#unfortunately for yall i love weird fucky stuff

[sparxwrites]

(Inspired by this post.)

Part of the Eldritch Boatem series.

[ao3]

The narrative is coming to get him.

Scar’s always been one for telling stories. It’s a remarkably effective way of getting what he wants. Not easy, no – though he makes it look easy. But it is effective.

Everyone loves a story! Hermits love a story, especially; there’s a reason he’s ended up with Hermitcraft as his home server. He’s yet to find a server where the players don’t, though. You tell the right story, and people will give you anything. Anything. It’s like having a masterkey to every lock in the universe. You pick a story, and you set the seed of it, you nurture it, you tame and control it into an extension of your will – you shape it just for the listener, and then watch as their heart opens up soft and half-voluntary beneath your hands from the flattery of it all.

The danger of opening locked doors for fun and profit, of course, is that some doors are locked for a reason.

Which is why Scar is careful with his stories. He tells stories about people – that diamond chestplate for five hundred friendship points, they’re valuable, I promise – or things – you need to flatter the enchanter, or it won’t work, just whisper some sweet nothings – but not the universe. You don’t tell stories about the universe. The universe has enough stories of its own to be getting on with, thank you very much.

The respawn is one story, or rather many, hundreds of stories told about stories across thousands of worlds; as many tries at your story as you want, if you believe that, and you may only tell this story once, if you believe that, and between two and seven tries, apportioned to each according to what they deserve, and when the red descends at last life you will kill those whom you love, and everything in between. Admins are another, wordsmiths capable and crazy enough to whisper sweetly to the universe and beg of it a favour or two; make me a world, a server, a haven and let me decide who to share my story with and let me trail my fingers across the source code of creation, let me dip into it, let me tweak and twist and pull. Creative mode, another; give us your story, and we will give you everything and trust us, there is space for the whole of the universe inside your head, would we lie to you? and come be we and be free.

Those kinds of stories – the big ones, the enduring ones, the ones that stretch within servers and across servers and between servers – are dangerous. Those kinds of stories are slippery, wont to get out of control. They get large enough to start telling stories about themselves in the blink of an eye, and then they’re gone, off the leash and with a life of their own. Scar is careful with his stories. He doesn’t make narratives about the Universe.

Grian, by contrast, has never been careful with anything, ever.

Scar’s not even sure if Grian realises he’s making narratives, half the time. He’s definitely sure Grian’s not crafting them. He just does them, just opens his mouth and lets words fall out in any which order he pleases, and lets a story out into the world without a single care for what it is or what it might do.

He starts stories for the joy of it, Grian does, with no thought for the consequences – and they are things of beauty, half-wild and un-collared and dangerous with it.

So, of course, it’s a Grian narrative that’s coming to get him. Of course it is! It’s Grian who looks at their ridiculous stack of boats and assorted junk, their newly-christened Boatem Pole, and says, we’re going to dig a hole under it. It’s Grian who says, Impulse, you can get through bedrock, right? Grian who says, I think we should make this hole into the Void the centre of our town.

Grian who says, it’s called the Boatem Hole, and it demands sacrifices, and we’re going to feed it.

But, of course, it’s not Grian that feeds it.

It’s Scar that falls in all the time, is pushed in all the time, loses his life and his possessions to the void over and over. He doesn’t mind overly much – Hermitcraft has a forgiving respawn narrative, as many tries as you want, death means very little here, be nice to those who’ve died, and there’s worse ways to go than the void. They make a joke of it, even, him and the rest of the Boatem crew – Scar the unlucky, Scar the klutz. Scar, who is the Boatem Hole’s favourite.

He should really have known better. A joke is a half-step away from a story, after all.

So what happens is, they make a narrative – him and Grian and Mumbo and Impulse and Pearl. A narrative about an improbably-balanced pile of boats, and a hole dug beneath it. A narrative about an impossible hole, hollowed out straight down and through the bottom of the world into the starving void below. A narrative about a void that picked a favourite, and pulled that favourite down into it over, and over, and over.

And the narrative is alive. The narrative is sentient. The narrative is hungry.

And Grian may have started it, Boatem Pole dig a hole build a town open the void make a sacrifice, but it’s Scar who finished it with it must like me. So, of course, the narrative is coming to get him.

Or rather… the narrative is not coming to get him. Because, Scar realises, as he wakes to the void all around him and against him and within him– as he wakes to perfect and absolute darkness, to stillness and silence and hunger that answers to the name of Boatem– it already has him.

#grian #goodtimeswithscar #boatem hole #hermitcraft #hermits crafting #hermitfic #fic #eldritch boatem series #yes this IS a series now whoops my hand slipped #unfortunately for yall i love weird fucky stuff #and also stories eating people #and also The Void #and also Other Things Which Are Spoilers #also yet again we say hello to me plagiarising the electric angels from matthew swift as creative mode #it's a hobby of mine what can i say #ANYWAY please enjoy several hundred words of scar dunking on grian but like. classily. #and also me doing Minecraft Mythology but like. weird.