~The First Step~ a Hermitcraft AU

Chapter 39

wc: 1860

"...Hallo?"

Iskall poked his head into X's base, the door left open. Stress was next to him, her eyes darting across the room.

"Anyone home..?"

Papers were scattered across the tables, drawings and observations and old books flung wide open. Stress picked one up, frowned, and showed Iskall. The pages were covered in runes and old etchings.

"Do you know what this is?" Iskall asked, frowning at the paper as Stress moved to go to another room.

"It does look like some dialect of faerie," she replied, poking her head into another room before sighing and closing the door. "I don't recognize it, though."

Iskall tapped on his bionic eye. The words were highlighted in blue before the system wrote "LANGUAGE OF NATURE AND LIFE FAERIES" in bold words across his vision.

"It is faerie dialect," Iskall reported. "Nature and life faerie?"

He didn't know much about faeries in general, only that a couple of people on the server belonged to its people, Stress included. He was fairly sure that Tango was some sort of Nether faerie, and that Doc was... something, but that was the extent of his knowledge.

"I don't know any life faeries on this server, though." Stress picked up another paper. "A portal?"

Iskall peered at her paper. Descriptions of spells were scrawled across its surface with near illegibility, the handwriting slightly familiar.

"Well... the only ones missing right now are Scar, X, Mumbo, and Grian," Iskall pointed out.

"X is of the End, and Mumbo and Grian didn't come back to the server from.. Last Life, so it's probably Scar," Stress said. "He is a kinda nature-y guy anyhow- Oh!" Stress' gasp made Iskall freeze, then immediately rush to the entrance of the room where she was standing.

"What??" He stood in front of her, glaring at the room . "What?"

Stress pointed slowly. "...a rift." Iskall took a step forward, but Stress caught his wrist. "You can't see it yet. I'll go."

He started to protest, but she'd already started stepping forward, hand outstretched. A faint pink glow began to shine from her palms, and as he watched, shimmering cracks began to appear in the air. They spread a bit further, before Stress gasped and her arm dropped.

"Stress?" Iskall said, inching closer. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

She backed up into the hall. "That portal leads to the Watcher world." Her eyes were blown wide open. "I can't open that any further, I'm not strong enough." She turned to Iskall. "If they really are in the Watcher world..."

He didn't answer. He didn't have one.

Stress turned and opened her communicator. "The people who got back from- from whatever Last Life was might know something." A ping sounded from his communicator as she sent whatever she had typed. "Mumbo and Grian never came back. Maybe something happened over there." A sigh. "I don't know what happened, but the people who came back have been acting very weird."

"Definitely," Iskall muttered, walking back to where the papers had been and picking one up again. His eyebrows rose as he recognized the language as Galactic. Two taps on his eye and the words were being translated. "Watcher portals," he read. "These are very difficult to open, and near impossible with only one person, but two or more strong enough individuals can open one by using these encantations. Please note that if you are not strong enough to open this portal, trying this may be very dangerous."

"These idiots," Stress said, pacing back and forth. "No one goes into the Watcher world. No one. I mean- what do they think they want to do?! Die?!"