#empires smp fic

[scribbling-dragon]

Forced Acquisition of a Child

summary:

“Jimmy,” he holds the baby awkwardly, gripping it under the arms. The blanket unravels a little, trailing below but not quite touching the floor. He’s never held a baby. He should never be trusted to hold a baby, and yet, somehow, here he is. “Why have you got a baby.”

“fWhip gave it to me,” Jimmy continues to look and sound the most distressed Tango has ever seen him, and Tango was there for the Train Incident. They still don’t have an explanation for how it appeared overnight, but Jimmy is too scared to remove it. Like the train tracks might summon another train if he does. “And then he just left.”

-

Or: Jimmy "doesn't know" how to take care of babies, and Tango doesn't know how to take care of babies.

(ao3 link)

(masterpost)

(2,185 words)

“But what am I meant to do with it?” He tries not to sound too distressed, but even he can hear how terribly he fails at that, voice coming out higher pitched and squeakier than he intends. He’s never beating the toy allegations. The baby he’s hold at arm's length looks rather content, only wriggling slightly as Jimmy continues to stare at it.

He doesn’t think it’s blinked once.

“I dunno,” fWhip is already walking away, shrugging and not even looking back at Jimmy. “Your problem now, don’t kill it, yeah? Alright, bye!”

“Oh my god,” he looks back at the baby he’s holding. He doesn’t even know how to hold a baby. He’s pretty sure there’s a specific way you’re meant to do it though. He’s not suited for this; he can keep the cats content, easy, they’re cats. If they’re not happy they go a kill something to keep themselves happy. Or they run to Tango so they can use him as a heating pad. Cats are simple, in that they practically take care of themselves. All he needs to remember to do is feed them and shower them in love and affection.

He's never even seen a child this small before. Are children meant to be this small? Do they normally emerge from rocks, is that how it works? It doesn’t seem like the way it should work, but he also doesn’t know enough on the topic to dispute it. He never thought to ask before, but maybe he should have. He really, really should have.

He thinks. Doing his best, at least, as the baby continues to stare at him. Unblinking.

It’s like having a mini-fWhip at arm’s length, judging his every move. Which…actually isn’t far off what the normal fWhip does. Enjoys doing, whichever. But he does normally blink a little more than this. Did fWhip have a staring problem as a baby? He can’t picture fWhip as a baby; he’d always assumed the goblin just sprung from the earth fully formed, or something. He rests a hand over the baby’s eyes, shifting his grip on it so it’s cradled in the crook of his elbow.

God, he knows nothing about children. This is such a horrific idea. Whose idea was it in the first place? Right, yeah, adoption program. It just sounds like a way of foisting childcare onto the other empires because fWhip can’t be bothered to deal with it.

He can think a little clearer now that the baby isn’t staring at him, judging his every move. He keeps his hand firmly pressed over their eyes, but not hard enough to do any damage. He thinks. He doesn’t even know how to hold a baby! He’s doing his best.

Never mind, just…think.

Think. Who would be able to help with this? The other empires have their own goblin children to deal with, and he doesn’t even want to know what some of them are doing to these unfortunate children that have, somehow, managed to end up in their care.

What smart people does he know that have good, well-rounded, and applicable life skills? He knows a lot of people. Not many of them are well-adjusted to normal life, meaning he can easily disregard over half of the people he knows.

He spins on the spot as epiphany strikes him, hooves clattering loudly over the stone as he realises he already has an answer, a remedy to all of his problems: Tango.

 === === ===

 Tango hummed quietly to himself as he moved back and forth, tail flicking behind him as he rearranged a few more of the files. It’s not one of his favourite tasks, mainly because Jimmy seems unable to agree on a standard filing system, making everything they have impossible to find in a hurry because it’s in some arbitrary place that made sense at the time.

It’s been a slow process of gradually rearranging everything into a proper system without Jimmy noticing. And also repositioning the documents he puts in the now incorrect places. He had thought by organising it he’d find the system behind Jimmy’s madness. But there is nothing. There is no system. Jimmy loses his files regularly, and then they have to hunt around for them because he managed to remember a tiny detail that means they’ll be able to take one of the local bandits to a proper court and go through proper legal proceedings.

The door crashes open behind him, swinging back into the wall (he’s been meaning to put a doorstop in so that can stop happening. He’s had to repair that wall three times in the past two weeks. It’s getting tiring). He winces at the resounding crash, flinching back from where his hands are in their filing cabinet, still holding one of their thinner files.

“Tango!”

“Jimmy,” he turns around with a smile, relaxing a little as his voice registers to Tango’s ears. “You scared me for a moment there, I thought there was a problem.”

“There is a problem!” Jimmy’s across the room in a moment, looking unusually distressed and cradling something in his arms. “Look!”

And the bundle is thrust unceremoniously into his arms, leaving him fumbling to balance the file and the surprisingly heavy object he’s been given. “Um,” he says, intelligently.

“What am I meant to do with it?”

Tango isn’t even sure what it is yet, so he ignores the question in favour of peeling the blanket back and looking at the thing underneath. A pair of eyes stare back at him, bright blue and unblinking. Right. Alright. That’s a thing.

“Jimmy,” he holds the baby awkwardly, gripping it under the arms. The blanket unravels a little, trailing below but not quite touching the floor. He’s never held a baby. He should never be trusted to hold a baby, and yet, somehow, here he is. “Why have you got a baby.”

“fWhip gave it to me,” Jimmy continues to look and sound the most distressed Tango has ever seen him, and Tango was there for the Train Incident. They still don’t have an explanation for how it appeared overnight, but Jimmy is too scared to remove it. Like the train tracks might summon another train if he does. “And then he just left.”

Right. Goblin King…gave Jimmy a baby goblin. He’s pretty sure goblins just naturally emerge from the stone of their caves, but that doesn’t explain why Jimmy has now come to be in possession of a baby. Even less so why fWhip specifically took the time out of his day to give the baby to Jimmy.

He grimaces at the small creature, more than a little unnerved by the fact that it hasn’t blinked yet.

“And you gave it to me, why?” He holds the baby a little further away from himself, attempting to give it back to Jimmy. Jimmy steps backwards, tripping over his own hooves, and fumbling to catch himself on the edge of the desk. He succeeds in catching himself on Tango’s desk, simultaneously succeeding in disturbing the piles of paper he had spent the morning organising. “I don’t like children.”

“You're smart, you know what to do with a child, right?”

“I might have been a bandit but I never kidnapped a child.” The baby reaches a hand towards his face, grabbing hold of some of his hair and yanking. Tango grimaces at the feeling, pulling his head back to try and avoid the small fists. “I had standards. And a limit on where my patience ends.”

“I wasn’t saying you would, Red,” Jimmy frowns at him. Tango huffs a laugh from his nose, and he watches as Jimmy’s frown deepens. “You were being mean, alright. Nevermind, I don’t think you have any standards. Your standards are terrible.”

“And what does that say about you?”

“That you're lucky to have me.”

The baby makes a small sound, reaching for his hair again. He should have cut it ages ago, should have ignored Jimmy when he said that he liked it. Sure, being able to braid his hair is an added bonus that he gets to enjoy on a morning when Jimmy does it for him, but it’s not worth this. He’s going to have to wash his hair later.

“Did you date fWhip at some point,” he asks.

Jimmy stares at him. “What?” He sounds like he’s either about to start laughing or crying.

“Just,” he gestures helplessly, movements slightly hindered by the baby in his arms. “Babies normally come from a relationship. Or maybe he just really hates you.” The baby makes another grab for his face, aiming for his ear this time. “Just- take the baby, it’s not mine.”

Jimmy almost drops the baby, but manages to catch it quickly enough that it is as though nothing happened. He then cradles the baby in one arm, balancing it perfectly and easily. He looks at the baby, then back at Jimmy, then at the baby again. The baby looks perfectly content, like it might fall asleep.

“It’s not mine either!” Jimmy’s protest is loud enough that Tango worries they might be interrupted by some concerned citizen. He’s not sure how either of them would explain the baby that is very clearly a goblin.

“Alright,” he leans back against the cabinet behind him. “Let’s take this from the top. How did you go from having a meeting with the emperors to acquiring a child.”

“It was part of the meeting.”

“It was part of the meeting,” he repeats. “Alright. Why was it part of the meeting?”

“Because…fWhip got the crown, meaning he got to make a rule. And he wanted…all of us to take care of a goblin child. Like an adoption program.”

“And you just agreed?”

“Uh, yeah?” He’s pretty sure the baby has just fallen asleep. He’s heard Jimmy, several times, protest that he doesn’t know how to deal with children, let alone look after them. He sleeps in the same bed as a liar, apparently. “He has the crown right now.”

“And this crown is all-powerful, is it? All, wow, look at me, I'm so powerful and great and you must listen to my rules?”

“Only one rule.”

“That’s not the point, dear.” He sighs. “Is the crown magical?”

“Maybe?” Jimmy shrugs. “I haven’t been able to get my hands on it yet, but it’s old. Pix found it in a ruin.”

“And his first instinct was to make a game with it? This old and potentially evil crown that might be able to…I don’t know- it might do something!”

“I didn’t think about it very much!” Jimmy protests, still looking at him with his sad eyes. Those eyes stopped working around the time that he figured out Jimmy practiced them in front of a mirror to manipulate him. “This is why you need to come to these meetings with me.”

“No.” He ignores Jimmy’s still sad eyes. “I went for a few, and that was it. You’ll have to tie me up and drag me through the door to get me there.”

“I'm not doing that.”

“Which is why I suggested it,” he smiles. “Now, what you're going to do is take the baby back to Gobland, and we can pretend all of this never happened.”

“But I can’t.”

“Why.” He taps a finger against the cabinet behind him. It isn’t an impatient move, just something he does when he’s thinking hard. He’s calculating, right now, how much work he’ll be able to do while Jimmy returns the baby. He might even be able to finish organising the cabinet. And then he can relax.

“Because of the rule.”

“Alright,” he sighs. “How do you make the rule stop…being in effect.”

“You steal the crown.”

“Well,” he claps his hands together. “Fantabulous, you’ve got your solution. Get him while he’s least expecting it.”

“That’s not a word.”

“Yes it is,” he lies through his teeth. He doesn’t know if it’s a word. Half the words he says aren’t words. It doesn’t matter, they convey his emotions well enough. “Take the baby back to the Goblands.”

“But what if it gets hurt?”

“Bigger chance of it getting hurt with us taking care of it.” He reasons. “I regularly catch on fire. If the cats didn’t land on their feet, you’d have dropped one of them on their head at this point.”

“Harsh.”

“But true,” he presses a kiss to Jimmy’s cheek as he walks past. “If you're quick we might be able to go for an early dinner at Chromia.”

“We’ll go there anyway,” Jimmy grumbles half-heartedly. “It’s a Tuesday. You and Scott have your weird little competition.”

“You love it really.” He calls over his shoulder, already occupying himself again. He prefers doing something to sitting around idly. “Have fun returning the child!” Jimmy doesn’t respond, but he does shut the door gently behind him. Doesn’t make up for the hole in the wall (Tango almost managed to forget about that), but the thought is appreciated.

Jimmy is fantastic, but if he comes back with another child Tango might just kill him.

#juno.writes #red bandit au #jimmy solidarity #tangotek #solidaritek #trafficshipping #empires smp #empires smp fic #empires smp s2 #team rancher #solidarity gaming #solidaritygaming #empires jimmy #empires tango

[simple-seranade]

What’s a god to a nonbeliever?

Jimmy is done with the jokes, the lack of respect.

Joel wants to see a toy? Oh, Jimmy will show him a toy.

TW: body horror, non-consenual body transformation, hurt/no comfort, blood, swords

(credit goes to this post by @theminecraftbee , sorry if the tag is unwanted lol)

______________________

“Jimmy, this is ridiculous! Let me GO!” Joel strains against the ropes pulled taught against his skin, wincing as the skin chafes.

That damned smile doesn’t leave Jimmy’s face. It looks so wrong, all sharp and so cold it burns. “Now why would I do that? I need you to play a game with me, after all.”

The words send a slimy kind of fear racing up Joel’s spine, and he fights back a wince at the feeling. “What in my name are you on about?”

He can’t move as Jimmy turns away from him, dragging the steel of his blade across a nearby anvil with a wicked screech. “Well, you see, Joel, you’ve been under the delusion that I’m a toy! Such a silly thought, coming from such a big, powerful god, right? Clearly, toys are just so far below you that you never cared to see what they actually were!”

The god barely restrains a screech as the sheriff spins, holding the horrifically sharp blade to his throat with practiced ease. “But not to worry,” Jimmy continues, tone as sweet and acrid as cyanide. “I’m here to help you!”

The metal is poking his throat now, burning hot from the desert sun. “T-Tim-”

“That’s the Sheriff to you.” With a jerk of a hand, the blade leaves Joel’s throat, leaving a thin line of gold as ichor drips from the newly opened wound. “And as your Sheriff, I’m going to show you something.” Jimmy leans in close, and for a split second Joel swears his brown eyes gleam red.

“I’m going to show you what a real toy looks like.”

Joel can only choke back a scream as Jimmy shoves a vial of potion down his throat, the taste thick and ashen and sickeningly sweet. It slides slowly down his throat, coating it and making him cough. His lungs seem to tighten, something tickling in the back of his throat as he coughs again. Golden ichor splatters against Jimmy’s white shirt as blood enters the fray, Joel near heaving in an attempt to clear whatever the hell is in his chest-

Until suddenly, he can’t cough. 

His eyes widen as the air fizzles out of his lungs with nothing but a quiet wheeze. He tries to breathe in, get more air, only for nothing to happen. His mouth is open, he knows what he’s doing should be resulting in filling his lungs with air, but instead there’s just… nothing. A hand comes up and presses his chest, only for it to cave slightly under the pressure. The god fights back the urge to vomit at the sensation, feeling things shift inside him. 

“Rule one: Toys don’t breathe.”

He turns his panicked gaze to Jimmy, who looks at him with nothing but ice-cold apathy. His heart pounds in his chest as he feels his strength seep away bit by bit. Even holding his arm up feels like an impossible task, and he can only watch as it falls limply to his side.

“Rule two: Toys don’t move on their own.”

He’s frozen in place as he feels the steady thump in his chest begin to slow. His gaze is simply stuck looking up at the Sheriff.

“Rule three.”

Joel feels the irrepressible urge to scream with lungs and vocal cords that are there no more. The Sheriff leans down close, his face inches from the god’s as a divine heart takes it’s final beats.

“Toys have no heart.”

Joel screams and sobs from the glass prison of his mind as all connection with his body is severed. He doesn’t know how long he’s stuck there as his world becomes overwhelmed by pain in every single nerve, all while being unable to move a muscle. He’s even shrinking, getting smaller and smaller and Jimmy’s shadow looms over him. He doesn’t even notice when the pain stops, internally shouting from a conscious no one can hear.

He’s vaguely aware of rough hands picking him up carelessly, squeezing what should be his stomach and is instead stuffing. 

“This is really your own fault.” Jimmy says, almost conversationally, like Joel could even respond. “You gods are all the same. So caught up in the sound of your own voices, you forget where your power really comes from.”

The Sheriff leans in close, holding the now-doll up by a single arm. 

“A god is only as strong as their worshippers think them to be. And call me a heretic all you like, but even a ‘god’ such as yourself holds no candle to someone who never believed in the first place.”

#Sheriff Jimmy #jimmy solidarity #solidaritygaming #Solidarity Gaming #jimmy solidarity fic #joel smallishbeans #empires joel #cw body horror #tw body horror #tw nonconsensual body modification #villain jimmy #empires smp #empires smp s2 #empiresblr #empires smp fic #empires smp fanfic #tw blood #My writing #sera's stories #smallishbeans

[sixteenth-days]

From the Archives Masterpost: Updated AGAIN

so yeah it's been a BIT since i made a new masterpost, and there has been so much since then. so let's do this again from the top!

The art masterpost is now here, I had to put it in a Google Doc because it hit a limit for links.

THE MAIN FIC SERIES:

Test Recording: One, Two, Three: The newly hired Archivist familiarizes himself with his office.

The Statue Garden: Statement of Cleo, regarding a book of statuary.

Werewolf Games: Statement of Scott, regarding a camping trip and a disappearance.

End Condition: Statement of Scar, regarding his death.

Elephant's Foot: Statement of Zedaph(?), regarding a mousehole in the wall of his lab.

Stargazer: Statement of Pearl, regarding her dreams.

The Anniversary: Statement of Lizzie, regarding a wolf in the woods.

Blight: Statement of Shubble, regarding a disease in her family's crops.

The Not Deer: Statement of False, regarding the disappearance of her roommate, Gem.

The Joe Hills Podcast: Statement of Joe Hills, regarding his own backstory.

Slumber Party: Statement of the collected Archival staff, regarding a night spent in the Archives.

Supplemental: Moonsick: Supplemental audio to Slumber Party, recorded by Pearl, never archived.

The Art of Escape: Statement of Ivory, regarding an escape from solitary confinement.

Red Light, Green Light: Statement of Grian, regarding the deaths of twelve people in an incident that never happened.

Skittering Things: Statement of Stress, regarding a bug.

Assorted Supplemental Recordings: A collection of bonus recordings appended to formal statement files.

Research Questions: Statement of Impulse, regarding an encounter with the entity known as Zedaph.

Immersive Storytelling: Statement of Ren, regarding an ARG.

The Wastes: Statement of Cub, regarding a book of poetry.

Golden Eagle: Statement of HBomb, regarding the actions of his friend False during a group tag game.

Ornithology: Statement of Grian, regarding... feathers.

Supplemental: PTO: Supplemental audio to Ornithology, recorded by nobody in particular, never archived.

Camera Obscura: Statement of Martyn, regarding something that was watching him.

Concerns from the Academic Record of Mr. Tango Tek: Statement of a professor of architectural design, regarding his concerns about a particular student.

Freezing Point: Statement of Scott, regarding a problem with his house's heating.

Gelatinization: Statement of Jevin, regarding a cookbook.

The Vigil: Statement of an unknown traveler, regarding a monument in the desert.

The Vital Importance of a Good Night's Sleep: Statement of Bdubs, regarding his problems sleeping.

Deckbuilding Basics: Statement of unnamed, regarding an encounter with Beef, a trading card collector.

Ad Astra: Statement of Grian, regarding a visit to a certain library.

OTHER FICS NOT IN THE MAIN SERIES:

Interlude from Another Reality: Taxidermy: A pair of scenes in a timeline where Joe's the Archivist, and everybody else is shuffled around too.

mouse hole/black hole: A character study of AU Zedaph, making heavy use of formatting fuckery.

Beautiful Things: Likewise, a character study of AU Stress.

#the hermit archives #hermitcraft #my writing #hermitcraft fic #life series fic #empires smp fic #masterpost

[circesays]

Oli didn’t know what to do.

This was actually pretty normal for Oli, TheOrionSound, local Strong Boi™, slayer of dragons, master of the Olipeoligo and Pretty Neat Bard.

(Pretty normal for Oli, who held an Orb in his hands and emerged from the depths changed.)

“But never had this courageous man run into a situation like this,” the oldest Emperor murmured, head lolling as he locked eyes with his friend captor.

The goblin across from him, with skin as green as an olive and ears that moved and tilted with every sound echoing from the caves, scowled back. His arms were crossed, his feet tapping impatiently, causing a repetitive tuk tuk tuk sound on the stones.

There was no recognition in those blue eyes.

(And Oli wept internally, because Gem looked at him and saw a stranger. Because Sausage slept above, and Pearl wouldn’t let him pass to see him. Because Fwhip held him in a cage, dangling above the cavern floor.)

(Because someone called the Sheriff was on the way, and he didn’t know if he could handle looking another friend in the eye and seeing nothing but a blank stare.)

“Fwhip,” came the call, from further within the massive cave, “Why is there a man locked in a cage? Are you stealing my brand?”

Jimmy.

Oli turned to look at the blonde, taking in the rancher cowboy outfit. Dusty hat, golden star, and a leather elytra that folded together to create the image of a badge on its edges.

(And internally, he prayed to the Orb, a habit not yet broken, that this wouldn’t be another friendship lost.)

The Sheriff approached quickly, taking in the cage and the impatient goblin with a keen eye. The lasso on his hip swung as he finally ascended to the platform above.

“No, no, never!” The goblin teased back, “Gem says that he has the dragon egg. And Sausage said-”

“Sausage is here?”

Both emperors turned to the prisoner, who’s choked, incredulous statement startled them.

“Yeah, Sausage is the ruler of Sanctuary,” Fwhip elaborated with a casual, dismissive wave of his hand. (Sausage is here. Sausage is here. Sausage is awake-) “But anyways, he said he saw a strange figure at the campsite the other day. And we did find that weird sign in the Ancient City. So we were thinking that he might just be our culprit.”

Jimmy finally locked eyes with Oli himself.

(And Oli wanted to cry again, but this time in relief, because he knew that look.)

The Sheriff shook his head with a wry grin. “Is that so?” He drawled. “In that case, I’ll take him off your hands and back to Tumble Town for questioning.”

(It was the “gosh dangit Oli, what did you do this time?” Look.)

And the goblin whined and groaned and complained, but he let them go without too much of a fuss, because watching over a prisoner was taking up a lot of time anyways.

As Oli clung to Jimmy’s back, taking in the new sights as they rode atop Arrow, he felt the Sheriff sigh.

“You know, I’m going to be honest, I don’t know who you are.”

(And Oli recoiled because no no no not another one-)

“But I know that I know you. And that you mean no harm. So I’m going to take you back to my home, and you’re going to explain how you know us, and then I’ll help you find your house okay?”

And that was all Oli needed to finally burst into tears and start wailing his woes dramatically, thanking his savior for bringing him out of that “horrible, unbearable cage,” grinning all the while.

(And Jimmy grinned too, because something had felt off, memories missing and inside jokes made with no context. Maybe this familiar stranger was the final missing piece.)

(Elsewhere, a Keeper of Lore straightened and smiled, his hands stilling and resting on a lectern.)

(“Honestly, Oli,” Pixlriffs muttered affectionately, “I was starting to think you’d never get out of that end credits screen.”)

#jimmy solidarity #fwhip #oli theorionsound #theorionsound #empires smp #empires smp season 2 #empires season 2 #pixlriffs #empires fwhip #empires jimmy #empires oli #Yeah that’s a tag now #amnesia? #empires smp fic #hey have you guys seen oli’s episode yet #spoilers for oli’s episode #here have some angst #with a hopeful ending #minor angst

[seth-kia]

Pixlriffs sees the world as it used to be.

At first, he's nothing special. The archeologist's guild relocates him to the Ancient Capital, where he sits for hours in the blistering heat, hikes across hills and cliffs and mountains, even delves into caves armed only with a torch and feeble sword--he's a historian, not a mercenary--to catalog a massive diamond-infested ribcage the neighboring Sheriff discovered during his spelunking trip.

He mines and farms to keep his little patchy settlement alive. He brushes fossils and restores paintings and is careful, so careful, with the crumbling stone and the withering grass. He does his job, and his research, and does his best to restore the past with gentle hands.

Perhaps it is his gentleness that gifts him the visions.

His hand brushes through the rising columns of houses made from basalt and deepslate, through the walls as if he's the ghost. It's disorienting, at first, to reach out and be met with nothing. He calls it a vision, because it's far too vivid to be a mirage, and he does his best to ignore it.

But something about the ruins haunts him while he tries to work. Something stirs in his heart as he watches the walls flicker and shift, and he feels… he feels longing, deep in his ribs.

Maybe that's why, the next day, he picks up his tools and gets to work.

Pixl knows what his job is. Preserve, restore, discover, record. This isn't what the guild authorized.

But the instinct to bring the vision to life, to put it where it belongs, is insistent.

Building, as it turns out, is much more difficult than restoring. He gets the hang of it, though, and the blueprints that he sees each time he blinks are helpful, if maddening. The itch in his ears is resolved once the ruins are no longer cobbled, and the frame of a long-destroyed home is returned.

He knows his strengths, though. It's not returned to its former glory. But the house is once again standing where it belongs, and it fills him with awe and longing and emotions he can't even begin to describe.

It's only a house, but it's inexplicably, indescribably right for it to sit on the crest of that hill, nestled between his wheat and the slowly wearing path to the campfire.

He brought it back from the past. He brought something back to life. He feels warm, like peace has settled into his stomach and given him time to rest, and to work.

The next time he sees something that isn't there, the peace is obliterated, and he is filled with apprehension.

There is no way he could build that.

The bridge spans for miles upon miles. It is absolutely massive, with twelve towers digging deep into the river, and it screams to be a symbol of pride, of honor, of unity. It is regal, tall, brilliant. He is washed in awe to bear witness, but he knows his limits.

He's just an archeologist. He can't do that.

So Pix tries ignoring it.

He spends the day working, getting his hands dirty. It's easy to turn his back on the vision in the distance, while the sun is high. He focuses on the discovery of the catacombs, of trading with the other… 'rulers', they call themselves, expanding his area.

The night is a different story.

Pix is a light sleeper. He tosses and turns on a good night. But he can't close his eyes, and he can't stop thinking about the bridge. His muscles still ache just from the little house across his field.

He tries to reassure himself--maybe it's a mirage. Go to sleep, Pix. Everything will be normal in the morning.

When the voices speak, he thinks he's lost his mind.

It is a big thing to undertake, but we are with you.

"Who?" he starts, choking on his saliva and nearly landing on the floor beside his bed.

The Great Bridge must be build again, they whisper, low and conspiratorial and ageless, and you, with your gentle hands, and your fire, are the one to do so.

"I… who are you?"

The voices don't answer.

There are voices in his head. He's losing it.

He thinks. He clings to the sheets of his cot, and he prays to whoever is listening that he's not going just as crazy as whatever Joel has going on.

"I can't do that," he says, hushed and bewildered. "I'm… I'm just a man, I can't do that."

Heroes like to say that, they whisper sadly. But do not fear. We are with you.

The vision fills his mind once again. The Great Bridge, miles above the sea level from where it once was, in glory and in greatness.

A symbol of unity.

"Okay," he says, voice small. "I'll… I'll try."

After that, he loses time.

He remembers his knees scraping against sharp stone and getting soaked from falling into the river several times. He remembers calloused palms and burning skin. He remembers building. Working.

He's good at that. Working.

When he feels himself again, he is kneeling, covered in dust, with bloody knees and aching hands, in the center of a bridge a million times his size, and he feels like the world has woken up.

There are voices in his ears, cheering to him. He is laughing, helpless.

This is what he was made for. Restoration. This, the thing he's collapsed on top of, this is history.

He doesn't know how long he stays there, kneeling on the bridge. Someone swoops by and asks if he's alright, and he answers yes, feeling light. He's never been better, he says.

They fly away rather quickly, but he hears their elytra spiral around the bridge for many seconds before it fades into the distance.

Hero, the voices whisper. We are with you.

He goes home, and he sleeps for three days, and then everything goes back to normal. He tends to the wheat and the cows and the froglights. He eats, and cleans his bloodied knees, and speaks with the rulers, and trades.

He is complimented on the bridge for weeks after. Even Joel, the eleven-foot god, stops by to leave a small floating bedroom in one of the towers. The rulers seem to have accepted him in their world, and he feels the stories move along around him. The blueprints are gone from behind his eyelids, now that he sees the true buildings before him every day.

The next vision is different.

Pix wakes up, in the middle of the night, forced out of his bed by something akin to fear, to anxiety. It stirs in him, pulses and ties his stomach to knots, and his gaze is frantic as he tries to discover the perceived threat.

His eyes land upon a statue that certainly wasn't there when he went to sleep.

There is a woman.

She towers. She is strong, in all but the material that builds her; she is love, she is strength, she is mothering kindness, and she is light, in everything, she is light.

She holds a sword, but her arms are open. Her hair is long, in waves; and behind her spreads wings, and behind her still a circlet of gold like the sun behind her.

Santa Perla, the voices whisper, and they ache equally with longing and joy.

When his gaze meets hers, the fear calms.

Santa Perla.

The night is high, and the air is cold, and the monsters are angrier than most, but he picks up a shulker, and he works.

Pix remembers the moment before, when her gaze is locked on him, melancholic and ageless. And he remembers the moment after, when she stands tall, in glory, looking to the horizon, gracing the land with light.

His fingers are bleeding from the stone, his eyes are dry and his stomach is howling and the sun is setting, but the peace fills him and he can't stop smiling.

She has returned, he thinks, and it is right.

"Are you there?" he asks the voices, once he's brushed the final dust from the stone. "I did it. She's back."

We are with you, they whisper. The air around him shimmers, cool against his burning skin. We are grateful.

He laughs, breathless and achy. "What's next?"

Wait, hero. You have served us well. Rest, and we will return.

"I'm no hero," he says, and is met only with silence.

It continues. The gates are shaky in his mind, like a mirage in the desert. The museum grows to be a constant, the voices murmuring soft in his head as he adds history into reality. The castle, oh, the castle, it is bigger than he could ever imagine.

But the bridge was just as big, and the voices just as strong. Hero, they call him, and he finds the word fits on his shoulders.

So he puts down his feet and he gets to work.

He builds and discovers history as he creates it. With every piece he restores, he stills the stirring in his chest, and he feels more like himself.

He works, and he grows, and he learns. He is called hero and he is called king.

Pixlriffs sees the past as reality, and he brings it all back to life.

ao3 link here, inspired by @darubyprincxx and their post on pix's lightmatica wristband actually being visions. i love my prophet!pix headcanons. sue me.

#pixlriffs empires #empires pixl #empires s2 #empires smp 2 #prophet pixlriffs #but with a twist! #some religious undertones #santa perla #pixlriffs #ancient capital empires #empires fanfic #empires fic #empires smp fic #dm for tags!!

[tunastime]

No Night that Doesn't End

Jimmy is the sheriff of Tumble Town. Everyone knows that. Some people like it--some don't. Whether or not they like it is a problem he's not really worried about. Right now, his town is empty. So is his farm, his wells, his home, and his heart. And that is a much bigger problem. Deep in the stuffing of his chest, Jimmy knows something he's pretending he's forgotten: Every desert town goes. It's just a matter of when.

so I wrote this back in july when I was really having jimmy feelings and now I'm back to having jimmy feelings. good grief!! it's fine!!

(3532 words) (read it on ao3!)

Through the window, a pale, yellow-white beam of light cuts through, illuminating the dust that filters through the edges, making the perfect tile on the sanded wood floor. Jimmy stares at the ceiling. He thinks he’s watching the barely-there oscillations of the ceiling fan above him, turning ever so slightly in the still air. But he’s not. Instead, his tired, achy eyes bore into the wooden slats of the roof above him, and his hand rests against his chest. He can feel the thudding of his pulse against the side of his wrist, against the pads of his fingers, as well as he can feel the sleep-warm fabric of his shirt. He sighs, taking in a breath that pushes at the limits of his chest, no matter how small those limits are. It almost doesn’t seem worth it. But he does it on instinct. He stretches, the spaces between his bones expanding and contracting as they pop and settle and he settles, too, back against the soft mattress.

Staring into the ceiling, Jimmy lifts a hand to wipe the sleep from the corner of his eyes. He blinks, and the grey-gold room comes into better focus. He can at least count the knots in the wood, now, if he so desires to go back to sleep. But his body settles with a nervous energy as he lies still, like a vibration from the soft curve of the arch of his foot to the hair at the line of his forehead. He scrubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, runs one hand through his hair. He shifts to sit up. As he does, the small grey shape beside him stretches awake, and so does the shape beside that. Two pairs of eyes blink back at him before both cats resettle themselves. Jimmy watches the tip of Norman’s tail flick against the quilt he’s laid out on. 

Jimmy moves in one motion. His socked feet hit the cold wood floor. He sits there, hands pressed to the mattress, fingers curled over the edge. His knees sit apart. His shoulders are bent forward. The world waits for him to rise from bed, only for a second, as the light from the window catches dust and Jimmy digs his fingers into the sheets he’s rumpled. They’re soft and worn—he’s not sure if he’s noticed the texture before now, as he runs his thumb over the seam of the mattress, where feathers and cotton and sewn edges meet. After a moment, his hand jerks away, finds his chest instead. There’s still a pulse there, and still a breath as well.

The world is still very still, despite his lingering movement. He feels as if he’s puncturing a bubble as he stands, pulling back the sheets to fix them. His fingers run over stitching. The world stays that same quiet even as he pulls away from the beside and his feet shuffle against the wooden floors. He pads to the dresser, searching for something clean—white shirts, blue shirts, black shirts. Jeans. Any combination of colors. The top of the dresser comes away dusty on his hand as he braces against it. He leaves a streak of grey on the blue jeans he pulls on. His blue shirt stays partially unbuttoned and untucked, and the shirt is cool against his skin. Skin, he promises. He can feel it. He combs back through his hair with his fingers, and he can feel that too, each curly, soft fluff of hair. He keeps combing as he wanders the room. From behind him, he hears Norman and Flick wade and bound over the rumpled sheets. One of them collides with his ankle as he turns back to the bedside. Jimmy only hears the jingle of his collar as he leaps back onto the bed. Reaching out, Jimmy runs his hand down Norman’s back. Norman turns, bumping against his hand. 

As he stands at the bed, Jimmy catches movement in the spotty, dusty mirror. He stands for a second, eyes focused on the edge of the dark wood. Through the grime, he can see the rise of his chest, where an unbuttoned shirt gives to a soft collarbone, the outline of his wrist and down his thumb. Other than the general shape of his body, no minute details stand out. For a fraction of a moment, he thinks he sees the glint of his eyes, much too bright in the sunlight that shifts to catch him. He takes in a sharp breath and drags his eyes from the dusty surface. It’ll keep collecting dust, that’s what it’ll do.

Jimmy wanders his way downstairs, tucking in the tail end of his white-trimmed blue shirt. The air is still cool downstairs, even as Jimmy lights the stove and hears it click, and even as the kettle comes to a rolling boil. He listens to the water against the tin. His stomach pangs. He chews the inside of his bottom lip as he opens the cabinet, mouth twisting in a frown. 

The morning goes like that. The silence is cut through by the sound of toast on the stove and jars of jam being opened. There’s a clunk when the pan gets dropped into the sink unceremoniously and the clink of dishes as the cats are fed and the teacup finds its way to the table. In a warm beam of light against the kitchen table, Jimmy eats breakfast, and Norman stands on the windowsill, and the warm thing curling in his chest hasn’t died yet. Tipping back the rest of his tea, Jimmy wanders into the living room. The cup sits on the oak desk jammed up against the wall—the impromptu office that stood before the jailhouse was built. If he were to dig through the cabinets, he’s sure the first land deeds would be sitting at the bottom, or that his official notice, the first time he was sworn in as sheriff, would be, too. Lately, he’s not even worn the badge. Every time he looks at it, the heavy pit in his stomach grows a little heavier, a little colder. Instead, Jimmy drags his hand over the smooth, dark surface, and picks the hat off the side of the chair. 

The Bowl is still a cool red-grey as Jimmy steps out. The quietness settles as the sun starts to climb in the sky. With it, grey clouds sit on the horizon, just above the lip of the Bowl, like a taunt. Jimmy rounds the side of the house, searching for a spade and till. The side garden, just a handful of dead plants, now, had wormed its way up to the top of his to-do list. So now, spade in hand, bandana pulled over his nose, he sets his hat on his head and sinks to the red dirt.

On the edge of the mesa, thunder rolls. Jimmy stiffens. His spade is stuck pointing down into the dry earth, a small pile of crisp herbs beside his hip. When he stares up into the greying sky, he feels his neck ache in protest. His face feels warm with exertion, and his arms are red with dirt and sticky with sweat. He can feel the tan worsening on his neck and arms, even through the shirt. The thunder rumbles again. He turns to it, nerves sharp, suddenly more alert than he’s been in days, like a haze had suddenly, momentarily, lifted off of him. He scrambles up, darting to the side of his house. On the edge of the building, tucked under the siding, is a large, blue barrel, faded on one side where the sun had hit it over and over. He pushes the barrel through the dirt, shoving it under where the siding meets the rain gutter above. He darts back to the small shed situated opposite of the house. There, he drags out large, heavy buckets, tugging on the ropes until they give across the dry earth. He pulls them into place at the other corner of the house, and falls back in the dirt. 

Rising quickly to a wobbly stand, Jimmy looks up into the grey, darkening sky, and sighs out a long breath. He dusts his freshly-raw hands on the sides of his jeans, trying to beat off the dust and dirt as he wanders to the porch. There, on the step, just below the awning, he sits, and kicks his boots out.

The sky opens up. When it does, Jimmy sticks his hand out, and the first big, wet raindrop falls into the palm of his hand.

He stares into the rain as it begins to fall.

It soaks the soil until the dry brown earth turns dark, until small pools start to form as the sky goes from grey to black. Jimmy stares into the falling rain.

The first time the sky opened up and poured its heart into the fishbowl, people celebrated. They dragged out big buckets to fill, looking for pots, pans, and bowls to supplement them. Children stood ankle deep in rich, dark mud, soaking wet. The cats stayed tucked under the bed, but Jimmy Solidarity, boots off, pants cuffed past his ankles, was also standing in it. He let the rain soak his white shirt through and didn’t even mind that his hair was plastered to his face. It was before a time where his skin felt sticky and cold when damp, before a time where it was too much to wash more than just his hair, or wipe down his face. He turned circles in that storm, letting the warm rain run down his arms and hands and fingers, let it darken his jeans, let the kids drag him about, stomping in the mud. Somewhere, under an awning, somewhere he found himself laughing, was a liquor bottle and food and his hat, safe from the rain, under the watchful eye of a deputy. Soon enough there was no one who wasn’t soaked. The cobbles only stayed damp until the sun peaked out from behind the clouds, but the rain barrels stayed full until the next time. The next time there was singing, dancing, more food and more bottles. More familiar faces, tucking themselves under awnings so as to not risk the rain. A smile on that face. A warm body he knew, to pass food to, and to laugh with.

But every desert town goes. 

It's sewn into the soil, the deep red and orange earth nothing grows in. It's written in the dry wells with cracked bricks. It's on the wind, where the taste of rain is just a memory. Maybe the lights go out first, or the rivers dry, or the plants die, or the trades stop. It doesn't matter what kills it—every desert town becomes a ghost town eventually. It's just a matter of when.

Jimmy remembers the first time they asked him to come with them. The day was hot, baking the soil to near ash, heating every stone hot enough to cook on. The days were hot—always, relentlessly, from noon up until dinner, when the red-yellow sun slipped down the side of the bowl and the wind started up, bringing a cool breeze that tasted like rain but never gave it over. There was always the linger of dampness in the air as it settled. But on that day, the sun was up nearly 3/4ths of the way in the sky, and someone was packing a market wagon outside of the stall Jimmy himself had set up first. The sign was loose and faded now, and the barrels were empty of gunpowder, but he'd filled it—he'd filled it a week ago, hadn't he? No matter—someone was packing and it was packing to leave, not packing to go home and light a little stove fire and make a cup of tea. 

Jimmy held a rust lipped, tin watering can with the dredges of dusty water. It was for the saguaro cactus on the porch, the thing dark green and heavy in its pot, stretching up its fleshy stalk toward the roof of the porch, a small, wilted desert flower on its top. He was staring at two hands tying a knot in frayed rope around the metal grommets. As he had watched, guilt sinking in his chest, his leatherworker had turned toward him, a tight expression to his face. 

The leatherworker had spent too many hours teaching Jimmy how to punch grommets into leather, to work the fabric until it became soft and pliable, on how to keep his boots sealed and clean, how to make them shiny, how to buff them to keep the grit off. He’d followed his careful hands to fix frayed fringe and tie leads, to keep the cracks out of Arrow’s saddle. Hell—the leatherworker had taught him how to catch horses in the first place. Half of his success with Bullseye could be chalked up to that alone. Jimmy’s eyes pass over the tight expression wrought across his face, finding the fine lines under his eyes, hand raised to shield from the sun, red hot above the bowl. He watches him blink the sun from his eyes and frown, mouth curving down sharply as he shakes his head.

"Sheriff,” He says, in a voice Jimmy can only half remember. “'s a damn shame you won't come with. You’re a fine craftsman."

Jimmy swallows, but for a moment, he isn’t sure what exactly he might be swallowing down—disappointment, mostly, maybe grief, the taste of both lingering on the back of his tongue. He shrugs. The leatherman’s never told him he was good at the work he did. He guesses it was maybe implied—and now that he thinks about it, he can remember nods, or the look in his eye. Jimmy wishes the can were still in his hands so he would have something to do with them, besides let them hang awkwardly at his sides before they find his back pockets. There, he finds a loose string, twisting it between his thumb and forefinger. He says:

“You know me,” and tries to smile. “As long as people stay, I’ll stay, too. ‘Ve got a duty to uphold, ‘n all.”

The leatherworker shakes his head, the same smile reflected on his face.

“Better man than me, son,” he says. He stands with his arms folded now, still squinting, but keeps his eyes downcast, away from the glare of the fishbowl around him. He sighs, watching his boots in the dirt. Jimmy chews at the inside of his cheek. His fingers dig into the denim of his pockets.

“Sure you won’t be back?” He tries, shrugging his shoulders. Another sigh from the leatherworker.

“I don’t want to leave…” he says, letting out a tired, weak laugh. “Trust me. But we’re not sellin’ anything, anymore.” He looks up, meeting Jimmy’s eye, likely for the final time. Jimmy remembers that gaze, the first one that looked at him, rather than through him. One of many times that he felt more like himself than he ever had. Where he wasn’t just ropy hair and a soft body, despite how many of these people had become that way. He feels the words like stones in his stomach, but he lets them sit. He has no other choice. The leatherman nods, offers a smile, and extends his hand. Jimmy takes it.

“‘M sure I’ll be back around.”

It was an unfortunate pattern that continued long into the rainless season. As the air grew hot and dusty, and rain showers grew less and less frequent, it became heavily apparent that the town couldn’t survive. He’d gone and lost a deputy, he’d lost his friends, he’d lost a gunpowder farm to the chaos of the rest of the world. Even boxed in with an artificial sky, there was nothing he could do to keep the town from trickling out. It wasn’t a steady thing. People seemed to know right when they needed to leave. And it was always the same look, the same tug at him to come with them. It was empty, wasn’t it? The water well. The gunpowder farms. The stocks. Himself. If it was so empty, wouldn’t he come with to fill it somewhere else? Would he rather watch it crumble?

It’s noon.

The mesa air, even into the canyon where the jailhouse sits, is dry and heavy and still. It isn't quiet, though. It brings sounds of movement. Jimmy catalogs the sounds, tracing the inside of his mouth with his tongue, feeling the ridges of the back of his teeth. He worries his quill pen between his fingers. The metal nib digs into the side of his finger, making an impression where it sits as he writes, and he feels that out too, alongside his teeth, alongside the heat seeping in through the wooden slats. At least inside, the heat doesn't get to him as fast. The fan above him makes lazy oscillations in the slight breeze through the windows. He can feel a line of sweat down the back of his neck. As he signs his letter, there comes a high whistle. He stands from the desk with a start, even in his daze of work, and pulls his hat on his head as he steps out of the door and onto the orange dirt.

A woman stands by a cart, a few steps away, soothing a horse. He can tell there are other people in the wagon the horse pulls, but he can’t see them. A second woman at the front of the cart doesn’t face him, but he can tell by the look on her face that she’s holding something in. He knows the woman by the cart. He can’t remember her face. But he knows her. He does. He swallows. He knows the look on her face. He takes off his hat, and sets it on the banister. His hair sticks up. She smiles, but it doesn’t quite meet her glassy eyes.

"Oh, Sheriff,” she says, sighing. Her voice is sad. “Won't you come with?"

He shakes his head. His heart has already leapt into his throat, as much as he tries to swallow it back down. Talking forces it back up over and over, and he can’t stop the words from pouring out of him. He never really could. He never learned how to hold his tongue. 

"You know I can't do that..." he tries. The woman’s tone takes on an edge of desperation that has him blinking, swallowing down something that isn’t just his heart anymore.

"Please,” she says, spreading her hands. She steps a bit closer. She’s within arms distance, now, or, at least this is how he remembers her. “This place has nothin' for you."

He shakes his head, again. It’s the only thing he can seem to make himself do. 

"I can't—” he manages. He drops his head, staring at his boots. “I can't."

The woman touches his arm. Her hand is warm against his sleeve, but he doesn’t feel it like he should. 

"Please."

"I'm sorry,” he says. There, the woman pulls away. She touches his cheek, just briefly, studies his face as he looks her over. She smiles, profound and sad and a bit far away, and Jimmy thinks the look of her face up close will ever be etched into his memory. He sniffles. Her thumb drags over his cheek.

"You're a good man, Sheriff,” she says, trying to keep her voice light. “You keep that cactus alive, you hear me?"

Jimmy nods, sighing wetly as she lets him go. He laughs, the same damp sound from his chest, watching her turn away from him, watching her pet the nose of her horse as he nods again, forcing a wobbly smile onto his face.

“I will,” he says. “I promise!”

She laughs. It’s the clearest sound Jimmy’s ever heard. It’s clear, even in the fog of memory.

Jimmy watches the cart as the road turns from cobble to dirt, as the dust settles and the strong, temperate horse gains speed, as someone watches back, before the image is too blurry to see right. He turns back to the jailhouse. Something curls and dies in his chest, and for the life of him, he hopes it isn’t something important.

Cicadas start to sing again in the crisp, dead trees.

Jimmy blinks.

In the rain, on the porch, shielded from the thunder and the downpour, he sits. The memories are simply memories, nothing more. He watches a raindrop hit his boot, and pulls his legs in. His knees tuck up to his chest. He loops his arms around them, holding to each elbow, and sets his chin on one knee. The rain falls, loud, blocking out the sound of anything else. The town is still as empty as it was when he first sat. He is still a man of cloth and rope and stuffing begging to be flesh and blood again. And he’s still the sheriff of an empty town he refused to abandon. 

Jimmy stares into the falling rain. He hopes something in it will fix everything. But he knows that’s not the case.

#jimmy solidarity #empires smp #empires s2 #sheriff jimmy #solidaritygaming #mcyt fic #mcyt #empires smp fic #esmp #fics #text #RGAHGRHABFHRBHFBRHHFGDFHB #sorry anyway #shout out to theo and also shep for getting me to post this. one for moral support and the other to shout at me #you two can figure out who's who #i've been sitting on this since july because. i was afraid to be wrong LMAO #but i think i like it too much not to post it #and i'm on a jimmy kick recently #that's two fics in two days #WOOAOWOAOWAOW!!!! #im sooo fine and normal about him and not a weirdgirl at all

[blocksgame]

The descendants of Empires have contained and secured a reality-breaking tower from the age of myth. One day, a message from an ancient cosmonaut appears, as though flung between dimensions. This message begins:

Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from a doomed world. Long experience has taught me that all worlds are ultimately doomed, so that’s not an especially cool or helpful thing to say. Do you know the saying that goes: "If all your stories end with, 'and then something bad happened for no reason', maybe you’re the problem"? It’s good to keep in mind but I’m pretty confident it’s not relevant to this particular situation. First, I do my best to spread sunshine wherever I go, not cataclysm. Second, in this case, the doom is clear and imminent! The moon is about to crash into the earth.

Here's a fic I wrote for a friend's discord exchange! Oneshot, SCP-inspired epistolary AU. A cross-dimensional conversation between Hermitcraft and the descendants of Empires Season 2 about the end of the world.

#hermitcraft fic #empires smp fic #hermitcraft fanfic #empires smp fanfic #joe hills fanfic #pearlescentmoon fanfic

[arospecsyourblockdudes]

“And so then, I merged with my evil corrupted self, who I think actually came from me in a previous life so maybe he isn’t my evil corrupted self, and after all that I’ve just been focusing on the empanada business and my family!”

Oli put his margarita down on the bar counter and stared at Sausage. “Mate, I just asked how you’d been lately.” 

Sausage smiled, cheery as ever, and sipped his mojito. “Well, that’s what I’ve been doing! It just happened to involve multiple realities and past lives!”

“Your lore is crazy, man.” Oli shook his head. “I’ve just been playing tunes, putting up tents, being a dragon dad. Normal things.” It’s always a gamble asking Sausage about his day, because you never know what the hell that man was going to say. Oli had expected maybe an update on Hermes or the latest crazy build the man had done. He supposes it was a good idea to meet at his tavern. 

“Ooh, how’s the baby dragon? I have to come visit them sometime, they are so cute. You should make me the godfather!” 

“Yeah sure, you and Shelby can be the godfathers.” They helped out with the egg hatching, Oli figures they deserve that much. “They’ve been chilling. They love the hot tub.”

“I love hot tubs.” Sausage nodded, like that was some bit of wisdom he’d just dropped. “Oh also, I do know who you are now! Since I got access to my alternate reality memories and all, I remember when you were just a little enderboy! I thought that was fun.” 

“That’s..well, that’s nice.” It is nice, even if Oli doesn’t understand Sausage’s life. “You’re a different guy than the one at Heaven’s Reach though, right? You’re just like...crawling around in his brain.”

Sausage tapped on the counter and thought for a moment. “I guess so. That’s a weird way to say it, though. I don’t think I was the angel, but he was a different version of me from an alternate reality. I can just remember what he remembered.”

“I think the man is dead now.” Oli chugged the rest of his drink and ordered another one. One can only wonder how that little blue man made such good drinks. “That’s weird. I’m just the same guy. I just get put in new situations.”

“Huh! That’s funny, because we sorta got the same thing going on!” Sausage grinned. “But we also don’t!”

“Don’t rope me into your bloody lore, I am not about that.” 

“I don’t even know what lore is, but Thunder Daddy loves it.”

And the two of them talked and drank late into the night, like they had been friends for years. And they had in one sense, and in the other they’d only just met. Oli knows how to get content in one world with a new set of folks, and he’d settled into this one once his first tent had been put up. But it’s nice to see Sausage settle into just one as well. Even if he’s got some weird multiversal stuff going on, and even if it wasn’t technically the Sausage he’d been friends with before. It was good enough for Oli. 

#empires smp #empires smp fic #oli orionsound #mythicalsausage #this has been smth in my brain for a bit now #oli n sausage being reality-weird besties

[umbrify]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Empires SMP Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Bryce | fWhip & Jimmy | Solidarity Characters: Jimmy | Solidarity, Bryce | fWhip Additional Tags: Empires SMP Season 2, Canon Compliant, could be fwhimmy if you wanna see it that way, Angst, Hurt No Comfort Summary:

Jimmy's boots click loudly on the stone as he walks, and, as he looks down, he notices the way the deepslate stones are worn down in certain places. Paths up and down the halls where the stone is scuffed in a certain way, as if fWhip often walked there.

As if he did, Jimmy scoffs at his own thought. He knows fWhip did. He watched him do it all the time, before…

Well… before.

—

Rearranging fWhip's storage room may not be the height of villainy, but Jimmy thinks it'll do fine enough. He didn't expect to be there long. He didn't account for all the thoughts he'd been trying to avoid.

#empires smp #umbrify talks #umbrify writes #fwhip #solidaritygaming #empires smp fic #empires smp season 2

[arthropod-concoctions]

part 5

Elytra still worked the same as Joel remembered. Though the high speed had given him vertigo initially-- and he'd needed Jimmy to point him in the right direction after apparently forgetting which way was north-- he was now flying steadily northwards with an elytra and some rockets Jimmy had had lying around. He soared over terrain which was now completely new to him, and towns built in styles he didn't recognize. He even saw some buildings floating in mid-air in the distance. Building in the sky? Why would you do that to yourself? he wondered, but kept flying ahead. Eventually he noticed the purple and green roofs Jimmy had told him to watch out for, and touched down in the vicinity of the town.

As he walked through the streets he noticed beady eyes looking at him through the windows. They looked strange, but he couldn't quite put how finger on why- until he turned a corner and stood face-to-face with a bipedal frog. He froze in place. The frog did too.

“Er... hello,” Joel said to it. The frog just looked at him.

“Say, do you know where Lizzie is right now?”

The frog stayed silent, scrutinizing Joel. Then, after a few long seconds, it pointed to Joel's left.

“Thank you!” Joel replied, igniting a rocket and flying in that direction. He quickly came across a field where sweet berry bushes had been planted in lines, and in the midst of it, a figure with pink hair was picking berries.

There she was.

Joel suddenly felt very unsure of himself. He had not planned this far ahead, and had no clue how to approach Lizzie now. Should he even approach her? What has he hoping to achieve here? But his overthinking didn't last long, because the second his feet hit the ground, Lizzie jumped and spun around to face him.

“...Joel.” She spoke slowly, sounding suspicious of him.

“Hey Lizzie.” The words almost stuck in Joel's throat.

“You're... smaller than I remember.”

“So are you.” Lizzie looked even shorter than when Joel first met her, before any of her transformations.

She had made her way out of the berry field now, but was still staying at a distance from Joel. While walking, she maintained eye contact with him the whole time. There was something distinctly off about her behavior.

“So, what brings you here?” Lizzie asked. Her lips seemed to move less than they were supposed to.

“I... wanted to see you.”

“Well yes, obviously. But what for?”

“Well... I...” we were married a thousand years ago, and then you forgot about me, and I want you to remember me again. Easy enough thing to say, right? “I just-”

Lizzie suddenly gasped and jumped a few feet backwards. “What the...” her eyes flicked between Joel and a point in the air a little behind him. Joel spun around, but saw nothing behind him except more forest.

“What's wrong, Lizzie?” he asked, but she didn't seem to hear him. She was still looking at the air.

She then said: “Is this some kind of new marketing strategy? A new product for the toy barn, perhaps?”

“...what?”

“I see.” Lizzie turned to face Joel again. “Say, would you be interested in working for me in Critter City? You'd make a fine butcher, I think.”

“Wha- No! Lizzie, you're scaring me,” Joel replied, and now it was his turn to backpedal a few feet. The way Lizzie was acting now, talking to the air, reminded him of how Jimmy and Pix had been right after they exhumed him. Jimmy had said something about a god then- nonsense, obviously, but something had clearly been influencing him. Was the same thing now affecting Lizzie?

Lizzie abruptly started walking back towards her town, not even so much as saying goodbye to Joel. He started following her, when he noticed something. An elastic band wrapped around her head, connected to the sides of her face. A mask. Lizzie's face wasn't even actually her face. When he saw this he stopped.

He expected the fact that Lizzie was ignoring him to make him sad, but he mostly just felt numb. I've had this crisis already, he realized. Before his long nap, Lizzie had forgotten him too, and he hadn't been able to reconnect with her then either. Now she had a new face, and strange new memories, but this fact hadn't changed.

Joel stood there outside Critter City until night fell and a zombie attacked him, then he grabbed a rocked and flew back to Tumble Town.

(ch 1 | ch 4 | ch 6)

#arthropod writes #mirror mesa #empires smp fic #smallishbeans #ldshadowlady #empires s1 joel #empires s2 lizzie #empires smp

[underground-monarch]

ok. um. sorry but like

In Empires, only the rulers are Players. Only the leaders of each empire have the ability to die and come back, while their citizens are just mobs that, once dead, are dead for good. Right?

Does anyone see where I'm going with this?

~*~

Icestar (warrior name Icewing) is a fluffy white tomcat with elegant golden-yellow markings on his head, face, back and tail. His intense cyan blue eyes appear cold at first, but warm to the shade of a sunny winter sky when gazing upon those he cares about. His loyalty to his Clan is fierce, and he would not hesitate to give every single one of his nine lives to ensure their safety.

Webbedstar (warrior name Webbedfoot) is a lithe tomcat with short, sleek, murky brown fur. As a newer leader, the others enjoy poking fun at him, and though his reactions and retaliations are those of annoyance, there is often a sparkle in his bright green eyes, like sunlight glinting on the surface of a calm sea.

Redstar (warrior name Redsmoke) is a dark ginger tabby tom. With his usually rumpled fur and dusty black patch markings on his paws and chest and around his striking blue eyes, he perpetually looks as though he has been rolling in soot. He is a mischievous character, and while this trait can come across as antagonising to the other leaders, he is warm at heart and enjoys spending time play-fighting with the Clan’s kits, making the effort to get to know all his Clanmates personally.

Crystalstar (Crystalheart) is a pale ginger tabby she-cat. While the expression in her jade-green eyes might often be read as gentle, she is not a leader to be underestimated; a skilled fighter and hunter making use of her quick wits and unusual pale-purplish claws, she will always stand up for her Clan. Although she is usually more level-headed than her brother, she is not above participating in mischief, and to others’ surprise she often seems to enjoy it immensely.

Darkstar (Darkclaw) is a big dark grey and black tabby. His pelt is unusually coarse, except for his soft pale cream belly fur. He is a ruthless fighter, determined to make sure his Clan is the greatest and ready to unsheathe his claws on anyone at a moment’s notice. His desire for power smoulders in his deep amber eyes.

Goldenstar (Goldenwing) is a long-haired she-cat; her sleek golden-brown fur ought to be elegant, but it is often ruffled by playful wrestling matches with her Clanmates and fellow leaders. Her yellowy-green eyes glow like the summer sun reflecting off a grassy hillside as one bathes in its invigorating warmth. Her Clan and their home territory is her life, her heart; if anyone wanted to take it from her, they would have to kill her ten times before she would stop fighting.

Petalstar (Petalshine) is a petite she-cat with beautiful long, pale pinkish-beige fur. Her warm brown eyes hold the deepest secrets of the earth, and her heart holds the peace of the world. Although less willing to unsheathe her claws, she is still a formidable barrier against threats to her Clan.

Shrubstar (Shrubtail) is a small yet strong she-cat. Her fluffy tabby fur is marbled with a hundred shades of brown and grey, and her dark green eyes express a slight haunted depth behind her usual bubbly happiness.

Leopardstar (Leopardpelt) is a lanky golden tomcat, his short fur awarded with brown tabby-like rosettes that ripple across his sleek body like the dancing dappled shadows of leaves across the ground. His Clan is smaller than others, but no less fiercely protected; he will do anything - anything - to make sure his home remains unharmed.

Earthstar (Earthheart) is a short sandy and dark brown tabby tom with a tall spirit. The people he loves mean more to him than anything, and his Clan never tire of witnessing that fact. Despite his stature, he is a powerful leader, and any who belittle his Clan regret getting themselves on the wrong side of his claws. The frequent flash in his emerald eyes could describe any emotion from relaxed happiness to eager mischief to vengeful anger.

Oceanstar (Oceantail) is a large yet elegant she-cat. Her pale, almost bluish fur is mostly short and sleek, but her contrasting long and flowing tufts on her tail, ankles, elbows and ears give her an aura of majesty. Her eyes are light pink in colour, but the connotations of softness in that shade are a misleading foil to her unending determination to protect her Clan and those she loves.

~*~

welp. this was a fun little writing and character design exercise!

I have ideas for the season 2 characters as well, but I’ll probably post those separately, so keep an eye out for that :]

I was planning on having done drawings of each of them before making this post, but my arting braincells aren’t currently active and my writing braincells are, so yeah here ya go :) I’m still planning on drawing them at some point though! (but then again I’ve also been planning to draw my Last Life Warrior Cats AU characters for like. a year. and that still hasn’t happened sooooo. we’ll see 😅)

but if anyone else wants to draw these guys, please please please do!!!!! I would absolutely love to see how others interpret these descriptions, so if you do please tag me! :D

I might do a bit more worldbuilding on this concept as well, maybe come up with Clan names and other characters and stuff like that, maybe write some actual stories with these characters... 👀

#esmp warrior cats au #empires smp #empires smp s1 #esmp #empires smp au #empires smp fic #mcyt #scott smajor #jimmy solidarity #fwhip #geminitay #mythicalsausage #pearlescentmoon #katherine elizabeth #shubble #joey graceffa #joel smallishbeans #lizzie ldshadowlady #<- for reference of who's who. if it wasn't clear :)

[scribbling-dragon]

30 for seablings? not sure if you've ever written them before

shared history (forgotten past)

summary:

Leaving the egg behind, despite how she might later look back on it, was not easy. With the rose-tinted glasses of the future (a phrase she’ll learn and forget, and learn again as she has this realisation) she can say it was as easy as breathing. As easy as taking one step and then another. It was not easy.

(ao3 link)

(1,892 words)

[quick warning that this fic does talk A LOT about death. it's a recurring thing within it, and not something that i want people to be unaware of when going into this fic. take care! <3 this fic was also done for these writing prompts!]

Leaving the egg behind, despite how she might later look back on it, was not easy. With the rose-tinted glasses of the future (a phrase she’ll learn and forget, and learn again as she has this realisation) she can say it was as easy as breathing. As easy as taking one step and then another.

It was not easy.

It was days and nights of sitting and considering. Cradling the delicate egg close to herself. It is the only thing she has. She is the only thing it has. There is nothing left for them in this world other than each other.

Still, an egg is not good company. She has sat beside this egg, day in and day out, hiding when she can. Fleeing when she cannot. She uses the currents to her advantage, hides in places where the salmon cannot reach them. Where they are safe, if only for a little bit, if only until the salmon figure out how to reach her and the little egg, and she is forced to flee again.

She is not certain that whatever is in the egg – a sibling, it’s something related to her, a sibling – is still alive. She can’t be certain that the egg she carries with her, the egg that despite it’s small size makes her arms ache and bring tears to her eyes, still contains some kind of life.

For all she knows, she might be carrying an egg that has already begun to rot from the inside out.

The egg has not hatched yet, and it feels as though hundreds of years have passed. Maybe it will never hatch. Maybe it’s just an oddly shaped rock that she’s been swimming around with no justification for it other than she cannot be the only one.

Sometimes, she almost swears she can feel a heartbeat pulsing through the shell. Can feel it in her claws and in her fins, but when she shifts her hands slightly it fades as quickly as it had arrived. Maybe the egg is empty, has nothing at all within it, and it can only imitate that which is around it. It echoes her own heartbeat back into her eyes, giving her the false hope that she clings to.

(Please, she finds herself begging with increasing frequency, please, please, please, don't let her be the only one. Don't leave her alone. She’s not sure she can survive that. Not sure that she would want to.)

She presses on. Forges onwards despite the doubts that continue to claw at the edges of her mind.

The salmon continue to attack. They are mocking and malicious. They taunt her with their silence, refusing to utter a single word that would break the silence she has wrapped herself in. Layer after layer of silence covers her, tightening around her body as another layer is added, day after day after day.

Maybe all the muscles in her throat have atrophied. Maybe she will never be able to utter a single word.

She can’t bring herself to speak into the shell of this fragile egg. This small thing cradled close to her chest. Her heart beats, strong against the weak shell of the egg. She fears, sometimes, in the quieter moments, that her heart may beat too fast, too hard, and the egg will simply crack under the pressure.

She snaps and snarls at the salmon the next time they approach her and the egg. Lashes out at the few that attempt to dart forward and steal the last egg from her grasp- as though they haven’t taken enough already!

Waking amongst the destroyed shells of her siblings was a horror she doesn’t like to linger on. The cracked eggs, empty and devoid of life. The frantic scramble through a nursery turned graveyard. The panic that had overtaken her, the one that has not yet unhooked its claws from her skin, the one that lingers.

The dizzying relief of finding another egg is also something she has never experienced again after that moment.

A single egg, trapped beneath the tossed aside shell of one of her – their – siblings. She had almost given up hope on this egg, too, had seen the flattened side from where the shell had rested on it too long.

But it had been intact. And there was a heartbeat inside of it. One that slowed to follow the gradually slowing beat of her own heart.

She had sat beside that egg for months.

She had watched it, day in, day out. She had barely dared to move from where she sat, fearful that if she pulled herself away for even a moment, went to chew on some seagrass or try and find some kelp, that she would come back to a cracked egg. A slightly larger graveyard.

That looming loneliness had kept her rooted to the spot, even as the sand gathered around her. Even as it began to gather beneath her scales and itch.

As the months dragged into years the bitter taste of fear began to rear its ugly head. She squashed it at first, dismissing the worries for something unfounded. This egg was smaller than the one she hatched from. Was smaller than most of the eggs around it. Maybe it was younger.

There was no one to ask how long she had remained in her egg for.

The egg might take another hundred years to hatch. Might take another thousand.

She would wait. She has waited. There’s no reason to stop waiting now, no reason to abandon this egg for dead when she may as well lay herself in front of the salmon and ask them to kill her.

To abandon the egg would be to abandon the hope for companionship.

She is not alone, never alone, even if her only company is an egg. One that thumps the same heartbeat as she does. She doesn’t dare utter a word to its shell, doesn’t dare breathe a word into the shell, for fear that there is an emptiness within it that would echo the words back.

So, she clutches the egg close. She weaves it a sling of kelp and seagrass, one to keep it close to her chest and free her hands.

The salmon continue to grow. No matter how many she kills and eats they come back stronger. She kills one and two return. She kills the two, and four take their place.

There are only so many places she can run to. Only so many places she dares to venture this deep. This dark. There are things lurking here worse than the salmon. They would not appreciate her waking them from their slumber, just as she would not appreciate staring into a deep-sea trench and discovering that it is staring back at her.

The light of the ocean above looks more tempting by the day.

It looks warm and comfortable. Safe from the salmon that lurk in the shadows and pursue her slowly.

They are waiting for her to tire. She knows this. She fears this. Can feel the exhaustion beginning to tug on her bones, making her just that fraction slower as she escapes. The salmon get closer each time, closer and closer until she’s just barely avoiding them.

They are mocking her, she knows. They speak in that silent language of theirs and mock her for carrying an unhatched egg.

She clutches it ever closer and prays that there is something, anything, out there that might take pity on her.

No response comes. And she takes matters into her own hands, sick of waiting and tired of the dark and the cold and the loneliness. She seizes the first opportunity she has and forces herself into those warmer waters.

The egg does not pulse at her. Does not imitate her heartbeat.

The egg drags her down, makes the ascent difficult. There are many opportunities to abandon it. To untie the sling that keeps it close and watch it sink into the depths. Just another sibling to join the graveyard she’s left behind.

But this egg has colour. This egg has the potential for life and she cannot bring herself to abandon the thing that has pushed her forward this entire time. Cannot abandon the opportunity for companionship.

Until she does.

Until the warmer waters prove to be hostile too, and the land begins to look more and more safe as the days roll by. Time had been an unknown thing in the dark depths, but here there is a clear order to it, a darkness and a light. A day and a night.

The salmon here are more vicious. Faster. They have fed well on the prospering lands in a way their relatives in the deep had not. The salmon there had been meek, she realises, in comparison to these warm-water salmon.

It is with a heavy heart and a decision that is not as easy as breathing – she may say it is, in the future, a tease, to a companion she hadn’t known she lost until she found him again – but it is not easy now.

It is not easy to rip through the sling, grief slowing her movements. She tucks the egg away into a place it will be safe. Somewhere the salmon do not patrol.

The warmth seems to have done the egg some good.

That new confidence, that new hope, allows her to lean close to the egg, floating serenely in the shallow and muddy waters of a swamp, and bring her mouth close to the egg.

“You're okay,” she breathes. “You’ve got to be okay. You’ve got to be. You're okay.” She doesn’t recognise the sound of her own voice. It is as though a stranger is speaking her mind, is speaking with her mouth. It is her voice, she knows, but it is not one she recognises. “Please,” she begs. “Please be okay.”

The egg does nothing.

She cannot help but be relieved. The fear of the egg echoing her words back to her; there being nothing within the egg other than the false hopes she has built up over the last several centuries. All of it has been proven false.

She strokes a hand over the egg and swims away.

She doesn’t look back as she pokes her head out of the water, observing the dry sand ahead of her. Leading into a lushness that looks like an entire field of seagrass, only above ground. A great, large greenness stretches up towards the sky behind it, like an entire kelp forest.

She cannot help but glance back then, when she can no longer see the egg, bidding it a farewell. It will find her, she tells herself. When it hatches, it will find her, and she will no longer be alone. And it will be warm.

The sun is warm as she climbs out the water, thoughts of the egg trickling away as easily as the water trickles away from her skin.

She stands beneath the sun, feels the warmth of it on her back, staring off into the distance. She blinks, and then shakes her head, wet hair flicking about her face and sticking to her skin.

There had been something…something that she can’t remember.

There was…something important in the swamp?

Well, can’t have been that important if she’s forgotten it!

#asks #anon #juno.writes #ldshadowlady #jimmy solidarity #empires smp #empires smp s1 #empires smp fic #empires lizzie #empires jimmy

[paradoxlemonade]

Find It And Set It Free

Fandom: Empires SMP

Ships: Shelby x Paranoia (that’s a joke, there are no pairings)

words: 1053

Warnings: denial, paranoia

Ao3: Here!

Summary: Shelby finds a mysterious spyglass that lets her find lost things. It raises more questions than answers. (This is my @mcytblrholidayexchange present for @booisghost! I hope you enjoy :D )

 Shelby’s hands trembled as she pulled the spyglass out of her chest. The sleek wooden body and copper rims glinted in the low light of her room.

 Her brows pinched. “I don’t own a spyglass.” Did someone rummage through her house? A bite of discomfort wormed around in her gut.

 But why come here just to drop off something so innocuous, and not even leave a note? She had half a mind to check every chest to make sure everything was where it should be, but the box she pulled it out of was full. If there had been a thief who left their spyglass behind while pillaging because of a full inventory, then the chest she found the spyglass in would be far emptier.

 She shook her head. “There’s no thief. Definitely not. It’s fine!”

 Measuring the weight, she turned the offending object around in her hands and ran her fingers against the cool wood barrel. Up and down, until her nails caught on an engraving. A clue?

 With a distracted flick of her hand, one of the floating candles sank towards the strange object and angled its wick inwards. The warm light cast ghostly flickers over the smooth surface.

     ‘Find what has been lost.’  

 Shelby repeated the phrase out loud, each common word and syllable awkward and foreign on her tongue.

 Was this some kind of weird joke? If it was, then the punchline was off in the distance and she wasn’t going to get it anytime soon.

 The spyglass was pretty, but odd to just show up. Eh, no matter. Her spyglass now.

 She held it with one hand, and without bothering to focus, peered through the lens.

 Her lungs stopped.

 Grey.

 Nothing but a sea of dark and light grey.

 Magic.

 She scrambled to hold it as far from her as possible, as if that would make it go away. “No, no, no. This isn’t happening. I don’t—I can’t—The academy couldn’t have magicked it here. That only works with mailboxes.”

 An incredulous laugh bubbled in her throat as her feet carried her around the room in frantic pacing. “But it’s here, and it’s magic! Witch magic; what else would it be?”

 She clutched the offending object to her chest, suddenly still and silent.

 “What even is it?” Beyond a spyglass, of course. That was merely its form, in the way that a flying broom was shaped quite like an ordinary broom for cleaning. But it could fly.

 Cautiously, she lifted it back towards her eye, her other hand coming up to twist the barrel and focus the view. She squinted through the eyepiece.

 The walls, furniture, and everything else in her sitting room were washed out in watery grey light as if viewing an old photograph. Some objects blurred together where their values were too close (even if their colors set them apart with her natural vision).

 She swept the lens around the room and drank in the sight. To her left was grey, up was grey, down was grey, right was grey—

 And Purple?

 She lowered the spyglass. “Tortoise, there you are!”

 Tortoise croaked at her and hopped over from where he’d nestled himself between a bookcase and the wall.

 … She went downstairs because she was looking for her familiar to perform a spell—Tortoise was lost.

 Shelby looked at her frog through the eyepiece once more. His leathery skin blended into the floor, now appearing a dappled grey. Huh. Since she found what she sought after, it was no longer lost.

 Her grip tightened. Why would the academy send her something useful? They expelled her. Shamed. A failure. Why did they send her this?

 … If it had been them at all.

 A growl worked past her anxiety-bitten lips. Who else could it be?

 For lack of any answers, she brought the mysterious gift back to her eye and let her gaze drift around her messy living space. She checked under, behind, and in hiding places for things she’d lost, each little bauble or trinket highlighted in their original colors. They jumped out from their surroundings as if to say, ‘I’m here! You forgot me, but I’m still here!’

 Crystals with cloudy surfaces from scratches, empty bottles gathering dust, shoes still caked in dried mud, buttons with chipped paint, and spools of thread barely used were just some of the knick-knacks Shelby returned to their proper homes in shelves, drawers, and closets. Really, the spyglass was a lovely item as long as she didn’t think about where it came from. Which she was pointedly not doing. She’d always had it and it did not show up unannounced. That would be silly! And she’s not silly. It’s fine.

 She used the spyglass to look out the window. The grey was lighter in the sunbeams reflecting off the pool, and deeper, darker towards the woodland shadows. And then something flickered. It burned bright, almost flickering and flashing through the tree branches. A color. She sucked in a clenched breath and ducked down under her window, legs pulled tight to her chest and nails digging into the spyglass’s lacquer. Was that orange? Or red? Was it humanoid or quadrupedal, or did it not have legs to begin with? It moved. Something lost was shifting amongst the trees.

 No. No, she saw nothing at all, let alone something alive and lost. The woods were dark and grey and nothing else. There was nothing out there, and certainly not anything she needed to find.

 Shelby took a deep breath and stood back up. She resumed her search.

 By the time she reached her bedroom, most of the things she couldn’t find but wanted to (and several she didn’t know were misplaced) were returned to their proper homes. Everywhere she looked in her room lacked color, since she spent so much time there and was very familiar with it.

 She meandered to the center of the room and slowly turned, still gazing through the spyglass.

 She stopped on her mirror.

 A shocked face, flushed pink, stared back at her. Soft brown hair framed the woman and a large sage-green hat cast a warm shadow over her. She clutched a grey spyglass tightly, still looking through the lens.

 Shelby shrieked.

 The spyglass slipped from her fingers, and the lens shattered on her floor.

#shubble #empires smp #esmp #empires smp fic #idea writes #idea original post #empires smp shubble #fanfic #mcyt #mcyt holiday gift exchange

[sixteenth-days]

From the Archives: Statement 0170921

Hypomyces

[MUMBO] You know, when you asked me to drop you off, I figured that meant you were going to sleep. Not… straight back to work. It’s past ten. [GRIAN] I just- look, I just need to read one, and then I’ll go straight to sleep after, okay? Statement of Katherine Elizabeth, regarding a boarder in her house. Statement originally given five years ago, September 21st, 2017. Statement begins.

#my writing #the hermit archives #empires smp fic #katherine elizabeth #shubble #shubbleyt

[circesays]

Previous Part | Next Part | First Part

Deep beneath the surface, down where the sun doesn’t shine, hangs a cage of copper and wood. And in this cage of twisting metal and weakened bars sits a man lamenting about life. Life in a cage.

“Ohhhhhh, this is just dreadful, you know,” Oli remarked to his ghostly companion, a new addition to the dreary surroundings. “Stuck down here, all alone in this cage.”

“You literally have been rambling to me for the last two hours,” deadpanned the floating specter, the form of a child wrapped up in green threads, like a puppet on strings.

“Yes, but I’m 97.4% sure you’re just a figment of my imagination that my mind has conjured from the depths of my psyche to torture me and prove that I’ve gone ins- hey! Really?”

The specter held his hand in front of Oli’s face with a frown and poked the other's nose. “I am real. And like I was trying to tell you earlier, I need your help.”

At this, Oli sat up straight and gave some finger guns. “What do you need my fine foggy freaky... fun... friend? Not much I can do from a cage, you know. And what's your name?”

The boy looked puzzled, his head tilting to the side. He couldn't be older than 16.

(Oli secretly thought it was kind of adorable, if not a bit concerning, like a lost puppy.)

"I... do not know my own name. Not right now."

(And the threads pulled ever tighter around his neck, his wrists, his ankles. Because toys aren't given names unless they're loved.)

(And the god does not love Tumble Town.)

"Oh. Well. That's not... concerning at all. What's up with the strings, then? And the weirdly calm attitude?"

“My entire town has been cursed by an arrogant god. We’ve all been turned into inanimate toys while our Sheriff is left alone and unable to help or leave. I can't really feel much as a ghost... we're not quite alive right now.”

(Across the server, a thousand chunks away, a small figure curled up in the fake fur of his faithful companion, listening to the pitter patter of his deputy’s heart, wondering why it all went so so wrong.)

The stillness was only pierced by the bats above and the distant sounds of the bustling Goblin Empire.

(Oli did not know what to do. The horn slipped into his inventory.)

“…what?”

(And Oli was frozen like ice inside.)

“My entire town-”

“No I heard you the first time, kiddo. Who’s your Sheriff?”

(And Oli is rarely serious, hiding the heartbreak and pain away beneath songs and jokes and caterwauling.)

(But this boy, only a child, needs him right now.)

At this, the boy shrugged. “I can only remember him as the Sheriff right now. Brown eyes, pale skin-”

“Does he have a green streak in his hair?"

(And the air grew tense, the boy's expression darkening in time with the pulsing of the skulk around them.)

"No."

(The air remained thick. A sore spot, then. What did Joel do, to receive such rage?)

"Okayyy, not- okay. Blonde, loud voice, bullied often?”

A nod, hesitant and frustrated.

Oli frowned. That could only be Jimmy- the others could never resist teasing him. But to go so far? It had to be some sort of mistake. Actually, speaking of mistakes…

“Why have you come to me of all people for help? It’s not like I’m your best option.”

The boy shook his head with a bitter smile, leaning against the bars with his head tilted back.

“You’re the only one who can see me.”

(Because most players dove through the fabric of reality in the "end," landing safely in their beds or in the soft grass of the world spawn. Because most players let the darkness you fight is within you and the light you seek is within you and you are the universe and you are love slip by.)

(Because the emperors went about their days, unable to see the green strings covering their eyes and ears, wrapping around their throats.)

(Because far away, the loremaster and builder and historian and friend struggled against the green strings tying him up, leaving him trapped within his own mind.)

(Because far away, Pixlriffs called to the universe. But nobody could hear him scream.)

(But Oli let the universe hold him, drifting in the folds as he waited and listened and was told he was love. And the universe loved him. And he was love.)

Oli eyed the threads threatening to choke the boy, reaching out to give a gentle tug on the one wrapped around his wrist.

No strings could hold him.

(Because he is love.)

“I’ll help you, once I get out, then.”

“You can just jump out of the cage you know, it’s not a far enough drop to kill you.”

“…I could’ve done that this entire time?!”

#oli theorionsound #theorionsound #cursed toy au #angst #empires smp #empires smp fic #ghost #lets go #surprise! its oli! #pixlriffs #you wondered where he is #well there he is! #hahaha i tied him up :) #joel smallishbeans #smallishbeans #empires smp season 2 #jimmy solidarity

[canarydarity]

Uh. Hi?

Obviously you have no obligation to do anything but uh-

if you did end up writing that pix one-shot

I know at least one person that would gobble it up.

(it's me, I'm that person)

Withering Away

(words: 1619) (link to previous Pix fic)

__________________________________

It was part of Pix’s job to have even an elementary understanding of decomposition, though it was never a topic he’d expected to come to know intimately. Or, well, he had, just not when he was still conscious for the experience. 

This was not how it was supposed to happen. There was not meant to be an awareness of such things. A mercy, it was—it must be—to lose sentience before losing all the rest; physicality, corporeal form, tangibility. A mercy Pixlriffs was not afforded. 

And was not afforded, and was not afforded, and was not afforded.

The first time—the only real time—he’d woken up gasping on the stone floor of the catacombs. Likely no time at all had passed since his, well, passing to when he awoke, but his mind felt decades older, his head weary from the encounter with death. It didn’t matter that he’d died indoors, huddled in one of the dark corners of Katherine's house, curled into a ball on the wooden planks—his body had felt itself be reclaimed, it had touched decay. 

Time had both slowed and sped up around him; the party had moved on, his stuff pillaged or put aside for his return—when they’d at first expected that to happen—then unknowing. The crown chose another host, tea was drunk, and goodbyes were said as the partygoers left and returned to their own empires; and all the while, Pixlriffs remained on the floor, watching this happen at thrice the speed, like a film being fast-forwarded, finger holding the button to remain on the fastest possible setting. He could not speak, he could not move, he could not intervene. He could take only one, shallow, raggedy breath every few minutes, the air rattling around in his quickly emptying chest, the term death rattle never feeling quite so accurate. 

All in all, the rest of the party must have been an hour or so long—but for Pix, it was mere minutes, and time did not stop there. He lay on the floor of a forgotten hallway and watched around him as time passed on; as folks and events came and went until suddenly the empire had fallen—or he assumed as such, because the rooms remained empty and dark and the sconces empty of torches and small weeds had begun to peek up through the floorboards before seemingly gaining their confidence and overtaking all. 

And as the house sunk deeper into the ground, what must happen to all happened to Pixlriffs; the life in the dirt found him, and they reclaimed what was theirs. It seemed that the speed of time had only been saving him for this: this duty of his—of us all—to give back to the ground from whence we came. He had been outrunning it for so long that it did not waste any time when it finally caught up with him. 

Roots of the surrounding plants reached like hands for his arms his legs wherever they could catch hold, and as they curled around him they tugged and tugged until his burial began. The worms and the bugs and the scavengers picked and picked at him until the leathery fleshy parts that let him resemble something human were gone, and the rest of him was left to seep into the ground and fertilize. To give back; life gives to life gives to life—it was just that the life that begins this cycle—the giver—was not supposed to still be alive when this occurs. 

And that was only the first time. 

Pix had awoken, as he’d said, on the floor of the catacombs, emptier than he’d felt in a while. Something vital had been taken from him, something living—something human. This ghostly presence was what was left. His skin was ashen and sunken and—at the wrong angle of the sun—transparent, and his insides were hollow, and his lungs didn’t seem to fill all the way when he went through the motions of breathing, but he was still here. 

So he went back to work, because what else was he to do? He was still capable, he did not see a problem with continuing to run the museum. 

The following times had been, weirder, for lack of a better way to describe it. Since he no longer seemed to be alive to begin with, not in possession of a physical body, he didn’t know how it was that he could decay. But the earth tried and tried and tried again to show him, to prove that it could be done. 

There was nothing for them to take, he thought, there should be nothing left of him to decompose. But he did.

And he did. 

And he did. 

The ground just worked harder from each time then on. It would tug at him and pull at him and bury him but each time it found nothing to eat, to consume, but it would not be deterred. It would grope and paw and beg and it would not give up until it found a piece of him that it could claim, digging deeper and deeper with each further exploration. It latched onto whatever it had found and it ripped it from him; he feared each time that there would be nothing left to be conquered, and he did not want to know what would happen then. 

This time, this most recent occurrence, he came to on the ground in Chromia, his brain catching sight of the color around him and feeling overwhelmed for a moment by the sheer amount of sensory input. Being dead, he thought he was past inherently living experiences such as having to catch one's breath—he was constantly being proven wrong. 

The sky was blue above him, almost clear besides a handful of clouds lounging about their day. It was a nice sight until it was no longer in his view; big eyes and blond hair leaning over him, a hat somehow even more aggressive and loud than the decoration around Chromia, which was saying something. Right, he had been helping Oli with his noteblocks. 

“Oh, my liege!” the bard cried, dramatics high, ever playing up an act; like he’d heard the phrase all the worlds a stage once and decided to take it far too seriously. Even so, he was as undeniably genuine in his emotion as he always was—it was a shame there was never actually an audience to watch his evergreen performance.

Oli’s hands gripped his shirt, pulling him up with more strength than Pix expected him to have, but he forgot his shock when the position change made his head ache harder.

“Not the king anymore, Oli,” he corrected, eyes clenched tight and hand coming up to grab his head. He thought perhaps he’d just sit here with his eyes closed until it was dark and there was less to look at, yeah that sounded like a good plausible idea. 

“You okay, king?” Oli asked, having backed off a step or two, though still crouching before Pix in his show of concern. “Not king as in the king as in ‘oh fair crown of jewels that’s killed you so!’ but as in ‘yes, king, slay!’ that kind of king.” 

Pix wasn’t really sure measures of ‘okay’ applied to him anymore since his status had changed to non-living. Surely the relative measure of well-being was different for those who were dead.

“Yes, Oli,” He said, rather than explaining this. He wasn’t really feeling willing to elaborate at the moment. 

Oli laughed awkwardly. “You sure? You’re looking a little green there. And, by green, I mean completely see-through to the point where I can see the grass beneath you.” 

Pix looked down, and, sure enough, his legs were looking less than tangible. “Right,” he said in response like he had any sort of reasonable explanation to offer for this phenomenon, falling back into his role as an educator out of need for some form of consistency, but there was nothing more that he could say. Oli awkwardly laughed again when there was no follow-through, the fear behind it permeating the air. 

Pix made to stand, and Oli grabbed one of his arms to help him up, the gesture appreciated well enough. 

“So, does that happen often, or? I’m sorry, is that rude to ask? I’ve never met a dead person before.”

“Often enough,” Pix said, picking up his bag and throwing the strap over his shoulder. They were technically not done setting up the noteblocks, but he didn’t think Oli would protest his needing to leave. “And I’m unsure, I’ve never been dead before, myself.”

Oli blinked at him a few times until Pix smiled, giving him permission to smile in return. 

“Don’t worry about me, Oli. I’ll figure it out in no time and be right as rain I’m sure.” He lifted a hand to bid Oli goodbye and turned away. He needed to get back to the capital. 

The bard called behind him, “Of course, king, of course! Good as new—brand new, in fact!” and then he must have turned back around himself because the noteblocks started up again, the sound carrying softly in the breeze, still slightly off-beat from the song attempting to be replicated. 

Right, good as new, Pix thought, despite the fact that in all of the human history he had studied, there didn’t seem to be a cure for having died. But there was certainly something here, something he’d never come across before. Maybe it wasn’t curable, but it was fascinating—and he’d just become his own primary source, no better subject to analyze than himself. He was going to get to the bottom of this. 

It seemed he wasn’t quite as undead as he’d thought.

#me and you anon🤝🤝🤝🤝 #the sole audience for pixlriffs fanfic apparently #and godbless for that thank you for having my back and encouraging this #pls #message me anytime to chat about pixlriffs i am far too obsessed with him #anyway yeah as i fucking said. this man was insANE for making a comment about reenacting his death and ill never forgive him for doing that #worm writes #pixlriffs #pixlriffs fic #empires smp #empires smp fanfic #empires smp fic #empires s2 #empires season 2