A Blessing and a Curse || A Hermitcraft/Watcher AU

Chapter Thirteen

Another server another disappointment. Xavon looked around after glancing over another tab list of more foreign names. He didn't know why he expected anything else by this point. He checked servers, he checked dimensions in-between, he was essentially hopping from one lily-pad to another, looking for his brother.

"Hey!" Someone yelled at him, and he quickly typed in the code to escape. He was pulled from the server, and on his way to the next. It was not a new thought that he'd never find his brother, but he kept going. He'd managed to find a rough location, and he was working on narrowing it down. It would be worth it.

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The blue water glimmered underneath him under the evening sun, and the tip of Xavon's wing cut through it, causing water to splash up after him. He lifted up, his wings pushing him up powerfully, with more speed and force than an elytra with a hundred rockets. His cloak flapped behind him in the wind but didn't get in the way, and some of the eyes between the feathers opened. The Watcher grinned as he did a loop-the-loop in the air and caught himself, before gliding for a minute.

He wondered how fast he could possibly go, and decided to try. He turned and his wings pushed him forwards, before finding their perfect gliding position for optimum speed. The wind rushed by him and the mask protected his eyes. His slightly too long hair flickered; the black had spread further.

After spending three days doing nothing other than practicing magic and flying, he'd improved significantly. His fingertips had gone so purple that they were black at the ends, his hair carried more black than white, and his skin looked purple-ish light grey. His movements in flight had become fluent, like second nature, and he found magic increasingly easy.

He liked it.

He loved every second that he was free. Free from his worries, from what he should be, free from caring.

Xavon landed, and he put his hands out and let them come to life with fire. He'd heard about Watchers being able to create and destroy bedrock, and he wanted to give it a try. He looked at a tree; he was going to turn it into the 'indestructible' material. Some of his hair flopped onto his face, distracting him, so he pulled as much as he could back and tied it into a ponytail, before going back to his aim.

He focussed on what he wanted, and after a few seconds he got it. He smiled at the tree-shaped pillar of bedrock. He had power, more than he ever realised was possible for anyone, let alone him. And he knew what he wanted to use it for. He knew what his instincts told him, what the voice of his past self whispered into his ear like the angel on his shoulder.

He could finally be himself again, not the pathetic Xavon, who hung around on the server, mourning his past self, because he had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. He could finally be what his soul desired. He didn't have to care about what his brother thought anymore, didn't have to worry about hatred because what did it matter? Really, why should he care?

Maybe he'd spent the last three days coming to that conclusion, maybe he'd only been accepting it in that time, maybe he'd known all along from the moment he heard the word Watcher. He would disappoint his brother, sure, but he would do so anyway by simply being a Watcher, so why did it matter? He'd hated every day of simply living as Xavon, and he refused to go back to that.

The winged man went back to his small base, which was more just a storage room that he didn't need, and picked up his communicator to see seven new messages from Xisuma. A small amount of guilt presented itself, but he ignored it. What had his brother ever really done for him besides leave him stranded and then take away his identity? He hated that thought and knew it was far from the truth but stayed with it.