~Chapter Six~
Grian's POV
_______________________
Grian joined the game
And just like that, he was falling through the air again. This time, he landed right on top of a tree. Well, not exactly a tree. A treehouse. Disoriented, Grian stood up. That aching feeling was completely gone. He was exactly where he needed to be. Or at least, he thought he was. This was just all too confusing. What he did know, however, was that he had a massive headache. And also, he was extremely hungry.
Grian opened up his inventorial pouch, hoping that by some miracle, he might've kept some of his items this time. Nope. This meant that he probably should look for some residents of this world. Maybe they had food. And, also, it would be nice if they could explain what in the Nether was going on.
It was mighty convenient that he was likely standing on top of one of their buildings. If he was lucky, it would be their base. The gremlin walked across the roof, looking for a way to get inside, until he spotted a relatively-reachable deck to which he could hop down. Ah, that works! Grian crouched down on the edge of the roof, then nimbly hopped off the side, landing square on his feet. Simple enough. Or not.
"Grian?!"
He heard a gasp behind him, and whirled around. His heart dropped.
Sitting on a bench, right there, eating ham sandwiches, were GeminiTay and PearlescentMoon.
A door slammed open in Grian's mind, washing it in light, color, sounds, tastes, and smells. Memories burst through him like a rapid storm, sending flurries of feelings back into their rightful places in his mind.
So Cultie's ritual actually worked.
He remembered.
Grian the player, standing before some very important-looking people, asking for their permission to do a little experiment with a few of his friends
Grian the soon-to-be-Watcher, standing before those same important people again, undergoing some sort of fancy initiation ceremony (apparently he impressed them?)
Grian the Watcher, meeting a Listener and becoming close friends with her
Grian the Watcher, attending one of those super important initiation ceremonies, this time welcoming an old friend as a Rememberer
Grian the Watcher, actually doing his job of surveilling all those worlds, watching people grow, seeing what they love, what they hate, taking notes
Grian the Watcher, sitting at a table, sharing insights on new ideas, most of them being really bad, but with the occasional hit
Grian the Watcher and Gem the Listener, quizzing Pearl the Rememberer on literally anything they've ever told her (how does she keep getting these questions right?)
Grian the Watcher, doing his job again... he's just watching people
Grian the Watcher, still doing his rather dull job
Grian the Watcher, watching as someone called Xisuma the Creator asks if by chance any of the Watchers would like to step down and join his world
Grian the Soon-to-be-Player, volunteering immediately
Grian, just Grian, leaving the Watchers behind for good
All words escaped Grian in this situation. This... this. He knew these people. They were his friends. He remembered what he used to be. A Watcher. No wonder that symbol struck such a cord in him; that darn nether-portal-thing was plastered everywhere in his old home.
Grian stared at the two Watchers, not daring to move a muscle. He wasn't even sure he could move them, even if he wanted to. It was all just too much. He just needed a second—as one generally would, after suddenly remembering a good portion of their life. A breeze swept by, ruffling his fluffy hair.
He slowly, numbly took a step forwa-
Suddenly, he was swept up into a giant hug by Pearl, and soon Gem as well. "Oh my stars, what are you doing here? It's been so long!" Pearl was grinning from ear to ear as she said this, before finally letting go. Phew, he could hardly breathe.
"Hi, Pearl! Hi Gem! Let me tell you, this is just as much of a surprise to me as it is to you," he said truthfully. He smiled. "But it's so good to see you two!" Grian sat on a separate bench as the other two resumed their original spots.
"So... what have you been up to since you left?" This time it was Gem who spoke, cocking her head slightly. "Heheh, I was never assigned to your world, so I wouldn't...yeah." She chuckled, clearly embarrassed.
This was awkward for everyone involved. "Well," he started, "I don't quite-"
"Wait, how do you remember us?" Pearl had this serious look on her face, one of confusion, of curiosity, of... concern? "It's been so long, your memories-"
"That's the thing: My memories aren't quite stable at the moment," Grian admitted. This earned him a few odd stares. Oh boy, did he have to do Cultie's spiel now? He quickly summed up the bit about Cultie unlocking his memories, and how he can't remember anything past his current—old? He had no idea at this point—world. "But then, of course, I see you two, and bam! Watcher memories come right back." Grian shrugged. "And here I thought you two would know more about this than I do. I don't-" Now it was his turn to be sheepish- "-I don't have any idea how I got here, really. I was just lying on the floor last night when this really weird feeling in the back of my head got super intense, and I started wandering around. Suddenly, I come across this Watcher symbol out in the middle of nowhere? Aaaand then I kinda...left the world? And wound up here?" He grinned, holding his hands up in the I-have-no-idea-what-is-going-on stance.
Pearl and Gem just stared at him, dumbfounded. Finally, the former spoke. "So what I'm hearing is that you got your memories unlocked, and even though you've been traveling through worlds willy-nilly, you are still remembering things. But only every once in a while. And then you felt this weird feeling, which led you to a Watcher symbol in the middle of nowhere, and then you just showed up here?" She took a breath. "Clearly, you've been having more fun than us."
Grian laughed. "Apparently so."
"Hm...and how long had you been experiencing that feeling before then?"
Huh. Good question. The gremlin shrugged. He supposed he had been feeling it a little bit as long as he could remember, but hadn't really noticed it until last night. "I have no idea."
He glanced at Gem, expecting her to make some sort of snide comment, but instead, her face drained of color. "Hang on, Grian you were in Xisuma's world, right?" She seemed nervous. No, more than that. She looked worried.
"Uh... the Creator?" Grian couldn't quite place it, but he could swear he had heard that name before, outside of Watcherhood. "Yeah, yeah I did" Giving it more thought, he did remember leaving the Watchers with an Xisuma; he just couldn't remember anything after. "Why?" Pearl and Gem shared a look. "...Is there something I don't know?" Or rather, was it something he didn't remember?
Gem stared at her hands for a moment too long. She seemed to be conflicted. At long last, she said, "X isn't a Watcher anymore." Okay, that wasn't that abnormal. Like any job, people came and went quite frequently. "And not by choice." Nevermind, that was definitely odd. In all of Grian's newfound memories, he could not recall a single time someone was cast out of the Watchers against their will. He didn't know that was even possible; surely if it was, he would've gotten the boot long before he stepped down. "That was, what, a few months ago? I don't exactly know what he's been up to since then, but he's not with us anymore, that's all I know."
Next to Gem sat Pearl, who seemed very uncomfortable, and was twiddling quite violently with her thumbs. After a moment of very awkward silence, she clasped her hands together and grinned. "So! Grian! How about we show you around the place?"
Pearl and Gem led Grian through their treehouse, which was actually several—easily twenty or thirty, maybe even more—houses across a gigantic forest. It was impressive, to say the least. Each of the houses was connected to the next by rope bridges, and with multiple levels, it was quite the sight to behold. Some of the bridges showed clear signs of wear-and-tear, and others looked like they may have been put up yesterday. Each of the houses was unique, with little decorations that gave each of them character. Most of them seemed to have the Watcher symbol at some point in them. Wow, how long had these two been here to have put this up? It must've taken months, maybe even years.
Huh, that brought up a good point: were they still Watchers? As far as Grian knew, all the Watchers resided in the same world, and this was not it. Grian paused in the center of the bridge he was walking on, causing Gem to bump into him. "Ah- sorry Gem- So, how long have you two been here? This is so impressive! You..." Instead of asking his question, he began to just ramble about the architecture and the little details. After all, he was a builder at heart. He appreciated all the effort.
"Oh, you see, we didn't do all of this," Pearl admitted. Grian stopped mid-word. Huh?
Gem butt in. "Yeah, this world is a vacation spot for the Watchers; everyone has their own little house they stay in while they're off-duty," she explained. Upon seeing Grian's dumbfounded stare, she said, "Oh, it was started by a group of us maybe two or three months after you left. Technically it's not really approved...but there's so many of us that the higher-ups don't even notice when one or two of us are gone for a week!" She smiled, and was very clearly proud of their clever plan. That answered his question: they were indeed still Watchers. Wow, Grian wished the whole vacation world idea was a thing before he left. Chances are, he wouldn't have even wanted to leave if he weren't so burnt out.
...Although, he apparently met a lot of good friends as a result of joining Xisuma's world. If he remembered his life there, would he still want to redo it differently? Eh, he didn't really care. The gremlin gave it no more thought.
"So is this part of the Watcher world?" Grian asked, glancing around. That world was largely different from this; it resembled the end in its color scheme and definitely didn't have a giant forest, at least not that Grian could remember.
Pearl shook her head. "No, this is another world entirely. A place like this could never exist at home," she said. Grian nodded. That made sense. It added to the allure of the vacation place—while the Watcher's world was stunning, looking at the same colors all day gets a bit old.
The three continued walking until Grian remembered something very important. He stopped right in the middle of a room, causing Gem to bump into him again. He ignored her complaint, and instead turned around. "Please," he began, serious. "Please tell me you have food."
Soon enough, they were all seated around a table in Gem's house—which was apparently a ways away from Pearl's because she neglected to tell her about the vacation world for weeks, something that Pearl was absolutely definitely not still bitter about—eating rabbit stew. Grian absentmindedly twirled his glass of sugar water, only spilling it a little bit. "So," he said, now more content that he had eaten. "I told you all about my adventures, now what have you two been up to lately? Anything interesting happen back at home base?"
Simultaneously, Pearl and Gem immediately said, "We have a pet ender dragon now."
"What?!" Grian stared incredulously at the Watchers as they burst out laughing. "You have to be messing with me. An ender dragon??"
"No no, we're totally serious," Pearl said after catching her breath. "You know how the Creators can do code and stuff, y'know, being the Creators and all? Well, they got bored one day and just spawned a dragon that apparently—hopefully—is not going to kill us. ... She hasn't yet.
...
"Her name's Eggs Benedict."
Gem could not stop laughing. Tears began to form in her eyes. "It's just- it- she just- she just chills there-"
The next twenty minutes were spent getting Grian up to speed on the latest happenings in Watcher culture. To an outsider, the idea of a bunch of people who observe the worlds and expand the limits of them seems so formal, maybe even imposing. He wouldn't be surprised if there were conspiracies about them being some evil overlords. But on to people on the inside? They weren't all that bad.
To be fair, though, they technically spied on everyone and their thoughts. But it's not like that was doing any real harm.
After Grian was caught up, Pearl raised a question that Grian either didn't think of, or didn't want to think of. "So...what now?" she asked. "You coming here was a fluke, and I'm willing to take a guess that you didn't tell your other friends where you were going." Pearl raised an eyebrow. Grian didn't answer. "Right. Chances are, they are probably worried about you."
As much as Grian hated to admit it, she had a point. He couldn't just stay here forever; that would be cruel to his other friends. But now that he remembered that Pearl and Gem existed, he felt guilty about leaving them again as well. "Um... probably," was all he could find it in him to say.
"I mean, you could always become a Watcher again," Gem said with a shrug. Grian paled. One minute, he's learning about a domesticated dragon, the next he's being forced to choose which set of friends to abandon. And here he was hoping he could just have a chill day catching up with some old pals.
"Ah..." Gem and Grian turned to Pearl. "Speaking of, we should probably go to the Watcherlands with this."
"What? Why?" Gem said.
"Because, we don't even have any idea how Grian wound up here, let alone why. Clearly, this is some sort of glitch, right? We have to report it."
"But...then we'd have to explain what we were doing outside of the world..."
"We tell them we were doing field research on that thing that happens with the trapdoors."
"...fine."
"Wow, thanks for deciding my fate for me, guys," Grian said with mock sarcasm. "I really appreciate it." He took another sip of his sugar water as the two apologized. This was amusing. He clasped his hands together. "Well, are we heading over there or not? I for one, can't wait to visit my old workplace." He'd figure out all that boring moral stuff later.
_______________________
No one's POV
[[valueT M=not_fhs]] Ago
_______________________
When they weren't working against each other, Sage and Grumbot made quite the team. Two heads are better than one, after all. With Sage's newfound coding abilities and Grumbot's innate connection to the world's system, the two—three, really—figured out a way to leave safely, and without any unfortunate situations. The method was created in record time; after all, necessity is the mother of invention, and the world was breaking down fast. No one had even seen a mob (hostile or not) spawn in a week. As soon as they could, they exited the world and didn't look back.
But was this where they parted ways? No, not yet. Yes, they abandoned HermitCraft, but apparently, they found it in their best interests to stick together; an uneasy alliance. They wound up in an entirely new world, devoid of any other players. That's where they set up camp for a while to plan their next moves.
"Any ideas?"
"I could kill you and see if you come back."
"No."
"Ooh, ooh! Can we get a pet kitty? Like the one that one Hewrmit guy had?"
"Not a chance."
"Absolutely not."
-(Author's Rambling)-
Hello! So, I lied. I have decided to make this weekly instead of biweekly. Once school starts next week, I may change that again, because you lovelies all know how good I am at keeping a schedule.
Anyway....:)
Thanks for coming, and see you in the next one, my little Readers!
Promise out!
Edit 3/22/2023: Hi! It's been a hot minute. I would just like to say that no, I have not forsaken you! School started and by the Watchers, it ruined my tracks much more than I'd like to admit. I have not had much time to work on this, but I did bang out a couple hundred words last night. I will do my best to get a chapter out in the next week or so (plus my yearly April Fools), so until then... well, I've already said it last paragraph. :)
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: Truyen247.Pro