The Chained Watcher

Scar's Crystals

Did he just spend several days digging out a secret tunnel to Mumbo's base? Yes, yes he did. Should he have been working on his base or gear instead? That would have been the wise decision. Was he aware of this, yet chose to do it anyway? So it would seem.

He even went the extra mile (not literally) and made the walls spruce wood as a little bit of decoration. At Mumbo's end, he made a place to drop out messages in minecarts and a hobbit hole hidden behind the mustache man's nether portal.

What's that? A nearby spruce forest has been mysteriously decimated? How terrible, who could have done that?

Anyways, it was probably time to check up on Scar, just in case he managed to do something outrageous.

Flying over to the giant snail, apparently named Larry, Scar's nametag was visible inside. Gliding down and knocking on the door, Grian called out, "Hellooooo? Anybody home?"

A startled yelp came from inside, along with the tinkling clatter unique to a large pile of glass objects. "Coming!" Footsteps came closer before the door opened, revealing Scar wearing his wizard's robe and hat. Behind him was a possibly apocalyptic amount of charged magic crystals, placed haphazardly on every available flat surface. Oh please don't let any of those be explosive.

With a mildly strained tone, Grian asked the pressing question on his mind. "Scar, why do you have the incredibly fragile and dangerous magic crystals stacked like this?"

"Oh! Well you see, I made a couple too many types, and the different ones don't stack so I ended up going with this!"

"And they're not going to... explode?"

"Oh no, the explosive ones I actually keep in chests. Learned that one the hard way."

Something else crossed Grian's mind. "Has Xisuma shown up yet? I don't know if he'd notice these, but they are magic so it's not out of the question."

"I haven't seen him yet, but from what I know he's not based too close to here. Oh! He also changed his outfit to look like a bee for some reason! Have you seen the little doodlebobbers?"

Speak of the devil, Xisuma's voice can be heard from below the snail. "Hey Scar, did I hear my name?" What a coincidence.

"Oh, yes! I was talking to Grian about your bee outfit! Want to come on up?"

"Sure, if you don't mind." Xisuma climbed up the ladder, pausing in shock upon seeing the magic crystals. His voice rises an entire octave as he locks eyes with the crystals. "Hey Scar, what might these be? They seem rather... volatile..."

Snickering, Grian answered for him. "Apparently they're magic crystals. Scar's decided to be a wizard, so he's decorated his house with stained glass baubles." He picked up one of them, careful not to knock over the rest. "Quite pretty, aren't they?" 

Watching Xisuma quietly panic about how to deal with what were essentially magical bombs without outright saying they were bombs was extremely amusing, but Scar spoke to assuage his worries. "Oh don't worry, these ones don't explode. Those ones I stored in a chest so I wouldn't misplace them." Wow, this can not be good for their admin's blood pressure.

"L-let's get you some better storage for these, wouldn't want them breaking, right?"

"I suppose that's true. I wouldn't want to knock one of them off and ruin all the hard work I put into making it." 

Xisuma sighed in relief before his breath hitched, watching Scar gather an armful of crystals from a nearby table. "Let's see, do I have any open chests in here? No... Not here... Here's full too... I think I have some outside I could use for now." The wizard started making his way down the ladder while carrying a teetering stack of crystals in one arm. Was he genuinely trying to give the poor Voidwalker a heart attack?

Somehow making it to the bottom without dropping anything, Scar started going through the start of a chest monster, not noticing a creeper coming up behind him. Xisuma noticed, and panicked to get rid of it before it could explode, going for the rarely used tactic of tackling the creeper. Naturally, it explodes, sending the admin to respawn and scattering his items everywhere.

Scar had found an open chest, and was placing the crystals inside when the creeper exploded. Now it was Grian's turn to have a heart attack, rushing to catch the crystals that went flying through the air when the wizard got startled. Xisuma sprinted back over from wherever his respawn was currently set, arriving to see Grian sprawled on the ground with a decent amount of the crystals. The final two air-borne crystals landed on his stretched out wings, him having positioned them to soften the landing of the ones he couldn't catch in time.

Now covered in mud, Grian carefully stands up, places the crystals in the nearest open chest, and announces, "I'm going to go take a bath." He made direct eye contact with Xisuma and wished him a heartfelt, "Good luck." Taking off, Grian spotted the look of horrified betrayal on the admin's face at the thought of having to deal with Scar's new ability to make bombs from glass, of all things.

Heading back to his own base, Grian dug a stone-lined one block deep pit to fill with water. Filling it, he hopped in and began cleaning himself up. Should he have really taught Scar how to charge magic into stuff? Probably not, but it's better than the alternative. He had no desire to see the man somehow manage to create a magical singularity, or whatever his magic made when unguided.

He hadn't seen the results of untrained magic mishaps himself, but rumors abounded in Watcher society so he had at least heard of the dangers. But why had he made so many magic crystals? Glass wasn't the most stable conduit, so... Oh... He knew why now... Grian hadn't taught Scar any ways to practice other than making crystals. Of course he would make them if that's the only method of practice he knew.

Xisuma was probably still hanging around Scar, so he couldn't just go and teach the wizard how to practice magic without creating bombs right now. You know what, let's let the admin deal with him for now, and go do base stuff.

~~~