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archetypal-archivist · 3 years

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Grian- Boots for the Rain Gone Cold

Kind of a story idea for Ex-Watcher Grian, 3500+ words. This is what happens when you listen to the song Welly Boots on repeat for a couple hours. The premise is that Grian and the Hermits aren’t quite as nice as they seem, and when Grian has to flee Hermitcraft to keep his friends safe from the Watchers, his friends do some malicious compliance to take care of him while he is away.

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A story in which the hermits take care of their own, even beyond borders they should not be able to cross.

Take a standard story about Watcher Grian. See him come to Hermitcraft, lost and alone and afraid. He has been through Evo, killed a dragon whilst alone and afraid, was taken against his will, watched his friends Pearlescent Moon and Taurtis die. He knows how to take care of himself, but nothing more than that.

Hermitcraft changes that, for him. Standing outside a portal that is unlike any he had ever seen, even during his time as a watcher, seeing a team of 20+ walk out is terrifying. But they had seen him, looked at each other, then rushed forward to claim him as their own. In the beginning he is left alone until he tentatively reaches out, saving Scar's stuff after he has died. An action unlike him, but he had appreciated their kindness in letting him stay, so he does his best to repay that.

Tit for tat is something he understands from the Watchers, even if this is a kinder variant.

Grian watches as people start to reach out to him, watching him with admiring eyes as he builds his first shops, offering items he's never needed or touched before now. (Conduits are so cool and he'll deny the shiver of excitement that crept up his spine when Xisuma first handed him one to his dying breath.) He watches as they smile and laugh at his antics, rather than come at him and his with sword and shield for his pranks.

He watches. He is good at that. He is significantly less good at returning their kindness, a trouble-maker to his core, intentionally or no. But he tries, and in the eyes of the Hermits, that is all that matters.

Iskall feeds him, sometimes, when he is sick and delirious, screaming at the shadows in the corners. They do not let him starve himself to death. (He learns to hide half stacks of golden carrots in their chests, just enough to replenish their supply, but not enough that they'd notice.)

Mumbo is patient with him when he comes crashing into his base like a wrecking ball, sometimes plowing into the taller hermit's redstone face first in the process. He just helps Grian up, smiling and laughing, helping him brush the red dust away. (Grian learns that Mumbo cannot sleep without noise, too used to the ticking of redstone clocks and firing pistons to sleep in quiet. He learns to fly in on late nights when Mumbo's base is still lit up and talk with his friend, chattering away until Mumbo can find it in himself to turn the lag machines off and fall asleep to the sound of Grian's voice.)

Xisuma watches the world with all the focus and patience that Grian once used when designing stars and bedrock towers. For Xisuma, Grian will watch the world too and ease its updates when he can- one less burden for his admin to carry, taken and handled with silent, secret grace.

Joe reads and reads and reads, spinning tales of his finds to all who stand still long enough for him to pin down for a bit. For Joe, Grian will bring out some of his old high school textbooks for him on the days when the man runs out of books to read.

Zedaph lives in a cave, warm and dry, but without color, the only life being the experiments rattling around in the background. For Zedaph, Grian will sneak in mushrooms and moss, encouraging them to grow in the shadows until the cavern blooms with them.

For the hermits, Grian is kind. For the hermits, Grian will learn.

Then one day it all comes crashing down, perhaps in the face of a bedrock tower springing from nowhere, perhaps in violent, screaming outburst of purple fire, perhaps in the face of a friend he once thought dead. The Watchers had tried their damnest to stamp out his heart and they nearly succeeded, but just as they could not stamp out his free will they also could not stamp out his humanity, and people- regardless of shape or size or color or race or species- are born to love and be loved.

Grian loves his Hermits. To protect them, he must leave. And so he does, quietly and in the dead of night, the faint echoes of screams ringing in his ears. If he has it his way, never again will he hear his hermit's pain, imagined or otherwise. It would be best to just forget.

Grian settles in a rainy little single player server that turns out to not be as single player as he would like. It seems instead to be an abandoned multiplayer server, lost dogs and empty houses abound in the distant corners, and every once in a while a new player stumbles in, running from something, settling in long enough to call the server home. Sometimes, these new players stay. Sometimes, whatever is chasing them catches up and they are forced to leave. Grian refuses to care for these fellow vagabonds, even as he watches from under the eaves of his perfectly constructed rustic house, rain dripping down and obscuring him from their wondering, pained eyes.

Grian has given up on having happy ending, and if the ending the narrative seems to want to give him is a tragedy, then he will seize it with both hands and rewrite it himself. What he does not take into account, however, is that the Hermits don't take kindly to being abandoned.

Grian was once a Watcher, and while watching and mimicking are perhaps some of his better skills, he was still new to the server and as such there is much about his Hermits he never had a chance to discover. Their pasts in large part remained a mystery to him, as he had learned to mimic kindness too well from them to ever pry. (They would have told him, if he had asked. Love was another thing he had learned from them, and if he had been seen and not just watched, he perhaps would have noticed how strongly they cared for him too.)

But yes. Though Grian was perhaps the only one of their number on the run from literal gods, he was not the only one with a tragic back story.

Xisuma, who watched the Hermitcraft server with all the vigilance of a soldier who had watched his fellow troops and their enemies weaponize glitches against each other, to the mass extinction of both. Evil X, who ran from it all, only to end up in a place where nothing violent simply became nothing.

Joe, who read and read and read, devouring knowledge the way he once devoured worlds, eyes flickering white on the nights when hunger panged in his stomach worse than usual. Cleo, who also knew the pain of consumption, from both sides of teeth like knives.

Zedaph, who popped into existence one day, whole and unsullied, with a vast, empty void where his past ought to be, who forgot sometimes that people are supposed to have likes and dislikes and colors and an instinctual obedience towards the laws of gravity. Tango and Impulse, who watched their friend and each other with eagle eyes to keep their trio from slipping back into old, self-destructive habits. (Overwork, overclocking, over-stimulation. All were equally killer.)

Grian, who's first and best skill, even before his building, was causing mischief and creating fun. A welcome distraction from old pains.

They loved him, the Hermits. In whatever flavor they chose, they loved him. They knew his darkness, though perhaps not the exact nature of it, and they knew that he loved them back. And then he left them.

The Hermits were powerful with love and sorrow and determination. Grian thought he could leave them so quickly, uproot himself from their hearts like a ghost in the night? Ha.

As. If.

It begins like this- Grian wakes in his little spruce house in the middle of a mostly abandoned town. The rain is pouring outside as it nearly always is and the rushing of wind through the trees puts him in the mind of his old ship-in-a-bottle base, warm and safe from the wet outside. He wakes up, stretches, thinks of eating. Steps outside and-

a brand new pair of bright red rain boots, almost glowing in the grey mist of early morning. They are in his colors, Grian just knows they would fit him perfectly. A welcome sort of gift, perfect for a world drenched in rain. Perfect for him, gifted with thought, with care. His stomach curdles and he just knows he won't be eating breakfast today either. A curl of a finger and the boots go up in purple flames, the scent of burnt rubber joining the petrichor of the air. He goes back inside. Goes back to sleep. Tries not to dream.

The boots are back the next day, shining red and a little closer to the door to better keep them out of the rain. He burns those too.

The boots keep appearing. Always bright red, always perfectly sized to fit him- squeaky new rubber, perfect for keeping out the rain. In the face of that, red boots like clockwork, is it any wonder that Grian gets tired? His front porch stinks of burnt rubber and there are new planks wherever he had to remove the scorched oak. Perhaps it's the burning that causes a new pair to appear- if there are no boots, a new pair comes to replace them, so perhaps a different method of disposal is in order.

He throws the next pair into the river. A new pair comes back to him the next day, alongside the old ones, dripping with sea grass and mud. Hmm.

(Cleo has friends in the rivers and oceans. It's easy enough to call in a favor or three to get the boots returned.)

Creepers next. A loud hiss and an even louder boom has him flinching back, phantom burns dancing across his fingers, but the boots are naught but ash. Three pairs of boots next time, one of them a dark swirling grey rather than the traditional red, as if mocking their scorched past.

(Doc's work. He's had enough experience with accidentally blowing up his own tools to know how to make a blast protection charm strong enough to keep his clothes and armor safe in the case of an unfortunate accident. The grey starbursts left over the material are just a neat bonus.)

Lava. Concentrated spider venom. Flattened by pistons. Dropped into the void. Left under a lightning rod. Thrown up into a tree. Fed to a guardian.

Each and every time, the boots come back, usually with some change in pattern, color, or marking that signals just what they have been through. All in perfectly usual condition, even the pair he cut in half with an axe.

(Stress had a field day piecing that pair back together, using molten honey and mending enchants to stick the halves together again. She always had loved a challenge.)

Eventually, Grian's front porch is covered in boots in all manner of designs, and fed up with the mess, he sets the whole mess on fire again with his signature purple flame, the only thing sure to reduce the number of boots permanently. He sets his house on fire in the process. Hmmmm.

There's an influx of new people into Grian's world all of a sudden. A pair of twins jump in, bloody, battered, and exhausted, and not a week later a roughed-up blond boy joins, snappish and hurting. All three lack shoes.

Now, Grian very firmly does not want to interact with any of them. He had found true friends among the Hermits and if he can't interact with them, then he certainly doesn't want to interact with a trio of traumatized children- however, he does have a pair of boots to give and dropping them on the children's doorstep requires no interaction at all. The female twin puts them on, marveling at how big the red boots are on her while the other kids stand watch suspiciously. Grian watches this from his front porch, hidden by the mist but eyes glinting purple in the gloom so he can see comfortably. The male twin seems to spot this, shouting and pointing, and Grian goes back inside to avoid the mess.

The next morning, the boots on his doorstep are rainbow-striped and several sizes smaller, perfect for a child's feet. Grian stares down at them, something hurting and tremulous in his heart, but his face remains blank. These boots are placed on the trio's doorstep as well. The male twin wears these, and the last child ends up with a pair of blue and black spotted ones.

(False had had fun with the patterns, feeling a little bit of relief that she could hunt down some rubber in a pattern other than plain red.)

Rumor spreads of a purple-eyed monster in the woods that gave people boots to keep them safe from the rain, although Grian very carefully avoids such stories. The children begin leaving trinkets for their monster in hopes to repay him, and Grian ignores these too until one day, the children somehow manage to get an old red dog collar to give him. Upon spotting this, Grian's heart gives a squeeze as it reminds him of Rendog, and he pockets it to put on his rather empty bookshelf. Other things also get picked up, all things that remind him of the friends he had to leave behind.

An allium, pressed into a book of galactic picked up from a stronghold. A jar of electric blue ink dried into a gelatinous cake. A tiny knight figurine, scuffed and missing an arm. A handful of spicy red jellybeans. Eventually, as time passes on and on and the rain bears down harder on Grian's tiny world, a trio of heartfelt, thankful cards appear on his kitchen table, all three drawn in crayon and filled with cheerful scribbles.

It rains harder, and the world shrinks down to just Grian and the three children who call out into the gloom every morning, grateful for the boots and the glimpses of purple eyes and feathered wings in the dark that tell them that they are not alone. The boots stop coming.

In their place, new things appear.

A toaster. Firewood. New sweaters and combs and soap. Little things designed to make life easier, many of them children-sized or painted in rainbow stripes or blue polka dots or a shade of red just off from Grian's favored color. These too go to the children, and the number of gifts Grian receives increases, many of them built from the material that he gives the trio of children.

(If the Hermits cannot gift things to Grian directly, then they will gift them to people who will transform them into something their wayward friend would accept. They do so with equal parts love and spite, angry to have been rebuffed but unwilling to let Grian feel himself forgotten. The trio of kids end up with a rather odd assortment of things. Tango, for example, is fond of the easy-bake oven he sent them that always burnt the food it made. Grian got nothing but his favorite chocolate chip cookies for a week, all of them scorched.)

In time, Grian does his best to drive the children off, building traps and leaving weapons on their doorstep to scare them. The stories of the monster in the woods increase in number and many more children join the server, encouraged by tales of purple-eyed, winged beast that taught its charges to be wary and gave them tools to defend themselves. Grian's cabin remains hidden in the mist, but many more wooden structures join it in the forest.

New boots appear on his doorstep. They aren't made to fit him.

(His heart aches, but his eyes remain dry. Morning dew condenses on Grian's cheeks.)

It comes to a head like this- no world, no matter how small or safe, is fully protected from the Watchers' gaze, and in the end, they find him. Only now, there are people here that cannot leave, that Grian cannot leave behind.

The children scream for their monster to save them. He rises from the mist, eyes heavy and wings heavier, dragging upon the ground and leaving trails in the brick red mud. They think they are saved. They are wrong.

Chains shoot out from the mist, forcing Grian to his knees as a huge female Watcher, Astrid, stares down at him, mouth turned down into a tiny frown and the rest of her figure still as stone even as she floats in the air, white robes fading into the surrounding fog. The purple emblem on her mask glows like a brand. Grian watches her with purple eyes glowing dim and dull, resigned to his fate but unwilling to flee if it means the deaths of those who do not deserve to serve his sentence in his stead.

He thinks, quietly, that he will die here. He wonders if this- any of this- is worth it. He thinks, yes. Yes it is.

He is wrong.

A figure coalesces before him, clad in yellow armor and arms crossed, the very picture of annoyed defiance. It tilts its head back, hard light construct featureless but practically radiating scorn, and from the mists a voice echoes.

"You are going to leave him alone. He's not for you." Astrid hisses behind her mask, galactic crackling and vile from between her lips, and the sound of wingbeats thrums like a heartbeat through the clearing, bass-heavy and loud in Grian's ears. He winces, closing his eyes as more chains shoot out from the ground to attach to Xisuma's- for what else could it be but his admin projected across time and space (that stupid, crazy, wonderful man)- construct. They coil around it, doing their level best to drag it to the ground, but the figure remains still and hovering before Grian, entirely unmoved.

"No. You will leave him alone." Xisuma's voice again, commanding and stern even from a figure that looks more like a glowing yellow armor stand. "I'll ask that you don't test me, it took a while to put this projection together and it will not dissipate until it fulfills its intended purpose." Astrid merely hisses again, this time with an underlay of static beneath it, and Grian's wings are suddenly pulled back tight and away from his shoulders- all three pairs of them, not merely those he prefers to wear.

The sound of flesh and feathers ripping through one plane and into the next has Grian feeling sick. Wrong, his mind repeats on loop, screaming. Wrong wrong wrong. Xisuma's figure freezes at his pained squeak before unfolding its arms and going carefully still. It tilts its head to the side, considering and cold.

"Is that your game? You do realize that that is death sentence, right? We would never let you survive it." Astrid nods. The chains rise up again, clinking softly as they loop once, twice, three times around Grian's outermost pair of wings, the ones most used to the physical plane and with the most nerve endings besides. The damp air is cold and aching in his lungs.

A rip. A scream. And then everything shrinks down to a flicker of brilliant yellow light, the shrilling of broken violins, and the long, drawn-out death wail of a Watcher unused to pain. A computer crash in slow motion complete with a harsh base note as Astrid's wings fall to join Grian's in the mud.

The world expands again, overwhelming. Agony. Silence.

Chains clink to the floor, broken, as Xisuma's hard light construct comes forward to stand before the Hermits' erstwhile server mate, slumped over in a pool of blood but conscious, something in his purple eyes bent, if not a little broken.

A voice, hoarse, achingly loud in the quiet of the glade. "You didn't stop her."

"No."

"...Is this my punishment then?" A moment of quiet and then the figure stoops down to gather Grian into its arms, its featureless gaze doing little to ease his fear.

Then, gently, ".....No."

Grian slumps, the last bit of tension seeping from his limbs as the pain in his back begins to register, sapping at his will and leeching into his voice.

"I'm sorry, you know. I- I'm sorry. I didn't want to go. It just- it hurts. Hels it hurts, so much. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"I know. I know." Xisuma's figure stands up, hoisting Grian a little higher up against its chest so that hiss remaining wings don't drag on the ground quite as much, then turning to face the cowering children. Eventually, a little girl in bright red rain boots stands up to meet its gaze.

She blinks back tears, scrubbing at her face to hide them, but her expression is brave. "Where are you taking him?"

The figure clutches the children's monster close, looking just as fierce as any dragon in a fairytale. "Home. Will you stop me?"

The girl pauses, considering. "No. Don't think I could, really."

"Will you try?"

"To keep going? Yeah, of fucking course, sure as my name is Clementine. To stop you? Not bloody likely, I like my head right where it is." Xisuma's figure nods, satisfied, and with a blink, it and their monster are gone.

Notes:

#hermitcraft #fanfiction #my writing #minecraft #grian #watcher grian

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timeisacephalopod · 3 years

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So I listen to true creepy stories on YouTube because funsies, and often people will talk about uncharacteristic behaviour in their pets have in creepy experiences that they ignore. Now I have a pretty great relationship with my pets, those fuckers are dead predictable sometimes down to the time of day (my younger cat decides to go Hog Wild at 6 am like clockwork). So my conclusion was that I’d never ignore their behaviour, and as if to test my theory my cat puffs up, hair even on her back standing on end and Mrs Jackson never acts like that, she’s a brave and adventurous cat assuming no one else is in my house.

Keep in mind I’m listening to true creepy stories (and yeah some are obviously fake but a lot of them are surprisingly well written), and also keep in mind a month or so ago Jason fucking Voorhese went at my neighbours with a machete (allegedly. Also they are home and fine, as far as the continued activity in their house goes since my only window faces one of theirs). So I don’t even THINK, I abandon my dinner and bolt to my window assuming I’m dealing with Sketch McSketchbag (probably at the wrong fucking window) and yell ‘get outta here!’ and slam my window shut.

Now, as I get to the window I look out to insure no peoples limbs were coming through (because that’s Relevant Information if I need to slam it shut on someone and then Again to actually shut it) and instead of Horror Movie Villain at the Wrong Window it was an orange cat that my cat lost her shit about. And that Bastard didn’t even blink as I slammed my window shut. And my cat. My fucking cat proceeds to have the biggest meltdown I’ve ever observed out of this cat, hissing and spitting at my near eleven year old grey ball of nervous fluff of a second cat, that Jackson has lived with her whole life, and the poor thing didn’t move a muscle until I walked over cautiously and slowly with Bribery Food for my Flipping Her Entire Fuck Cat, then she turned tail and skittered off nervously as I took over. It took me like ten minutes of literally talking this damn cat off the ledge reminding her that she is safe, and that Gemma is barely even a threat to a fly let alone her before she eventually calmed enough to be mostly normal.

This is how I discovered what I’d do if I thought a creeper that was not a likely stray orange cat pissing off my cat decided to approach my window, and apparently it’s yell ‘get outta here!’

#winters ramblings #funny story #I live in not TOO sketchy of an area but it not THAAAAT bad #but some weirdo deciding to wave hello THROUGH my window with no screen on it #doesn’t feel out of the question. or some idiot at the wrong window looking for my poor neighbours again #god knows I wouldn’t be targeted for being me lmao I don’t SPEAKto people #or leave the house much but I like it that way #anyway turned out my cat was losing it over a stray 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

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hermitcraftheadcanons · 4 years

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(submission) The Undertow

(tws for temporary death, drowning, and separation)

The tide washes out.

False opens her eyes to a brand-new world, filled with life and color. Around her, a coral reef stretches as far as she can see. Fish dart between the branches of the reef and through the pitted rocks underfoot.

What’s odd, though, is that she’s stuck.

Something, she thinks, is very wrong. She glances down at her body, which is wrapped in the rough branches of some sort of calciferous red growth, and as much as she struggles, she can’t move, the surface rubbing against her skin.

Behind her, she hears a frenzied splashing. She can’t turn around all the way, so she shouts to whatever’s behind her.

“Get away from me!” she yells. If it’s a drowned, maybe she can scare it away. If it’s something worse...well. She wasn’t expecting a death this early in the season, but it had to happen at some point.

Luckily, it’s just a human that calls back.

“False? Where are we?” asks Stress, her distinctive voice putting False back at ease. What passes for ease when you’re stuck in a coral reef, anyways.

“I...don’t know,” False says, enunciating each syllable with careful precision, considering the options. “This is glitched, I suppose.”

False can almost see Stress’s face brighten. “Oh, shame. Well, our dear admin will have it fixed in no time, then.”

“Yeah, I’ll send him a message. Maybe he can teleport us out real quick.” She sighs. “We’re going to have to restart the world, probably. That’s annoying.” Taking out her communicator, which is only slightly waterlogged, she swipes it open and types out a quick chat to Xisuma.

<FalseSymmetry> o/

<FalseSymmetry> x we’re stuck in coral. tp please?

The two women wait. Five minutes.

“Might as well start trying to get out of here!” Stress says, her voice a note cheerier than usual. It’s forced.

False snaps out of her thoughts. “Sure.” She takes her fist and slams it down on their colorful prison. “Oof, that hurt,” she says, peering down at the spot where it made contact. “And barely a dent!”

“Guess we better get working, then,” replies Stress, who’s trying her best not to sound too downhearted.

They do. It’s not going great when Stress notices a bit of a change in their environment. “Falsie...do you think it’s possible the water might be getting the teensiest bit higher?”

False nods grimly. “Yep.”

Stress grimaces. “Oh boy. And Xisuma still hasn’t replied?”

“Nope.”

“Ah.”

A moment passes in a nervous silence while the duo continue to chip away at the coral.

“You don’t think he’s ignoring us, do you?” Stress says, a small quaver creeping its way into her quiet words.

“Of course not. He’s probably just...busy.” False stops and cocks her head. “You know. I bet if our spawn is glitched, other peoples’ might be as well.”

“That makes sense, I suppose.”

A small wave washes over them. When they reemerge, coughing from the salty water, they find that Stress can no longer keep her chest above the ocean.

“This isn’t going to be a pleasant way to die, is it?” asks Stress, hands bleeding from the abrasive reef.

False shakes her head. “No. It isn’t.”

The ocean is not a kind place. It never pretended to be. The two Hermits just happened to be in its way, and that was not the ocean’s fault.

The tide rolls in, just as False’s hand finds Stress’s.

The tide washes out.

Their newly-respawned heads break the surface of the water, gasping for air. This time, they’re face-to-face, and the coral is yellow. False wonders if it’s slightly softer than the previous kind, or if she’s just imagining it. Either way. Small blessings.

Their eyes meet, and they pick up where they left off, only a touch sore. They don’t talk much this time around, except for Stress’s question about the message to Xisuma. And yes, False double-checked it was to the right person. She sends it again in the main chat.

<FalseSymmetry> anyone there lol?

Silence. On all fronts. Stress is making good progress on this new coral, until they both have to stop to fight an inquisitive drowned. Not an easy feat, but they manage, though the duo lose more hearts than False would like.

Stress manages to get a leg free and starts kicking with renewed vigor, until she’s finally out. The water is lapping at their mouths now, as Stress frantically tugs at False’s cage.

“C’mon,” Stress mutters. “We’re almost there…”

A wave knocks them both underwater, and by the time Stress resurfaces, further away from False, the blond Hermit is completely submerged.

Stress thinks that she has never swum faster in her life as she races toward False, hoping against hope that there’s somehow still time to save her.

She dives down to False, who is wriggling around frantically. She tugs against the coral, but she knows it’s too late. False lets out a scream, bubbles escaping to the surface, but points to Stress’s left. She’s confused, but she looks anyways--and the trident from the dead drowned is sitting placidly on a piece of sponge, unseen by both of them until now.

Stress pushes off the battered coral, so close to breaking, but too far, all at the same time. She scoops up the trident and swims back to False, who’s starting to slow, eyes rolling up in the back of her head. With a mighty swipe, she clears the rest of the prison, and drags the unconscious False to the shore.

Stress retches, the ocean coming out of her lungs in short bursts as she collapses on the warm sand. Next to her, False lies prone. She doesn’t know what to do. Should she put her on her side? Wait, isn’t that for drunk people?

Hopefully, False will sort it out on her own. Hopefully. In the meantime, Stress realizes that the sun is setting. She needs to get them in a shelter, ASAP. There’s no time for even wood--she just digs out a small hole in a nearby hillside, and, breathing heavily, brings False’s body into it. It just barely fits both of them, but she’s grateful to have it.

Stress can’t even think about dying again, if it means having to get out of that ocean. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to; False stirs to wakefulness sometime in the middle of the night, greeted with a motley chorus of zombie groans and drowned gurgles, plus a few others that neither of them want to try to name.

They huddle together in the small chamber, wet dirt and cold stone stealing precious body heat. When morning comes, they stay there for a little while. Neither one wants to be the first one out, but eventually False stands up, the joints in her spine cracking like fireworks. She peeks her head out, but there seems to be no imminent danger at the moment, so she cautiously ventures onto the beach from their escape. A spider lies perched in a small tree nearby, but she leaves it be. As she looks out over the glimmering water, alight with the sun’s first rays, she sees the broken branches of the coral that trapped her and Stress, waves gently carrying away the scattered shards. She watches them for a second, and as she does, the tide washes out.

The tide rolls in.

They’re so careful. Neither one of them wants to go back to the awful enclosure of stony coral and risk having to repeat the experience. Monsters are run away from, shelters are dotted around the map like flowers, and their armor has never been more prized. The duo have awful luck mining, though. They barely get enough for decent gear, but Stress reminds False that they’re lucky. Judging by the death messages that scroll through the chat like clockwork, not everyone has been as fortunate as them. And at least they have each other.

Or they did, before Stress falls into a soft bed of bone-chilling powder snow, along with a few creeper friends.

False doesn’t ever want to see that same look on Stress’s face ever again. It’s imprinted into her mind now, a mix of surprise and awful resignation.

She types out a frantic message on her communicator. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for weeks now. She knows it doesn’t work, and Stress does as well. But it doesn’t stop her from imagining where her only companion is right now, sending her chat after chat, begging her to come help her escape from the watery grave.

False considers respawning. Back where Stress is. She could help her then.

False would consider herself a practical person at heart, but she has never before been in a situation like this. Hermitcraft has never had a situation like this. She considers her options, falling back against the rough trunk of an oak tree, leaves raining down on her impassive face.

<StressMonster101> drowned.

She’s taking too much time. There’s no more room for error. Only action. Rustling through her pack, stuffed to the brim now with the remains of Stress’s inventory, she realizes that she has to find a way to get these items back to Stress. If she manages to escape on her own, they can meet up halfway there, and if she doesn’t, then False will have her work cut out for her.

It’s a backtrack of nearly two weeks. False does it in four days, not stopping to rest. She wishes desperately for a saddle, but when she happens upon a meadow full of horses, she grabs the nearest one, swinging herself upward onto the back of a very unwilling participant. False doesn’t care. The horse accustoms itself to her surprisingly quickly, and though False’s legs ache from the non-stop bareback ride, she knows she’ll get to Stress sooner with it. Turns out, golden apples can make a horse go through the night.

She names the horse Salvation. Sal, for short.

The journey gives her brain too much time to think, so she doesn’t, just hangs on to the death messages in the chat. It’s gruesome, but they reassure her that Stress is even still in this horrible world.

Sometimes, there’ll be a lull in the terrible rhythm, but those never last for long.

During a quick break, she gets bored and puts a braid in Sal’s mane, then uses a few of the nearby flowers to decorate it. She doesn’t realize until she re-mounts him that they’re alliums.

The tide washes out.

When False finally arrives at their old beach, she nearly cries in relief. Instead, she screams out Stress’s name as she jumps off of Sal’s back. Stumbling into the waves, she repeats her cry, voice already starting to go hoarse.

“Stress! I’m here!” False shouts. “Stress!”

She’s up to her neck now and there’s no sign of her. Maybe she made it out. Maybe False would believe that if she hadn’t just seen her death message on her communicator.

False treads water, weaving between the elaborate natural structures that make up the reef. She’s almost about to give up when she hears a weak cough, and rounds the corner to find an emaciated Stress, hanging from the coral wrapping her body like an exoskeleton.

“Stress, Stress, I’m here,” says False, wrapping her arms around the other Hermit’s body as tears start to stream down her face. “Oh my g-d. We need to get you out of here.”

Stress looks up at her, the first sign of movement she’s shown since False laid eyes on the woman. “You came for me,” she whispers. “You really came.” Her eyes flutter shut.

The tide rolls in.

Stress wakes to a gently crying False, who’s sitting beside her on the beach. Attempting a smile, she nudges the other Hermit. “Doing alright?”

False smiles at her. “Never better.”

She lets out a whistle. “Ok, so, correct me if I’m wrong, but you managed to get here quite quickly, if you came all the way from where I left?”

“Sure did.”

“How?”

“Well, meet Sal,” False says, pointing towards the forest behind them. “He was a big help.”

Stress squeals, and she thinks she can almost feel her eyes getting bigger. “Are those flowers?” She hobbles over to the horse, latching onto his neck. “I love him!”

False laughs, and Stress thinks she’s never been gladder to hear someone do so.

“But seriously, though.” False pauses for a second. “I think he’s going to be pretty important if we’re heading towards spawn.”

Stress nods. “Yeah, I think that’s a good plan. Bound to be a bigger concentration of Hermits there, right?”

“Exactly. Listen, this time we’re going to be super careful about beds. I’ll make sure we upgrade our armor as much as possible. I’ll do better--”

Stress puts a finger up to False’s lips, startling her into silence. “Nope. You did the best you absolutely could. I will have absolutely no self-blaming on this road trip.”

“Road trip?” False asks, nose crinkling.

“Absolutely.” Stress responds. “This is Hermitcraft! We’re here to have fun and make friends. And I see only one direction for that.”

“To spawn, then!” False laughs, mounting Sal and hauling Stress up after her.

“To spawn!”

The ocean watches the two ride off with mild interest. They’ll be back, after all. Sooner or later, they’ll always be back. No one can leave for long. But for now, it has other...friends to take care of, and the tide, as always, washes out.

#false #stress #submission #Hermitcraft #scattered au #mod shade #i love this so much actually #it has such good calming vibes #and #not to be one track minded or anything but #'other friends'???#:shakyeyes: impulse....

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justdalek · 5 years

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Different species of ghosts yield very interesting facts. Let’s look into this shall we?

Special thanks to @fluffyfeatheredferret for this one!

There are three species of ghosts: regular ghosts, Boos, and portrait ghosts

Regular ghosts include, but are not limited to Greenies, Slammers, Hiders, Gobbers, Sneakers, Creepers, Poltergeist, Possessor, Goobs, Hammers, Slinkers, Oozers, and Trappers. These ghosts reside in Evershade and at the Last Resort, and live by the night. While direct sunlight won’t kill them, they do get weaker the more time they spend in the sun. These ghosts are known to be generally nice, unless they are being controlled, then they act chaotic.

Note: The stronger (I’m going to dub crystallized) ghosts in Evershade do not loose their crystallization, and are still scarred by the experiments done on them. The remain hidden from the world, scared that King Boo will come back to get them and do more experiments again.

Another note: the ghosts in Luigi’s Mansion are just paintings brought to life. All of those ghosts are destroyed unless Vincent Van Gore is brought out of his painting to paint them again. But as of right now, they are not actually true ghosts.

Boos are a mischievous race that use illusion (Boo Physics Magic), and they live here, there, and everywhere throughout the Mushroom Kingdom. King Boo is their ruler, and he’s rather lax with his ruling, until Boolossus got captured by Professor E. Gadd that he went into rage and started his reign of terror across the regular ghosts and his somewhat ruling of the portrait ghosts. The Boos do go along with his mansion (and hotel) schemes as they get a kick outta scaring Luigi, but they are growing concerned for their king’s sanity. Whether or not King Boo actually stops, we may never know.

Portrait ghosts were once people (and creatures in the case of Jarvis, Spooky, Bogmire, Miss Petunia, the Clockwork Soldiers, and Captain Fishhook), but are now deceased and have come back as ghosts. They usually haunt the place that they died in, which is probably why E. Gadd started putting ghosts into portraits (but that’s a topic for another day). Hence why they are dubbed “portrait ghosts”. Portrait ghosts are stuck in the living world until they have done the thing that let’s them pass on. However, most tend to stay. After all, they can do their profession without getting hurt.

As always, if you have any questions, the ask box is open.

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ariana-maryse · 6 years

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Fandom List

An asterisk next to a title means I’m familiar with the source material.

Series;

- American Horror Story (Murder House - 1984)

- Bates Motel*

- Castle Rock

- The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

- The Haunting of Bly Manor

- It

- Ratched

- Rose Red

- Santa Clarita Diet

- Scream Queens

- Stan Against Evil

- The Walking Dead (up to the end of season 6)

- What We Do in the Shadows

- You (S1 + S2)

YouTube Series;

- EverymanHYBRID

Movies;

- 2001 Maniacs

- 31

- A Clockwork Orange*

- The Addams Family

- A Quiet Place

- The Babadook

- Battle Royale

- Beetlejuice

- The Belko Experiment

- Black Christmas (1974)

- Blade Trilogy

- The Boy

- Brain Damage

- Candyman

- Carrie

- The Cell

- The Conjuring / Conjuring 2

- Constantine

- Cooties

- The Craft

- The Crow

- The Devil’s Rejects

- Don’t Breathe

- Dracula* (1931)

- Elvira: Mistress of the Dark

- Evil Dead / Evil Dead 2 / Army of Darkness

- Evil Dead (2013)

- The Faculty

- Final Destination (1, 2. and 3)

- Freaky

- Funny Games (2007)

- Ghostbusters / Ghostbusters 2

- Ghostbusters: Answer the Call

- Ghost Ship

- Heathers

- Hellraiser / Hellrasier II: Hellbound

- Hereditary

- The Hitcher

- Hocus Pocus

- House of 1,000 Corpses

- House of Wax

- The Human Centipede

- Hush

- Insidious 1/2/3

- In the Tall Grass

- It/It Chapter 2

- It Follows

- Jeepers Creepers

- Jennifer’s Body

- Killer Klowns from Outer Space

- The Last Exorcism

- Legion

- The Lost Boys

- Maniac (2012)

- Marrowbone

- The Messengers

- Midsommar

- Murder by Numbers

- The Nun

- Psycho

- Red Riding Hood

- Repo! The Genetic Opera

- The Ring

- The Rocky Horror Picture Show

- Saw (I - VI)

- Scream

- Shaun of the Dead

- Silent Hill* / Silent Hill: Revelation*

- Sinister / Sinister 2

- Split

- Sweeney Todd

- Terrifier

- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

- Us

- The Uninvited

- Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

- Three From Hell

- Tucker and Dale vs Evil

- Venom

- The Village

- Warm Bodies

- The Witch

- Would You Rather?

- Zombieland

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the-elemental-sides · 6 years

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You Can’t Stay (Sanders Sides Spirit AU)

A/N: This fic is heavily inspired by Patton and the Lonely Ghost by @princelogical, particularly the ending. I’m also reusing the concept of Grim Reaper Virgil from my own fic of the distant past.

I’ve seen plenty of the “ghost haunts lonely roommate” style of fic for Sanders Sides, but it’s usually from the POV of the human. What if it was from the POV of the ghost? And what if the ghost himself was haunted by the Grim Reaper?

Warnings: Lots of discussion of death and depression, and brief mentions of existential horror, pain, and violence. Implied suicide reference (open to interpretation). Not a romantic fic, but you could read Royality, Prinxiety, or Logicality if you wanted.

Characterizing Virgil in this fic was really interesting. The whole thing was so much fun to write and I hope you like it. I just *clenches fist* frickin love Sanders Sides and ghosts. Thanks to @rubyredsparks for betaing!

Taglist: @alix-the-skeleton, @generalfandomfabulousness

Word count: 2,060

***

The Grim Reaper was omnipresent: a shadowy, looming force, a constant warning, and a bleak reminder of his fate. Yet somehow, it was comforting that he always checked up on Roman like a doting parent. In the Reaper’s own words, he was only trying to protect him.

“Look at you,” the Reaper scoffed, meeting Roman in one of the shadowy corners of the apartment. “You’re fading away. This is no place for a spirit.”

“If you’ve told me once, Verge,” Roman said, crossing his ghostly arms, which were in fact getting more translucent by the day, “you’ve told me a thousand times. I am not going with you.”

The Reaper scowled deeply, black lines etched into his face beneath his hood. “I regret telling you my name.”

“You’ve said that before too.”

But Virgil, the Grim Reaper, for all his pessimistic predictions of Roman’s imminent destruction, wasn’t one to give up on a lost spirit. At least once a week he would appear in the apartment that Roman housed to make his plea.

“Come with me to the afterlife.”

“No.”

And Roman stayed.

He stayed for him, the man occupying the apartment. The one who had no idea that Roman had died here; he only knew the rent was cheap. Beneath his kind, radiant exterior, this man, Patton, was in deep distress. And nobody knew but Roman.

After death, Roman’s view of the world took on a tinge like watercolor, alive and shifting, and there were times when sadness bled out of Patton like black paint. It made him determined to stick around and try to patch up that feeling of emptiness. The sadness was achingly familiar to Roman from when he was alive—he was literally a kindred spirit, a pun he thought Patton would appreciate—and he made it his ghostly mission to bring Patton joy.

He sang in the early mornings and harmonized with the birds. He chased away spiders who dared to breach Patton’s home. He drew murals in the shower steam on the mirror. He’d even tried to write his name once, but Virgil had forbidden it. According to him, Roman was pushing it as it was.

His ways of interacting with the world were limited, but Roman was nothing if not creative. Sometimes, it worked. Patton would stop and smile, admire the mirror, maybe remember to take his medicine for once, the scatterbrain, and both of their worlds would be brighter for that one day.

What frustrated Roman most was that he couldn’t leave the apartment. He could hardly get ten feet down the hallway. Once, Roman made it all the way to the elevator, but as he was propelled further and further down he realized he’d made a horrible mistake. Nausea boiled inside him like hot oil. He attempted to phase into the elevator shaft to escape, but he was consumed by dizzying pain before blacking out completely.

He woke up hours later, back in the apartment, with Virgil’s concerned face hovering over him. His hood was down. “That was stupid,” he scolded as Roman sat up in a daze.

“I was only trying...I only wanted to—“

“Don’t you get it, you moron? It’s this apartment, the place that you died, that’s sustaining your life source now. Not Patton. If you run out of energy, you’re gone, poof. That’s why you should let me—“

“Just stop,” Roman snapped. “...Please? I appreciate the help and all, Creeper, but I’m not going anywhere. I don’t know how I can make that any more clear.”

Virgil looked at him fiercely, concern and anger and resignation battling in his eyes. When the door unlatched and Roman immediately turned all his attention to Patton’s entry, Virgil gave up and melted away into black smoke. “...This isn’t ending here.”

Weeks passed.

Little things, like how Roman used to leave a cupboard open to remind Patton to eat, now required intense concentration. Moving anything heavy left him dizzy for hours.

It broke his heart to see how steadily Patton’s mood could deteriorate. He’d be full of giddiness and delight one minute when he came home from work, and then, like clockwork, he’d sink down, down over the hours into a funk that left him falling asleep with his glasses still on and his laptop still running at four in the morning. The next morning, he’d wake up (always so close to being late) and start the cycle over. Roman feared one day Patton wouldn’t get out of bed.

There was still hope. From extensive snooping, Roman learned that Patton had a close friend named Logan, a high school teacher. He liked ties and a certain kind of jam. That was all Roman needed to know about him. He didn’t care who it was as long as someone was there for his Patton.

Logan’s phone number was stuck on a whiteboard on the fridge amidst a cacophony of other sticky notes. In Roman’s opinion, this number was the most important of all. If Roman knew anything from his own experiences, being alone for long stretches of time was what was exacerbating Patton’s mental health to the breaking point. If he’d only get together with his friend, just once a week, just for coffee, he could reconnect with the world. He’d have someone to talk to. He’d have something to look forward to on bad days. Above all, Roman saw Logan as a way to keep Patton grounded.

There was no need for Patton to feel so lifeless and alone when Roman was the one who was already dead.

And, oh, he tried to get his plan in motion. He’d ruffle the notes when Patton walked by, sing the numbers at the top of his voice (individual words were too hard, but Patton had always been able to hear the faint warbling of a song), and try with all his might to communicate.

By now it was easier for Roman to see the floor through him than his own arm, and he had to grasp for things without knowing where his fingers were. Even then, pens and pencils slipped through his hands. He tried to type on Patton’s laptop, so carefully, one key at a time, but Patton hadn’t plugged it in, and Roman spent a night watching with horror as the battery ticked down and the screen shut off, erasing his message permanently an hour before Patton woke up.

Virgil came back. Patton had fallen asleep on the couch one night, and Roman curled up gloomily in the armchair next to him. Both were exhausted from the day’s work, though for different reasons.

A freezing force rushed over him, and suddenly Roman had been thrown through the couch and against the wall, pinned by a scythe at his throat.

“That is enough,” the Grim Reaper growled with a layer of darkness coating his voice, and Roman hadn’t been scared of him for a long time, not since Virgil had grudgingly revealed his name and Roman laughed at him, but he was terrified now. “Like it or not, you’re coming with me.”

“You can’t—“ Roman gasped.

“Can’t I? Do you think I’ve never broken a few rules? Do you know what’s waiting for you if I don’t save your spirit, Roman? Nothing. Can you imagine that, an eternity of nothing? I’ve seen it.” Virgil’s eyes were wide and dark, and piercing violet flashed within them. “We’ve all seen it, we’ve all feared it, and that’s why we try so hard to keep stubborn, lost, stupid souls like you safe. Why won’t you let me take you home? Why is one mortal worth an eternity of nothing?”

“Because,” Roman choked, and he noticed that in the pitch-black light emanating from Virgil’s robes, he could see bits and pieces of his own form breaking off and dissolving. “He’s not lost yet, Virgil. I am. It’s too late for me, but there’s still hope for Patton. He can—he can still be saved. I’m not letting this apartment claim another victim.”

He clawed at the sharp steel of the scythe, and Virgil noticed and slightly loosened his grip.

“You tried to save him,” he told Roman with a quiet, exhausted gentleness, like a parent who’s had the same argument one too many times. “You tried. You failed. It’s time to go to sleep.”

“Not while he’s still here,” Roman rasped with a fierceness that didn’t match his frame, which had faded to a bare outline against the wall. “Not when there’s a chance.”

Virgil seemed to be considering his next words carefully. “...Then.” He released Roman fully and stood up. He pulled up his hood and gripped his scythe in one hand.

“Wait...” Roman struggled to stand, but now each movement sent a wave of dizziness through him, leaving him paralyzed.

Like a living shadow, Virgil glided over the ground and toward Patton’s sleeping form. “Then I’m ending this, Roman.”

“What are you doing? Virgil! No! NO!”

Ignoring Roman’s shriek of horror, Virgil swung his scythe through Patton like a bat...and Patton’s own ghostly form, flickering with pale blue light, sat up inside his body and gasped. Virgil cast his scythe aside and grew until he was ten feet tall, looming over Patton at an unnatural angle.

“Your friend is going to die,” he boomed in that dark, double-edged voice. “He’s going to die someday and so are you.”

Patton’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“Do you know who I am? I’m Death. I am the Grim Reaper. And I’m getting real sick of this.”

“I…”

“Take my advice, now. Contact him. Call him. Let him know how much you care. Because I’m coming for you. And you’re not gonna know what day will be your last.” He pointed at Patton, and a crackling, dark purple portal, radiating cold, rent the air behind him.

Patton nearly fell off the couch, but his spirit was still connected to his body by the legs. He moved what he could, twisting his torso and raising his hands placatingly. “I didn’t mean for it to get so out of hand! I promise!”

“Promises don’t mean much to corpses.”

Virgil’s scythe reappeared in his hand, and with a tap on his forehead, Patton’s spirit’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed.

Virgil dropped his arms, and the stifling energy faded from the room. He shrank several feet and pulled off his hood. As he rubbed his temples, he looked almost human.

“There. I hope you appreciate the favor. I’ll never hear the end of it for showing myself to a mortal.”

Roman shivered like he had a fever. “You...scared him pretty badly. I mean, not that I’m not grateful. But that was a little extreme.”

“Hey, it’s what I do.” He gave Roman a crooked smile. “Keeping up a dark persona is the best way to get someone’s guard up.”

“Do you think it worked?”

“There’s power in a little fear. Call it motivation. When you’re running on fumes, a little goes a long way.”

He clasped Roman’s hand and helped the intangible spirit to his feet. “Now, are you ready to go, buddy? Seriously...all he needed was a wake-up call. He has strength. You should trust in that.”

Roman cast his eyes at Patton. In the real world, he had woken up, and he was blinking at the ceiling with fear and confusion. It was as if it’d only been a nightmare.

“Good,” Roman breathed. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Arm in arm, Roman as unsteady as a child, the Grim Reaper led him to the portal still swirling in the center of the room. The demonic purple light had faded from it, and now it was a clear, soft gold. Suddenly, in the light of the portal, Roman gasped. “He’s looking at us! Virgil! He sees me!”

It was true; Patton had his eyes fixed unmistakably on Roman. And then he smiled. “It’s you…” he croaked. “The drawings, the voice...it’s you, isn’t it?”

Faced with him, Roman suddenly had stagefright. But he grinned back. “It’s me, all right. Your specter in shining armor.”

Roman’s voice warped toward the end of his sentence, and Virgil quickly guided him into the portal. But even in the void of shimmering light, Roman could hear the faded echo of Patton’s voice.

It sounded like he was saying “...thank you.”

#sanders sides #sanders sides fic #my writing #grim reaper virgil #angst #tw death #tw depression #100 plus #oh my gosh thank you guys I was hoping this story would get there

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