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crash-hawk · 3 years

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Crash, crash, burn, let it all burn, this hurricane’s chasing us all underground...

Since I recently re-released Three to read in its entirety on Tumblr, I thought I would do the same for the first chapter of the follow-up fic Hurricane: a series of short stories set in the Passerine-inspired Kaleidoscope AU, focusing on the intersections and parallels between the series’ Hermit cast and their DSMP neighbors. Chapter 1 is a direct follow-up to Three, taking place literally hours later, so it’s recommended that you read that one first!

Hurricane is a work in progress, with three chapters completed so far. The rest can be read on Archive of Our Own HERE.

(For a look at what’s going down in this AU’s version of Third Life, check out @lunarblazes‘ devastating Give Me Back My Heart, You Wingless Thing and @exactlymypoint‘s stellar To Stars and Void He Will Return.)

The morning after’s always a bitch.

crash, crash, burn

No matter how many times that you told me you wanted to leave

No matter how many breaths that you took, you still couldn’t breathe

No matter how many nights that you’d lie wide awake to the sound of the poison rain

Where did you go? Where did you go? Where did you go...?

- Thirty Seconds to Mars, “Hurricane”

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A strange hush falls over the island in the hours just before dawn. The moon sinks into the water, unnaturally bright against stars that seem pale and faded and unreal, and seems to take all sound and life with it; the ocean is a vast expanse of smooth glass that barely seems to lap at the shore.

The Queen of the Hunt notices, and it disturbs her.

She does not live with the others in the main village. She makes her home in a vast cavern on the far side of the island, beneath a quaint red-roofed house that’s more decoy than domicile. The house is for the young ones and the new ones, who don’t need to know what she truly is (although every once and again one will come seeking her specifically, usually one who’s seen her in the Starborn’s tournaments, and if they show promise and she has nothing better to do she will take them on.)

She does not live with the others, but she’s aware of the visitors who’d come to their shore the day before. She knows them well, one of them most of all. Her own dark mirror; sometimes her twin and sometimes a stranger, sometimes an ally and more often an enemy. His presence here, in this place meant specifically to keep him out, infuriates her, because she knows it for what it is: both an implicit threat and a deliberate insult on the part of the one who’d brought him along. The thought of marching into the village and demanding that the interlopers state their intent was tempting, the thought of demanding that they leave even more so. But she and her shadow have always been flint and steel, and with each hour that passes the island feels more and more like dry kindling. The Huntress tells herself that no matter what happens, she will not be the one to strike the spark.

She wanders along the northern shoreline, not knowing why, not knowing where she’s going or what she’s looking for. It feels like she’s waiting for something, some coin to drop, some axe to fall.

And then it does.

The land around her has grown sere and scrubby, gnarled oaks making way for the flat-crowned acacia trees local to the northwestern point of the island. A huge mountain, ridged and buttressed like a castle, bulks to the sky, black against the dim, faded stars. She can see lights glowing softly from the windows of the homes her friends have built there.

A scream suddenly bursts from one of the windows.

It shatters the night into a thousand fragments, echoing from stone and tree and water, freezing the Huntress down to the bone because she recognizes it, would know the voice anywhere. That’s Etho screaming, screaming and screaming in terror and agony and something else, something that sounds dangerously close to madness--the Huntress has heard enough screams in her life to know.

She’s running before she’s even aware of it, her bow materializing in her hand from thin air, as dawn crawls over the eastern horizon behind her in a silent white line.

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Something’s wrong.

It pulses through Pearl’s mind in an insistent feedback loop, crowding out thought as they make their way back down the shore toward the village. George rambles on at her side, the most he’s spoken since she can remember, the most he’s spoken in millennia, she thinks, ever since the old forests were a new thing too huge with potential for her to govern alone. There are other siblings, of course, other gods of life and change and growth, but he is one of the youngest, and the most sensitive. So she smiles and tries her best to listen as he talks and talks and talks, about his woods and his dreams and his nightmares and waking up choking on ash, about his animal friends and the valley he made bloom in honor of one that he lost, about the unlikely friendships she still doesn’t understand, treasure hunts and near misses and the universe saying I’m going to be the best thing that ever happened to you.

“Granted, they’re both idiots, Sapnap especially,” he says, smiling. “But…”

“But they’re your idiots,” Pearl finishes with an answering smile. She can’t help it, she’s all too familiar with the phenomenon. And yet the maddening refrain continues: something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong.

To the east, dawn paints the sky in fragile seashell colors, washing out stars already strangely faint. They’re close, now; Pearl can see the massive, irregular shadow of Scar’s ore pile and the dim violet glow from Grian’s observatory. There are few lights lit, and even though she knows that logically everyone’s probably still asleep, it still sits wrongly. Even at this distance, the village feels shuttered, empty, dead.

“It’s so quiet,” George murmurs. Pearl turns to him, seeing anxiety in his eyes, in the way his arms wrap around himself. He feels it too.

“Some of them should be up by now,” Pearl says absently. “Bdubs at least, he’s staying at Impulse’s house this week and he’s always up and out with the sun, I don’t--”

“I think they’re all still there,” George interrupts, pointing down the beach, to where the the last embers of the campfire still glow dully in the early morning gloom. “It looks like they all fell asleep there.”

Pearl looks, and fear washes over her like ice water.

They’re arranged around the campfire in a ring, the way they gather almost every night if the weather permits. Twenty-some people, it looks like, almost the entire village. Some are still mostly upright, slumped against each other or against the logs of driftwood. Others lie sprawled awkwardly in the sand or curled up tight against the wind. Only one remains alert, prodding idly at the embers as they roast something on a stick.

Footsteps crunch in the sand behind them, making her jump, but she doesn’t turn around. They don’t look like they’re sleeping. Their poses are too awkward, too uncomfortable, as if they’d all been struck by the same bolt of lightning and simply lay as they fell. They look--

“There you are,” complains the approaching voice, all smoke and grit. “I’ve been looking for you all godsdamned night.”

“Sapnap--”

Pearl breaks into a run.

George shouts something after her, but she doesn’t hear it. She runs for the campfire, her cloak and hood flying out behind her, heart pounding in her head and chest and throat.

The one still awake looks up as she skids to a halt in the sand, smiling. “Morning,” he greets. “Breakfast? There’s fish enough for four.”

Pearl ignores him. Up close, she can see that the younger ones do seem to be asleep, piled up on each other in awkward configurations and snoring quietly, but the others...the others…

“What have you done,” she gasps, before she’s even aware of what she means to say.

“What do you mean, what have I done,” Dream asks, blinking. His voice and expression are the picture of bafflement, but his eyes are amused, glittering jade in the light of the rising sun. “I was making breakfast. They’re asleep.”

Impulse still sits next to Dream, slumped over the half-finished clock in his lap, head bowed. Beside him, Bdubs is face down in the sand. She can’t tell if they’re breathing or not. Across the campfire Scar lies curled on his side, arms crossed loosely in front of his face as if to ward off a blow. And beside him--

“Grian!”

For a terrible, terrible moment, Pearl is certain that he’s dead. He lies sprawled on his back, limbs bent awkwardly, boneless and loose as if he’d fallen out of the sky. His wings are invisible, still cloaked, and that’s wrong, Grian can’t hide his wings unless he’s conscious enough to think about it--

She drops to her knees beside him, laying one hand on his chest, the other cupping his cheek. She feels him draw in a breath and sobs, vision blurring with relief. So slow, though, a full minute going by before he draws another, and he’s so cold. Grian isn’t supposed to be cold. Grian is quicksilver and solar flares and lightning in a bottle, rambling speech and manic laughter and too-warm hugs. His fire is gone, his wings are gone. Grian is gone. What lies on the beach beneath her hands is nothing more than a placeholder. A shell. And she knows as certain as moonrise that if she were to go to the others, to lay her hands on their hearts, she would feel the same.

“What have you done?!” she repeats, pale eyes returning to Dream’s.

Dream simply looks back at her, impassive, the unnerving smile still on his face. “Nothing they didn’t ask for.”

“They would never ask for this,” she hisses, standing slowly. She can feel rage beginning to gather in her core, flowing down into her limbs like white fire.

“Dream?” she hears George ask from behind her, quick footsteps shuffling through the sand. “What happened?”

For a heartbeat, she sees the Green God’s expression flicker, a split second of something that might have been surprise or nerves or fear. She doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. Her rage is an incandescent, living thing, as though she’d swallowed a piece of the sun.

“I told her,” he says. “They’re asleep. Dreaming. They asked for a story, and I told one. I might’ve...gotten a bit carried away, but they haven’t been harmed, George. At all. They’ll wake soon enough--”

“They are not asleep!” Pearl cries, and suddenly there’s a spear in her hand, the curved head glittering silver in the misty sunlight. “Do you take me for an idiot? You’ve left their bodies here scattered like so many empty seashells, thinking I couldn’t tell the difference. They’re not here! What have you done to them, you lying bastard?”

In the space between heartbeats a white-cloaked shadow suddenly appears at her side, obsidian blade leveled inches from her neck. “Put it down,” the War God snarls. “Now.”

“No,” she says, not even bothering to look at him.

“You’d break guest right?” Dream asks, still smiling congenially, stepping forward so Pearl’s spearhead rests just below his collarbone. “Your little commune holds that sacred, doesn’t it? You’d run me through in the sight of the sun, in front of your ‘brother’? Well, go on, then. I’m right here. I won’t even dodge. Your place, your rule.”

“Pearl, Sapnap, stop,” she hears George cry, dismayed. “Dream, what the hell’s gotten into you??”

Pearl’s hands tighten around the polished ashwood haft of the spear. The rage in her is burning agony. And yet she can’t move.

The Green God smiles, his eyes the color of acid and chlorine and radiation. “I know you,” he whispers. “I’ve known you since you were formed. You’re not cut out for this role. You don’t have it in you.”

There’s a sudden ‘twang’ and a puff of sand as an arrow strikes deeply into the beach a bare millimeter from Dream’s ankle. Another grazes Sapnap’s cheekbone a second later, drawing a thin line of blood.

“You’re no guests of mine,” a woman’s voice calls from a point above and behind them. “And I do.”

The War God’s sword jerks away from her neck, and Pearl’s paralysis breaks. She whirls, her spear falling from shaking, nerveless fingers, to see False, Lady of War, Queen of the Hunt, standing atop a wave-beaten spar of rock, longbow nocked and drawn. Nor is she alone: beside her stand Iskall of the Mountains, his stone sword carved with runes and shimmering with enchantment, and Wels, Guardian of the Gates of Hell, in full dark armor and wielding a battleaxe the color of smoke.

“You,” Sapnap spits, black eyes narrowed and full of venom.

“Me,” False agrees.

“What the hell,” Iskall thunders, fire glinting in his eye, “did you do to Etho.”

Dream rolls his eyes. “Stars, Void, and In-Between, how many of you are there?”

“More than you’d believe,” Wels answers. “This is our place. Our home. And I think it’s high time you returned to yours.”

“You’ve outstayed your welcome,” the Huntress states flatly, her normally blue eyes as black as Sapnap’s as they drill into Dream. “I suggest that you and both of your friends get in your boat and leave. Right now.”

“Mm,” Dream looks up at the sky for a moment, as if thinking. “And if I don’t care to leave just yet? I never got to read the ending to that story I was telling last night, and your student body was so excited to hear it.” He glances over at the sleeping apprentices, and Pearl feels a stomach-clenching rush of fear and revulsion at the implicit threat. “Besides. You know you can’t kill me. You know it better than probably anyone else here.”

False laughs.

Dream’s forehead furrows, and Pearl is gratified to see that awful smile slip just a notch. “Care to share the punchline?”

“Oh, that’s true enough,” False admits. “You’re right, it won’t be my arrow that brings you down, though I must admit I’d greatly enjoy the trying. It’s just funny to me, how confident you are, considering where you stand.” She smiles, a tight, icy little smile that makes Pearl shiver in spite of herself, as she glances back at the village.

No, Pearl realizes, not at the village: at the rickety, towering sculpture in the center of it...and the yawning sinkhole beneath.

Dream’s smile falls off of his face so quickly Pearl can almost hear it thump into the sand. George stands beside him, looking confused and utterly miserable, hands twisting together. Pearl hates Dream almost as much for putting that expression back on his face as she does for the motionless bodies at her feet.

“What in the hell are you talking about,” Sapnap snarls, scowling in confusion.

“Shall I call him, Dream?” False continues softly, still smiling. “How about it? We’ve all got time, after all, while we wait for our friends to wake. I’m sure he’d be very interested in your stories. He’s a much more courteous guest than you are.”

“He won’t come,” Dream protests, but he doesn’t sound so confident anymore. “He’s busy, and lazy, and thousands of leagues away besides. He’s got a new playmate, and they’re enjoying themselves too much with their little empire down in the Southern snows to bother with you.” The smile returns to Dream’s face as if it never left, but there’s no mistaking the undercurrent of fear in his voice, the obvious way he’s trying to convince himself of what he’s saying. “And why should he answer to you at all, hiding away with your own little playmates on your nowhere island? You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?” the Huntress asks, dark eyes glittering.

A tense silence settles over the beach. No one moves. Even the waves seem to hold their breath, waiting to see which way the scales will dip.

“Why?” Pearl finally asks, her voice breaking. “What did we ever do to you?”

“Like I told you, they’ll be awake soon,” Dream says with a shrug. “Ask them.”

“Leave,” False reiterates, her smile gone, her voice cold. “All three of you. And don’t come back.”

“Very well, as my Queen commands,” Dream answers, sketching a mocking bow. “George, Sapnap, let’s go.” He turns to Pearl with a smile, green fire dancing in his eyes. "Until next time, my dear." And with that, he walks away, moving off towards the docks.

Pearl recoils, skin crawling with loathing and a creeping, nameless dread. “George, wait,” she entreats, sorrow and desperation thick in her voice. “You don’t have to go with them.”

George looks back and forth, from her, to False and Wels and Iskall with their weapons drawn, to his two friends, and then back to Pearl. “They’re my friends,” he murmurs helplessly.

He turns, walking off down the beach after Dream. A sob escapes Pearl’s throat.

Of the three of them, Sapnap lingers the longest, staring up at the three on the rocks with his sword still drawn.

“He’ll betray you, you know,” False says quietly.

“Stop talking about things you haven’t the least idea about,” Sapnap grits.

“He will, though. He’ll betray you the way the scorpion betrays the frog in the old tales, because it’s his nature. And because you have something he doesn’t, a capacity he doesn’t understand and never will, no matter how badly he wants it. I know, because you and I are the same. You’ve already begun to discover that capacity, as bumbling and resistant and stupid as you are. When you finally figure out the rest, he won’t be able to stand it. He’ll turn on you, and he’ll hurt you.”

“Whatever you say,” he mutters dismissively, but he sounds unsure of himself. At last, he sheaths his sword, stalking off after the others. Pearl wonders if either of them will remember this incident two days from now, if they'll be allowed to remember it.

When they’re finally gone, their boat nothing more than a hazy speck on the water, Pearl collapses to the sand. She pulls Grian into her lap and holds him, not letting go even as Impulse comes to with a strangled scream, clutching at his abdomen and hurling the half-finished clock into the waves with a cry; as Bdubs scrambles wild-eyed to the water after it, his legs shaking like those of a newborn colt; as Scar begins to cough and gasp and struggle to fill lungs that don’t seem to remember how to breathe; as the apprentices stir, looking around with dazed and uncomprehending eyes.

It’s only when Grian finally wakes, silent and gasping and threatening to shake himself to pieces in her arms, his pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks, that Pearl finally, finally allows herself to cry.

#Hermitcraft #Hermitcraft Season 8 #Third Life SMP #Dream SMP #Passerine #Fanfiction #PearlescentMoon #c!Dream #GeorgeNotFound #Sapnap #FalseSymmetry #Iskall #Welsknight #Grian #GoodTimesWithScar #ImpulseSV #BDoubleO100 #Kaleidoscope AU

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