Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time it hits him head on is when his hand, stained up to the knuckles with fresh dirt, grips around his shovel the wrong way.

It’s one of the small, little ones - better for farming than digging graves - but Mumbo holds it like it’s a blade. He almost doesn’t notice it at first; almost doesn’t realize. But, then, he stabs at the ground like it’s a body and that’s when it hits him. The spade sticks out from the earth and Mumbo thinks: Huh. And Mumbo thinks: That’s not right, right?

He’s been - he’s been farming for how long, now? And suddenly he can't hold a shovel the right way? A little snicker works it’s way up his throat. Funny. He’d assumed it was muscle memory at this point. 

Mumbo fixes his hold and gets back to work digging out little holes in the ground. He sprinkles watermelon seeds into each one when it’s all said and done, before covering the seeds up and pouring a little water onto them. The system, from here, is completely automatic - redstone-controlled pistons slam down onto the melons, forcing them open. 

It’s an easy way of getting melon slices, given that Mumbo’s not the one who needs to spend hours shelling them open like flayed bodies. 

(Part of him will think, in the future, that maybe the first time it hits him should be when he registers his thought process - the way he thinks, the bodies, and the way he thinks, the weapon.) 

Time passes before anything else sticks out to him. He banters with Grian and keeps to himself, for the most part. Right now, farming is the one thing he wants so concentrate on. It’s a change of pace compared to the expansive projects he’s always busied himself with, but. It’s not as if he’s not still making things. When he gets restless, Mumbo goes out and builds up better farms - ones that yield more crops, ones that give him sugarcane and wheat and pumpkins. 

It’s a little silly, the fact that he’s spending so much time on automatic farms. All things considered, Mumbo doesn’t cook often. He’s more caught up with bigger and better contraptions, not mastering the newest pumpkin pie recipe. (Not that he doesn’t try. His oven is something to be envied.)

That’s how it goes, for a bit. Mumbo loses himself and works hard and disregards the itch under his skin as boredom. He’s always caught up in doing a million things at once; having nothing more than maintenance to do is bugging him. 

Mumbo tells himself he just needs more stimulation. That stimulation isn’t hard to find, considering how loud the gears in his head churn. 

But - okay. The next concerning moment is less of a concerning one and more of an eye-opening one. He’s laying down more torches - some rouge creeper somehow got close enough to tear up a chunk of ground, so he’s decided that his defenses need to be bulked up, but that’ll come after the basic defenses like torches. The wood is hot against his palms; they feel rough like stakes and it’s almost hard to tell the difference as he jabs them into the flesh of the ground. 

Earth gives way easily, dirt spilling from open wounds. The torches burn brightly - it’s almost a little surprising that their reach only extends so far. 

It’s as Mumbo’s stabbing another one into place that a groan sounds behind him. It’s enough to catch him off-guard, certainly; Mumbo’s bases are so controlled that it’s rare for any sort of mob to slip through without his permission. (Or. Okay, so he’d like to think. He’s not really as put-together as he pretends.) 

Abandoning the torch in the ground, Mumbo grabs another stick from his cow-skin bag and lights the wet, cloth end with the already lit one. Each torch has been enchanted to withstand anything and everything - being extinguished by lack of fuel or rain is impossible. That doesn’t diminish the bite of the flame, though.

As the source of the groan - a zombie, half-decayed and nearly missing an arm, if it weren’t for the thin strip of green skin that keeps it in place - nears, Mumbo flings the torch forward, so that the flame slams directly into the zombie’s chest. The zombie lets out some sort of strangled half-moan as it’s body catches alight, clothes quick to catch. 

Even though it’s dying, the zombie continues it’s advance. It’s - it’s a little funny, all things considered, but Mumbo supposes he finds a lot funny these days. There goes another tool, used as a weapon. It’s technically still burning; he could probably still use it. 

With a laugh, Mumbo jumps back out of the way. The scent of burning flesh is sharp and enticing, in the sort of way dangerous smells normally are. He takes a deep breath and lets it flood him and, without his permission, another laugh slips from his lips. This one is less restrained, more loose. 

It should scare him, maybe, but it just makes him laugh a little harder. For a moment, it’s like - it’s like a game, almost. Dancing out of the way of the nearing mob, watching it’s body break down bit by bit. By the time it’s legs give out beneath it, hand still out and shaking like it’ll be able to take Mumbo down by force alone, he’s cackling. 

Mumbo steps forward - just a step, just close enough that the zombie’s hand brushes the hem of his pant leg - and slams his boot into the smoldering remains of the zombie’s torso. 

Now - after that, it takes another few days before he realizes what the itch beneath his skin actually is. He finds himself slipping out more, when it’s night; finds himself laughing at the sight of mobs in the distance burning to death when the sun creeps over the horizon. This should scare him - this new obsession, (well, not that, new), that’s slowly taking him over. But, just like with the laughter and the spade, it doesn’t faze him. 

Instead, he finds himself feeling curious. He wants to feel that rush of power go through him again - but how? Mumbo himself isn’t that much of a fighter. He needs another form of that rush, though. He needs - needs whatever constitutes as violence. The burning of flesh, the squeal of a body, the- 

Huh, thinks Mumbo, again, weeks after the spade incident. Maybe I should do something about this weird bloodlust stuff.

Weeks after that, Mumbo builds himself a blaze farm. 

So - it’s like. It’s like this. He makes the blaze farm, but he doesn’t kill the blazes himself. He sends dogs in there to tear down the golden golem things, and then he slips in and he takes the rewards for himself. He doesn’t kill anything himself - he took an oath, a while back; Peace, Love, and Plants. Even the zombie from the other day hadn’t died to his hand, not really. And besides. It’d already been dead. 

Even with that oath, Mumbo needs this. To watch his wolf tear the rods from the bodies of fallen blazes, to watch the wolf leap up and slam the blaze down. It gives him a thrill, just like he’d gotten when he watched the zombie fall apart. Each death, for the blazes, is slow. A dog’s fangs can’t sink into pure metal and hell-fire, but it can tear you apart, bit by bit, until you’re unable to move or defend yourself; until you just give in and everything stops.

Mumbo finds himself watching the wolf destroy the blazes a lot. He finds himself laughing along to it, a lot, too.

Again, again, Mumbo thinks - well, maybe there’s something wrong about this, right? Normal people, especially not after taking a vow like the one he’d taken, don’t seek out death like this. The spade had been a silly mistake, the zombie had been flood gates, but this farm - it’s enabling. Should he be trying to separate himself from the sight of violence? Should he be seeking out something else? Or-?

Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. He’s - he’s getting satisfaction from this. That’s good. That’s fun. And the more he watches the blazes, the less he gets an itch under his skin, (and the more something deep inside of him says, This isn’t enough, this isn’t enough, there has to be something greater-)

And there is. There is something greater and it comes in the form of the crystals.  

He can’t tell you when he’d first started with them - can’t remember the first time he’d crafted one. But he can tell you the first time he’d heard it’s explosion - when it erupts near his ear and the world spins on a dime and everything - everything - stops. 

It’s no longer about the blazes. Or the mobs. Or the dirt beneath his feet or the livestock near his house or the anything.  

It’s about the crystal and the explosion and the fact that Grian is dead and Grian is back and-

Mumbo knows. 

His hands are stained with sparkling dust from crystal. He’s staring at the newest crystal he’s made and he’s thinking, Grian is dead and Grian is back and I know what I want and I understand the itch.

It’s one thing to watch a mob burn to death. It’s one thing to watch a dog tear a blaze apart. 

It’s another to watch a life long foil die and it’s another to know that you caused it. 

And it’s another to know that you want more.