When Past Meets the Present

IXX

Quetta's PoV (Still She/Her)

After I ran the Hermits out I turned my attention back to Xelqua. The slash was quite deep. To a player, it'd probably be fatal but since he was a watcher he was more resilient than your average player.

"Xelqua. Xelqua, can you hear me?" He let out a groan of pain. "Ok, I'm just going to put you into a little deep sleep, alright?" He groaned again. "I'll take that as a yes." Once he was out I picked him up and carried him to our quarters where Irka was waiting for us.

"Quetta! What's wrong with Xelqua?" I told her he was stabbed by a hermit. She took Xelqua into his room while I ran to get a healer. "He should be fine. What I don't understand is how it happened. He could take on all the Hermits with both hands tied behind his back using his teeth to hold his sword and still win in a few minutes. How could he be injured by only five?"

"He was holding back, you could see it. He didn't want to hurt them, only push them out. He let down his guard to help one of them when he accidentally struck them. I felt the healing magic flow between them. They'll probably recover in a few hours."

"Well, he'll be fine too." Just as she said that the potted plant next to his bed began growing at an ungodly rate. It grew towards him, trying to reach him. "On second thoughts, his magic might try to heal him itself. It'll hurt him more than anything. Wake him up, quickly?" He woke up gasping for breath. He sat up and heaved over the side of his bed for a good few minutes before Irka spoke to him.

"Xelqua. We need to stop your magic temporarily so you can actually heal. The only place that is prepared for something like that right now is the jail. Do we have your permission to put you in a cell?" He nodded weakly.

"Do whatever you need to do. Just stop the pain, please." His voice was husky and sick. She nodded so he resumed his attempt to throw up his insides. I helped him to his feet and together we stumbled to the basement where he was placed in a cell with iron bars. I knew it'd cause him pain when he came back but if it'd help him heal then he'd forgive us later.

3-Day Time Skip (Now she's He/Him)

Xelqua asked if someone could feed his birbs while he was out so I volunteered. I was on my way that day when I heard blocks breaking next to me. I drew my sword and got in a stance. Since Xelqua was out we were allowed to engage in battle, attack but not kill.

The blocks broke away to reveal the hermits, again. Wasn't hurting Xelqua once enough? They saw me and their faces fell. Xisuma though jumped through the hole and charged me. I blocked him easily with a flick of my wrists. I usually trained with Xelqua, who was insanely good when he was actually taking it seriously.

"You again? Your name was Xelqua wasn't it? I thought I stabbed you last time." The other hermits dropped down and ran in the other direction, they must have had an actual plan this time.

"Nah, I'm Quetta, Xelqua is out today so I'm filling in for him. He was quite annoyed with that damn stab wound."

"Weren't you female?"

"Don't assume my gender!" I charged and attacked but this time filled with rage.

Joe's PoV

We left Xisuma to deal with Xelqua and ran off to find Grian. We went as a group to the stairs and reached the basement without running into any other illagers. Once we reached the basement we broke apart to search faster. 

I was the one to find him, lying in a cell on a bed that might have once been white but was now stained red with his blood. He was wearing his usual red turtleneck sweater and grey jeans but there was a slash mark in his side. He was also covered in cuts and scratches and yet more blood. There was an illager leaning over him, it was doing something to some of his wounds. It was impossible to tell if what he was doing was trying to heal him or not but Grian's face held nothing but pain.

The illager walked out and locked the cage behind him. I signalled to the others that I'd found him and they ran over. The illager was gone and I didn't see anyone else so we advanced. We broke open the cage and ran over to him.

"Grian?" I asked using the quietest voice I could. "Grian, can you move?" He weakly opened his eyes to look at me so I crouched so we were eye to eye.

"Joe? What are you doing here?"

"Getting you out of here. Mumbo, Iskall and Scar are with me now, but we've got Xisuma's upstairs too. Come on, can you walk?" I grabbed his arm to help him up. He winced and groaned when I pulled it. He was lighter than he should be, I easily threw him over my shoulder where he lay limply and walked out of the cell without trouble.

We ran back upstairs where Xisuma was fighting a losing battle with Xelqua. X must have been using his admin commands because he was attacking so fast I couldn't even see him moving, his sword was just appearing where he was about to strike but somehow Xelqua was blocking everything with his arm held behind his back. 

"Xisuma! We got him!" He nodded and pushed Xelqua as far as he could and ran to join us.

"Xelqua!" Called... Xelqua? X pulled out the command block that'd teleport us back to our base. I had to place Grian's hand on it since he was pretty much out of it. He pressed the button and we were gone just in time to see Xelqua ram his sword into thin air.

We appeared in the middle of our campsite. We looked at each other like, 'Did we actually just pull that off?'

Grian broke the silence by making a grumbling noise in his mouth that I recognised as him trying to hurl. I took him off my shoulder and held him up on his own two feet.

"Grian!" Mumbo ran over and took him from my arms. "Let's get you healed up, buddy." 

Healing him was easier than expected. Xisuma tried using codes to help but they didn't do much. We got healing potions out and at least they fixed the gaping hole in his side.

I don't really know how to end this so here it is. If tired so this part is one of the worst that I've written. I was rereading my story before writing this and I think I rushed things a bit so I'm trying to slow it down a bit while still having a 1000+ word count. 

Almost 600 reads. Only three questions. How? Why? When?

WC:1200

Cheers,

Isabelle