Hermitcraft and Empires Oneshots

Payment (Cleo)

TW: Fire

Cleo P.O.V.

I flipped frantically through the pages. I checked each date, each hour, every small passage of time. Making sure I hadn't miscounted, for today was the day I've forever dreaded.

This day, this day. I've dreaded for the past year two hundred year. I'm not ready for this day. I haven't prepared things for this day. I'm rushing around, for I know there was not an error made in my calculations.

Today was the day. Today is the day. I'm not ready yet. I don't have my payment. I don't have what they want. I've been too busy living the extra years they gave me, I didn't prepare payment.

I scrambled around my church and graveyard, trying to find something, anything that would help me collect the payment in such little time. Then I heard the dreaded sound.

The whoosh of the portal materializing near me. It was time. I wasn't ready, not yet. I couldn't do this, but what could I do. They were here now, and I didn't have payment.

Then I saw them. Yeah and purple armor judded with black crystals of obsidian. Indestructible, impenetrable, invincible, immortal, immaterial. this being was all of these things and more.

It may have gotten me before, but not for charity. It was not a good creature, it was a chaotic neutral, a force of nature, a being to behold, a monster to rival the gods in power.

It gave me another two hundred years to live, for a price. I did not meet that price, and now it is here to collect. I don't have the prize, so what is it going to take.

"Ah, Cleo, how are you? I see you've gotten along well, done quite a few things with your extra years." I simply nodded along, afraid to say something that might anger it.

" Now, I do expect you have what I asked. " I shook my head hesitantly. Immediately you could tell its entire body language changed. It was in a rage now.

I should have expected this. I knew what this creature could do, what it was capable of. Why, oh why, did I not spend more time gathering payment for it.

"You will regret this, Cleo. All I asked was for one simple thing, in return for another chance at life. Was it so hard to get that one thing, that you were unable to do it in two hundred years. Now, you will watch everything you love be destroyed."

Then, it grabbed my hand, and threw me as hard as it could. I never hit anything, for it opened up a portal that I was sent through. I jolted to a halt in the new dimension.

When I tried to move around, I found I was chained to a wall. In front of me was a large screen, with a view of the hermitcraft world. It zoomed in on the creature.

Around its raised fists, an area not black, but void of color was the sign of preparations to use magic. I struggled against the chains, shouting protests that went unheard.

I watched on, in horror, as portions of the world were engulfed in a dark purple flame that quickly reduced everything to ash. It wasn't long before the fire spread to chunks where hermits builds were, or where the hermits themselves were.

I was forced to watch on, struggling and fighting, as my friends, found family even, went up in the flames of destruction. Everything we had all worked on, Everything we cared so much for, was being destroyed, because of me, in front of my very eyes.

I focused my gaze on the creature, to find it laughing maniacally. "See, Cleo. This is what happens when someone doesn't give me what I want. I destroy everyone, and everything they have ever loved."

And the screen went dark. My chains released, and I fell to the floor, reduced to silent tears. Everyone I had gotten close too, everyone I had considered a friend, had perished because of me.

Simply because I could not father payment in time. Simply because I was an incompetent fool.

I don't know if this is any good, and I feel like this is a bit different style than I usually write. It was definitely a shorter one, but I was in the mood for some quick angst.

-Leaf