The Chained Watcher

The Feather

What circumstances led to Philza and Techno finding Grian?

~~~

On the way back home, Philza found himself examining the feather dropped by the Watcher they had encountered. It's quite a large feather, which makes sense given the average wingspan Watchers tended to possess, plus the shade of purple made it quite pretty to look at. Maybe he could build it a room in their base's vault? Some kind of reflective pool, with the feather lightly placed in the middle sounds interesting.

He and Techno got to the entrance of their base, and after he scanned the surroundings for other players they went inside. His only regret with picking such an unforgiving place to build their base would be the piercing cold. Techno headed off to a training room to wreck a couple more training dummies in the name of practice while Phil started planning where to put the new room. Not too close to the surface, on the off chance their base ended up getting raided, but also somewhere he could look at it from time to time.

Before leaving, he had taken the magic obsidian along with some weird purple crystals inside a nearby metallic geode, which also seemed to have been changed by the magic. Those should look pretty nice as decoration, but maybe some end colors would work well too? The worst that could happen is having to tear it all down and try again, so why not?

~~~

One building session later, and he now had a dimly lit room with a pool in the center. The various magic materials seem to give off a little bit of light themselves, so he ended up styling the room to be more cave-like than originally planned. Crystals stuck out from the ceiling and walls, while a shimmery metal path wound its way across the floor until it reached the pool. 

The pool itself was almost entirely made of the magic obsidian, lighting it up from within as the water filtered the light. A couple of finishing touches, and now it was time for the last piece. He took the purple feather and placed it gently in the middle. Hopefully, it would stay there on its own, but if not a couple pieces of string ought to do the job.

Stepping back, he admired his work. All in all, the room looked good. He would have to bring Techno over to look later.

~~~

(Several days later)

~~~

Much like he had been doing a lot lately, Philza made his way down to the feather's room. They hadn't ended up reporting the presence of the Watcher to the admins, mostly due to the strange lack of hostility. In Techno's words, the lack of even the remotest level of hostility was really abnormal. Apparently all the Watchers at the arena leaked ill-intent even when not paying attention to the gladiators, so for one to not only have none but also flee when confronted was... confusing, to say the least.

He rounded the corner, spotting the feather slowly spinning in the middle of its pool like it always did. Quite convenient, since he didn't even end up needing string to keep it in the middle. A couple of more utilitarian touches had been added, those being a redstone door and a few benches to sit on.

Taking a seat, he watched the slowly spinning feather cast blurry shadows on the ceiling. The gentle light of the magic-saturated materials let the feather always seem to be illuminated in a very mystical way, and the strange shadows it left on the ceiling never seemed to have the same shape. No sounds could be heard in the room other than the gentle rippling of water.

Then, it stopped spinning. 

It took him a moment to register, but upon second glance, the feather had stopped spinning entirely. Though it stayed in the center of the pool, its quill end now pointed South-ish. Was it broken somehow? Maybe if he touched it?

He lightly nudged the feather, and it gently rotated for a couple of seconds before settling back to the same direction. Once was chance, twice was coincidence. Would it do it again? Reaching over, he nudged it into a spin again. It stopped, pointing unerringly South again. Three times makes a pattern. What was it pointing at?

Pulling out his communicator, Phil sent a quick message to Techno.

<Ph1lza>: Hey Tech, could you come down to the feather room for a sec? It's acting weird.

Less than thirty seconds had passed before the sound of footsteps could be heard from down the hall. Techno hurried into the room, first checking over Phil for any obvious injuries before letting his gaze fall on the still feather. Phil reached out and nudged the feather, watching it spin before settling the same way it had before. A frown crossed Techno's face as he did it again, and again, proving that this wasn't just a coincidence.

"Alright, that's definitely weird. The way it's acting is almost like a compass." 

Wait, that made an awful lot of sense. The feather kept pointing South, but not directly. Maybe it points towards spawn? Checking his compass revealed the feather to be pointing somewhat West as well. Not spawn then. 

Techno spoke hesitantly, "Could it be... pointing at that Watcher?" He sounded like he was hoping that wasn't true.

"Maybe, but why wouldn't it have done this earlier then? It doesn't feel like something related to distance, so the only other thing that would interrupt whatever signal it's following would be the server portal. There's no way the admins would actually see a Watcher and just go 'ah, everything seems to be in order, head on through then' so..." 

He thought back to what he knew the Watcher had done. It had made itself invisible, that much was a fact. Other than that, all he had were assumptions. The Watcher was most likely the reason all the materials nearby were heavily saturated with magic, and it had been hiding deep underground. Maybe it was low on magic, so it settled for invisibility? The brainwashed experiments were proof that mind control wasn't an impossibility, so something like memory altering wasn't out of the question.

So many questions, with no answers to be found. His gaze fell back on the feather. Maybe there was one source of information...

"Phil, whatever you're thinking, no."

"I haven't even said anything yet!"

"You were thinking hard about something, then you looked at the feather. You then got that look of 'What if I-' while staring at it like it was the key to all your problems."

"But it is! If it's pointing at the Watcher, then why not go ask it questions!"

"Phil, it clearly doesn't want to be found. Why would it answer your questions if it's in hiding? My answer is no, nor will it change."

~~~