Chapter Text
Everyone had actually stuck pretty close together for the first day. Most hermits, led by Cleo and Etho, had been caught up in the play fighting around the village for the majority of the day and had ended up not being in a position to get a base setup before night time came back around. Xisuma had kept a watch on the group whilst loading and checking the data packs were working this time - he didn’t want the Season Seven start to repeat itself.
Communally it had been decided that a group bonfire would be held to allow everyone that didn't have a shelter built up, which wasn't all but two of them, to sleep and chill in a safe space. It also allowed everyone to introduce themselves to the new hermits.
Food had been passed around and Grian had ended up sitting in front of the fire on a log with Mumbo sharing and next to Scar in his wheelchair. Gem had settled pretty well into the girls group (BDubs included) and they were chatting and looking over some images on her communicator. ZIT, mostly Zed but being helped by Impulse, were using Tango as a personal fire pit and were roasting marshmallows over his head and then feeding him smores, all the while he was talking with Doc and Ren. Keralis had taken over cooking proper food and handing out burgers and hot dogs to anyone that looked like they needed more food. Joe was chilling on a log writing contently in a small notebook whilst talking to himself.
Normal Joe Hills activity.
TFC sat over on another log, his prosthetic leg stretched straight out after being on his feet all day. It was a rare opportunity to see TFC above ground outside of the hermit meetings. His mines were legendary on the global servers but he was a true hermit and rarely graced the overworld with his presence on a regular basis. The monthly meetings and the start of each season were the most that the majority of hermits saw the old man. Once he had his start-up supplies, he would be off, underground and digging but always there if you wanted a safe space or a friendly chat.
A few season's back, TFC had started an above ground base design. It had started great with a good design basis but TFC had admitted defeat half way through after the sun had started having detrimental effects on him which was to be expected for a mole hybrid. He had reverted back onto his hybrid's traits and started digging his mole tunnels again to escape the sun. Mole hybrids were very delicate to sunny conditions and X had quickly noticed TFC suffering with mild heat stroke symptoms and had taken the hermit into his own base until he recovered enough to cope with the conditions again.
Grian’s train of thought was brought back to the present when Pearl spoke to him.
"What happened to you?" Pearl whispered only loud enough for the few people milling around to hear, Grian immediately snapped his head in her direction on the log next to his, "You don't have to tell me now but one second you were right there with us and then you were gone. Nobody has heard from you, not even after we managed to get out. We couldn't get a message through to you either."
"I guess we need a spooky story time around the campfire," sighed Grian. A few of the others had heard the story time announcement and had gathered around, X included. "Before I start, this isn't a fun story. X knows most of this but my life has not been great before Hermitcraft and there are some details I am going to skip for your sake and mine."
"Once upon a time, there lived a pesky little bird who had just turned 18, escaped a bad living situation on a Japan based server he had been stuck in whilst he grew up and had been dragged kicking and screaming into Admin school. After causing as much chaos as possible in the school he gained his certification and was released from the Admin jail... I mean Admin school. After his last server was forcibly shut down, he was given very few limited options for his future.”
“He had decided to start his own server with some friends and acquaintances that he had met in the last few years." Grian started the story out with a small smile on his face, "He managed to find a world that was still back in the very early alpha stages and he had studied hard on how to upgrade a server through updates so that he had a fun adventure for his friends to explore a world through the updates together. They could explore the world like the first explorers and eventually upgrade it all the way through to the modern day. It would be a massive adventure with his friends."
"The world was going great, it was hard to get started with the old mechanics of the world but they pushed through. There were pranks and quests, lots of fun and adventure. Everyone worked together, made teams but even separated they were always happy to help each other out. They soon got to the first update. Pesky Bird had the admin code all ready to go, just one click of a button and it would activate. Nothing would go wrong, he had thought. Until it did."
"The server woke up the update morning, gathered in the main central area and found a quest from someone called One. The pesky bird decided to pause on running the update until the quest had been completed. When he realised that the riddle left would lead the group towards the update he opened up his admin panel and checked the code. Except he couldn't, he was locked out. Nothing could be edited or deleted, he was 100% locked out. He couldn't let his players know so he played along with the game, trying to find the person behind it. He reached out to many other admins and teachers at the admin academy to see if they could help but no messages got out. It was then that he realised that they were trapped inside his world."
The hermits listened as Grian explained the full story. Many of them had heard the postnotes version over the years but no-one had known the full version. Mumbo being Grian's oldest friend had not even been able to get the story from him.
"He was so scared, he tried to reach out to other admins to troubleshoot the problem. Except the messages weren't getting past the firewall. He tried to backdoor code his way in but this drew the attention of the visitor. They blocked all of his chests up with obsidian - you know how painful obsidian used to be to mine back in the early days."
"His players had no idea, they thought it was another game of mischief made by the pesky bird for some innocent fun." Grian saw Pearl nodding her head in agreement, "He didn't know how to tell them. So he played along for now until the quests and tasks from One and a new person Two who had also shown up started to take a turn for the worse. "
"The consequences for his actions resulted in a player being "lost" for a few weeks between the update jumps. He hunted for ages through the code to find any hint of where they had disappeared to, but with no luck. When the player came back, he was traumatised and the pesky bird decided to break the news to his players, who at this point knew that something was seriously wrong. Now that his players were being affected and taken from under his nose he knew that he couldn't just not tell them."
"That evening they sat down around a campfire and held a server meeting. He explained everything and they were rightfully scared. There was nothing they could do except play along with the games."
"They played along, running with the updates and building up their world. The quests became more and more complicated and they knew they were leading to something. One and Two then passed on another message, they would soon realise it was one of the last messages.”
"The next message from them pushed us… them towards the End. Everyone geared up to get ready for the fight of their lives. Spawn was set, potions created, armour handed out and weapons sharpened. They were excited, nervous and absolutely petrified. They were as ready as they could be, there was nothing they could do now. And so they jumped into the portal, one by one following after the pesky bird."
The hermits knew something bad was going to go down, Mumbo had leaned closer, touching his legs next to Grian to give him more comfort as he pushed through the story. Pearl was hunched in on herself knowing that this was the part of the story she was missing. Everyone was hooked and waiting for the next part.
"They arrived in the End. Or that is to say, pesky bird assumed they arrived in the End. Only the pesky bird never saw his friends on the other side. He never saw them again. They had been split up, fighting the dragon in two groups. They had made the pesky bird fight the dragon by himself. He had no idea what had happened or where they were, he didn't have time to think about them as the dragon rushed him. He fought for his life, barely scraping through the fight.
"Then they came. One and Two appeared in front of him, towering over him in all of their horrible glory, congratulating him on his achievement. They presented two options for the pesky bird. He could join them and become a Watcher, watching the worlds under their control or he could die and with it his friends would soon follow their admin.”
"The pesky bird told them that he would never abandon his friends. Two then said that it was a shame to lose another world but if death was what he wanted, then they would be happy to provide. Pesky bird had caught their word play this time, he knew they just implied that him rejecting their offer would be killing the whole world. He asked them, 'If I go with you will you spare my friends, let them leave the world?', to which One guaranteed their survival."
"They let him say a few words to his friends but the words that came out of his mouth were not the same words that he heard projected to them. Pesky Bird had told his friends to run, get as far away from the world as they could but all they heard was him saying that he decided to leave with them, wishing them well in their next adventure. He was taken away before they could even realise it was fake.
"Turns out that One and Two were Watchers, entities believed to be gods, beings of the Void that watched the worlds or players and decided to start interfering. Evo was their first playground and they would start to venture into other worlds soon. First they had a powerful admin to mess with. They combed through his code, fingers would dig in, pulling and twisting, messing and changing with the code lines as they wanted. Mixing in their own code to see what would happen. The pesky bird was just a play thing, to be used and experimented on.”
The pesky bird knew nothing but pain until they decided that they were finished and had 'perfected' him. They tormented him for days, weeks… Time was endless in their domain. I-" Grian paused, catching himself as he winced at the memory. Mumbo grabbed his hand and gripped it tightly, the pressure helping Grian to recenter himself and focus on getting through the last part of the story.
"Pesky bird couldn't escape right away but he watched, he waited and he learnt his surroundings and eventually, after a lot of time, they left him alone long enough for him to run to the portal room and escape through a portal to another world. He grabbed some supplies in the first world and then fled, world to world for weeks until he was slightly safe. He world hopped for nearly an entire year in the end. Sometimes it was hours in a world, other times it could be a week or two. One day he just couldn’t anymore so he knew he had to stop. Then he hid away from everyone until one day he decided to get his smashed communicator fixed and stumbled upon a frustrated admin trying to fix his server world's code in a small cafe."
"The very tired and extremely frustrated admin," Xisuma jumped in interrupting Grian's story, "...noticing the weary and scared player and offered him his comm info and a hand of friendship to him. Eventually pulling the pesky bird into his world and to safety."
Grian, noticing that X was now sitting next to him, flopped sideways, laying his head on the admin's lap. Xisuma huffed a small chuckle at the tiny bird and combed his hand through the blonde curls and ear feathers.
"There are still scars from them but you really did save me from myself," Grian mumbled, "You gave me Bumbo again and new friends to prank."
"And you, pesky bird, have made us laugh and we all love you. We are not letting you go anywhere even if the number of wars on this server has drastically increased. You are a part of this family and we will never let you go." Xisuma said and everyone made sounds of agreement. Gem and Pearl looked at each other with a smile. Even being with them a day, they felt included and a sense of belonging.
"Pesky bird, no, I don't like to think about what they did to me but the small perks are what I take advantage of."
"Wait... you can use their powers?" Cleo spoke up. Grian looked around and saw the interested faces of his friends, no-one looked scared, only curious. Grian wasn't sure if he wanted to show off to them but Grian winced and sat up straighter on his chair before pulling for the magic that he had pushed away for as long as he had.
"Just... don't freak out. I don't like this any more than you do." Grian didn't look anyone in the eye as he took a deep breath in, readying himself for the task.
All Watchers wore white eyeless masks, had massive white wings that seemed to glitch in and out of view at the edges and a rich purple and white robe. Grian was no exception to this rule. His robes may have been ruined as he made his great escape but as soon as the mask was placed on his face, a new set of robes would appear on the wearer.
Grian reached into the air, feeling the code in front of him and reaching for the mask that was hidden from view but never far away. The hermits could see nothing except a small mist until he pulled a white half mask from over his head, that would cover the eyes of the wearer. It looked unremarkable until Grian lowered it over his face and it covered his eyes.
The change was sudden to the other hermits, like the world glitched forward in time and everyone had lost the few seconds in between. Neither human nor hybrid eyes could comprehend the full Watcher form and instead just didn't translate what they saw to their brains, leaving them in the dark. Where Grian sat, was an exact replica of him, but with a few Watcher-y touches.
Purple, unkempt robes that hung loosely on his frame and made him look like a child playing dress up as a roman emperor, were layered on his body. The usually bright and colourful parrot wings were the biggest change, turning a dull white that shimmered with a purple like glow as if they had an enchantment attached to them. Grian's eyes were hidden by the mask but after a few seconds, single purple glowing eyes popped up all over the clearing. The transparent purple irises blinked out of sync, staring at each hermit or gazing out at the surrounding areas. The longer Grian kept the mask on the more that appeared randomly in the clearing.
Grian lasted roughly 30 seconds before he ripped the mask from his face and took a deep gasp of fresh air. Suddenly as they had appeared, his normal everyday clothes glitched back into being with his normal red jumper and his colourful parrot wings fluffed up in agitation.
"Yeah, not doing that here again. You guys break code too much, it's starting to stick to a few of you. Just looks wrong," He pulled a comical face as if he was going to be ill from what he had seen.
"I have so many questions..." Doc mumbled before receiving an elbow to his ribs from Ren. Zed nodded to Doc’s statement but kept quiet at the time.
"Honestly Grian, you fit right in. We have a jumbled mix, what is a baby eldritch godling when you add it to THIS little mess." TFC commented from his seat, waving around the fire.
TFC’s hand had, through pure chance and by complete accident, landed on BDubs when he finished his statement. BDub’s was very quick to shout an annoyed “Oi! I am not small and I will also have you know I am not a mess, I am a moss!” which had the rest of the hermits who weren’t already laughing to burst into fits of giggles.
BDubs was quick to continue his rant to the laughing hermits until he was pulled into the girl cuddle pile by Stress. Small huffs of annoyance sounded from the puffy moss jack that BDubs had retreated into but he quickly snuggled in closer.
The laughter was a welcome break from the story even if by accident. You could always count on someone to break the ice in the room in the most unexpected way.
Grian looked around at his friends and smiled. It was nice to be accepted. The hermits sat back and enjoyed the first night of their new world together.