Evolved [Book 2 of the Life Hearts Trilogy]

The Empires - Blue

The first day in the new world, the Empires, was spent in relative safety. Gem, FWhip and I built starter bases, and although we were far from each other, we could still communicate with separate devices: me with my watch, FWhip with his shiny new Admin communicator, and Gem with her bracelet.

I settled in a swamp, near Jimmy. We met up to draw boundaries and decide who would get a monopoly on slime so that we wouldn't start a war over it. I let him make a slime farm. I didn't even know how a comparator worked, so a farm was far out of my ability.

Gem built her base in the side of a cliff in the mountains. She named her area the Crystal Cliffs and started work on her empire, putting spells into various objects and structures to help the place run a little more smoothly. But she also started disappearing, frequently enough that it couldn't be for resource gathering. When I confronted her about it, she acted like nothing was wrong. I saw through, but I knew that she would never tell me, so I dropped it.

Oh, by the way, Gem was magical.

She called herself a wizard. No matter how many times FWhip and I told her that a female wizard was a witch, she insisted that she was a wizard. Apparently she saw a difference.

She got her powers one night in a dream. Gem had told us later that she had seen a grey silhouette that offered her an orb of purple light. She accepted it, and had woken up with magic. Since then, she had had more dreams explaining how to control the power and use it. Gem was really good at enchanting items, particularly crystals, to harness the power of the moon, or communication magic. But she had other skills as well.

FWhip settled close to her, in a place he called the Grimlands that was on the edge of the mountains as well. He immediately got to work on a castle and a TNT factory for all his explosive needs.

I named my area the Dripleaf Marsh. I started with a small hut on stilts in a pool of water. When a wandering trader came along, I traded with him for some dripleaf and planted it throughout my empire. I made farms, paths, mines, and houses for the native villagers. I allied myself with the Wither Rose Alliance, so FWhip, Gem, and Sausage. I didn't like Sausage very much, but he and FWhip had clicked instantly, so I had to deal with him.

It was peaceful, with the only deaths being from monsters and cliffs. But things escalated quickly.

Sausage Mythic, one of the new people, was the kind of guy to say something mean and then add in "kidding" and call it good. Of course he didn't mean any harm, but it seriously offended some people. Namely, his neighbor and also my neighbor and fellow Third Lifer, Jimmy the Codfather.

It turned out Jimmy had stolen some resources from Sausage right at the beginning. Sausage retaliated by stealing Jimmy's special music record.

Of course, Jimmy was not very happy about that. So naturally, he retaliated for Sausage's retaliation. But he had an ally this time.

I was at Jimmy's house, negotiating a treaty between the two swamp empires, when Pixl Riffs flew in and landed right in between us. "Hello!"

"Hi, Pix," Jimmy said, a little startled.

Pix also didn't like Sausage. The latter had put Illagers in both the his and Jimmy's bases recently, to annoy both them and any guests they might have.

I hadn't noticed it before, but ever since I returned from Third Life, Pix had been disappearing quite a bit. And once, when I needed copper, I had accidentally barged in on him writing some sort of script. I only caught the words "End Crystal war in Boatem. Participants: Mumbo Jumbo, Impulse Esvee..." There were more names, but I couldn't read them because Pix stuffed the papers into a drawer in his desk and made a lame excuse as to why he couldn't negotiate at that moment.