Chapter Text
ARC 1 - TICK, TICK, TICK
Pre-Session 1
- Sparks -
impulseSV - Pre-Game
Grian: impulse
Grian: what kind of candles do you want in your summoning circle
Grian: the new life series
impulseSV: lol
impulseSV: ocean mist is good!
impulseSV: and bamboo :)
💚 💛 ❤️
Impulse isn't breathing. You wouldn't either, if you were the one flying through the Void. Breathing here will fill your lungs with icy spikes. Yeah, he was technically coded as a demon, his mortal flesh warm with the taste of life, but breathing here still wouldn't be a good idea. It's smarter to free-fall in an exhale. Smarter to suck the empty air through your nostrils (if at all).
The Void smells like frost burn, gunpowder, and the gooey poison of cave spiders all mixed together and baked in a cake of death. It's a small improvement over the steamy sulfur of the Nether, but neither one is a cake you should be eating. While the Void isn't alive, sometimes Impulse hears it huffing at him. If you skim low enough, you can hear saliva crackle as it licks its lips and rumbles, hungry for its prey. It wants you. More than any lover every will, more than any ravager or vex or creeper, and it will crush your lungs if you so much as grant it breath. Impulse has died to it a dozen times, but this won't be one of those days.
It's a wall. It divides this world from other worlds. It will gobble you up and leave a petrified husk behind. Your unmoving body will float a few moments in empty space until the Void spits out your code again beside a bed. Falling out of this world, plunging into the depths of the Void, is one of the fastest deaths there is (right up there with a bad fall that snipes all ten of your hearts in one blow)… but it's the death that always takes the longest to regenerate from. You never hit the ground. There is no sudden snap. It just devours you. It's dangerous and beautiful and Impulse loves it for its mysteries. He wants to grip it in his hands. Run thick streams of it through his fingers. Immerse himself in danger and delight.
The Void will kill him if he spends much longer down here. Even if he holds his breath. And he can't fault it for that. When he's down to the last threads of durability on his elytra, he really shouldn't be skimming this low in the inky darkness. It's either been 15 minutes or an hour of waiting for Grian's call… Both are indistinguishable, the rocket count the only indication that time exists down here under the world at all.
Yet some kind of yearning in his code demands he play the waiting game here… Something raw, something primal, buried deep within his data core.
Question: Why?
Impulse blasts another rocket, arcing upwards. Years of practice keep him from bashing his head straight into the bedrock ceiling, but… Eee, that squeal he made when scraping close wasn't exactly the most manly thing he'd ever done. Skizz would get a giggle out of it and wax poetic about how much he loves those little shrieks, but Skizz isn't here right now. He's off in the mines hunting down a little extra coal. Though he didn't bump his head, Impulse rubs it anyway and gives the bedrock a little kick.
"Mean," he mutters to himself. He should probably stay up here. There's more oxygen near the bedrock. The cold doesn't bite as much. But he dips his elytra and ducks away from the ceiling anyway… mostly because he doesn't trust himself enough not to slip up and punch it with his fist. With ungloved hands, punching it is sure to result in damaged knuckles. His hunger haunches aren't full enough to offer natural regen after that.
Goosepixels blister across his skin. The yawning Void stays empty underneath him. And Impulse, so often steady in his faith… begins to falter. What's going on? He made a schedule. Has recording for the new Life Series already started without him? Maybe Grian told him the wrong date. Or…
Maybe, in spite of last week's chat messages about candles on the Hermitcraft server… Grian forgot that one of his players needs a special invitation to join a new world for the first time. As a demon, it's built inside his code. He needs a circle. His name chanted thrice…
No. Grian won't forget him.
Impulse swoops into the blackness and pulls up like a hummingbird. He juggles double rockets in his offhand. Okay. Okay. His breath slithers out in a silver cloud. Every inhale stabs his lungs. The Void is freezing- really freezing. Do people realize that? It's already eating away his skin like maggots and he hasn't even touched the worst of it. Or is he just crazy? Yeah! Maybe he's gone crazy from spending 15 minutes to an hour straight down here, doing nothing but fly in aimless circles, awaiting a portal that may never come…
The Void feels blacker here in the Overworld, somehow, than it does when you're in the End. It engulfs him in a cloak, and Impulse cannot breathe. The wings of his elytra strain at his shoulder muscles. Oh. He's too low. They're trying to pull away from him, like the pockets flapping from his cargo shorts. The wings are weaving in and out of his code. That's not unusual this close to the Void. The Void is weird like that. It wants to rip him into pieces. It wants to drag him closer. It wants to gobble him up.
Paf! goes half a heart of damage. Paf! Paf!
Ow. Impulse whips his mind back from its wanderings, throwing all his energy into his wing muscles. His elytra strain, but with the help of a rocket, he sails a little higher. His hearts stop flickering. He presses a hand against his chest. Okay… He can still feel six of them beating. He's okay.
Grian won't forget about him. He won't.
"Hhh… Hh…" Impulse buzzes his wings, spirals towards the ceiling again, wobbles, and fires one more rocket. The Void doesn't scare him, but it's like a wild animal: he knows when to back away. It's just as vicious as a mother bear. It'll rip him apart if he forgets his place.
There's an ache in the backs of his knees. He can barely flex his toes. They're too stiff. He's cold and not wearing any shoes. Impulse shakes his whole body in a shiver like a dog, except instead of flinging off water droplets, he flings off little black ice crystals. The Void writhes far below him, chuckling as he fights to hold his place.
I need to go back and get the admin panel… Maybe he sent a cross-server text to let me know he isn't coming.
But just because he "needs to," it doesn't mean he will. He's stupidly stubborn like that. Really stubborn. And competitive. Impulse grits his teeth, digging the heels of his hands against his eyes. He curls in his legs and just hovers there, wingbeats wild, and tries to concentrate on staying above the Y-level that will start to eat his hearts again.
Would it matter right now if he fumbled and fell? Not counting his T-shirt - crafted so carefully from the same code that makes up his skin - he has nothing of any importance on him. A couple rockets, some leather, and a damaged pair of elytra. He'd be disappointed to lose the wings, sure, since he went through all the effort to put Mending on them, but he and Skizz have spares around here. And it will take several agonizing minutes to pull his particles together again, but at least the Void won't be slurping away his will to live.
Would it matter? Of COURSE it would matter. Skizz would freak! Impulse grabs his face, hissing, and twists his fingers in his hair. Hhh… hhh… He really is going insane. It's not even dying that would worry Skizz. Both of them die all the time, and it's pretty common practice to do so if you've wandered far from home and can't be bothered to find your way back. But he's known Skizz since the day his code adopted solid form, and the guy will take one look at him and know instantly that he's tying himself in knots.
"Dippledop, let's talk."
He doesn't want to talk. It's not gonna do anything. Not right now. It's not going to take away his stress, grant him feelings of accomplishment, make him any happier. Plus, if Skizz is really in a bothersome mood, he might try to force a hug on him, and Impulse definitely doesn't want a hug. No talking, no touch. It'd just feel nice right now to scream and let a heart or two start to break.
Actually, the Void's kind of icky. The invisible wispiness of it is touching him a little more than he wants it to. He'd kind of like a shower.
Does the Void work like the ocean? Should he be watching some kind of air bubbles to defend his own sanity? His wrist monitor can't measure that - no one's ever reported that kind of thing - but there's no real reason he should be spending this much time in the Void. Are there little Void maggots devouring his arms? Impulse shakes his head, which snaps a few of the hairs from his scalp. Oops. Yeah, he's still been clutching his hair in his fists. He flings the strands into the Void with an exaggerated hurl, then dusts his hands clean. His elytra whirl behind him, and he tries to remember not to breathe through an open laugh. He's dancing with death as it is, just inhaling little gasps through his nose. It's a full-on tango down here. A sock hop. A waltz. Everybody in the whole cell block is dancing to the jailhouse rock.
I'm gonna be sick.
Maybe tonight isn't a Life Series recording night after all. That's unfortunate. Not Grian's fault (Grian isn't mean), but still a disappointment. The date must have gotten mixed up along the way, despite his careful calendar. So. Yeah…
This isn't good. Now his teetering work-life balance has tumbled in disarray. Like, what should he eat tonight? He'd planned to eat with Grian. His wife (plus Skizz's) already took the kids to another server for dinner with friends. Is it too late to text her and ask where they went? She'll roll her eyes in good humor and try to get a hug out of him when he shows up, and the only thought seeping through his head will be a desperate need to set better boundaries between his family and his work.
The date must be wrong. How did this happen? He wrote it on his schedule. He scrawled it on a signpost hanging on the bedrock. Impulse, fluttering like a moth above the hungry Void, runs his fingers through his tawny hair. It's sprouting ice crystals as black as the darkness below.
Maybe Grian got sick? That's not impossible. Every now and then, a bad regeneration sequence will knock your immune system out for days. Maybe one of Grian's cats slipped from the house on his AFK server and fled into the jungle. Or maybe Impulse isn't the only one who needed a few minutes to bid good-bye to a wife who's heading off to feed herself tonight. Grian's married, right? To Honey? Grian doesn't talk about her much, but Impulse is pretty sure that's her name.
Why isn't he here?
Impulse glances at his wrist, checking the second meter on his status watch. His elytra's durability is dropping fast. Great. He might need to pop into the Ender ender for mending if he flies around the Void much longer.
Should he dip? Yeah. Yeah, this isn't a good idea. Something's up. The timing's off. He mixed up the days. He should probably wiggle back through the gap in the bedrock ceiling and wait there for his rift portal to show. That's way safer than flying around in the dark like this until he's almost forgotten which way is up.
But why crawl up there to double-check his written schedule? He's been counting down the days for an entire week. He already knows what it's going to say… Sure, skimming beneath the bedrock ceiling is a cramped and dangerous way to play the waiting game, but he won't be here in the freezing darkness much longer. The summoning portal will appear below him any minute.
Any minute now.
Grian won't forget about him. He just needs to wait.
💚 💛 ❤️
Grian - Pre-Game
The wind kicks up, blowing strings of waffle-colored hair back behind his ears. It blows out the summoning candles too. Grian scratches absentmindedly at his nose and stays where he's standing, even when a second gust flings a splash of water at him from the river. It splatters the hem of his trouser leg. He doesn't even glance down. You can't be a Minecrafter if you don't expect a little dirt and water to bounce across your skin.
But it's a shame about the candles. He drops to one knee, stretching out his arm to light the nearest one with his flint and steel again. Wax has started dripping in the dirt. The candle jolts, then sputters back to life. Who knew trying to keep them all lit at the same time could be so difficult?
At this point, I'll just be glad if loose sparks don't set this place alight. The lag levels would be insane.
There's a portal of unnatural white blocks out here in the bamboo forest. It was built with admin powers and will be disassembled the same exact way. Its center glows and pulses with hazy pink light, showing blackness in its center if you squint. Grian wipes his wrist across his forehead. One finger twitch sends flint and steel back to his inventory. As wind rushes in his hair, he throws his arms upward in a V.
Easy does it now-!
The admin portal definitely doesn't exit into another forest like this one. It hangs suspended like a watchful eye. There's a thin ledge - barely the width of a trapdoor - for the guest of honor to land on. And Impulse does land, with an exhausted thump like a massive vulture before dropping to hands and knees. His fingers squeeze the little plank like a pirate who doesn't want to walk. He leans forward, cheeks puffed and red. Black ice crystals tumble from his hair. His elytra droop against his back.
"Hhh… hh…"
Grian, still standing with his arms thrown above him, tilts his head. He and Impulse make a strange duo, actually, if you really start to think about it. Down by the river, you have this young, almost spindly man in a red jumper despite the sweltering heat. His arms stretch skyward like the bamboo all around him. His eyes must be glowing with all the power of an admin. Really, the crazed eyes probably say it all. His blond-brown hair is ruffled out of place, grin ecstatic. Those smiley black eyes, as wild as a forest fire. That's how Grian would describe it, anyway. He's sweaty, disheveled, ready to work… but he isn't panicked. Not yet. He doesn't look like much of a demon hunter, and the man he summoned doesn't look like much of a demon. He's just Impulse. And they're friends.
Impulse, still drooped on the thin platform, lifts a single finger. "I'm just… gonna take a couple deep breaths… I need a minute. My legs fell asleep."
"I'm not sure that will help," Grian tells him honestly. "You're still sitting in the Void. I mean, you look like a pinched muffin. Crawl through to this side; the sun is much nicer over here."
"I'm not crawling through. I have my pride."
The next gust of wind throws dirt and sand in Grian's face. He coughs, rubs his eyes, and gets a little more sand between the creases of his skin. Eugh. Well. He still has ten minutes left of admin powers. Maybe toning down the wind on this server would be a worthy use of time. Grian rattles the command out on the panel fixed to his wrist and flicks the send button.
The answer snaps right back at him, almost instantaneous: Command denied.
Grian double blinks. "What?" Even that got denied? It's just wind. He twists, squinting up at the sky. Nothing but the hazy sun glares back at him. There aren't even any clouds in view up there. The only shade is provided by thin stalks of bamboo and one stray parrot watching from a lofty perch. Grian grits his teeth. "Are you sure? I still have ten minutes to set things up. Can't I fix the wind?"
His question is answered only by the waving stalks of bamboo. In the distance, a panda grunts and nudges its nose against a little baby, who rolls over with a flop. Grian drops his gaze, fidgeting with the admin panel. He says nothing else. Red text glares up at him from the screen on his hand, and there's little point in arguing.
But…
Grian rubs a bit of sand from his eyes. It's his fifth round in the death games. He knows the rules. He knows how to run a server. Why can't he finalize the details of the environment for once? It's his server. And he's the one with the admin mark seared into the back of his hand.
Well.
He turns back to watch as Impulse staggers to his feet. The demon - not that you can tell it from his human form - gives his body a firm shake. He steps beneath the shimmering pink curtain that screens his side of the portal from this one. The instant he passes through, his wings and little loose bits of leather go up in smoke. So does the carrot in his offhand.
Grian tries to smile, blinking tiredly against the sun. Against the sand… against the rejected command. Of course he'd be eating carrots. He's known Impulse for years, and the guy is just so… normal.
Oh, Impulse definitely doesn't look like what you'd think of when imagining a demon. No claws curl from his fingertips. No horns spiral from his head. He has no wings. There is no whip-thin tail swishing behind him as he walks through the shiny white portal, his hands linked behind his back. Even the place he exits doesn't look demonic in nature. No fire, no pits of skulls… just cold, smothering Void. Chips of ice still cling to the hairs of his arms.
He's a big man. A strong one. Broad shoulders stretch out his black t-shirt. They're the type of muscles that get shaped from days of shifting blocks, one by one, a few pixels over from where they were before, because Impulse's attention to detail simply wouldn't stay quiet if he let something off-center remain untouched. His chin is lightly shaven, but flecked with stubble the same graphite gray as his eyes. Grian sets his hands to his waist, cocking his head to one side again. So weird how if you took a gander at the guy's code and nothing more, you'd expect some kind of grotesque beast. And he's not. He eats carrots. It's enough to make Grian's smirk twitch up at one end.
Theatrics aside, this is shaping up to be an average Tuesday night. Impulse, keeping his hands locked behind him, steps gently from the summoning portal and into the sun-scorched grass below. He smiles too, eyes shining with bright relief. "Hey, Grian! Good to see you again."
"You didn't think I'd leave you in the Void, did you?"
"Nah! I had full trust you'd come through for me. But you know… Just chanting my name three times with intention works just as well. You don't need all the candles. After a while, the full ritual does lose a little of its charm."
Grian's smirk twists a little higher. He flicks his wispy curls behind one ear. The pixels glimmer in the sun. "Well, eventually, I'll let you know if it ever does. You know I like to make a show of it. I kept it pretty private last world like you asked. This time… I thought we'd make it fun! That's why I called you up before anyone else gets here. You know what I'm like. This is your fault. You enable me." The smile dips very faintly at one end. "I promise, we'll cut all this out in post. Recording doesn't start for another nine minutes."
"Yeah, well, I get that. Skizz used to do the same thing in Naked and Scared." Impulse glances back at the flickering candles and shrugs. "I guess when you're new to it, I see the appeal. Candles are fun!" He tilts his voice upward at the end. It's his own little joke.
The Skizz comment brings Grian a moment's pause. "Wait. Angels can summon demons?"
"Ascended demon, fallen angel…" Impulse makes a teetering motion with his hand. "We're basically two peas in a pod. It's why we get along so well. We always meet each other halfway."
"… Huh." There's only a sliver of non-human melded in with Grian's code. It's his parrot wings, and he already disabled them before he got here. They won't turn on until he comes in contact with an elytra, which never happens in the Life series. He'll get them back when he clocks out after the session tonight. Grian turns away, breathing in the scent of bamboo and jungle trees. "Well, normal spawn is just over that way, by the pumpkins. I'll start calling everybody else. I planted some carrots and wheat, so grab a snack if you need one. Take a seat and- Oh, WOW! Just… just look at that!"
"Hm?" Impulse is taller than he is, but leans around him anyway as though it helps him see better. Grian cannot speak. He lifts a finger through the trees, pointing out the river. It bends up ahead and curls back around, barely wide enough for two boats side by side. Heavy plants dangle their tendrils in the water. Dragonflies flicker their wings. Bamboo grows in spikes all around them. And in the distance, the orange sunset gleams as it glides towards the horizon.
It's quiet. The water ripples. A salmon leaps. Sploosh. Grian clears his throat. "I just… really like these new shaders I put on. Oh, that's beauty. The water looks fantastic now."
Impulse chuckles, releasing the stranglehold on his own hand for the first time. He flaps his shirt collar at his neck. "This should be a good world then, yeah? Can't be hell if it looks like heaven on the first glance."
Grian smiles back. Impulse's dark eyes glint with mischief, like two tiny chips of sea glass in the sand. "Here's to hoping so. It's a very pretty place to die."
"And I look forward to killing you," Impulse says. Grian rolls his eyes.
"Yeah, you would."
Spawn isn't that far from here, but it does require jumping across the river. Not only that, but they have to hack their way through the leaves, plus dump the leaves from their inventories so they'll actually despawn. That's a lot harder to do when walking one behind the other, so Grian hangs back and lets Impulse go first. Neither of them has a sword, let alone shears. An itch runs across his skin as the sun finally dips below the distant trees, bringing on the night.
Yuck. They only have a few minutes before the rest of their friends arrive, and resource gathering at night on Day 1 is about to suck. Cleo and Bdubs are going to have a fit. Good content, though. That is, if it's not completely pathetic to watch every player get sniped by random skeleton shots to the back. Hardcore mode can be brutal if you're unprepared.
Halfway there, Grian stops walking. "Oh. I almost forgot to take the portal down. Hang on. I'll just be a sec."
Impulse presses on with a grunt of "No worries." Grian rattles off the command for portal deconstruction against the screen. And… he hesitates, his fingers poised to tap out something else. He glances at the sky. Mm…
Yeah. Why not take the risk? Set time to day. Send command.
Command denied.
Grian exhales, morphing his sigh into a raspberry halfway. Why does he sometimes feel like this isn't really his series? Sometimes he feels like he's living in it and nothing more.
He checks the sky again, keeping an ear out for any mobs, then shoots a cross-server message to his wife: Game's starting. Take care. See you soon.
A few seconds later, she texts him back a heart. He flinches. Doesn't mean to, but he does. Grian glances at the sky one more time, throwing a questioning look at the Watchers or the Powers That Be or whoever else might be out there (His boss)… and jerks the admin panel off his hand. It's not like whoever's up there's been listening to him anyway.
The panel weighs like a brick of ice in his hands. Grian stuffs it in his inventory as his face heats up. Hearts, flowers…
It's all so confusing (and half for show). Is it… wrong? Even after several years, he still doesn't know how to act when a heart flits across the screen. What's the right way to show affection to someone you were programmed to see as "Wife," even though you never had a wedding? Never had a real first date? It's just… One day he woke up with a ring coded on his finger, and it was six weeks before he even found out who the recipient was supposed to be.
And now we share a private server. Two cats. A home.
Somehow, it isn't weird to share servers alone with Taurtis or Tim or BigB or Scar or Joel or Impulse or Pearl… but it's different sharing with Honey. He built them a small manor - even did the back of it, with her help - and he's done half the interior. They're still missing essential features… but Honey never nags him for it, for which he's honestly grateful. Don't get him wrong! He's grateful!
Their home lies tucked away in a jungle biome and they get visits from parrots every day. Honey feeds them seeds from her palm. Most days, she'll pull apart her office curtains in the mornings and talk to them, which Grian can hear from next door in the master bedroom. She loves parrots. Which is… weird. Right? Was she designed that way on purpose? So… so confusing…
She can't keep pace with the changing updates of the game. She doesn't know the names of half these blocks. She struggles to defend herself against mobs… She's only HERE because she was created, but because she's perma-AFK, she's locked into her birth server with no way out…
You know, living with Honey is a little like living with Scar. She builds unintentional mob farms, doesn't quite grasp the little nuances of world mechanics, and Grian feels like a babysitter whenever they go out to explore. It stings, actually. It kills him to know he's only seen a handful of their home server's chunks. If he had properly explored maps, he wouldn't even be able to wallpaper the space between his desk and his window. Their house isn't built from the materials Grian originally wanted, either, because he didn't know where to go to find them, and not knowing hurts like heck, but it also hurts to go out there on his own…
Oh yeah. Honey built the Nether portal too close to their bedroom. It's almost the loudest thing in the game. He needs to move it. He doesn't know how to say that without causing offense.
Hhh. It's hard. And Grian hasn't found the right words to say it yet, because it isn't Honey's fault that she can't leave their server on her own. She isn't whitelisted anywhere else. She's AFK-bound to her homeworld… Grian knew it hadn't been necessary to change his own settings, set his own AFK world to match hers… It wasn't required of him…
But he did it anyway. Willingly, because he had to, and he has #No Regrets. I mean, Honey lives on the other end of the code between their wedding rings. Grian knows from experience - oh, he'll never say it's from experience - the smothering level of guilt that will grab him by his neck if he ever tries to walk away. Grian's the only one in the multiverse who was whitelisted on her birth server, and if he won't stay with her…
… then no one will. Ever. No one but the parrots and cats.
And he won't doom his own wife to an eternity of loneliness like that. Even if there isn't a fleck of romance between them. He'd never be able to look his reflection in the eyes again.
The wind coasts again across his waffle-colored hair. Grian stands there, hesitating, as the sound of Impulse pushing through the leaves slithers through the air behind him. Isn't it, you know… funny? Impulse considers himself a married man. He loves his wife, his kids… two kids who poofed into existence one day and could suffer account deletion at any time.
But Impulse loves them anyway. If you ask him probing questions, his eyes will dance like campfire smoke and he'll tell you all about them. His youngest has been here a couple years now. Grian met them twice- only twice. Neither of those scamps can stick with a server long, trapped in an endless cycle of building starter houses before growing bored, but…
Impulse fell in love with them. Even if they go exploring for days or weeks or months, thousands and thousands of blocks away. He hugs them every time they row their boats or ride their horses home. He taught them how to shoot their first bows. He combs loose pixels from their hair, makes their favorite mushroom stews, holds their hands when crossing busy server seeds, and…
It's like he just knew how to love them from the start.
After several seconds, Grian reaches beneath his jumper. He drags the admin panel from his inventory again and rotates it until the screen faces him once more. Hhh. He grips it in both hands, squeezing 'til its corners prick his fingers, and sears the name on the screen into the back of his head.
I'm a married man. She cares about me. She wants me to talk to her about the game instead of going on resource-gathering trips so I can be alone.
He doesn't want to scare her. Honey's server doesn't have player PvP enabled. He can catch her if she falls, grab her if she stumbles, but if he ever attempted genuine damage, his pixels would pass right through hers. Honey's only enemies are zombies, skeletons, piglins, ghasts… the occasional witch or creeper…
She doesn't know.
She wants to learn about the outside world. I need to text her updates this time to tell her how it's going. She cares about me. I need to connect. I have a wife… I have a WIFE…
Would it shatter her if he tried explaining that when he leaves her, it's not always to work on "construction projects" in someone else's server? Would she still smile at him in the mornings if she knew how often he spends his evenings just… pulling mischief, setting traps… taking other people's lives? Yes, the respawn mechanic exists, but… How do you begin to explain the Life series to someone born with PvP disabled? There are other worlds out there where my friends and I pretend that WE'RE the monsters, and WE fill our enemies' hearts with dread…
Hhhhhggggghh…
This stupid wind. There's still sand pricking at his eyes.
(It would shatter her, by the way.)
Impulse and Skizz share an AFK server with all their family members. They're next-door neighbors. Having a neighbor would make things easier, but Honey can't leave her server and no one else can get in. Sometimes when Grian's social needs are welling in his throat but the AFK locket is dangling like a shock collar, he grabs a few melons and goes wandering through the villager trading hall. The villagers are just mobs, just digital programs that flesh out the world, so they're not exactly good at conversation… but they can sense when he's upset. His Efficiency V villager always listens to his rambles, and always reaches out to hold his shoulder and offer what grunting comfort he can.
But that's not how I want to spend the rest of my existence. When I end up perma-AFK, is this all there is for me? WHY, even as the admin for multiple servers, do I still feel like my life is out of my control?
Grian clutches the admin panel to his chest for a moment, then holds it out to get a good look at that heart she sent him again. It gleams a romantic shade of red. It's got sparkles sprinkled on top. No dancing around that.
Grian stares, silent and squinting, at the little ring coded on his finger. He isn't the one who put that code there. And although running the Life series has taught him a great deal about coding, he's reluctant to be the one to pry it off. Honey might take it as an insult. And that great someone watching over him might just code it right back on.
In the distance, Impulse grunts and struggles with a particularly thick area of underbrush. Grian blinks himself out of his stupor. Right. He's got stuff to do. They only have five or so minutes before the rest of his friends arrive. He tilts up the admin panel again, frowning at the screen. Honey's message floats there, unanswered, in the Void.
A little red heart.
Grian tries to ground himself, tries to feel the scuff of dirt beneath his default shoes. Drink the noise of the river, the colors offered by the new shaders… and he grits his teeth.
I'm here to create entertaining content. Play with my friends. And it doesn't matter if I win. I already won the series when it was 3rd Life. I can just…
He's going to be better this time around. Honey worries for him, you know. The Death games are controlled - it's all for entertainment - and she's never lived in a world with PvP, but she can still recognize when he's hurting. Embarrassingly, he's sometimes flown into a wall, fallen down a cavern, or gotten shot by a rogue mob while exploring the AFK server. She always sprints up the stairs to check on him, searching for damage to his limbs, while he stands uncomfortably on his side of the double bed and tries not to say anything that might splinter what little (so little) they have.
Okay. I'm here because I want to play and I want to be entertaining. But my personal goal doesn't have to be winning the series. I'll just try to think of funny things that I can talk to Honey about when I get home.
He'll be better. He can do this. He loves the wildness of the game, but he can afford to be a little softer, take a few more breaks, focus more on the things that are supposed to be important in his life. He burns himself out sometimes, you know. He needs to take more time for himself. And this time, he'll send Honey updates every night. Ask her 'How are things back home?'
And when he finally looks at her the way that Joel looks at Lizzie, then… then he'll feel okay about texting Honey hearts. Those little… sparkly… red…
He texts Honey a thumbs up emoji and stuffs the admin panel away again. Without its light, the world looks a lot darker. The wind blows a leaf across his path. It's cold. He can hear the distant groan of a zombie with a limping foot.
Five minutes until we start.
Then he has to duck, yelping for Impulse as a skeleton's arrow whizzes past his ear. His foot catches on a tree root. Fwump! Thwip!
A second arrow wedges itself between his cheek and hand. Eugh. Grian scrambles up again, brushing his hand down his jumper. Hardcore nights are killer in the early game. Oh, morning can't come soon enough.
Thanks for reading Chapter 1~
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