As I stepped through the portal, I was bracing myself for roaring fires, collapsed buildings, and dead servermates. There was no way that we could get there in time.
Fortunately, though, there was nothing that seemed to be wrong or out of place.
Unfortunately, what was waiting in front of the portal was much, much worse.
I stepped out into the Area 77 field and slammed straight into Iskall, who was standing right in front of the portal. We toppled over each other and landed in a tangled heap on the ground.
Iskall groaned, carefully extracting themself before helping me up. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah. Just caught by surprise." I brushed the grass off my suit.
Iskall suddenly let go of my hand and punched my arm.
"Then what the HELL were you thinking!? Stepping through the portal like that--that is the DUMBEST risk I've ever seen someone take, I thought you were better than that--you scared us all to death, I was about to follow you in there!"
"It was for a good reason," I protested weakly, rubbing my sore arm. Iskall hit hard.
"Good reason??" Iskall did their best to stare me down, but that was kind of hard, considering I was a good half foot taller than them. "You'd have better come back with some sort of life-altering, plot-changing object."
"Well...it's not an object. It's a person." I stepped aside just as Grian stumbled out from the portal with far more grace than I did.
The way Iskall's face changed from anger to confusion to shock to even more confusion in the matter of microseconds almost made me burst into laughter.
"Wait--but--how--" Iskall turned towards me, a look of absolute bewilderment on their face.
Grian didn't seem to notice Iskall's shock, instead looking around at Area 77 in wonder. I'd forgotten how massive--and impressive--the place looked to outsiders. Heck, I was still impressed by the size of this place, and I was a regular Hermit.
He caught me looking and quickly averted his eyes. "My world was in a different update than this," he muttered. "An older one. There are some materials here I've never used before. And, well, the entire terrain just looks different."
He turned around to look at the Infinity Portal behind him, caught off guard by its odd dimensions and diamond frame. "I-is this vanilla Minecraft? How did you even do this?"
"With a whole lot of Redstone," I replied. Iskall was still staring at Grian. I kicked them discreetly in the shin.
"Oh. I wouldn't know how to do that." Grian sounded embarrassed, like his awe towards Hermitcraft wasn't valid. "I don't know anything about Redstone."
Yet another thing he had in common with NPG. I wondered idly if he hadn't given NPG any Redstone skills because he didn't know anything about it either.
"But...how?" Iskall still seemed stuck in shock.
I couldn't blame them, but there were more pressing matters at hand than finding out that a servermate you originally thought was dead is actually alive. Like, come on. We're about to be attacked by an interdimensional being with the ability to snap us all out of existence, for crying out loud.
Grian raised an eyebrow at me. I gestured that I'll tell him later, and that seemed enough for him. It seems I'd have to do a lot of explaining if we ever got out of this. But that was a very big if.
"It's a long story," Grian said to Iskall for their benefit. "Right now, though, we need to warn everyone--or round them up, at least. Mumble here--"
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FanfictionThe screen flickered, distorting for a moment, then played a fuzzy video. They could barely make out what was happening, but it was enough. And what they saw would change everything that they knew. Things aren't what they seem to be. - Some informat...
