AN:
Sorry for this chapter being late (both in terms of time of day and date). I was on a trip for half a week so I didn't get much time to work on the chapter. After I post this, I'm going on another trip to a place without service, WiFi, or electricity for three days (aka I'm going camping) so I won't be able to write at all during that time.
Fun fact, a Magic Treehouse book is about 5,000-12,000 words long, according to google while Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is about 76,900 words. We are currently around half the Sorcerer's Stone length and almost 3 times as long as a long Magic Treehouse book.
End AN
"You're not the only Enderknight, are you?" Etho watched Grian's eyes widen even more than they already were. He hit the nail on the head.
"Etho, are you hearing yourself right now? Me? An Enderknight? I hardly go to the End in the first place and who else could possibly be one," Grian forced a smile.
"You know, when X was looking for you to check up on you, he was asking everyone if they've seen you. I asked why and he told me that Scott asked him to. Now I could be wrong but, I don't think you're super close to Scott that he would know that there is something wrong with you to ask X to regularly check on you. In fact, it seemed like it was a one-time thing. If he'd noticed something at MCC, I doubt he would have waited a few days to show his concern."
"Okay? I do not get how that is relevant to this conversation…"
"It was the day that everyone was banned from the End, unless for emergencies because it became dangerous to be there. I would imagine that Enderknights would have some connection to the End. I believe Scott also has one of your old friends in his world, someone from the same unknown world as you. If something happened to him, it might be safe to assume that something could have happened to you."
Grian looked behind Etho, towards Impulse. "Impulse, you do not think I am an Enderknight, right?"
Etho turned around to see Impulse rubbing the back of his neck. "Well, Etho has made some really good points."
Etho huffed. Why won't Grian just accept that they know? Why couldn't he trust them in the first place? Even though Etho himself hasn't known Grian for years, he's known most of them for that long and Mumbo for a bit longer. Why couldn't he trust them? A small voice inside of Etho called him a hypocrite. How did he have the right to judge if everyone had the right to know Grian's past?
"If… if I tell you… do you promise that you won't tell anyone? When I say anyone, I also mean the other resistance members," Grian said without meeting their eyes.
If anything, that confirmed it. Not being able to tell anyone else though…
Etho looked over to Impulse with a hesitant look.
"Only if you answer a few questions," Impulse proposed, trying to find a way to balance out the deal.
Grian nodded to the request, "within reason. There might be some questions that I am not comfortable answering if you do not mind."
Etho nodded his head.
"What would you like to know?"
(Line Skip)
It was taking everything Grian had to not burst into tears. Everything was unraveling at once. His secrets, his friends. All he could do was agree to make sure the situation wouldn't get worse.
"You're other friends, the ones that you knew before joining this world, they're also Enderknights too. That's why X-Life and Legacy are also closed off with us," Impulse guessed.
"Yes."
"How many more Enderknights are there?" Etho speedily asked.
"Including myself," Grian started hesitantly, "six or… I guess five."
Silence filled the room as the reality of Zee came back to him. Grian watched Impulse and Etho's eyes travel towards the armor as they took in the meaning of Grian's words.
"... Who was he?" Impulse asked after a while.
He couldn't tell them but…
They'd watched Grian mourn him. They'd watched him clutch onto the rotting limb that was left of his old friend.
They have some right to know who Grian's mourning.
"His name was Zee. Zee System."
"Zee, what does—did he do? Where has he been before he came here? How did his body end up here?" Etho started asking before getting elbowed in the side by Impulse to stop.
Grian winced at the last question. "I will start with your first question. I believe he was learning some type of magic called coding? I do not know. Whenever he tried to explain it to me, it confused me. Before that though, he was a potioneer. Probably the greatest, and one of the only, potioneers that I know."
"Potioneer? Like some type of potion maker? Why and how would someone get better at making potions? It isn't hard to make them, just put the ingredients into the brewing stand GUI and wait a minute or two."
"... Have you ever been inside of a world without admin control, without admin magic altering how things act."
The other two resistance members looked at Grian as if he grew a second head. "What do you mean by 'admin magic altering how things act'? It's always like that," Impulse questioned.
They didn't know?
Grian couldn't believe they've never been somewhere without admin magic creating shortcuts to make items that usually needed someone with skills and knowledge of how to make it. On the other hand, Grian has heard from some of the other Hermits who hadn't been born in Hub and they still had people living in their world with admin magic. Any world the admins find, they intertwine their magic into the land to make it easier and safer for people to live in it.
"Have you never wondered why you are able to deal somewhat the same amount of damage to someone or something else even if you do not know how to fight or you do not get a good hit on the opponent? Have you thought of the reason that the GUI appears in the first place? If you look at the one world that admin magic can not do anything else except for maintaining a portal, Hub, has none of these. If you were to walk up to an anvil, you will not get a GUI to add enchantments onto an item or to rename it. It would be used to forge the item in the first place."
"If the admin magic does change all of that, why would we want it to change if it makes things easier for us. If we can get things with admin magic, why should we spend years trying to master one thing?" Etho asked, intrigued.
"Would you trust the quality of something mass-produced in a factory or something handcrafted by someone who has been creating that object for most of their lives? Yes, admin magic makes things easier but, at a price. The quality is practically non-existent. Think of it like this, a potion that you would be able to create would most likely have, at most, about 7 or 10 minutes. A potion that Zee would have been able to make could last for 7 or 10 hours if he wanted to."
The other two hermits stood staring at Grian with wide eyes of disbelief and awe.
"Why don't they make potions stronger if it's possible?" Impulse wondered.
"Well, part of the reason that potioneers are so scarce in my world has to do with potions being extremely dangerous and illegal. I do not know why your admins do things the way they do but for something like that, it could be because of safety. I could also see it being so people are less likely to use potions over other things. I do not know."
"What's with the knife?" Etho asked, pointing out the dagger that lay discarded on the floor right next to the severed arm. He must have thrown it with the arm.
"It is a dagger," Grian nearly growled.
"Okay… well… what's it for?"
"... It is a symbol. In the world I am from, there is a killer. Whenever she killed a victim, she would leave the dagger she used to mark it as her kill."
"How do you know it's hers?"
Grian picked up the dagger and looked at it. No matter how many daggers she left after killing someone, the daggers always were made with the same design. The chances of someone else recreating the exact design and using it to kill someone is too small.
"It is hers," Grian answered softly. "She does not use random daggers, she has a specific design with certain markings on it to signal it as hers."
"You've seen it before?" Impulse asked with a bit of horrified realization. "Wouldn't that mean that you've… you saw… you knew…"
"She has killed many of my friends. That had not started with Zee."
"How did she get here?! She isn't from one of the other worlds that are linked to ours, is she?" Impulse exclaimed.
"No, she is not. She is not hard to miss with pink hair."
"There are some people in X-Life with pink hair."
"Natural pink hair, along with the fact that she is not human. And I do not mean that in the sense that she is insane, well… mostly. I mean that she is not the same species as humans. She is a felina. Felinas have cat-like traits, females especially, the males have a slight wolfish appearance."
"So a pink-haired cat girl. Sounds like my worst nightmare," Etho joked.
"Who kills people with kni… daggers," Impulse added on. The two laughed a bit at the explanation. Grian huffed in annoyance at their lack of understanding the seriousness of it.
"Never underestimate her. I had fought her before on multiple occasions and had nearly lost my life to her," Grian gestured to the scars that are visible through the large holes in his sweater that is barely holding together.
"Did she," Impulse pointed to the glowing scar through a giant hole that is exposing nearly all of his chest and the scar.
"No. Do not ask about it either." Grian doesn't want to think about him any more than he usually does. Even with him dead.
A thick silence fell upon them as the severity came into reality.
"So… What did you do?"
"What?" Grian answered Etho, confused.
"You said that Zee was a potioneer, what did you do?"
"I… I would like to skip that question."
"I thought you agreed to answer our questions."
"Unless I. Not comfortable with answering them. That question, and any other questions that could come from it, are not comfortable for me to say. They have a lot of deep layers to it that I am not ready to face myself."
"Alright, I'm guessing that asking where you're from won't get an answer either."
"No."
The other worlds are not ready to know about Ardonia.
AN:
Please comment. You guys still have full permission to spam me about writing the next chapter.
Thank you Nordicfae for writing about updating because even though I didn't have it out a few days after, it would have been a while more after.