A Lot More Hermitcraft Stuff

The Builder (one-shot)

(warning: blood, mild gore, nausea, syringes)

A glimmering fire crackled brightly on the charred wood, billows of smoke slowly twirling it's way up the chimney. A woman with long black hair sat in a comfortable armchair, resting an elbow on the fluffy white blanket that draped over the cloth arm. She crossed one leg over the other, shifting her simple yet elegant black dress. Moving her silky hair behind the pearly white feathered shawl draping across her shoulders, she gently propped up her thin black glasses and smiled with kind brown eyes.

"Gather around children," she murmured, her voice soft and quiet. "And let me tell you the tale of a man gone mad from ingenuity." She reached down and lightly grabbed the dark red book that leaned against the armchair and flipped open the crisp papers, stopping at the first. "This, is the tale of The Builder Who Reached Too High."

"Once there was a man who lived an exciting life. He had many, many friends and even more thrilling adventures to go on. But no matter how hard he worked, how many dreams he made reality, he was never satisfied.

One day the man was preparing for another build, when his friend made a small mistake. "Silly me," his friend laughed, replacing the smooth concrete with a handful of crumbling gravel. "You cannot mix concrete and sand! It must be gravel and sand!"

The man laughed along with his friend, but something else stirred within him. A sense of pondering. Almost... curiosity. It was basic knowledge, the recipe for concrete, and yet... the man could not help but wonder if he... could mix concrete and sand.

Or maybe... mix something new entirely.

And so, over the course of the next few days, the man began working on his discovery. His friends grew curious and decided to help, gathering supplies and searching for possible clues. While his friends only thought of this as a small side project, the man worked tirelessly, up until the sun had long vanished and stars speckled the night sky.

His friends grew worried and tried to convince him to stop, but the man ignored them. He needed to finish this. It would be a waste of time to leave a project as important as this incomplete!

Nothing seemed to work, the recipes he had memorized refusing to change no matter what he did. Then he had a thought. A dangerous thought. Players could change their appearance couldn't they? That part was evident in his friends, in himself. So what if he...

Rushing up from his desk, he ran to get a syringe. With the plastic in hand, he carelessly pierced the needle through his skin. Glistening red blood trickled down his arm as pain shot up though him. But the man did not cease and continued to draw blood up through the metal needle.

Sluggishly dragging the pointed tip from his now red skin, the man aimlessly spilled the scarlet liquid onto the materials before him. Nothing seemed to happen at first, the dark pool of blood only reflecting the taunting orbs of light above him. Then his vision started to shift, the air moving as though it was rippling water in an otherwise still pool.

Colors began blurring with one another, the sharp stinging in his bleeding arm softening to a dull ache. The red swam before him and and began running into every other color, creating a hypnotizing vortex that swam with a multitude of dulled shades.

Had he done it? Had he really made the impossible become true? The man smiled to himself deliriously, not even noticing the black shadows that crept at the edge of his vision. Bright lights start danced before his eyes, seeming to illuminate nothing as they bobbed just out of his reach. Had even the stars come to congratulate him?

The man crashed down in a pool of his own blood, a pathetic smile painted across his pale face as the suffocatingly endless void consumed him."

The woman closed the book and chuckled lightly. "Ah such a foolish man," she said, gently closing the book in her lap. "Curled up in a pool of his own failed ideas as he withered away." She lightly set the finished story at the side of her armchair "A name is not important, though you may wonder what it is. I certainly hope you do not wonder too much, especially not after that tale."

"Curiosity killed the cat, remember? Unfortunately." She grinned, her dark eyes revealing nothing. "The cat never received the satisfaction to bring him back."

   ~*~

i thought of this idea at like midnight yesterday, so blame very tired one braincelled me

(also, *yells in side view Biffa*)