XXXIX

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Gem was not happy.

Shocking, Jimmy knew. Who wouldn’t be happy at being called at half nine in the night to be told ‘Hey, Scott is dying, five people are caved in a snow tunnel, and there’s a corpse that looks like the the creepypasta horrorcore remix of Xornoth as a demon. Also, said demon is here and currently dying' on somebody else's communicator?

To be fair, the communicator situation wasn't his fault. He fell into a ditch of ice and his had broken, meanwhile, Sausage's had run out of battery. Both of these combined meant that he had to persuade Arna to let him use her communicator because she didn't have Gem’s number on it for some reason and he was the only person who remembered it. He thought everyone had Gem's number, but apparently not.

And now, with multiple confused people having run about and quickly shooed all of them away to the Crystal Cliffs where they had actual proper medical equipment that thankfully wasn't Sausage's incredibly dodgy stitching skills, Gem had grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him off to the side.

"Okay Jimmy." She leaned heavily on her staff, the purple amethyst glowing. "What happened?"

"I have literally no idea." He confessed.

"How do you not have an idea?" Gem looked at him incredulously. "Weren't you there?"

"I was there! But that doesn't mean I know what happened!"

"Oh holy cliffs, Jimmy." She swore. She drummed her fingers against the side of the staff in an anxious pattern. "Just tell me why you were there and I'll settle for that."

He nodded rapidly. "Right. I can do that."

It took Jimmy a few seconds of staring to realise that he was supposed to have started talking by now, and before she could sigh, he opened his mouth and started babbling. "Well, right, Sausage had one of his prophecy visions? And, well, it was about Scott dying- or at least he was injured or something- so he, uh, came to mine and we decided to accompany him because- well, Scott's my husband- and so anyway we went there and there were footsteps and a caved-in bit of snow? We went down some passageways because there were footsteps everywhere, and then we came across well, everyone else-"

"How long is this going to take?" Gem raised her eyebrows, shifting anxiously.

"A little bit longer?" He winced before starting off again. "Anyways, the gang were all caved in a little cove thingy so Arna-”

“Why was Arna even there?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time, Gem!” He protested loudly. She sighed in exasperation as he continued. “Anyways as I was saying, she decided to start digging them out, so me and Sausage went lower-”

“Why did you split up?”

Jimmy’s voice rose more than a couple of octaves. “Because it seemed like a good idea at the time! So anyway, me and Sausage went down a system of tunnels that went like, everywhere, and then we found a room where Scott was bleeding out on the floor and Xornoth was literally suffocating to death on the floor right next to him because of this poisonous plant? And there was also the corpse."

"The corpse of what?"

"I have no idea. It was just there. And it had knives sticking out of it." He shuddered at the memory of it. Experimentally he had tapped it, and an entire swath of skin had stuck to his hand and started peeling off. "So Sausage had something he called angel-milk, which I'm pretty sure is just milk, and I carried Scott out and- yes, we did drag Xornoth put as well- don't look at me like that, what were we supposed to do in that situation?"

She gave him a rather confused look. "You know you could have just left Xornoth to die, right?"

"Well I did suggest it. But it felt a little messed up." He grimaced.

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