The Chained Watcher

Into the End

~~~

The dark sky of the End dimension spread out above them, with the void lurking far below. It was always a little disconcerting, staring down into the depths, but they had gotten mostly used to it.

Looking up at the towers, they were taken aback to see them all randomly scattered about the terrain. There was no convenient circle, nor could they spot anywhere for the dragon to perch. And why were there so many??? Who even needs this many towers? Isn't this overkill?

Grian had already taken off to destroy the End crystals, which left them to bridge across the gap themselves. Having someone who could fly definitely took the difficulty of the dragon fight down quite a bit, and it didn't take as long to defeat the dragon as the number of towers would imply. For some reason, the bedrock structure the dragon usually perches on appeared after it died, so at least they had a way back to the Overworld now.

They all looked around for the mini portal to the End City, but it just didn't appear. How were they expected to get elytra now? Did they have to bridge across manually? Maybe build a flying machine?

Grian fiddled with the admin commands for a couple seconds, managing to get the server to spawn three sets of elytra for the flightless players to use. "Ta daaaaa! Problem solved." He looked so proud of himself, they almost didn't want to remind him of what he forgot. He saw their expressions. "I... did I forget something?" None of them spoke. His face went blank with realization. "I forgot the rockets." There it is.

"Yes, those of us without flappable wings need rockets to go up, I'm afraid. Dying in the void is not on my to-do list today."

Now properly equipped for flying, the four of them set out to search for End islands. Several hours later, they had found a total of none. Not a single one. Was their End dimension broken? First the extra misplaced towers, then no portal, and now no other islands. Clearly something just didn't generate right. They were this close to just turning around and calling it a day.

In fact, they had just made the decision to head back when Grian stopped, hovering in midair. He moved slightly to the side, forward and back, like someone trying to figure out which way they were facing using their coordinates. Turning slightly to the side, he accelerated rapidly in a direction without looking back, leaving them all to spam rockets to keep up.

After a couple minutes, a singular End City came into view, though it too was different from the norm. It felt like a custom build, and gave off a rather sinister vibe when compared to the normal architecture of the naturally generated structures. One thing was certain, this place was not designed for people without wings. Stairs had mostly been deemed unnecessary, and bridges were clearly considered optional.

Now, despite all that there's not much visually off about it, but their other senses tell a different story. The entire structure is tainted with Watcher magic, large quantities lingering despite the lengthy passage of time. All of them are obviously on edge, even Grian showing discomfort when looking around.

Slowly creeping through the entrance, they clustered together while exploring the empty halls. Most of the area was either private living spaces or public amenities, but they found some extremely creepy futuristic mechanical things that looked like cryostasis chambers. Was this some kind of experiment room? An office space was attached to the testing room, and upon peeking in was revealed to have several filing cabinets lined up against the wall.

Grian was the first to open a cabinet, pulling out one of the files and reading it out loud for everyone else to hear. "'Project Evolution, Experiment log zero zero one. The subjects have been prepared, and placed in the environment of the pocket dimension. When they awoke, the post-mindwipe' Mindwipe?!? 'confusion cleared faster than has been observed in isolated subjects. For the most part, they stayed grouped near where they woke, but some strayed from the forming community to live alone.'