The thing's serpentine neck squirmed before whipping around to grip Paola in it's deadly jaws, but she was already gone.

The Beast took the opportunity to deal the final blow; ripping it's throat open.

One last spasm, a death rattle, and the massive Hydra fell limp, bleeding out into the sands of the desert. He looked over the work of himself and his companion. (”Too easy.”) he thought to himself, more in empty dissatisfaction than in anything resembling “proud.“

The adrenaline subsided. The blood dried. He felt empty, again.

He crouched down in front of the creature's mouth, carefully removing two of it's most fearsome fangs. One, a personal trophy, the second, Paola's newest toy. And after skinning some of it's remaining usable hide and taking the more intact, and delicious cuts of meat, his mind began to wander on the walk back.

He thought of nothing particularly coherent.

His and his tiger's footfalls left prints behind in the soft warm sands.

He thought of when he used to feel something.

The warm sands gave way to harder sandstone, dirt and grasses.

He thought of how useless, meaningless, all this- being alive, felt.

Hours had passed.

Stuck in his head, his feet lead him down the rest of the path back home instinctively.

He thought of the ways he'd numb himself again.

Usually, he'd feel some amount of relief upon entering his lovingly cluttered home.

The amber light of his favorite lanterns hanging from the ceiling illuminated the red, orange, and gold colors of loved trinkets and fabrics strewn about the house.

He looked over his extravagant bed, cluttered with all manner of patterned throw pillows, a few larger deep red pillows he'd actually use. The black sheets were unmade- Had been that way, for two weeks now. It had been a long time since he cared to relax.

His trophy cabinet stocked full of fallen foe's fangs, horns, scales, furs, armor, jewelry- It all felt like nothing as of late.

His liquor cabinet, filled with his favorite, very expensive whiskeys, rums, and a few wines, was the most used thing in his house. This was always the case, but it was a hindrance during weeks like these.

No relief came.

He put everything from his hunt in it's rightful place, threw Paola her new toy- which she happily caught, wandering off to curl up in her favorite sun-tanning spot. His mind had turned against him the moment he had killed his latest hunt and the fight had ended.

Huffing a sigh, grabbing his medicinal supplies, he mended his wounds with the bare minimum. Disinfecting with his favorite alcohol, taking a swig, wrapping them in bandages that he'd remove sooner than he should. He could feel nothing. He washed, dried, and polished his custom-made gauntlets. Only danger felt like anything these days.

This sort of habit had become far too common as of late. He couldn't make himself care whether he lived or died. (”What would Zefiro think of me, if he caught me thinkin' like this- In this state.“) he thought to himself, pained at the thought of Zef worrying over him- Worse yet, scolding him.

Rolling his shoulders, a habit of his, he attempted to banish the worst of his thoughts from his mind. He sipped more of his favorite whiskey straight from the bottle.

Too tired to hunt anything else.

Not the kind of tired that allowed for sleep.

He could think of only one reprieve;

Joel, who'd used empires magic to grow to giant size and become a god, could tell that there was magic here. It was just... different.

Some of it was similar, if not the same: they could change their shape to match their aesthetic, like Lizzie becoming a cat or ocean queen, like Impulse becoming a dwarf or cybernetic future... guy. They could make life out of nothing, like that Grumbot guy he'd heard about, and of course his beloved Hermes.

But here the world didn't twist to their whims. Shubble's witchcraft would never work on hermitcraft, nor would that one demon guy from season one have much of an effect at all. So many hermits didn't put much substance in fwoopy, unclear magic-y sparkles, so the world didn't support it. They twisted the world to match their visions. Tango built a functioning factory using the laws of the world. It was huge and complex and would never have been built on empires. That wasn't even getting into whatever Doc or Zed were up to. Frankly, Joel liked sticking to his skyscrapers instead of testing the bounds of their world.

Still. It bugged him, because on empires he could have just built a car structure and boom, mustang for Joel Smallishbeans. But here he'd have to make like, an actual motor.

Regardless, Wels didn't have any knowingly hybrid features.

"By the gods, Wels, how are you not dying of heat right now?" Xisuma asked incredulously. As a bug-guy ("not a bug!") he couldn't sweat, so he was periodically spritzing himself with water. Hot days on hermitcraft were few and far between, because the weather was often either perfect or raining, but they did happen.

Wels had taken his helmet off but that was all and yeah, admittedly, he was cooking in his armor. But the aesthetic. The vibe. The embarrassing old band T-shirt he was wearing that he didn't want X to see. So many reasons.

"Maybe I'm just, like, built better," Wels said.

"Humanism? In my hermitcraft world?" Jevin muttered. He was thriving in the heat and prepping to leave, bored with Wels and X lounging around.

He never put much thought into it until he takes a selfie at the request of Gem, making a peace sign with one hand and holding his comm in the other, and Gem sends back an all-caps "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR HOUSE????"

Before he knows it every hermit has seen the selfie. Few care about the hermit present in said selfie (except for Bdubs, bless the man), and are far more interested in the simple, nondescript background.

"Why is there a lantern on top of a chest?" Gem demands.

"There's not, the lantern's held up by fishing wire, see?" Etho says.

"That's worse!" Gem exclaims. And so on and so forth.

Etho thinks his home is pretty normal. It works for him, after all. No need to have anything fancy and new. He lives by the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Doc stretches these rules to their limits. His redstone machines have shut down the world many, many times. He pushes at the confines of his cage and the cage, to his enjoyment and frustration, pushes back.

There's one area, though, that Xisuma, Hypno, and the others refuse to budge on.

"You cannot add modifications to your arm," Xisuma says.

"It already has-"

"You know what I mean," Xisuma says in exasperation, needing to be the Responsible Admin and hating every second of it.

Doc does, sort-of, in that he completely doesn't. "What's the difference between a soldering iron and a flamethrower, really?"

"Limiting the area of heat concentration," Tango adds helpfully. He's paying attention in the way Tango does best, conversing while fidgeting with a pile of metal gears that he periodically puts together and takes apart.

Doc rolls his eyes. "Yes, but to what limit?"

"The normal one," Tango says.

"We gotta make up numbers now?" Hypno mumbles. He's half asleep, headband pulled over his eyes.

"Nah. There are regulations already made for other prosthetics on vanilla-ish worlds," Tango says, which is annoying because Doc doesn't like following the rules of other vanilla-ish worlds. Tango shoots him an impish grin. "I know because I had to modify my arm from the create worlds."

Annoying. Extremely, frustratingly annoying. Doc frowns. "What about-"