"You ready?" Iskall glanced over his inventory one more time; rockets and an elytra (if things got bad his last worry would be about the No Wings Club), golden apples, trident, his best sword, infinity bow, arrow, torches, food, communicator, diorite flint and steel (always), obsidian and a few End crystals Mumbo had given him.
"Yep." He said, "but," he grabbed Mumbo's wrist to stop him going in just yet, "before we go, are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure." Mumbo said quickly.
"No, are you completely sure?" He said. "Once we go in there, we might not like what we see. Grian could be different."
"I..." Mumbo hesitated. "Yes, I'm sure, are you?" Iskall thought for a moment.
"Do you think it's right that we go? Do you not think maybe Xisuma or maybe Pearl would be better suited for this?" He asked.
"No," Mumbo said surely, "we're best friends, all three of us, I think he'd be most likely to trust us."
"I guess." Iskall replied.
"We're... we're the Architechs." Mumbo said. Iskall smiled and chuckled, although slightly sadly at the thought that the friendship might be lost.
"Yeah, I s'pose we are." He said. "Let's go."
They stepped into the purple sheet side by side. It felt very different to a nether portal, like they were in a much larger universe than before and suddenly they were aware of it. The purple hue that took over their vision wasn't made up of neat spiralling swirls, but a non repetitive fire-like pattern.
* * *
Xelqua was home alone, Oリᒷ meeting up with some other Watchers and T∴𝙹 watching over a world. He was planning on leaving to join T∴𝙹 a few minutes later when he felt something; two new presences enter the temple. He rolled his eyes and 'walked' to the main portal. He walked too quickly though, inhumanly quickly. What should've taken about thirty seconds took one, and he also didn't need to move his feet. It was a bit like teleporting, but a shadow of him was left in the corridors he went through for a millisecond. There wasn't a word for it in English, but it took them by surprise.
Iskall lost his balance and fell back for a second and Mumbo took a sharp step back, nearly going back into the portal. When he realised that, he took a small step forwards to get further away from it.
"Wait, Grian? Is that you?" Mumbo asked, squinting to see the small amount of details that could be seen under his shadowy hood and outside the white mask.
Why are you here? He asked.
"To- to help you?" Iskall said, losing certainty.
What? This was entertaining.
"We came to, to, uh," Mumbo started, losing his own certainty as he could see no sign of expression or reaction from the playful, mischievous, energetic hermit. "To see if you needed... rescuing." It sounded so stupid said out loud in the dark, ominous room.
I don't. You may leave now. He said.
"Wh- no, what? Grian?" Iskall stuttered. He wasn't expecting the conversation to be so blunt. He was expecting happiness, sadness, fear, reunions, or at the very least anger. Not this.
"Grian?! Tell us what's going on, we're so confused back home, we don't know- we don't- please just tell us-" Mumbo started.
Tell me a reason I shouldn't kill you on the spot. Xelqua replied. He wasn't angry, he was amused.
"Wh-?" Mumbo started, before being interrupted again, but this time by Iskall.
"We're friends." He said. "Architechs." He glanced at Mumbo, before looking back at the black-cloaked Grian. "Remember? From season six?" Xelqua mentally chuckled.
Yes I remember.
"You see? We were friends." Iskall said.
Yes, we were. Xelqua said, emphasising the 'were'.
"Grian..." Mumbo said, clearly hurt. Humans were simple like that.
Stop calling me that. He replied, not rushing because it was turning out to be quite interesting. He wondered whether he'd mind letting the hermits destroy each other.
"What do you mean?" No, they were getting too comfortable, too questioning.
My name isn't Grian, I made it up when I joined Hermitcraft. He stated.
"What?" Mumbo said.
Leave now. They were definitely getting too curious.
"No, we want to talk, we want to know-" Iskall started.
Leave before you no longer can. He ordered.
"What do you mean 'no longer-" Mumbo started. Xelqua raised a hand, lit it with magic and took their weapons out of their inventories, letting them hover behind him. Iskall instinctively reached to try and get his sword back but his blocked his hand using his wing.
If you're dead you're not exactly going places, are you? Xelqua said. Apparently that was the last warning they needed because they stepped back into the portal. He threw their weapons in after them, before deactivating it on their side. Then he stepped into the purple magic himself to join T∴𝙹.
* * *
"What?!" Cleo said as Mumbo and Iskall stepped out of the portal. "What happened? Why were you- How- Why-" she stuttered. Xisuma, Hypno and Zedaph also looked up to see them.
"What were you two doing?!" Xisuma said, louder than he'd meant to. "Did you go in without us?! Do you know how dangerous that could've been?!" Mid morning daylight filled the room. Mumbo and Iskall glanced at each other. They'd only been gone for ten minutes from their point of view, so realistically it should still be dark as it should only be about half past four in the morning, but maybe portals worked weirdly. They didn't really care.
And assortment of swords, bows, arrows and axes floated through the portal and dropped onto the ground, making a loud clattering sound.
"What happened? Are you okay? Did you see the Watchers?" Xisuma was showering questions at them, and he was probably just worried and confused, but neither of them could be bothered to answer. The portal turned off behind them.
"I'm going to sleep." Mumbo announced after a minute or so.
"What?" Hypno asked.
"Why?" Zedaph asked.
"Yeah, me too." Iskall said. "Gonna sleep for a week straight." They began to walk out.
"I'm sorry, am I misunderstanding something? Why are you sleeping? What happened?" Xisuma asked.
"Tell you in a week." Iskall said. Mumbo chuckled slightly, but it wasn't of happiness or humour. It was more... bitter.
"You can call off the whole rescue-Grian mission." Mumbo said as they left the Watcher's structure.
"Does he not, does he not want us?" Xisuma asked Mumbo as Iskall (to everyone's surprise) put on his elytra and launched a few rockets, pushing himself up into the air in the direction of his base.
"Nope." He said, willing his jaw not to wobble as he desperately wanted to start sobbing.
"So you're... sleeping?" Cleo asked.
"Yeah," Mumbo nodded, "he doesn't want us, so why bother staying up making stupid plans? I'm tired anyway."
"Are you sure?" Zed asked.
"He threatened to kill us twice and it turns out his name isn't even Grian. So yes, I'm sure." He said. Saying it aloud was abnormal. Before the others could question it any more he launched himself into the air and glided into the van. It was only his starter base but it was cosy and actually had a bed, unlike the start of his mega base. He collapsed onto the soft mattress and let himself fall into unconsciousness, numbed from the pain of the world around him that seemed to be falling down in every direction he looked.
* * *
The thought of his numbers on the tab list resetting to zero wasn't a good one, but the thought of going all the way back home on foot was worse. In any other situation, he would've smiled when the savannah mountains came into view, but right now it was hard to imagine himself in a happy expression ever again. He landed on the wooden decks and wandered over to the one bed.
"Oh, you used your elytra?" Etho asked.
"What does it look like?" He replied quietly but clearly, instantly feeling guilty. Etho was quiet for a minute as Iskall emptied his inventory into a chest.
"Are you okay?" He asked.
"Not really." The Swedish hermit replied.
"Oh, um," comforting people wasn't really Etho's strong suit, "I think X and people are investigating the portal right now if that would cheer you up." He suggested, it wasn't ideal for cheering up since it was related to everything going on, but there wasn't anything not related going on. "Me and Beef were about to head over there if you..." Iskall lay down on the bed and sighed.
"Don't bother going," he said.
"What? What about Grian?" Etho was confused now. Iskall just shook his head before turning onto his side and bringing the duvet up to cover him.
"Wake me up in a week," he said, "or don't." Etho stood silently as his friend fell asleep pretty much straight away. The conversation had ended by the choice of one side, a bit like a phone call in which the other person had hung up mid-sentence. He pulled out his communicator to check if anything had happened, but there were no unread messages.
Deciding there was probably some urgency to the situation, Etho took Iskall's elytra and rockets out of the chest and took off in the direction of Boatem.
As he arrived over the grassy plains, he immediately saw Xisuma, Zedaph, Cleo and Hypno stood between Mumbo's starter base and the Watchers' structure. He also saw Beef walking towards them - he briefly wondered whether the fellow Canadian was early or if his conversation with Iskall had taken longer than he'd thought. Maybe it was both.
He glided down.
"Etho? How come you're flying?" Beef asked as his feet touched the ground.
"Hey, um, what's wrong with Iskall?" He asked the others.
"That's kind of hard to explain considering we don't know the whole story." Xisuma said.
"What happened when he got to your base?" Hypno asked.
"He took off all his stuff and went to bed, told me to wake him up in a week, or not." He said.
"What do we do?" Zed asked.
"Is there even much we can do?" Cleo said. "They are clearly set on not talking about it."
"But we need to know what happened." Hypno said.
"Well, yeah I know that, but we can't exactly force them to talk." Cleo said.
"What's going on?" Beef said quietly to Etho, who shrugged.
"Look, let's just give them some time and hope they'll tell us more. From what Mumbo said, I don't get the impression Grian wants or needs us, so let's just try and get back to normal life as much as possible until we know more." Xisuma said. A few of them nodded, quite solemnly. "I'll send out a message letting everyone know."