The Watchers' Call

Chapter 3

"I wonder why Grian is out so far?" Mumbo said. They'd been flying for half the day, it seemed, and yet were still a ways away from the coordinates Grian had sent them.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Xisuma replied.

Finally, an hour later by Mumbo's estimates, they arrived at the x, z coordinates. There was nothing extraordinary about the surface here. It was a typical spruce forest. If anything, the unusual part was seeing the landscape so untouched. Everywhere around where the hermits had settled was terraformed, built up, or destroyed for resources.

Mumbo took out his shovel and began to dig a simple 2-by-2 staircase into the ground. Xisuma silently followed, placing torches as they went. As Mumbo dug, he heard an ever-increasing noise. He kept digging, and found a stone brick.

Everything clicked into place as Mumbo realized what the noise was. How did I not realize that sooner? he wondered. 

He'd never heard so many of them, though.

"I think this is why Grian needed help," Mumbo said.

"You think?" Xisuma retorted.

Mumbo broke the stone brick. Looking down into the room, he saw more silverfish than he'd ever seen before, hundreds of the tiny gray menaces, all jumping at a comical tower of dirt, dark oak, and birch. Now that's a weird combo, Mumbo thought. He sobered when he realized what was on top of the tower.

There was Grian, looking close to passing out, sitting with his knees bunched up to his chest and his wings tucked around him, seemingly trying to make himself as small as possible. Oh, right, that's probably exactly what he's doing, because, you know, silverfish. Mumbo pushed the thought away.

He thought of their options. Swords? There were far too many. Bows? That would take forever, but maybe-

Mumbo's thoughts were cut short when Grian fell.

----

Grian was so tired. It had been a day and a half by this point, and although he didn't really want to admit it, he'd pulled a few all-nighters the days before trying to catch up on what he'd missed while he was sick.

He was also weary from the silverfish. Occasionally, one would manage to get up atop the tower, boosted by its peers. Those few, Grian could kill, but he was getting more and more exhausted.

Grian didn't even Mumbo breaking the ceiling block. The sound of the stone bricks breaking was all too familiar. At first, he'd looked up when blocks broke, but now, after hours and hours of it, he just ignored the sound of new silverfish joining the pack.

At last, Grian's body couldn't take it any longer. He lost his balance and toppled over into the sea of silverfish.

----

Mumbo didn't move when he broke the block. This annoyed Xisuma. He needed to see what was going on, too! So he broke a few blocks and created a space for himself to stand and see the room.

He saw the silverfish, the tower, and then he saw Grian fall backwards, right into the silverfish.

Xisuma didn't even have time to think before he found himself jumping into the room, past Mumbo, and into the swarm of gray things.

The silverfish barely cared. They'd been fixed on Grian for so long that Xisuma dropping right into the middle of them didn't faze them. They were intent on getting to Grian.

Xisuma quickly assessed the situation. Lots of silverfish, a useless spoon, a half-dead Grian, and himself and his tools.

He pulled TNT out of his inventory and thew it into the lava pits in the corners of the room, then dove towards Grian and the main swarm. The TNT went off behind him, killing all the silverfish in that half of the room, destroying the spawner, and creating a lava moat that stopped any new fish from getting to this side.

Perfect, I've cut off the source. 

Xisuma didn't have time to celebrate, though, because he had immediately jumped into the mound of silverfish surrounding Grian and pulled Grian out of them. Luckily, the half-awake hermit was small and light- he's been forgetting to eat and sleep again, hasn't he? I'll have to talk to him about that after this- so Xisuma was able to grip him with one arm while fireworking into the hole in the ceiling with the other. 

The impact hurt, since he had shot into the tiny cubby with a lot of force and used his own body to cushion Grian, but at least he and Grian were both still alive.

----

Mumbo could barely comprehend what had happened.

Xisuma had jumped down into a swarm of hundreds of hostile silverfish, perfectly thrown TNT into the lava pits in the corners of the room at the right time and angle to take out the floor, the spawner, and half the silverfish, dove into a mound of silverfish, grabbed Grian, and shot perfectly into a one-block hole in the ceiling from less than ten blocks away out of said mound of silverfish while holding Grian, all in the space of about ten seconds.

And all Mumbo had done was watch.

He was speechless.

"X.. you... what...?" was all he could manage.

"For goodness sakes, you're the only one here who isn't close to dying and you're the one who's stuttering?" Xisuma said. "Come on, let's get out of here."

Mumbo followed Xisuma up out of the mine in awe.