Chapter Text
Wemmbu blinked hard. Purple ender pearl particles still crawled across his vision. His stomach did the familiar drop-and-catch of a stasis pull, then settled with that ugly, delayed lurch that always made bile climb up his throat like his body was trying to spit the teleport back out.
He swallowed it down, breathing through his nose.
Only that was the problem.
Wemmbu hadn’t set up a stasis chamber at all recently. He didn’t leave backups lying around either. There were too many dumb, catastrophic ways it could go wrong. Some random player could stumble onto it and decide it’d be funny to yank his pearl and see what happened. An enemy could find it and hold it as leverage.
This… this wasn’t any of those things.
The last of the purple haze bled from his eyesight. He forced his eyes to focus, and the room assembled itself in slow, reluctant pieces.
It wasn’t anywhere on the SMP he’d ever seen.
The air felt… wrong. Like he’d stepped into a chunk that hadn’t fully loaded, except everything was loaded. The space around them was all soft edges and impossible depth, walls that looked carved from pale stone and starlight at the same time. Veins of faintly glowing crystal ran through the surfaces like constellations trapped beneath glass. Above, the ceiling didn’t behave like a ceiling. He tipped his head back and his throat tightened. The ceiling opened into a dim, endless sky where slow, drifting motes floated like ash in water.
His skin prickled. There was a noise behind him, and Wemmbu spun on his heel, every muscle coiling tight, his shoulders locking into a fighter’s hunch before his mind had fully registered.
Eggchan lay sprawled on the smooth, seamless floor about five blocks away. He hadn’t arrived gracefully, his limbs splayed at awkward angles. His signature suit was rumpled. His singular eye was open but unfocused, the pupil dilated wide, blinking with a sluggish, disoriented rhythm. Another sound escaped him, a raw, grating noise that was more animal groan than recognizable word.
“W… Wemmbu?” The name rasped out of him, voice rough like he’d swallowed gravel.
Wemmbu was moving before his brain finished catching up. He crossed the space in two quick strides and dropped to one knee beside him. His eyes did a fast scan, checking for any obvious injuries. Egg was breathing, his chest rising and falling in shallow hitches. Conscious, but dazed.
Good. That was good.
Wemmbu didn’t give himself time to sit in the relief. He hooked an arm under Egg’s and hauled him upright with more force than gentleness. Egg’s head lolled for a moment before he managed to brace his neck, a fresh wave of disorientation washing over his pale features.
“I’m here,” Wemmbu said. He kept his voice even on purpose but it didn’t match his thoughts. “You with me? You good?”
Egg blinked again. Once. Twice. Then he gave a single, slow nod, so deliberate it looked painful. He dragged a hand down the front of his suit and brushed at dust that wasn’t really there. His fingers stuttered when they met only the cold, smooth fabric. His hand stilled, then fell away as he finally lifted his gaze from Wemmbu’s face to the space beyond.
His eye, always so expressive, so wide, dilated further. The pale blue iris seemed to shrink, swallowed by the black pupil taking in the room.
His eye widened a fraction. “…Where are we?” The question was a whisper.
Wemmbu swallowed, jaw tightening.
“No clue.” The admission was gritted out. The words tasted wrong. He stared at the glowing stone like it might answer him if he glared hard enough, before flickering his eyes back to Egg. “Did you set a stasis chamber for us?”
Egg’s head shook, a quick, jerky denial. “No. I’d tell you. You know I’d tell you.” He paused. The next words came out quieter, laced with a shame that made Wemmbu’s stomach sink like a stone. “And… I don’t even think I remember how to. It’s… fuzzy.”
That was not what Wemmbu wanted to hear. But Egg tilted his head, squinting at the space around them as if a different angle would reveal the answer. “Is there… is there even a stasis chamber here? Can you see one?”
A short, sharp bark of laughter punched its way out of Wemmbu’s throat. “‘Course you don’t,’” he said, and it came out meaner than he intended, but the chuckle died as soon as it left him.
Wemmbu’s eyes traced the room again, slower this time, forcing himself to actually look instead of just scanning for danger because Egg was right for asking the question. There wasn’t anything that remotely screamed like a stasis chamber in the room.And worse than nothing, he couldn’t feel anyone else. They were utterly, profoundly alone. Wemmbu’s fingers flexed at his side, restless. He had he urge to move.
Egg swallowed, then opened his mouth. So how—” he began, the two words hanging in the air, and then he stopped. He didn’t finish the question, because the rest of it was obvious. How did we get pulled here?
“Yeah,” Wemmbu exhaled, the breath hissing through his nose. His jaw worked, teeth grinding faintly. “That’s the question, ain’t it?” He stepped a half pace away from Egg because he needed mental space to think. “Stay close,” he continued, the command quiet but absolute. “Don’t touch anything unless I tell you to.”
Egg nodded out of habit as Wemmbu turned away from him and started walking toward the nearest wall. He didn’t argue.
Wemmbu turned his back on him. His focus narrowed to the wall. He reached to his side, his hand finding the familiar, reassuring weight in his hotbar without conscious thought. The netherite pickaxe materialized in his grip. He hefted it once, and swung.
The pickaxe didn’t bite. The head of the pick had dragged through the air with a lazy, awful resistance. Wemmbu stared at his own hand, at the tool in it, for a second too long. Disbelief tightened his face into something sharp and ugly.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me—”
He tightened his grip until the handle creaked in protest. Set his feet wider, grounding himself against the unnaturally smooth floor. He put his whole body into the next swing, a sharp, diagonal chop meant to cleave a chunk from the wall.
Same result.
Behind him, Egg tilted his head, confusion creeping into his voice. “What? What is it?”
Wemmbu didn’t answer right away. He forced his right hand to clench into a fist. The muscles in his forearm bunched, obeyed. He unclenched. Again. Clench. Unclench. The delay was subtle, but it was there. A fraction of a beat where his fingers didn’t obey on time.
And then the understanding slid into place like a blade. Mining fatigue.
He snapped his gaze to Egg, his eyes hard. “Swing your pick.”
Egg frowned, but he did it. More for Wemmbu than for the request. He pulled his own iron pickaxe from his inventory and swung at the wall beside him. The diamond head dragged forward, fighting for every inch, before bouncing harmlessly off the glowing surface. The recoil traveled up the handle and jolted through Egg’s shoulder, making him stumble back a step. He stared at his own hand, then at the pick, his single eye wide with a dawning, horrified comprehension.
“What the—” Egg said, and the words came out sharper than he probably meant. “Why do we have mining fatigue? Who gave us mining fatigue?” He stared at his own hand like it had betrayed him.
“Yeah,” Wemmbu muttered, his voice a low, dangerous rumble, his eyes cutting back to the wall. “That’s what I’m sayin’.”
For a beat, the two of them stood there with their thoughts colliding in the silence, debating on their next move, before the air changed.
A low, sub-auditory hum rose from nowhere and everywhere at once, so deep it was less a sound and more a vibration in the fillings of their teeth. The hair on Wemmbu’s arms lifted straight up. A primal wrongness buzzed against his skin. Wemmbu and Egg pivoted at the same time, backs half-turning toward each other out of habit.
The space in the middle of the room twisted. At first it looked like heat shimmer, a distortion in the air like the world was buffering. Then it folded inward upon itself, a localized knot of spacetime pulling tight. A sickly flash of purple light, deeper and more violent than ender pearl particles, erupted silently. A visible ripple shot outward from the epicenter, rolling across the seamless floor like a shockwave through water, making the very light in the crystalline veins shudder.
Two bodies materialized from the distortion and hit the floor with a simultaneous, sickening thud of armor and stone. They landed hard, limbs splaying like the world had thrown them down rather than placed them. The impact echoed across the room, and ender pearl particles skittered off them in glittering trails before vanishing into the air, little sparks dying as quickly as they’d been born.
Wemmbu and Egg backed up in sync until their shoulders met the wall they’d been trying to mine. Wemmbu kept his pickaxe raised. The gesture felt absurd, pathetic even, but lowering it felt like surrender. His other hand hovered near the hilt of his sword, fingers not yet closing, but ready.
In the center of the room, the two new arrivals groaned. One of them, a yellow figure in scuffed, diamond and iron armor, rolled onto his side with a gasp, his body convulsing in a fit of wet, ragged coughs. The other, shorter, with a pair of large, blue-green wings matted and tangled against a green tunic, simply lay still for a heartbeat. Then his wings gave a single, full-body twitch before he visibly forced them to clamp tight against his back. Slowly, both of them began to push themselves up from the floor.
Wemmbu’s frown deepened as their faces came into view. The recognition hit fast and made his stomach drop again for a different reason.
ParrotX2 and Theobaldthebird.
“What the hell…” Parrot muttered, voice hoarse. He dragged a hand over his face like he was trying to wipe off invisible dirt. His feathers looked slightly fluffed. “This isn’t— this isn’t the shop.”
Theo made a noise that was half groan, half laugh, and then immediately regretted it. He winced, breath hitching as if the sound had scraped his throat on the way out. He pushed himself up onto a knee, armor shifting, wings twitching again before he forced them still with a visible effort. “Yeah, no kidding.”
Parrot’s single-minded scan of the impossible room was frantic, until it snapped onto Wemmbu and Egg. His entire posture changed in an instant.
Egg lifted his hands immediately, palms open. “Um. We didn’t do this.”
Wemmbu didn’t bother pretending to be calm. He held his pick up and kept his shoulders square, standing between Egg and the center of the room by instinct. “Believe me,” he said, the edge in his tone unmistakable. “If I wanted to have a chat, I’d just walk into your damn shop. I wouldn’t need to do… whatever this is.” He jerked his chin at the room.
Parrot didn’t relax. If anything, Wemmbu’s defensiveness made him even more suspicious. His hand drifted toward his own hotbar, hovering near the outline of an axe. Not drawing yet, but the intention was clear. “What do you mean you didn’t pull us?” he challenged, his gaze flicking between Wemmbu’s tense form and Egg’s open hands. “Who did, then? Some third party you’re working with?” His eyes narrowed further, landing squarely on Egg. “Did Egg do this?”
Egg’s head snapped toward him fast. “Bro.”
Wemmbu’s jaw flexed.“Don’t drag Egg into this,” he growled, taking half a step forward.
“You already did,” Parrot shot back, immediate. “You’re literally standing in front of him right now like a bodyguard.”
Wemmbu took another step, the pickaxe coming up a fraction. Theo moved in the same instant, subtly putting himself in between Parrot and Wemmbu.
“Okay,” Theo said, voice flat, warning. “Stop. Both of you. This is stupid.”
Wemmbu sputtered, heat rising into his chest. “He started it! Accusing Egg—”
Parrot didn’t take his eyes off Wemmbu. His gaze stayed locked, sharp and unblinking in a way that made Wemmbu want to bare his teeth. “I’m not trying to start something,” Parrot said, and the words were technically calm, but his posture said otherwise. “But look around. We wake up in a weird room and the first people we see are you two. You expect us to just… trust you?”
Egg’s hands dropped from their open-palms position, irritation bleeding in now. “So what, then?” he asked,. “You want to interrogate us until this all makes some kind of sense?”
“No,” Parrot snapped, rolling his eyes, then forced himself to rein it in. “I just want a reason. One good reason why we should trust you guys.”
Wemmbu let out a short, harsh laugh that held no humor in it. “Look, man. Here’s your reason.” He jabbed the point of his pickaxe toward the floor for emphasis. “I got yanked. I almost puked. I found Egg on the floor. We realized we’re nerfed. And then, like clockwork, the room folded—” he mimicked the twisting motion with his free hand, “—and spat you two out right in front of us. We watched it happen. You think I’d stage my own kidnapping this badly?”
Egg nodded once, a sharp, confirming jerk of his chin. His eye was fixed on the spot where they’d appeared. “He’s not lying about that last part. We literally watched the space fold and spit you out.”
Parrot’s face didn’t change much, but the skepticism stayed.
Then the air shifted. The hum hit again. It vibrated in the soles of their boots, a bass note that made their teeth ache and the delicate bones in Parrot’s wings tremble. The hair on Egg’s arms stood straight up.
Egg’s eye darted between the three other men, wide with a fresh, electric dread. His voice pitched up, thin and tight with instinct. “Um— guys.”
All four of them froze.
Space in the middle of the room twisted again. Two more bodies materialized from the tortured space and hit the floor with a simultaneous, sickening crunch of armor and unforgiving stone. They landed in a tangled heap, limbs entangled, ender pearl particles erupting around them in a frantic, dying glitter before being snuffed out by the quiet of the room.
“Ow!” a familiar voice barked immediately, sharp with offense. “Who did that?!”
“Man— that hurt…” another voice groaned, lower, more dragged-out.
The two new arrivals moved, slowly hauling themselves upright. One pushed up on an elbow first, then sat up with a wince, rubbing his side like he expected to find a bruise through armor. The other rolled onto his back, blinked up at the fake sky, then muttered something low and venomous under his breath, a curse lost to the acoustics of the room, before planting a hand flat on the floor and forcing himself upright with a sharp, controlled exhale.
Spokeishere and Mapicc.
Their eyes found the assembled group all at once. Four faces, four postures of varying tension, watching them from the edges of the chamber. Spoke’s grin tried to show up out of habit, but it came out cautious, half-formed. He looked between Wemmbu, Egg, Parrot, and Theo, and you could see the calculation in his eyes.
“Oh,” Spoke said, the word coming out a little too bright, too forced. He attempted a chuckle. It sounded thin, strained, dying in his throat. “Well isn’t this lovely. A reunion.”
Mapicc didn’t laugh. He straightened fully, eyes narrowing as he took the area. Then he looked down at his own hands. He flexed his fingers once, slowly, curling them into a fist and releasing. His expression, already grim, tightened further, his lips pressing into a thin, bloodless line.
“Mining fatigue,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
Wemmbu’s jaw set. His eyes flicked to Parrot, holding the other man’s gaze for a half-second, a silent, furious see? I told you, before snapping back to the newcomers. “Yeah,” he said, his voice flat, drained of any warmth. “Welcome to the party.”
Spoke’s attention snapped to that, the false cheer evaporating. He moved fast, raising both hands, palms out in the universal gesture of don’t swing at me! “Look,” he said quickly, the words tumbling out, “I don’t remember enacting any schemes against you all recently… I swear. But if I did do something, somehow, to have the four of you decide to kidnap Mapicc and I, I am genuinely open to hearing about it so we can—”
“We didn’t pull you here, Spoke,” Parrot cut in, voice flat. His stance was still tense.
Spoke froze mid-sentence, his hands hovering awkwardly in the air. All the performative panic bled away, replaced by something colder, more genuine.
“What?” The word came out higher than normal, pitched with a raw spike of alarm before he could stifle it. His eyes, wide now, flicked to Mapicc beside him, seeking an anchor. “Then who did? Because that felt like a stasis chamber trigger, and I know I didn’t set a chamber. I don’t even—” He stumbled over the sentence, his breath catching. “I don’t even have one ready. And Mapicc was with me. We were just talking.”
“I was,” Mapicc confirmed.
Parrot didn’t reply right away. He stared into the center of the room, jaw working. When he finally spoke, it was slower, measured. “I’m starting to figure out that whoever did this… they wanted specific people. In one place. Together.” He finally looked at Spoke, then at Mapicc, his gaze bleak. “And because of the mining fatigue… they didn’t want us breaking our way out.”
Spoke’s raised hands lowered a fraction. Holding them up suddenly felt stupid. His voice dropped, becoming more shaky, real. “Okay. Cool. Great. So we’re in a weird glowing box with mining fatigue, and some… dude, or thing, is just…” He swallowed, “…collecting us.”
Wemmbu’s grip on his pick tightened. “Yeah,” he said, “That’s what it looks like.”
Spoke took a deep, shuddering breath, visibly forcing air into his lungs. He squared his shoulders, an attempt to reclaim some semblance of control. “Okay,” he repeated, his voice firming into something steadier, a commander falling back on protocol. His gaze bounced from face to face. “Who saw anything before they got pulled? Like any clue at all.”
Wemmbu didn’t answer immediately. His eyes flicked up to the sky again, then back to Spoke. “I was visiting Egg in the End,” he replied after a beat. “Then I got yanked and landed here.”
Egg nodded, quick and almost frantic. “Same. Nothing. Just… purple, then here.”
Theo rubbed the back of his neck, the motion weary. “I was at the potion shop. Doing inventory. Literally counting glowstone dust. Then I was face-first on the floor here. No warning.”
“I was with Theo,” Parrot said, his feathers giving a single, involuntary ruffle of agitation. “I was in the middle of restocking strength pots. Then it just… happened.” He hesitated, searching his memory for a detail that wasn’t just sensation. He made a small, futile motion with his fingers, like plucking a string that had already snapped. “There was a… a resonance. Felt it in my wings first. Then everything went purple.”
Spoke watched the gesture like it offended him. That,” he said, pointing a finger at Parrot, “is the least helpful description I’ve ever heard. ‘A resonance.’ Great. Fantastic. So we’ve got nothing.”
Parrot’s eye narrowed. “You want me to lie and make it more dramatic?”
Spoke’s mouth twitched. “I mean, if you’re offering, a little narrative flair wouldn’t hurt—”
“I’m saying it was instant,” Parrot cut him off, his voice losing its measured calm, fraying at the edges. “One frame I’m in my shop, the next I’m here. It just happened.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Spoke said, then sighed. He looked at each of them like he was waiting for someone to suddenly remember anything. When no one did, his shoulders sagged a fraction, revealing the bone-deep weariness beneath. “So, nothing. Great. Love that. Ten out of ten. Best kidnapping ever.”
Silence settled in behind the joke.
The low hum started up again. It began the same way it always did, it started low and quiet, before becoming insistent.
Egg’s head snapped up, his single eye wide. “It’s starting again.” The statement was unnecessary. They all felt it.
Everyone’s posture changed at once. Spoke took a half-step back, putting Mapicc marginally more between himself and the epicenter.
Just like before, the space in the exact center of the room seemed to pulse. The glow around the center point sharpened, brightening along edges that weren’t there a second ago. The air folding inward, and the floor rippled. Then it spat them out.
Two bodies slammed onto the stone hard enough to make armor ring, the metallic clink echoing too cleanly in the wrong quiet. Ender pearl particles skittered off their armor in quick arcs before fading. One of them let out a sound that was half groan, half angry hiss through teeth. The other lay still for a beat too long.
Wemmbu’s eyes narrowed as they groaned and started to move. The instant recognition hit him like a physical shock, and with it came a new, entirely different kind of tension. It wasn’t the wary suspicion aimed at Parrot and Theo, nor the frustrated confusion surrounding Spoke and Mapicc. No, this was different.
FlameFrags and Manepear.
Flame was the first to move, like his body refused to stay down. F He rolled onto his side with a sharp, pained inhale, then shoved himself up onto an elbow in one jerky motion. His head snapped to the side once, then again, a brutal, animalistic gesture as if trying to clear water or static from his ears. He blinked hard behind his signature blindfold, shaking his head slightly as if he could physically rattle the disorientation of the pull out of his skull.
“Okay—” he started, his voice strained, rough with the aftermath of the teleport. He stopped dead the moment his other senses caught up and registered the room.
His entire posture tightened in an instant, coiling from pained disorientation into ready violence. “What is this?” he demanded, his voice losing its roughness. “Why am I here?”
Beside him, Manepear groaned, slower to rise. He rolled onto his back first, staring blankly at the drifting motes in the false sky for a second before pushing himself up into a sitting position with a wince, one hand coming up to rub the back of his head tenderly. The confusion on his face turned into immediate irritation.
“Dude…” Manepear muttered, his voice thick with sleep and annoyance. “I was literally sleeping.”He said it like that was the biggest crime of all.
Flame’s blindfolded gaze whipped down toward the sound of his voice, snapping onto it with unnerving precision. “Wait— what the hell, bro? Mane?”
Manepear blinked at him, recognition filtering through the fog of anger and disorientation. “Flame? What are you— where are we?”
Spoke, ever the reluctant master of ceremonies in this nightmare, lifted his hands in that now-familiar don’t shoot the messenger pose. “Hi guys. Welcome to the weird glowy box. Sorry about the floor. It’s not very forgiving.”
Manepear stared at him like Spoke had spoken another language. “What?”
Wemmbu’s voice cut through before Spoke could dig the hole any deeper. He didn’t take his eyes off Manepear, his gaze steady and unblinking. “We didn’t pull you,” he said, his tone leaving no room for debate. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
Flame’s head turned toward Wemmbu, the blindfold somehow making the focus feel more intense. His gaze flicked from Wemmbu to Parrot, to Spoke, assessing the lineup. “Then who did?” he demanded again, and this time the edge was harder.
“Join the club,” Parrot said, and he didn’t take his eye off Flame for even a second. “Everybody here got yanked.”
Theo added, quieter but just as firm, “And we’ve got mining fatigue.”
Flame frowned. He reached into his hotbar on instinct, pulled out his netherite pickaxe, and gave the air a quick test swing.
The swing came out wrong.
The lack of snap in it was so jarring that Flame froze mid-breath, shoulders tensing hard. He stared at his own hand as if it had betrayed him. He tried again, harder, putting more shoulder into it. The arc was still sluggish, thick, like swinging through honey.
“Are you kidding me,” Flame muttered afterwards, his jaw clenching so tight the words sounded clipped.
Manepear scoffed and tried it too, like he didn’t believe Flame until he himself confirmed it. One short swing, quick and careless. When that came out wrong, he blinked, then did a second, sharper attempt. Both swings were grossly sluggish.
Manepear’s face twisted with immediate, visceral disgust. “Oh, that’s disgusting.” He said it like he’d tasted something rotten. The pick vanished back into his inventory with a dismissive flick of his wrist.
Flame finally lowered his pick, his blindfolded gaze cutting across the room like a blade, sweeping over the cluster of players pressed against the walls. “Alright,” he said. His voice came out clipped, stripped of any patience. “Can someone please explain to me what’s going on? Because this feels like a setup, and I don’t like it.”
His question hung in the air. The others exchanged glances.
Flame’s jaw tightened. “Well?” he pressed. “Anyone? Or are we all just gonna stand here?”
Theo answered first, because Theo always did whenever no one had an answer. “Look,” he said, palms out a little, “we don’t know, man. That’s the point.”
Flame’s brows pulled together beneath the fabric of his blindfold. “Bro,” he said, incredulous. “You’re telling me you all woke up here the same way?”
Theo nodded once.
Flame’s head tilted slightly. A low, disbelieving breath escaped him. “You’ve got to be shitting me…” he said, and the anger in it was less directed at them now and more at the sheer, faceless absurdity of the situation. Then his tone shifted. “So who got grabbed first?” he asked. “Like, who was already here when everybody else started dropping in? There’s gotta be a sequence.”
Wemmbu felt Parrot’s eyes flick toward him. He met Flame’s general direction squarely. “Me and Egg were first,” he said, his voice neutral. He lifted his chin slightly toward where Egg stood. “At least, first that we know of. Could’ve been others before, but they’re not here.”
Egg nodded, quick and nervous, backing him up. “Yeah,” he added, his words tumbling out. “Wemmbu got yanked, then he found me already on the floor here. We were just figuring out the mining fatigue when Parrot and Theo dropped in. Then Spoke and Mapicc. Then you and Mane.”
Flame stared at the pair of them, his expression unreadable behind the blindfold, but the tilt of his head conveyed pure disbelief. “What the hell.” He let the words sit, a condemnation of the entire universe, then shifted his focus back onto Parrot. “You. You’re smart. You got any idea who would do this? Or how?”
Parrot’s feathers ruffled once, a clear sign of irritation flashing across his usually composed demeanor. “No,” he said, the word sharp. “And if I did, I wouldn’t even like their decision.” His gaze flicked to Wemmbu for a half-second, a silent admission. “We almost started swinging at each other two minutes ago because we thought the other had set it up. That tells you how bad this setup is.”
Manepear, who had been rubbing his forearm as if checking for breaks, looked up, his mouth widening slightly in delayed understanding. “You were about to fight? In here?”
Egg lifted a hand halfway. “It was, like, almost a fight. There were no punches thrown.” He paused, then added with unfortunate honesty, “Yet.”
Wemmbu shot a look at Egg, a silent, intense shut up now. “Don’t say ‘yet.’”
Egg snapped his mouth shut immediately, his eye widening. He held Wemmbu’s gaze for a beat, giving a silent, chastised my bad, before his attention slipped sideways, drawn by something else. His head tilted, bird-like, and his entire posture changed, shifting from anxious participant to focused receptor. It was a shift Wemmbu recognized instantly. Egg was hearing something the rest of them had missed.
“Wait,” Egg said, his tone different now, lower, more certain. “The hum’s gone.”
Wemmbu felt it a second later. That low vibration that had been riding under everything had actually faded.
Parrot’s wings gave a single, minute twitch. He held perfectly still, head cocked, listening to the nothing. “He’s right,” Parrot confirmed, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s stopped.”
Spoke’s shoulders rose and fell with a quick breath. “So… does that mean it’s done pulling people?”
Manepear stopped rubbing his arm, his expression turning unsettled. “And it can just… start and stop that whenever? Like it’s on a timer?”
“Seems like it,” Mapicc said from his position near the wall, his voice a low, humorless chuckle that held no mirth.
Spoke forced a laugh that didn’t really land. “Awesome. That’s just… awesome.”
No one laughed with him. The silence that followed was worse than the hum.
Then the light changed. Not from the crystals in the walls. From above. A single, pale beam of pure white light lanced down from somewhere near the false, star-dusted void, striking the blank stretch of wall opposite the main group with surgical precision. It hit the seamless stone and held there, a solid column of illumination in the otherwise soft glow.
Spoke’s head whipped around to follow it. “Oh, come on,” he groaned, the words a mixture of exhaustion and dread. “What now?”
A faint, mechanical whirring sound followed, utterly alien in the organic-feeling room. It was the sound of gears engaging, of lenses focusing. The beam widened, morphing from a circle into a perfect, stark rectangle of light projected onto the stone. Inside the rectangle, text flickered into existence. For a second it jittered violently, the letters blurring and scrambling as if struggling to resolve, before snapping back into sharp, legible focus. It settled, crisp and sterile against the pale stone.
PLEASE REMAIN CALM.
Egg stared at it, frozen. “Is that—”
The text shimmered, and the message repeated itself, as if the system was confirming its own functionality.
PLEASE REMAIN CALM.
Manepear took a half-step back, his mouth falling open in a perfect ‘O’ of disbelief. “Bro,” he said, and there was genuine awe in it, tangled with a sharp thread of alarm. “I might have a blindfold but am I seeing right? That’s a projector.”
Egg blinked once, slow and deliberate, processing the sheer absurdity. “Oh,” he said, and the deadpan delivery was almost comforting because it was so quintessentially Egg. “Well. The scientific community is going to have a field day with this one. ‘Localized reality-warping pocket dimension utilizes advanced audiovisual presentation technology.’” He said it like he was reading a future headline.
The projected message on the wall flickered once, a subtle pulse of light, as if it was responding to the noise in the room, calibrating to their presence. The faint mechanical whirring underlying it shifted pitch slightly.
DO NOT PANIC. DO NOT FIGHT.
“What do you mean, ‘do not fight’?” Parrot demanded, taking a step forward toward the glowing rectangle. His voice cut through the stunned silence, sharp and challenging. “Who the hell are you? Why are we here?
The text stuttered, pixels scrambling for a microsecond before resolving into a new sentence.
YOU WERE SUMMONED HERE FOR A REASON.
Wemmbu’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Summoned,” he muttered under his breath, the word tasting like ash. “Sure.”
Parrot didn’t look away from the wall. “And what reason is that?” he pressed, voice hard.
The light held steady, almost clinical. The rectangle didn’t waver even when Parrot stepped closer. More text scrolled onto the wall in a clean, blocky font, each line appearing with that same faint, precise mechanical whirr, typing itself into existence.
I HAVE DETECTED THE SERVER TO HAVE BECOME TOO UNSTABLE. THUS, YOU WERE SUMMONED.
A beat of silence followed. Everyone looked at each other, faces mirroring variations of the same unspoken question: Unstable?
The server was… the server. It was home. It was chaotic, sure. But unstable?
“That answers nothing,” Flame said flatly, turning his head back toward the “screen.” His tone was dismissive, a blade of pure skepticism. “What does grabbing us have to do with it?”
The message flickered again, a rapid pulse, as if it had anticipated the pushback and was queuing its response. The next lines appeared immediately, scrolling up to replace the previous ones.
I WAS CREATED WITH THE SOLE PURPOSE OF DETECTING SERVER INSTABILITY AND PREVENTING IT.
AS OF EXACTLY THIRTY-THREE MINUTES AND SIXTEEN SECONDS AGO, I HAVE DIAGNOSED THE SERVER TO BE IN A STATE OF CRITICAL INSTABILITY. THUS, CONTINGENCY PROTOCOLS NEEDED TO BE EXECUTED.
Spoke stared at the wall for a long, silent moment, his usual frenetic energy replaced by a deep, unsettling focus. “Okay,” he said slowly, drawing the word out as if testing its strength. “So you’re… what? A bot? Some kind of automated admin mod?”
The response came instantly.
YES.
The single word landed heavy.
A bot? Especially one that could freely think like this? Even with exploiting and redstone knowledge and every server trick they’d ever seen, none of it looked like this. None of it spoke like this. This thing could fold space, apply universal debuffs, project text into a pocket dimension that didn’t exist on the map, and respond in real time like it was listening. How was any of that possible within the game's framework?
Parrot stepped forward, stopping just short of where the projector beam cut through the dimness. The pale light sliced across his chest, but he didn’t flinch away from it. His gaze was fixed on the glowing rectangle. “Who made you?” he demanded.
The projector held steady. No new text appeared.
Parrot didn’t let the silence sit. “And what exactly do you mean by ‘contingencies’?”
For the first time, the screen didn’t update instantly. The wall went blank for two full seconds, the empty rectangle of light humming softly. It was a pause, a hesitation that felt profoundly unnatural coming from a machine. Then the text began to appear again, one line at a time, typed out with deliberate, almost cautious precision.
MY CREATOR WAS A PLAYER NAMED WIFIES.
Spoke blinked. “Wif—” The syllable escaped him and died. He looked between the wall and Parrot, his brain visibly scrambling to connect dots. Then his eyes widened, comprehension dawning with a jolt. “Wait.” His head snapped toward Parrot. “Isn’t that your friend, Parrot? The one you used to run with?”
Parrot didn’t answer right away. His posture didn’t change much, but something in his stillness did. Like he’d gone from tense to… contained. His feathers settled in a way that didn’t look like calm.
Theo moved a half-step closer to the avian hybrid, his voice low with concern. “Parrot…”
Parrot stared at the wall. His jaw worked once, like he was grinding back a response.
Wifies.
Of course it was Wifies. When didn’t everything, eventually, circle back to him? The ghost in the machine.
“Yeah,” Parrot said eventually. The word came out quiet, hollow, like he hadn’t meant for anyone to hear it. He cleared his throat, the sound rough. “That’s Wifies.”
Spoke, though, reacted like someone had just said a cursed word. The color drained from his face.
“Wait,” he said, his voice pitching up an octave with sheer disbelief. He glanced wildly at Mapicc, seeking an anchor, confirmation that his memory wasn’t playing tricks. “Didn’t he get banned? Like, permanently? By Ashwagg? I swear I remember you saying that, Parrot.”
Mapicc gave a slow, grim bob of his head, his own memory aligning. “He did. Or… we thought he did.”
Parrot didn’t answer immediately. He swallowed, his throat bobbing visibly. He exhaled slowly through his nose, a controlled release of breath that seemed to buy him a few precious seconds. Because he didn’t talk about this. The whole affair had been… messy. Complicated. A private failure he’d sealed away.
“No,” Parrot said finally, and the word was quieter than before. Then he corrected himself, forcing the truth out. “He… he wasn’t banned.”
Spoke blinked rapidly, processing the contradiction. “But— I swear you said he was gone. You said Ashwagg dealt with him… That he joined the Invis Mafia and got wiped.”
“I didn’t know,” Parrot cut in. His feathers ruffled once, a brief flare of agitation, before settling again. “Look. At the time, I thought he was gone too. For good. Everyone did.”
Theo’s wings gave another restrained twitch. “You don’t have to explain it here, Parrot.”
Parrot’s jaw tightened again, before looking back at the projector. “He faked his death,” he said, the words blunt, clinical. Then, as if ripping off a bandage before he could talk himself out of it, he kept going. “The ‘ban’ was a cover that he orchestrated. He was the Director. The whole time.”
Spoke’s mouth made a small O. The sound that came out was barely a word. “No way.”
Mapicc’s face tightened. “The Director? Like… the Director?”
Manepear looked utterly lost, his head swiveling between them. “I’m sorry—” he said, his confusion genuine and profound, “what does that even mean? Who’s the Director? What’s a Wifies?”
“Dude,” Spoke said, his voice pitched somewhere between utter disbelief and a plea not to have to navigate this particular minefield. “It’s a long story. A really, really messed up long story.” He looked Manepear up and down as if seeing him for the first time. “Where have you even been, man? Under a rock?”
Manepear lifted both hands in a flustered, defensive gesture. “Bro! I’ve been on a side quest! A very involved, very legitimate side quest!”
Flame made a short, sharp noise that was somewhere between a derisive scoff and a laugh of pure exasperation. “You always say that.”
Manepear pointed an accusing finger at him as if this proved his point. “Because it’s true!”
The tiny flare of normal banter would’ve been comforting if it didn’t feel so out of place in the glowing room.
Egg’s single eye flicked nervously to the center of the room where they’d all appeared, then back to the impassive projector. “So if Wifies is this… Director,” he said slowly, choosing each word with extreme care, “and he made this… bot… then why are we hearing about him now? Why is his machine grabbing us?”
Parrot didn’t have an answer. He didn’t even have a shape of an answer. His gaze stayed fixed on the wall, shoulders locked. The name sat in his chest like a hook in his ribs, dragging everything else with it.
The projector whirred softly.
THE SERVER HAS BECOME UNSTABLE. THAT IS THE PRIMARY REASON YOU HAVE BEEN SUMMONED.
Wemmbu’s voice cut through, flat and deliberately bored, a defense against the rising tide of panic. “Yeah. You already said that. We heard you the first time. It’s not getting more convincing with repetition.”
Another line of text scrolled into place beneath the previous one.
YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED DUE TO YOUR DIRECT AND FREQUENT PROXIMITY TO RECORDED INSTABILITY EVENTS.
“Proximity to—” Spoke stared at the words, his brow furrowing deeply as he tried to parse the clinical terminology. He forced a laugh, but it cracked halfway through, revealing the strain beneath. “Bro. What does that even mean?”
For a beat, there was nothing but the projector’s faint whir and the sound of too many people breathing in the same room. Then the projector answered.
CONTEXT IS REQUIRED FOR COMPLIANCE. YOU WILL WATCH PAST EVENTS THAT HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE CURRENT INSTABILITY THRESHOLD. YOU WILL WATCH THEM IN FULL.
Manepear’s confusion curdled into active unease. He looked from the glowing wall to the others, searching their faces for some shared joke, some sign this was an elaborate prank. He found none. “Hold on,” he said, his voice thinner now, losing its earlier bluster. “Like… recordings? You’re going to show us home movies?”
PRECISELY. AUDIO-VISUAL LOGS OF KEY INTERACTIONS.
Parrot stepped closer to the projector beam, the light now casting his shadow long and sharp across the floor. “No,” he said, the word low. “We’re not doing some weird, forced confession booth thing. This isn’t a therapy session.”
Flame shifted his weight. If this was true, then… he didn’t want to know what they considered a “past event.” His blindfolded gaze stayed fixed on the projector, his jaw tightening until a muscle ticked in his cheek. “I don’t like that,” he stated, his voice a flat line of pure distrust. “I don’t like any of this.”
“Wait,” Mapicc cut in, his analytical mind seizing on a practical horror. “Are we talking about watching from the start? The literal beginning of the server?”
YES. The answer came instantly, like it had been waiting for that question.
Mapicc’s expression pinched, his face paling slightly as he did the mental math. “It’s been years,” he said, his voice tight with dawning realization. “Years since the server was first created. If you’re making us watch everything that ‘contributed’ to instability, we’re going to be here for actual centuries.”
TIME DOES NOT PASS HERE AS IT DOES IN THE PRIMARY SERVER SPACE. THIS CHAMBER EXISTS IN A TEMPORAL POCKET. WHEN YOU ARE EVENTUALLY RETURNED, EXTERNAL TIME WILL BE ESSENTIALLY UNCHANGED FROM YOUR MOMENT OF EXTRACTION.
That landed with a different kind of weight. They all glanced at each other, the same horrific thought moving through them in a sickening wave: We could be gone for days, weeks, even years from our perspective, and no one out there would ever know. We’d just be… missing.
The projector continued, words stacking with the same calm certainty.
YOU WILL NOT FEEL HUNGER. YOU WILL NOT FEEL FATIGUE. YOUR AVATARS WILL REMAIN AT PEAK FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY UNTIL THE REVIEW IS COMPLETE. DISCOMFORT IS MINIMIZED FOR EFFICIENCY.
Spoke’s voice came out flat. “Yeah. That is not comforting.”
Mapicc looked back at the wall, his jaw working as he chewed on the next, inevitable problem. “And what if,” he said slowly, choosing his words with care, “watching these… events… causes…” he searched for the right term, then settled on the glaringly obvious one, “…conflict. You’re planning to show us our worst moments, our biggest fights. What do you think is going to happen?”
The response came immediately, as if it had been pre-programmed for this exact contingency.
SHOULD THE VIEWING OF LOGGED DATA CAUSE INTER-PERSONAL TENSION, YOU MAY EXPRESS IT VERBALLY OR PHYSICALLY. FIGHTING WITHIN THIS CHAMBER WILL NOT RESULT IN ADMINISTRATIVE BANS OR SERVER-SIDE CONSEQUENCES. ALL EXTERNAL PUNISHMENT PROTOCOLS HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED WITHIN THIS SPACE.
Silence hit hard.
Egg’s single eye flicked immediately, instinctively, to Wemmbu. He knew. He knew exactly what wire had just been tripped, what door had just been flung open.
Wemmbu’s head snapped toward the projector, his entire body coiling. “Wait,” he barked, loud enough that the word rebounded sharply off the crystalline walls. “So you’re saying I can attack Flame right now. Right here. And he won’t get banned?”
A deliberate beat of silence from the machine, as if allowing the implication to fully saturate the room. Then the wall answered, crisp and horrifyingly direct.
INDEED. RETALIATORY OR INITIATORY COMBAT IS PERMITTED. FATAL OUTCOMES CARRY NO PERMANENT PENALTY. RESPONSE IS ENTIRELY BETWEEN PARTICIPANTS.
Flame’s head tilted slowly toward the sound of Wemmbu’s voice, the black fabric of his blindfold facing him like a dark, unblinking eye. His voice dropped, becoming low, calm in that specific, infuriating way. “Try it,” he said, the two syllables a soft, goading challenge. “See what happens.”
Wemmbu barked a laugh, sharp and mean. His hand slid toward his hotbar without even a conscious thought, fingers hovering over the slot where his mace sat, its enchantments humming with latent violence. Every grievance, every past clash, every simmering resentment that the rules of the server had forced him to bank down came roaring to the surface, white-hot and immediate.
“Oh,” Wemmbu said, his voice a gravelly promise, “you bet I will.”
“Wemmbu,” Egg said, quiet but urgent. “Don’t.”
Wemmbu didn’t look at him. His entire world had narrowed to the space between himself and Flame. He saw the way Flame stood, utterly relaxed. The challenge was laid down like a gauntlet made of silk, all the more insulting for its quiet confidence. It was the posture of someone who’d already run the fight in his head and liked the ending.
But Manepear moved fast. He stepped into the lethal geometry forming between them, planting himself squarely in the line of fire, his hands coming up open, palms out, a human shield made of frayed nerves. “Guys—!” The word burst out of him, sharp with alarm. “We are not doing this!”
Wemmbu’s gaze snapped to him, irritation flaring hot and immediate. “Oh, suddenly you’re the voice of reason?” he sneered, the words dripping with a contempt so personal it felt like a slap. “Playing mediator now? After everything? You don’t get to stand there and pretend you have any right to call the shots here, Mane.” He spat the name.
Manepear flinched, just a tiny tightening around his brows, but he didn’t back down. His hands were trembling with a fine vibration he couldn’t control, but his feet stayed planted. “I’m not calling shots,” he shot back, his voice cracking under the pressure but rising to meet Wemmbu’s glare. “I’m trying to stop you from being a goddamn idiot chungus because you’re pissed at the universe and he’s the closest target!” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at Flame, not taking his gaze off Wemmbu.
Flame, for his part, hadn’t shifted a millimeter. His head tilted a fraction, blindfold aimed at the conflict. “You scared, Mane?” he asked, his tone disturbingly conversational, almost bored. “Or you just worried he’ll figure out how this dance ends before the music starts?”
Manepear’s head whipped toward him, a flash of pure, incredulous fury. “Bro, will you shut up? For five seconds? This isn’t helping!”
Wemmbu’s harsh laugh died in his throat, strangled by a tighter, darker emotion. His attention swung back to Manepear, and the anger there was older, more complicated, woven with threads of betrayal that had nothing to do with Flame. “You don’t get to call me an idiot,” Wemmbu said, his voice dropping into a gravelly register that was far more dangerous than his shouting. “Not after your little disappearing act. Not after you waltz back in like you never left, like you’re still…” He cut himself off, teeth grinding, the unfinished sentence hanging in the air. Like you’re still one of us.
Manepear’s jaw clenched. “I know you’ve got issues with me,” Manepear said, forcing the words out. “Fine. We can have that out. Not here.”
Wemmbu took a half step forward. Manepear matched him instantly, keeping himself between Wemmbu and Flame.
“Move,” Wemmbu commanded, the word a flat line.
“No.”
From the sidelines, Spoke swallowed audibly. “Guys, maybe we should just… cool it?” he tried, his voice small, already braced for impact.
“Stay out of it, Spoke,” Wemmbu snapped without even a glance. His eyes stayed locked on Manepear.
Then Egg moved. Not between them, but beside Wemmbu. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper, meant for Wemmbu alone. “Please,” Egg said. Just the one word.
That landed.
Wemmbu’s hand, hovering over the hotbar slot that held his mace, flexed. His knuckles were white. He could feel the phantom weight of the mace, the satisfying heft of it, the way it would sing through the air. The promise of impact, of catharsis, was a siren song. His chest heaved with a single, ragged breath. The fight inside him was a living thing, thrashing against its chains.
He was so close to giving in.
Then he exhaled through his nose. A long, controlled breath that sounded like it hurt. Like forcing the air out was the only way to force the impulse down with it.
Wemmbu’s shoulders dropped a fraction. His hand fell away from his inventory, hanging limp at his side. He looked at Manepear, then Flame, like he hated all of them for different reasons and didn’t know which hatred to feed first.
“Fine,” Wemmbu muttered, and it came out like a concession he’d choke on later. “Not here.”
Mane didn’t move right away. He stayed planted between them for another beat, shoulders tight, eyes flicking to Wemmbu’s hands like he was waiting for them to dart back to the mace slot. Only when he was certain the immediate storm had passed did he slowly lower his own arms, the tremble in them more noticeable now. A shaky breath escaped him.
Egg closed his eye for a second, a silent wave of relief passing through him.
For a heartbeat, the projector remained blank. Then a single word formed in the center of the wall, rendered in stark, oversized type that seemed to pulse with disdain.
SHAME. The word sat there alone.
Spoke made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “Oh— okay. Cool. It’s judging us now.”
The projector flickered again. The judgment vanished, erased as if it had never been. New text appeared in its place, as calm as the first time.
WELL THEN. SHALL WE BEGIN?
Before anyone could answer, before anyone could object, the text scrolled again.
BEGINNING PLAYBACK: PRIMARY INSTABILITY CATALYST ANALYSIS
TITLE: HOW TO DESTROY THE UNSTABLE SMP
PRIMARY SUBJECT OF ANALYSIS: SPOKEISHERE
ALL REMAINING SUBJECTS WILL REMAIN PRESENT FOR CONTEXTUAL REVIEW.
The blood drained from Spoke’s face so completely he looked ghostly in the projector’s glow. He went utterly still, a statue of shock. His eyes darted once, a frantic, helpless glance toward Mapicc. Then they snapped back to the wall, wide and unblinking, as if sheer force of will could rewrite the words branded there. “The— what?” he managed finally, the words paper-thin. “Why is it… why is it me?” The last word cracked, betraying a vulnerability he usually buried under layers of manic energy. He wasn’t the planner, the mastermind. He was chaos, yes, but not an architect.
INTERRUPTION IS NOT ADVISED.
The line appeared with the same certainty.
Spoke’s mouth opened slightly, then closed with a soft click of teeth. No sound came out. His hands hung limp at his sides, fingers twitching faintly. He stared at the text, but his gaze had turned inward, already braced for the blow, because he knew exactly what terrible cornerstone moment he was about to be forced to relive.
The last thing the projector displayed before the image fully resolved was a single line, centered and blunt.
PAY ATTENTION.
And then the past began to play.