The Chained Watcher

A Feather?

Deep in Hypixel's frozen wastes, several Hermits huddled together. Now you might be asking yourself, 'What are they doing all the way out here? There's nothing to find!' To which they would answer: Yes. That's the point.

You see, when building puzzle rooms for the Secret Seekers to solve, Grian hadn't skimped on the quantity of locations or items in the slightest. At first, this had been a good thing! Even if 4 out of 5 puzzles were already raided, they still got plenty of things to study from the rooms. The problem comes from that exact same fact. They keep getting more stuff, and very few of the things actually stack with each other. 

This brings us to now, far in the depths of the desolate North. Several members of the Seekers have come here in search of a good location for a base. Why the North? Because no other players want to live here. And because no other players want to live here, they can build themselves a humble hidden storage facility with little to no worry of enterprising vault hunters.

None of them actually plan to spend large amounts of time here, apart from studying the things they find, so it doesn't need to be the usual lavish base found on Hermitcraft. After finding a suitably distant location, they set to building. It takes them several hours to get it up to snuff with what they consider basic necessities, but there's no need to put too much effort into something only used for storage, right?

And indeed, by the standards of the Hermits, this is a fairly basic base. Unfortunately, what is considered basic on Hermitcraft is not the same as what most other servers would count as basic.

Most of the base is located underground to stay subtle, but contained within it is: a wool farm, a sugarcane farm, a cactus farm (yes, in the arctic), a high-tech redstone sorting system, a small-scale mob farm built around a spawner, a seaweed farm, and a bamboo/bonemeal/flower farm. You know, just the basics. They were looking to set up a villager trading hall at some point, but hadn't managed to get a second villager there yet.

Also located in there was an ender pearl stasis chamber Doc set up that they could remotely trigger. None of them knew quite how it worked, but it did and they weren't going to complain.

Speaking of Doc, after the portal closed, he, Iskall, and Pearl had stopped trying to theorize about what Grian's secret might be. When confronted, Doc planted his face on the table in front of him, Pearl averted her eyes, and Iskall hesitantly said, "We, uh, already figured it out..."

Naturally, they all wanted to hear it, but all three stubbornly remained silent. Eventually, Pearl lit up before offering a middle ground. "What if we get Grian to give us another word clue? Kinda like the one that we found behind the compass door in his previous base."

The only other thing any of them were willing to say regarding the nature of the secret was their unwillingness to actually give away the secret themselves. "It's... a bigger secret than any of us were guessing it was. Now that I know, it makes a lot more sense why he didn't want to just come out and say it."

After that meeting, they had apparently gone to ask Grian for a riddle, but were asked to give him a couple of days to actually come up with a good rhyme. Hopefully it would be ready before their next meeting, otherwise it would have to wait for next week.

~~~

So, as it turns out, they're not the only players to base in the middle of nowhere.

Tango had gotten a bit lost when flying over the seemingly endless expanse of snow and ice, and had spotted a frost-covered door while wandering around. Peeking inside, he had seen a definitely not abandoned base, and had gone back to the Secret Seekers base to drop off any stuff he didn't want to lose before returning to the arctic base.

Sneaking in, he slowly crept his way down through the eerily empty base, wincing every time his steps echoed around the halls. Down he went, until he felt his (totally real) redstone senses tingling. The walls had several decorative buttons on them, and he started pushing them in search of a reaction.

Part of the wall retracted, revealing a dimly lit room with a shimmering path beyond it. Hesitatingly, he started recording. This wasn't something he was used to seeing. What even was this weird metal? Looking more closely, it had that same purple sheen as most of the anomalous items Grian left in the puzzle rooms. Was this entire path made out of it?

Continuing onward, he looked up at the ceiling. Stone and deepslate with purple streaks running through it, much like crying obsidian. Amethyst-like crystals dotted the ceiling, shedding an ever-so-faint purple light from within. He spotted a simple bench up ahead of him, and could hear the soft rippling of water in the silent room.

As he approached, the source of the sound revealed itself. A pool of water, with its basin made of obsidian and covered with scattered crystals, sat in the center of the cave-like room. As captivating as it was, it couldn't compare to the presence of a single feather, perpetually spinning in slow circles. This feather didn't look like a purple chicken feather; he'd know, Grian had hidden some of those in the puzzle rooms before. As a matter of fact, if it wasn't for the color, he'd think it came from Grian himself.

The feather was quite large, and looked to be coated in a subtle, directionless light as it slowly spun atop the water. He was tempted to reach out and touch it, but didn't, afraid to disturb whatever kept it spinning in the center. Other than that, the thing that threw him off the most was the color. Grian's feathers were a light lilac color, though some Hermits argued that the color was instead lavender. But this feather in front of him? It wasn't lavender or lilac.

It was a deep, strong violet.

Before he could think about what this meant, a sound reached his ears from beyond the quiet stillness of the room. Whoever's base this was, they were back home. And he was intruding.

Rushing out of the room, he smacked several buttons to close the door, making more noise than was advisable for a stealth mission. The sounds from above grew louder, as their owner heard his rushed actions and came to investigate. Spinning around, he sprinted away from their source and down the winding halls. 

Was this the way out? No, probably not, but the other way had people there.

Taking the corners as fast as he dared, his pursuer slowly started catching up, drawing closer and closer to him, until when he looked back, he made eye contact. Yep, time to leave. Fumbling around with his inventory, he dropped a single dandelion, vanishing as the enderporter activated and pulled him back to base.

~~~