Chapter Text
It was yet another incredibly productive meeting in Pacific. Mumbo and Iskall had been messing around in their meeting room for the best part of half an hour, laughing themselves breathless as they squeaked back and forth on their inflatables, tumbled in and out of the water, and even at one point watched with glee as Scar dropped by to rate their water slide.
Every time they attempted to settle down, their attention was snatched by some strange going on. Basil had found his way into one of the dingies and was paddling around in circles, or Mumbo had slipped partway through beginning to explain his latest redstone innovation for Pacific, and had ended up head first in the water, scrambling to get upright.
All the messing around was perfectly fine, though. They both already knew the direction they wanted to take their business, and had countless redstone contraptions and ideas roughed out, either in the Pacific skyscraper itself, or Mumbo’s underground development lab. Discussing them in a meeting was more of a formality than anything else, and both of them relished the opportunity to relax and hang out it afforded them.
The sun hung low in the sky by the time they managed to compose themselves enough to actually discuss their latest projects. Iskall squinted, just able to make out the shadowed form of Mumbo in the shade of one of their palm trees, partially lit by the sunset that hung heavy behind Iskall’s head. The man didn’t have to hide from the sun, Xisuma had long since gone and tweaked some things to make it safe for him, but old habits die hard. Not to mention just how easily he got sunburnt, something Iskall revelled in teasing him about, but it was all in good fun. Difficulty handling the sun was all part and parcel of being a vampire, and needless to say Mumbo was very used to it.
From his spot in the shade, Mumbo was explaining to Iskall his PacifiCo banking system. It was truly ingenious, and Iskall couldn’t begin to imagine the masses of redstone behind it, his excitement to head to Mumbo’s testing facility to check it out growing with each word.
“I had two ideas, one is PacfiCo having a fixed price, and the other is a variable price, so it changes every day, or we can change it ourselves. I just wanted to check with you which you preferred before I started building it, I’ve got both systems planned out already.” Mumbo said, smiling in a slightly nervous manner at Iskall.
“The second one, definitely the second one.” Iskall said with a nod, partially because he thought it sounded cool, and partially because he could see Mumbo’s excitement when he metioned the idea. He couldn’t wait to see it in action. It would be omega.
Iskall was distracted from the conversation by the buzzing of the communicator in his pocket, and he opened it up, squinting at the screen in the reddish light of the newly risen moon. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mumbo doing the same.
BdoubleO100: I can’t sleep?
BdoubleO100: can anyone else?
Keralis1: No
MumboJumbo: Sleeping’s broken?
Iskall glanced briefly up at Mumbo, who’s face was creased in minor confusion as he stared down at his communicator. The screen was all that lit up his face, as he continued to sit in the shade, despite the fact that moon, in all it’s bloated, crimson glory, had chased the sun from the sky.
Iskall’s mind caught up with his eyes, and he did a double take. Crimson? There weren’t meant to be blood moons on the server, Xisuma had disabled them seasons ago. But there one was, rising sluggishly behind mumbo, who hadn’t seemed to notice.
Something tugged at Iskall’s mind as he watched it. There had been a reason X had turned them off. Something more than the fact they couldn’t be slept past, but in his surprise and confusion, the exact reason escaped him. He glanced back down at his communicator, quickly reading the few messages that had been sent in the time he was distracted.
Xisumavoid: Mumbo, where are you?
MumboJumbo: I’m at pacific. Why, what’s the problem?
Xisumavoid: Is anyone there with you?
MumboJumbo: Just Iskall
MumboJumbo: X, what’s the problem?
Xisumavoid: Can Iskall see chat?
Iskall85: yeah
MumboJumbo: Yeah
Xisumavoid: Iskall
Xisumavoid: Run
Mumbo looked at up him in utter confusion, opening his mouth to speak, but closing it once again when he saw the look in Iskall’s eye. Dread settled in the pit of Iskall’s stomach, making him feel ever so slightly sick, X’s command still ringing in his head, the gravity of the blood moon that sat smugly in the sky above the server sinking in.
He stood, reluctant to leave but knowing that he must, for both his and Mumbo’s sake. He couldn’t make eye contact with the man, his red eyes so full of abject confusion and worry, as he, too drew himself to his feet.
“Iskall-” Mumbo began, stepping out from the shade to stand opposite Iskall, cutting himself off as he froze in the bloody light of the moon. His expression shifted ever so slightly, and he turned, fully facing the swollen satellite, his slim, tall frame silhouetted in the gory light. Iskall stepped back, unfurling the green and black plumage of his elytra, but some strange reluctance pulled at him, and despite every rational part of his brain screaming at him to go, he stayed put.
Mumbo couldn’t have stared up at the moon for more than a second, but it felt like an eternity before he turned back around to face Iskall.
And when he did he looked so wrong. His face too angular. His limbs too long. His eyes too red. Nails had turned to talons, and when he grinned a cold, unsettling smile at Iskall, his mouth was a nest of sharp, needle-like teeth. Had Iskall been able to see Mumbo better, he’d have seen fangs carpeting almost every surface on the inside of Mumbo’s mouth, clusters of teeth lining his throat, cluttering his tongue with needly white horror.
Iskall blanched, adrenaline shooting through his system, but his body froze up, refusing to move. Mumbo began walking towards him, his steps leisurely, his glittering dark red eyes trained on Iskall with deadly intent. Iskall was panicking, his breathing erratic, his limbs shaking, tears pricking at his eyes, threatening to brim over as his friend came to kill him.
Mumbo can’t have been more than a few feet from Iskall, a low hissing noise rasping from his nightmarish throat, when a great tide of barking erupted from beside them, as Basil sprung from where he’d been sitting off to the side, and leapt between Iskall and Mumbo, growling, hackles prickling down his back, tail tucked firmly between his legs. Mumbo tutted, rolling his eyes at the desperate little dog, and began to reach for him with those deadly talons. Basil backed up, now whining more than he growled, crouching low to the ground in fear, until he came up against Iskall’s shaking legs.
The contact seemed to jog Iskall out of his horrified, frozen state, some kind of protective urge awakening within him and he lurched forwards, scooping Basil up off the ground and leaping from the Pacific building, elytra flaring behind him and rocket going off in his hand. He banked sharply, adjusting his course to take him to the jungle he called his home.
Behind him, the dark shape of Mumbo unfurled it’s leathery, batlike wings as he took to the sky after Iskall, empty, red eyes glowing with malice and deadly intent.
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Doc wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand, silently cursing the bubbling, man made lava lake he was in the process of fencing off. The sun was setting in the Valley of Tatooren, and between that and the custom Mustafar landscape, Doc was really overheating. He didn’t know how Ren could stand to work like this, let alone live here, but he was nearly finished with his task, and as soon as he could he planned to go home and jump in the sea to cool off. The bay beneath The Goatmother was very nice this time of day, and on full moons Ren preferred to be left to his own devices.
In fact, Doc was only still here because Ren had made an offhanded joke about slipping on the sand and falling in the lava once he’d transformed, and since he could prevent it, Doc thought he may as well. Ren was currently in his hut, preparing for the full moon ahead of him, and as Doc moved over to begin putting up the penultimate panel of fence, he glanced at the sun, which had all but disappeared beneath the horizon. His eyes then dragged across to the other side of the valley, where the moon had just begun rising. The whole sky was tinted red, and the crimson hue seemed to extend to the moon as well, but Doc thought very little of it. His vision was somewhat two-tone, able to see infrared alongside visual light in his natural creeper eye, so the reddish tint was not unusual, simply more pronounced than he was used to. He pitched the fencepost, ignoring the short bout of persistent buzzing his communicator had done, and moved to slotting in the pickets between it and the final one. The Lava lake ended bluntly, with a steep cliff face on one side, and he felt content affixing the fence into this cliff. Ren could definitely still fall in, but that that point he’d almost have to be trying.
The world had fallen into the dark stillness of night by this point, and it was only now the red tint to everything gave him cause for pause, his mismatched eyes turning once again skywards to the blood moon that hung in the sky. He stilled, the crimson glow filling him with a kind of… manic energy that was greatly unwelcome, and he hissed softly to himself, tearing his eyes away. He thought Xisuma had disabled blood moons, it was always a pain to keep away from people whilst they went on.
His mind listed back to the communicator, and he lowered the half-finished fencing to flip the thing open. The messages on it were still fairly new, and reading them filled him with dread. Not only for Xisuma’s ominous warning, but for the unwelcome reminder of what the blood moon would do to some of his inhuman friends. Mumbo, Cleo, Ren, all of them would be so violent. He hoped that there would be no clean-up work in the morning, and if there was, he did not want to be a part of it. Doc pocketed the communicator and went back to pitching the fence, cursing the coarse blackstone that chafed his knees as he worked. Ren really couldn’t have built a more inhospitable base.
… Oh god, Ren.
Doc suddenly became aware of the soft sound of paws crunching through loose sand behind him, and he turned with a start to see Ren mere feet away from him, body tucked low, clearly stalking him. His piercing blue eyes were trained on him with uncharacteristic hostility, and his lips were pulled back in anticipation of a snarl, huge, sharp teeth looking almost gory in the red light of the moon. Doc went very still, his back pressed against the unfinished fence, unwilling to move for fear of agitating the werewolf. His eyes couldn’t help but drift to the dagger-like claws that adorned each paw, and he bit back a hiss, the urge to react with violence a little too close to the surface of his psyche for his liking.
Doc’s heartbeat was loud in his ears as Ren stared him down, brown tail twitching, but otherwise making no movement. He couldn’t help but wonder what he was waiting for.
After a painful minute of staring and waiting, without so much of a twitch as warning, Ren pounced, becoming a wild flurry of teeth and claws and death in and instant. All Doc could do was throw up his prosthetic arm in defence, so that at the very least Ren wouldn’t damage something he couldn’t fix. The impact threw him backwards, breaking through the newly constructed fence with a painful crack, the full force of Ren’s leap coming down on Doc’s chest, as Ren sank his teeth deep into Doc’s prosthetic arm with a sickening crunch of metal. He then began to swing his head from side to side in wild arcs, Claws gouging scratches in Doc’s chest and shoulders, irrespective as to whether it was skin or metal as he fought to keep his body relatively stable. There was nothing Doc could do against the attack, as he hissed and yelled and bore his teeth. Had he been able to explode, he would’ve, but he’d lost the ability to do that alongside his arm and face many years ago.
With a final, grating, painful metal groan, the joint that connected the arm to his shoulder gave way, and Ren was flung to the side by his own weight as the arm was ripped off.
Doc wasted no time in extracting himself from the remains of the fence, shaking splinters from his arm and stumbling to his feet. Adrenaline masked pain as he threw his elytra open and took to the sky, the overlapping metal plates that imitated feathers chafing and clattering all too loudly as he rose, circling for a moment as he watched Ren scatter pieces of his arm all over the valley.
Doc swerved in the air, unsteady and unbalanced, his head getting light as the scratches in his chest began to drip black blood onto the leafy canopy that quickly came up below him as he began to head into the jungle.
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Cleo and Joe were relaxing beneath a tree, enjoying the quiet peace of the setting sun. It had been a busy day for the both of them, bantering back and fourth as they made some more headway on the Hermit zoo, and so they both felt they deserved the rest. They sat in near silence, Joe’s quiet humming the only sound that broke it, watching contently as the valley that contained the partially built Hermit Zoo was bathed in the last few rays of daylight.
It was around then that their communicators began to buzz wildly.
“Huh,” said Joe as he pulled his out, and flipped it open. Cleo leant towards him to try and see the screen,
“What’s going on in chat?”
“It looks like sleep’s broken” Joe said with a frown, “And now Xisuma is quizzing Mumbo? That’s strange.”
He continued to frown down at the communicator, as ominous messages continued to roll in. Cleo had gone very quiet.
Xisumavoid: Run
Xisumavoid: Iskall, did you manage to get somewhere safe?
Xisumavoid: Iskall?
JoeHillsSays: What’s wrong?
Xisumavoid: Blood moon
Joe stood up abruptly, looking up at the sky to see the blood moon he had somehow missed hanging above the horizon. He’d always found it strange that a rock could be so menacing. His attention turned to Cleo, who was still sat against the tree. Her eyes were unfocused, and ever so slightly glazed over, and she sat still and stiff. He sucked a breath in between his teeth, turning away as he equipped his elytra, and pulled out his rockets. He opened and closed the wings a few times, getting used to their weight. He didn’t wear them constantly like a lot of people did, and still flew fairly infrequently, although that had been changing since he’d gotten a free fireworks pass at Tango’s shop.
“Well, sorry Cle- OH!” He had turned to say goodbye to Cleo, only to find her much closer to him than he had anticipated. He backed up quickly, opening his elytra, and she lurched forwards, lunging for him. Joe backed up more, panic mixing with fear and sadness as she paused to fix him with eyes that brimmed with genuine hate and disdain, before lunging again. Joe tried to step away, but instead of finding more space behind him he was met with a tree. He threw himself to the side, stumbling and staggering slightly as he overbalanced, having to flap the elytra wildly to stay upright, forcing him to stay in the same spot for just a moment too long.
Cleo saw her opportunity and took it, throwing her rotted, undead form at Joe, hand clawed, dragging too-sharp nails across his arm. He let out a short cry of pain, clamping a hand over the small wound and stumbling away, reluctant to look at it, for fear of what he would see. Had she drawn blood, then he knew it was over. He’d be one of the undead soon.
Joe fumbled for a rocket and launched into the air, landing clumsily in the canopy of a tree. Cleo seemed to have lost all interest in perusing him, instead wandering aimlessly in the direction of the zoo. In any other circumstance, this would’ve been a relieving sight, but instead it filled Joe with unequivocal dread. And so, shaking slightly, he turned his gaze to the scratch in his arm.
Four neat little lines of blood greeted him.
Joe exhaled shortly, the despairing breath fading into a vague, disbelieving chuckle as he placed his head in his hands. He’d always known this was a possibility, and a risk he was more than willing to take in his friendship with Cleo, but to have it actually happen, and so suddenly as well- He’d never been fully prepared for this. How could he be, really? How could anyone be prepared to wither away into a mindless killing machine? But there was more to it than that. More than his own dread for himself- his worry for Cleo. He knew she’d be devastated to find out.
Heaving a heavy sigh, he pulled out his communicator. He was getting ahead of himself.
Joehillssays: X, you still around?
Xisumavoid: Yeah
Joehillssays: I got scratched
Joehillssays: It drew blood
Xisumavoid: Oh no
Xisumavoid: Can you still fly?
Joehillssays: Yes
Xisumavoid: Come to my base, I’ll see if I can find any golden apples
Joehillssays: omw
Joe rose to his feet shakily, already feeling sick, but his despair dissipating ever so slightly. In his haste to assume the worst, he’d completely forgotten about curing. He knew it was an unreliable process for players, often not working at all, but he had to believe it would, for his own sake.
Casting a final, sad look at the valley and at his friend, Joe took to the sky, the rush of acceleration making his head throb as he headed for Xisuma’s base.