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sleepless-in-southlands · 3 days

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in a vision, your body told me it had always been afraid

Ao3

Summary: As far as Luke had ever been concerned, his power of prophecy had only ever been, and only ever would be, a curse. Knowing the future was useless and painful when he wasn't allowed to do anything about it, especially when the future shoved Inscryption into his hands, already bloodied. When he drops into Hermitcraft, however, things change. Maybe his curse can too. Content: AU (of an AU), hurt/comfort; prophets/prophecy, secret identity, mistaken identity, watchers, a luke who is both very on top of things And very oblivious, getting together Pairings: Lucky Jumbo (Luke Carder/Mumbo Jumbo), Luke Carder & Grian Notes: This is an AU of my AU, Lucky Jumbo, and is part of the MCU (Mumbo Carder Universe)! Knowledge of Inscryption, HC, and/or Lucky Jumbo isn't necessary to read this, but they may help. Spoilers for all three will be present to some degree, so reader beware

Knock, knock.

Luke glanced tiredly in the direction of his front door, well aware of who was knocking on it like it had offended them, well aware of what would happen when he went to answer it, well aware he couldn’t change any of it. Not for the first time (but likely the last), he wished he hadn’t dug up the damned game that had led him to his penultimate moment of regret.

Not that he really had any say in the matter. Luke was all too familiar with just how self-fulfilling his prophecies could be when he tried to avoid them. His sister’s death was as much his fault as it wasn’t, and neither interpretation brought him any relief.

Luke pushed himself to his feet, a choir of sirens singing a mourning song in a background only he could hear. He couldn’t actually wait as long as he wanted to face the reaper, nice as it would be. The reporter’s words, crackly and mumbled through his phone’s speaker, were echoing the ones he had heard barely a week before. He had hoped that particular vision had been another corrupted one- the madness of a prophet and the madness of Inscryption did not mix well- but deep down he had known otherwise. He always knew otherwise.

He hadn’t had a vision since, which had been the final nail in his pre-built coffin. His vision-self opened the door, and then all was dark, as he hoped it would be forever after. There were many myths about what became of prophets after death, few pleasant, and Luke… Luke was tired. He wanted rest, and with Inscryption dogging his feet, he knew that Amanda might be his only true chance for it.

Luke moved to his door almost on autopilot, pushing aside his thoughts as best he could. The more he thought of what was coming, the more his head hurt, and it was about to be doing enough of that all on its own. He paused for a single, final breath.

Luke opened the door.

Amanda shot him in the head.

Blood-red curtains spilled across the floor and ended the scene, and Luke knew nothing, not even peace.

Luke had to give it to the universe. It was the reason he was cursed, and yet it had still managed to deliver a twist he hadn’t seen coming.

Namely: life, continuing, but in some weird, alternate universe that somehow made less sense than Luke walking into his own elaborately planned death of arcing madness. Listen, knowing ahead of time that first person you met in your new world (a man with no visible mouth, a glorious moustache, and an extremely high tolerance for being fallen on top of from heights that should have killed both him and Luke) was going to start beating up a tree for its wood didn’t make it any less painful and perplexing to witness.

Because of course Luke’s curse had to follow him into his new life of cubes and code. It had adapted, even, his foresight shifting from overlapping voices that sung like a greek chorus and screamed like horror movie victims into floating, digital words, draping themselves over the edges of the world around him and sliding off his back like a cape of fortune. Quieter, but not silent, as evidenced by the warbled laughter that had come alongside the head’s-up that his attempt to fly would end in pyrotechnical disaster, the wind that cooed like a bird when he took Mumbo’s hand.

Presumably his visions had followed him as well, but they were more infrequent. Luke couldn’t be surprised he hadn’t had one after only a few weeks in Hermitcraft, even if he wished the reveal would get itself over with. Foresight was annoying, but Luke could tune it out, had spent a life perfecting how to do so. Visions were unpredictable. Visions were debilitating if they were severe enough. Luke needed to know if he was still going to have them so he could start preparing excuses for when a hermit inevitably caught him having one.

Which he hadn’t, at first, thought would be a problem. People had mixed feelings about prophets in his old world (his old life), including quite a bit of debate over whether or not they really existed, but they were generally accepted. Respected by some, dismissed by others, but treated within a fairly normal range. There were extremists groups, but Luke rarely felt like his life was more at threat from fellow people than it ever was from his curse. Amanda included.

But Hermitcraft…

(“Do you guys have prophets here?”

Luke’s fellow Boatem members looked at him with varying levels of confusion, conveyed to varying levels of accuracy via their varying levels of full facial structure. They were all sitting down together after one of Luke’s Boatem tours, having originally begun with only Mumbo and himself before the rest of the group slowly joined in on the wanderings and build-describings. They had finished at the Boatem hole, and Luke had opted to have the group seat themselves a healthy distance from it, doing his best to avoid having to tumble into the hole on his foresight’s command.

“...Profits?” Scar repeated, and Luke appreciated the way his newly visual foresight allowed him to pick up on the translation issue immediately. “In Boatem? I’m a little insulted you have to ask, Luke.”

“No, not diamond profits, I mean like oracles. Or seers?” Luke offered, frowning at the hermits’ continued confusion.

“I… don’t think so?” Pearl offered after a moment of consideration. “Are those villager classes?”

“Not exactly.” Luke answered, taking his own time to try and think of a minecraft-friendly description. “It’s… something a player can be. No one’s really sure how they work, uh, but they’re able to see the future. Predict something that’s going to happen, that sort of thing. I didn’t know if-”

Luke cut himself off. His foresight was humming, swirling past him, encircling Grian with predictions of what he would say next, what he would do, and Luke didn’t need the words to tell him how tense the mouthless hermit had gotten.

“Something a player could be?” Grian repeated. The question was rhetorical, but the words curling under Luke’s chin told him he nodded, so he did. “Were they… were they common?”

“...No.” Luke said slowly, because he felt like he should, because he knew he should. “They were rare. Not everyone agreed on if they even existed.”

Some of the tension seeped out of Grian, shoulders slumping incrementally, but not much. He stood up, Luke’s predictions rising with him, hanging like golden chains off his red sweater. “No. Hermitcraft doesn’t have them.”

Luke watched as Grian turned on his heel, then, walking away from the group, Luke’s foresight clinging until it faded into the sunlight.

Pearl sighed and stood up as well. “I’ll go talk to him.” She told the group, Mumbo and Scar more so than Luke, before going off as she said she would, as Luke’s foresight confirmed she would.

“I’m… sorry?” Luke said after a moment of silence. Occasionally, his foresight would tell him the why of something, but it wasn’t a guarantee. Grian walking off at the mention of oracles had been predicted, but not explained.

Mumbo bumped Luke’s shoulder from where he was sitting next to him. The words swirling there scattered at the point of contact, as though touching a non-prophet would be treasonous to their accursed seer. “Don’t be. Grian’s not upset, just…”

“I think we have a different word for your… prophets.” Scar finished for Mumbo, glancing in the direction Grian and Pearl had gone. “They can be a sore subject for some hermits.”

“Oh.” Luke pulled his arms closer to himself, tucking in his visual foresight as best he could, as if Mumbo and Scar would suddenly be able to see it if he didn’t. “I’ll avoid mentioning them, then.”

“That may be for the best.”)

Luke sighed at the memory. He couldn’t be too surprised that Hermitcraft, a place that was weird but ultimately wonderful, a server filled with kind hermits who took in a complete stranger like it was nothing, would just happen to be a world where prophets were… he didn’t even know what. Something bad. Something unspoken. It would have been too easy, too kind, of the universe to simply provide Luke with a perfect new life, no questions asked, no cost except a bullet through his skull he could taste in the back of his mouth on bad mornings.

Of course, if the universe had really wanted to be kind, it would have taken away his powers in the first place. If Luke had expected anything but tricks and hidden catches, it was his own fault for not reading the writing on his back.

But Luke would be fine. He knew how to react to his foresight without making it clear he had foresight. He hadn’t had a vision yet, and he trusted in his ability to make something up if he got caught having one. All Luke had to do was keep his predictions under wraps, and he would be fine.

Well, that and avoid hurting Mumbo, but Luke thought that had been an unnecessary demand to deliver to him via threatening circle. He didn’t think he gave the impression he wanted to hurt his first hermit friend. When Grian had first cornered Luke, he had thought his secret had been found out, that somehow Grian knew.

But no. What Grian ‘knew’ was something Luke didn’t understand, and vice versa. It hadn’t stopped Luke’s foresight from chittering at him like grinding metal, suggesting it too knew something Luke didn’t, which Luke didn’t think was technically possible.

Knock, knock.

Luke’s thoughts tore themselves up like tissue paper at the sound of someone knocking, his visual foresight briefly flashing red at him in an ironically too-late warning. He knew it wasn’t Amanda at the door, knew it wouldn’t matter if it was, but Hermitcraft still had headaches, and prophets weren’t immune to fear.

“Luke?” Mumbo called out after a minute of no answer. Luke huffed, both in relief and some minor level of self-abashment at letting the old prediction get to him.

“Come in!” Luke yelled back as he got up from where he had been sitting and contemplating at his kitchen table. He knew he needed to start adapting into his new life, spend his time learning things like ‘how to build architectural miracles’ and ‘what to do when you inevitably get lost in a mine,’ but he had yet to do much more than exist and wait to exist while doing something with other hermits. Mostly Mumbo.

Mumbo, as invited, let himself in, moustache-smiling at Luke when he saw him. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Luke waved off the thought, words of the future scattering honey-light only he could see on his fingers as he did so. “Not at all, I was just distracted. How can I help you?”

The words crawling the backs of Luke’s hands answered him before Mumbo did. “I was thinking about exploring some further out world generation, see if I could find a new village or a shipwreck, nothing too exciting. Wanted to know if you’d like to tag along.”

“How much flying will be involved?”

Mumbo laughed at Luke’s immediate off-the-bat question. It sounded much better coming from him than it did reading it. “A little, to get far enough out and to get back, but nothing else. And I promise I’ll guide you.”

“As long as I don’t have to handle the fireworks myself, I’m in.” Luke said, doing a quick check of his inventory to make sure he had his elytra and enough golden carrots to feed several armies. “Anything we should handle before leaving, or…?”

“I’m ready to go when you are.” Mumbo answered, still smiling at Luke in a way he couldn’t help but return.

“Then let’s go.”

The flight out was, thankfully, fairly unexciting. Luke didn’t entirely trust Mumbo’s ‘redstone-improved’ wings, but his foresight didn’t reveal them suddenly exploding mid-flight, so Luke was able to mostly put the concern to the back of his mind. Mumbo’s guiding help remained masterful, and although the flight was a bit longer than the one to Boatem had been, his grip on Luke’s hand never once faltered.

(Again, Luke’s foresight had murmured the nonsense of a whale song when Luke took Mumbo’s hand. Again, Luke couldn’t fathom as to why. His foresight seemed to be teasing him- which, was it even supposed to do that? was it allowed?- but Luke didn’t think it had any reason to be doing so. Holding Mumbo’s hand was nice, not funny.)

When they landed, it was on the edge of a forest, flowers of all kinds and colours dotting the land around and between the trees. Luke surveyed the area while Mumbo put away his wings, having started being more careful with how he tucked them in his pocket since he caught Luke’s wide-eyed stare at the way he usually shoved them into his inventory. Luke’s foresight told him Mumbo’s behaviour hadn’t changed in general, that it was an adjustment made specifically around him, which Luke greatly appreciated.

“This looks like a good place to start.” Mumbo said, slightly unnecessarily, as he finished his task.

Luke hummed his agreement, waiting for Mumbo to pick their starting direction before falling into line beside him. To Luke’s understanding, exploration so ‘late in the season’ (as Mumbo kept putting it) was more for enjoyment and adventure than it was any specific use, since the general ‘main area’ for the server had already been set up and developed by that point. A lack of importance came with a lack of pressure, and Luke enjoyed how simple and casual that allowed the trip to be.

“Did you have these flowers on your old server, too?” Mumbo asked once they were deeper into the forest, trees surrounding them. He had been naming some of the flowers for Luke, pointing them out in case he couldn’t match name to flora. A sweet, if unneeded, gesture when Luke’s arms dripped with honeyed predictive descriptions.

“We did.” Luke answered, watching the bulbs of a blue orchid sway like neon bells under its own weight. “They look different here, though.”

“Bad different?”

“No, not bad.” Luke reassured quickly. “These ones are incredible.”

“Aren’t they?” Mumbo mumbled, seemingly mostly to himself, tone slightly awed. Luke had moments of foresight often, but not always, and when he turned to look at Mumbo he did so with no glowing golden guidance. He found that he must have been blocking Mumbo’s view of one flower or another, the redstoner looking as though his focus was only on Luke.

Luke tried to take a small step back, hoping to get out of the way, but Mumbo’s gaze only followed his movement, laughing a little. Luke, caught off guard and not entirely sure what was happening, did nothing but watch as Mumbo bent down, picked the blue orchid nearest to him, and approached Luke.

“I know some servers have wilting mods,” Mumbo started as he began tucking the cerulean flower into the front pocket of Luke’s shirt, the same white collared one he had died in having followed him alongside his curse, “but we don’t. So this will stay perfectly lively even in your pocket.”

“Oh.” Luke said, in lieu of anything meaningful, tilting his head down to see the way Mumbo had arranged the naturally drooping flowers against his chest, their bright colour making it clear they were alive no matter what position they slumped into. Though he was done with the flowers, Mumbo continued adjusting Luke’s shirt, fixing his collar and tugging on the sleeves to straighten them. Which meant, of course, that when Luke looked up, Mumbo was right there, still looking at him and much closer than he had been before.

“How do you like it?” Mumbo asked, and while it could never be said that Luke ever wished for his curse to be on him, he could acknowledge that it wouldn’t have been the worst thing ever if his foresight had been active right then, feeding him answers he wasn’t entirely certain he had the wherewithal to produce on his own in that moment. Something about Mumbo being so close was throwing Luke off, disrupting his thoughts.

It wasn’t as unpleasant as it should have been, conceptually.

“It’s… nice.” Luke offered after too long. A point in his favour on the ‘hiding being a prophet’ front- no seer would have taken so long to give such a simple response. “I mean- they’re pretty. Especially if they won’t die.”

“So you like them?” Mumbo moustache-smiled again, and despite everything else he wasn’t following, Luke was capable of smiling back.

“Yeah, Mumbo, I like them. Thank you.”

Mumbo’s smile grew at that, and he looked as though he wanted to say something more but was hesitant, needed to be sure of it. Luke was happy to wait, would have been happy to wait, but it was at that moment his foresight decided to make a reappearance.

The bright yellow text, matching the orchid in intensity, trickled across the sky beside Mumbo’s head to provide Luke with a warning he couldn’t properly issue: a creeper, already visible over Mumbo’s shoulder, having successfully sidled up to them in their distraction. By the time Mumbo noticed it, it would be too late, and the blast would kill him and severely injure Luke. A tragic and sudden end to what had been a pleasant outing.

The prophecy didn’t have Luke saying anything, modeling him as having been too distracted to have noticed the oncoming threat, only doing so at all because of his curse. Luke however, admittedly somewhat mentally unbalanced, unthinkingly said, “Creeper.”

Not that it would matter. His prophecies could flex when necessary, to bend back into the path they were meant to follow. Mumbo would blow up slightly more aware of the creeper than he had been originally, but he would still blow up, and Luke would still end up stranded with a long walk home ahead of him.

Case in point: Mumbo’s eyes quickly widening, him turning around to spot the creeper, the creeper already beginning to flash white, Mumbo moving quicker than Luke had yet seen him do to grab Luke’s arm and pull them both out of the blast radius-

Wait.

What?

Luke blinked rapidly, as if that would cause his vision to change and clear, to reveal his prophecy having occurred as intended and letting him explain away hallucinating otherwise as a moment of madness. It didn’t, however; all it revealed was the creeper, having not exploded, approaching him and Mumbo once more, and Mumbo looking at Luke like his third eye had become visible.

“Luke? Luke, are you alright?” Mumbo asked him, sounding worried as he slowly kept pulling Luke backwards with him, keeping a safe distance between them and the creeper. He had pulled his sword, which Luke knew he didn’t want to use, but he looked like he might if Luke didn’t snap back into the conversation soon.

“You weren’t… you weren’t supposed to do that.” Luke murmured, not needing to see Mumbo’s face, not needing to read his foresight to know that was possibly the least comforting response he could have offered. He sounded dazed, half-there, which was accurate, but not exactly the image he needed to portray right then.

“Luke?” Mumbo repeated, softer, as if he wasn’t sure what to say in response to that. Around his wrists, Luke watched his foresight continue on, shaping itself to fit the new reality. Now, Mumbo, panicking about a mostly unresponsive Luke and having no other option, kills the creeper, breaking his no-kill streak so he could eliminate the threat and focus on properly assessing the situation.

Luke looked over at Mumbo, watched him glance rapidly between himself and the green mob, watched him tighten his grip on his sword. Something in Luke’s gut twisted painfully. He didn’t want to be the reason Mumbo lost his self-set challenge, even if he didn’t fully understand it, even aside from the fact Grian might then kill him for it, but it was foretold, it was prophesied, and Luke’s sight gave him the ability to know but never touch, never change, never alter.

Except… he had. Mumbo had. Luke had given a warning and Mumbo had saved them, had shifted what was supposed to happen, and his foresight had followed. In his old world, seers were powerless in face of their fortunes, meant to record and report and never rewrite. But here… here….

Before he could think it any further through, Luke dug his hand into his pocket, the handle of his own sword settling into his grasp with barely a thought. The sudden movement startled Mumbo, enough that Luke was able to pull his arm from Mumbo’s gasp with relative ease, moving quicker than his thoughts could follow as he took two running steps up to the creeper and slashed it across its chest.

Nothing exploded. No godly figure appeared in a blaze of terrifying glory to smite Luke for wrongdoing against the oath he had never signed up for. The creeper didn’t magically bounce off of Luke’s blade and onto Mumbo’s in a deadly strike.

Instead, the creeper fell back slightly, as was to be expected. Mumbo stayed back, sword at the ready but lowered. Luke’s foresight changed, shimmering as it looped itself around his arm, his hand, his sword and told him of the new future he was plunging into- Luke, victorious against the creeper, victorious against fate.

That prophecy Luke brought to fruition, swinging until the creeper was gone, leaving behind nothing but the smell of mulch and an oddly well-stacked pile of gunpowder.

Luke, for his part, stopped moving as soon as the creeper was dead, standing in place and letting the sharp edges of his sword droop into the grass and dirt. He was panting slightly, staring uncomprehendingly at the mob drop. Mumbo hadn’t died, hadn’t broken his no-kill streak. Luke hadn’t been severely injured. The creeper hadn’t detonated. His foresight, still yellow, still golden, still present, rustled like crystal leaves from where it pooled on the ground around his sword. Luke had changed his prophecy.

Luke had changed the future.

With loud, deliberate steps, Mumbo came to stand next to Luke, pausing for a moment before setting a hand on Luke’s shoulder, as if afraid anything too fast, too sudden, too much would scare him out of his skin. “Luke?”

Luke forced himself to take in a deep breath, hoping he only imagined it when yellow smoke tinged the following release of air. “Sorry, Mumbo, I don’t… I don’t know what happened there.”

“It’s alright, I just… want to make sure you’re alright.” Mumbo said, staring at the way Luke was still gripping his sword a little too tightly. “I take it you don’t fight much?”

“You can say that again.”

“I certainly understand that feeling.” Mumbo chuckled, putting his own sword away and shifting his grip to be around Luke’s upper arm, light and grounding. “Do you want to head back to Boatem? Since this d- trip hasn’t been quite as peaceful as I promised.”

Luke looked to his pocket, drawn by the shine of prophetic words outlining his blue orchid, telling him to say yes, to say let’s go back, to say we can continue another time.

Luke looked to Mumbo, expression sweet and worried, waiting patiently for Luke’s response, completely and blessedly unaware that it had already been decided upon.

“It was only one creeper.” Luke said, pocketing his sword before laying the newly freed hand over the orchid’s stem. He smiled at Mumbo, ignoring the rearrangements of his foresight. “If we see another huge spider though, I’m turning around and sprinting all the way back to Boatem.”

Mumbo laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He responded, guiding Luke with a slight tug to continue on in the direction they had been going before the near-explosive interruption. Luke followed him easily, words more malleable than Luke had ever known trailing behind him like a cloak.

At first, outside of what had happened while he was out exploring with Mumbo, Luke avoided trying to alter his prophecies. It wasn’t something prophets were supposed to do- not that Luke had ever thought that was any fair, to hold prophets to promises none of them had chosen to make- and it wasn’t something that could be done. Prophecies, those of foresight and visions, were unchangeable because the future was unchangeable, set in stone, destined. Trying to avoid them only ever ended up bringing them about- Luke had read the Greek tragedies, the news, the obituaries. He knew better than to mess with the future, knew better than to try.

And yet… Luke couldn’t help but want to. It wasn’t a moment of hubris, the desire to escape the inescapable that nearly all oracles experienced at some point. It had happened. He had gone against one of his prophecies and it had worked- not just one, but three.

If prophets were treated differently in Hermitcraft than they were where Luke came from, why couldn’t the same be true for their prophecies? That might explain why seers were taboo. To predict an unchanging future was one thing, but to have the power to alter it, to shape it?

So, of course, Luke started going against his prophecies.

They were little changes, for the most part; a slightly different sentence, a step to the left instead of the right. Nothing that would seem out of place to the other hermits, especially given none of them knew what was ‘supposed’ to be happening. His visual foresight always changed to predict the new future, and Luke always eventually followed it, but the prophecies did change. Luke wasn’t trapped. For the first time in possibly his entire life (lives), Luke’s sight wasn’t a curse.

And because of it… Luke got sloppy. It was his fault. Hadn’t he already known, already told himself that the universe wouldn’t give him any free favours? That just because he couldn’t see it, didn’t mean there wasn’t a trick hiding in the background?

Luke’s foresight told him everything that was about to happen within his sphere of interaction, not everything that was happening at every given moment. It didn’t inform him of things going on around him unless he noticed- or was going to notice- them. It didn’t tell Luke about the way Grian had started to watch him, didn’t tell Luke about the growing suspicion in Grian’s eyes, didn’t tell Luke that Grian had noticed something.

It didn’t tell Luke anything until Grian was pulling a sword on him.

The attack had come out of nowhere, Grian having originally pulled Luke into a discussion about block palettes that Luke had, truthfully, only been half-following. He had been distracted, autopiloting his half of the conversation, when there was suddenly a sharp, loud noise, like a bell being struck by lightning.

It had come from his foresight, a warning he could actually act on- Grian, drawing his sword with no preamble, stabbing Luke through the chest.

Luke’s eyes widened. Grian’s arm twitched. Without thinking, Luke stepped quickly to the side, and Grian’s blade cut through nothing but air.

Luke’s foresight dutifully began to change, rewriting itself alongside the new future, but Luke didn’t need to read it to know what it was going to tell him. Luke had avoided a surprise attack before it had begun. There was only one way he could have done that, and given the way Grian’s expression had hardened, they both knew exactly what way that was.

“I can explain.” Luke said immediately, aware he had no chance of maintaining a pretense. Grian’s initial response was to swing at him again, Luke dodging a second early.

“Do I look like I want to hear your explanation?” Grian’s tone was venomous, his diamond blade glinting in the sun as he continued going after Luke. In counter, Luke’s foresight had wrapped itself around the sword, bright yellow moving a breath before the blue beneath, showing Luke when and how to move even as each word wrote a story of being cut.

“It’s- it’s different where I’m from!” Wind against the back of Luke’s neck as he ducked a high swing. “I didn’t realize-”

“You didn’t realize?” Grian echoed, mocking, disbelieving. “You- what- you came to Hermitcraft by accident? You moved into Boatem without processing the player names there? You started flirting with Mumbo out of pointless happenstance?”

“Flirting?!”

Grian briefly abandoned trying to slice Luke up, instead ramming an arm in his direction. Luke dodged most of the hit, but he stumbled when Grian made contact with his shoulder, only barely missing the next swing. He could see the future, but that didn’t mean Luke had good reflexes. He couldn’t avoid Grian’s attacks forever.

“By Code, I should have never let you get this far.” Grian showed no signs of stopping soon, if ever. “I don’t know what your plans here were, and I don’t care. You’re not invulnerable. None of you are. If I have to be the first one to prove it, if that’s what it takes to get you all to leave me alone, I will.”

“Luke?! Grian?!”

Mumbo’s words were predicted, but Luke still swiveled his head hard in the direction of his voice. He had been walking, going about his day casually, but he had broken into a run at the sight of the in-process violent homicide.

Looking away proved to be a mistake within a second, however, Luke’s arm suddenly beginning to burn. Grian had finally landed a hit.

Instinctively, Luke slapped his hand over the wound, pain being overridden by terror when he realized the site of the injury was warm and sticky. He looked down, hoping that somehow both his intuition and foresight would be wrong.

He wasn’t. Beading from the cut, clogging under his hand, dripping down his arm was blood. Crimson, liquid blood.

(“Do hermits not… bleed?” Luke asked, tentative, as he watched Mumbo pull an arrow out of his arm with the same level of concern as Luke would treat a splinter with.

“Not naturally, no.” Mumbo answered in a way that felt much too normal. “Blood mods are pretty common, but Hermitcraft doesn’t have one. Did yours?”

“We did.” Luke confirmed, ignoring the copper-like taste coating his mouth. “I think I’ll enjoy not having it anymore, though.”

Mumbo chuckled. “It’s certainly less messy.”)

Grian had stopped actively slashing at Luke, eyes wide when Luke looked up. Mumbo, having reached the two of them, wore a similar expression of shock.

“Luke-” Grian started haltingly. Luke took a step back.

“I’m sorry.” Luke said as genuinely as he could manage before turning on his heel and sprinting in the opposite direction.

He heard someone call his name again as he ran, but he didn’t stop, hastily digging his hands into his pockets to grab his elytra and emergency fireworks. Luke’s foresight jumped ahead of him, caution signs keeping pace with him, telling him yes, this time you will fly, go, do it now.

Luke went airborne with only a little difficulty, wobbling in the air but managing to avoid crashing into anything as he went up. He didn’t hear any other rockets going off behind him, which meant he wasn’t being followed- good. He had no chance of out-flying any of the other hermits, especially Grian, who used his elytra like it was a pair of actual wings.

Granted, Luke hardly had any sort of plan, but step one of it whenever he figured it out was definitely ‘don’t get killed.’ Step two, he decided, mid-air and hurtling aimlessly off in one direction, was to find a chunk of land far enough away from the inhabited ones to hide away on and form the rest of his plan. Hermitcraft went as far as any player could go in every direction- it would take them a while to find Luke, unless they got truly lucky, and Luke would theoretically have foresight to protect him from their approach.

With that ‘plan’ in mind, Luke set off another firework, continuing until he was far, far past the point that he could see any hermit-built structures.

He didn’t decide upon a stopping point so much as it decided upon him, his foresight having scattered in the air and leaving him defenseless against dipping low at the exact wrong moment and accidentally slamming his leg into the edge of a hilltop. Sure, arguably, he should have been able to see it coming on his own but- well- he was distracted.

Luke rolled down the hill, elytra folding up and saving itself as he tumbled. By the time he came to a stop, he was sore all over, blood from his cut arm smeared across some of the grass. He pushed himself into a seated position, shucking off his elytra and banishing it into his inventory along with his remaining rockets. If he needed them, he would get them, but the wings were heavy on his aching back and the fireworks would never not be dangerous to Luke.

Luke exchanged the flying gear for one of his many golden carrots, nibbling on the metallic first-aid vegetable and returning to his barely-started plan. The most obvious next step was to get out of Hermitcraft, make it to the ‘server hub’ he had occasionally heard mentioned and disappear into a different world, but what was much less obvious was how, exactly, he could pull it off.

While Mumbo and some of the other hermits had asked Luke about his former server, tried to see if there was anywhere he needed or wanted to go back to, Luke had known there was no point in attempting to find a way back. Even if his old life really had been on some ‘heavily modded server,’ Luke knew his time on it had ended. Permanently. As long as the hermits had been happy to have Luke, Luke had been happy to stay in Hermitcraft.

Luke didn’t regret his decision, but it certainly was coming back to haunt him right then, sitting on a plain in the middle of generated nowhere with no way out. He might have had a chance to get a quick ticket out if he had gone directly from Hermitcraft to Xisuma and convinced voi to take him to the server hub, but he had lost too much time getting away. Grian had likely already told every other hermit what he had learned, Xisuma probably the first on the list after the already-present Mumbo. All the hermits were protective of their server and servermates, and Luke knew that went double for the admin. The chance that voi would want to help a prophet who had kept their identity a secret until a forced reveal? Zero. None. Nil. Luke was on his own, which narrowed his options significantly.

Then again, all the best oracles were cave-dwelling exiles, right? Luke could make that work, assuming the hermits would eventually get tired of looking for him, which… didn’t seem terribly likely.

Luke finished off his carrot. His cut had closed, and his bruises had abated, but the ache from all of them remained. Along with those pains, there was another building behind his temple, one that was awfully familiar in a way Luke had hoped he would never experience again.

And to top it all off- the universe once more reminding Luke that it wasn’t his friend in the slightest, not even a friendly acquaintance, despite all the wisdom it was constantly dumping directly into his skull- that was when Luke saw two figures gliding across the sky above him.

The plain offered Luke no place to hide, so he wasn’t too surprised when they immediately honed in on him, dropping a bit suddenly into a landing a short distance across from him. Luke shoved himself to his feet, hoping to use their landing time as a small headstart for himself, but the leg that had slammed into the hill protested his haste and brought him right back down to the ground. Now he wasn’t just a prophet, he was a clumsy prophet too. Great. Super. Was one death with dignity too much to ask for?

Escape foiled, Luke turned to face the hermits, unsurprised to find them to be Mumbo and Grian. Mumbo was closer to him, putting his elytra away (so carefully) but keeping his eyes on Luke, moustache frowning in what the distance had Luke mistaking for concern. Grian was to Mumbo’s side, several blocks behind him, glancing between Luke and his communicator in his hand.

“We’ve found him.” Grian said to his communicator which, wonderful, Luke hadn’t been gone an hour and the server was already on some sort of manhunt for him. “No, I think we- I think Mumbo has this. Yeah, we’ll let you know if we need help.”

Luke shifted his focus to Mumbo as Grian finished his call. He looked miserable. Grian sounded miserable. Luke felt miserable. A+ work, universe.

“You guys got here faster than I expected.” Luke said, shooting for a neutral, unaffected tone that he doubted he achieved.

“We asked Xisuma to find your coords.”

Luke swallowed, feeling nauseous in a way that didn’t entirely have to do with the fact that he was well and truly screwed, both unable to leave Hermitcraft and unable to hide from its inhabitants. He got to his feet, going slower, not missing the way both Mumbo and Grian tracked his movements, ready for him to try and run. “Listen, I- I don’t know how to leave servers, but if you show me how to, I promise, I’ll go. You don’t have to see me again. I won’t come back. You don’t- I’ll go, I’ll just go.”

Mumbo’s frown deepened. He took a step forward. Luke took a step back, and Mumbo stopped moving. Grian stayed motionless where he was.

“Luke.” Mumbo said his name placatingly, calmingly, worriedly, which was not the combination of emotions Luke was expecting to hear in any capacity. Anger, disgust, disappointment- those felt more appropriate for the situation. “There’s been a misunderstanding. We don’t want you to leave.”

Ah. That was it. Mumbo- sweet, friendly, first-hermit-to-befriend-Luke Mumbo- hadn’t believed Grian when he revealed that Luke was a prophet. He thought there was a misunderstanding. That’s why Grian hadn’t started attacking Luke on sight; he was waiting for Luke to play his hand, show his cards, to give Mumbo the proof that would validate Grian when he did go back to slashing and hacking.

Well, they had come at the perfect time for exactly that, if the ringing beginning to build in Luke’s ears was anything to go by. His foresight might have changed in the transition between worlds, but his visions seemingly had not. Luke had a minute or two, at best, before he would be too caught up in the vision to do anything in the line of covering it up or defending himself from swords.

“For the record, I didn’t… I didn’t mean to trick you all.” Luke said, voice getting tight as his headache worsened. Maybe, if he was pitiable enough, they wouldn’t kill him mid-vision. He wasn’t sure what that would look like, and he wasn’t particularly interested in finding out.

“You didn’t trick us.” Mumbo assured him, rocking on his feet as though he wanted to step forward again but was holding off. “Are you- are you okay?”

Luke raised a shaky hand to his head. The skin of his temple was burning, the world around him was beginning to spin, his throat was closing in on itself. Luke shut his eyes, and under his eyelids, everything was golden. “No.”

Presumably, that was the moment Luke collapsed, the strain of the vision disconnecting Luke from his body and leaving it to fend for itself as he learned its prophecy.

Unfettered from the demands of his physical body (free from ‘mortal needs,’ from his ‘human half’ as some people would put it, those who considered prophets to be the middlemen between humanity and divinity), Luke was able to receive the vision in its full form. Segments of time, glimpses of triple-digit dimensions, sensations that no language could describe bombarded him, a fortune so detailed it would take Luke four dictionaries worth of pages to write it all down, all overlaid with the only words Luke was allowed to speak, a single spec of sand out of a beach full of information. There was a reason all prophets went mad, and it was contained in the break-neck juxtaposition between the future they knew and the future they were permitted to speak.

Purple eyes surrounded Luke in the space of the vision, the space in his mind torn out to make room for his curse, all wide and watching and never blinking. The darkness swallowing them bent, distorted, claws forming to jump out at Luke, scratching and grasping, obsidian nails painting bloody divots across his chest. One hand held one purple eye, twisting and snarling, burning up mauve, magenta, merlot. Blood dripped from the corner of the eye, honey fed from Luke’s own wrists, scabbed over in useless words of gold. The captured eye turned to stare directly at Luke, and fearfully the other eyes closed out of existence. The captured eye said nothing. The captured eye said sorry. Luke, hand drenched in amber guilt, reached out towards it.

Luke opened his eyes.

Time was meaningless in the thralls of a vision. As far as Luke knew, it could have been a minute since it began, or it could have been hours. The sun was still in the sky, and Luke was still on the plain he had crashed into, but even those indicator variables felt useless. Luke could have been there, trapped in the vision, for days.

What didn’t feel useless, however, was Mumbo, sitting with Luke tucked against his side, an arm swung comfortingly across Luke’s shoulders while Luke’s head lolled on the top of his chest. He was warm.

Across from the two of them was Grian, standing up and squeezing his communicator so hard it seemed liable to crack and shatter in his grasp. He was closer than he had been earlier, before Luke’s vision, but not close. Looking at Grian, a sense of inhuman understanding settled in Luke’s gut, weighty and unignorable: the vision was for him.

Luke sat up, stiff and sudden, Mumbo’s arm falling off his shoulders in the process. He stared directly at Grian, whose eyes were wide in the face of Luke’s, blinding sunlight in perfect circles. Luke opened his mouth, smoke the colour of sulfur spilling out before he said a word.

“In three days time, a thousand eyes of violet violence shall descend upon you,” Luke intoned in a voice that was borrowed and stolen and entirely his, “lured by power they’ll seek to know but never will. Your server you will save, but not yourself, nor your false enemy of unmalleable gold.”

Prophecy delivered, Luke slumped back into the exact position he had been arranged in, exhaustion coursing through him like it had replaced his blood. Mumbo tucked his arm around Luke once more without question.

Grian, for his part, looked the same way most people did when they received one of Luke’s prophecies: angry and terrified.

“When you first came to Boatem, and you were asking us about prophets,” Mumbo was the first to break the silence that followed Luke’s prediction, his words half-rumble in Luke’s ears, “you asked because you’re one, didn’t you?”

Luke nodded, sliding his head against Mumbo’s chest. He had been long since found out; the vision was a last shovelful of dirt over an already buried coffin. Lying wouldn’t do him any good (telling the truth wouldn’t either but then, what did it matter? might as well go out honest). “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t- you don’t need to apologize.” Grian said, voice uncertain, as though he didn’t know if he was saying the right thing. “If anything, I’m the one who should be sorry. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have- well-”

Luke wondered, idly, what Grian’s intended end of sentence was supposed to be. ‘Sorry for not killing you fast enough?’ Luke would have accepted it. If he had died at Boatem, at least he would have done so without another vision under his belt.

Mumbo’s arm tightened around Luke. “No one’s killing you, Luke.”

Ah. Apparently those hadn’t been ‘idle wonderings,’ but rather ‘words he was saying aloud.’ A common mix-up.

“I can be ready to leave in five minutes.” Luke said, that time on purpose, mind jumping to what the other option must be if they weren’t going to kill him- they had accepted his plea. They were going to let him off with a promise to never return to Hermitcraft. It wouldn’t be pleasant, he knew, and saying he could be ready to travel in five minutes was stretching the truth to the point of poking holes in it, but he wasn’t going to risk trying their patience when he had already determined the ‘allowed to leave alive’ option to be so unlikely.

“You don’t- There’s been a misunderstanding.” Mumbo’s hold on Luke didn’t lessen, which Luke felt would make it hard for him to eventually get up and go. Both in a logistical sense (how could he get up when he was being held down?) and a more emotional/exhausted way (the closer he got to falling asleep on Mumbo, the less he wanted to get off of Mumbo). “We don’t have prophets here. We thought, based on your description, that you were talking about… something else. But we were wrong. We-”

“I was wrong.” Grian cut Mumbo off, crossing his arms and looking away from Luke. “I should have- I should have known you weren’t one of them. That you aren’t one of them.”

“We have a lot of names.” Luke made a vague motion with his hand. “Oracles, seers, fortune tellers, other things. I’m not surprised Hermitcraft would have a different one.”

Mumbo shook his head, a motion Luke more felt than saw. “It’s not just the name that’s different.”

Ahead of them, Grian sighed and sat down, still so far despite having moved onto Luke’s level. “Watchers don’t bleed, no matter what server they’re in.” Grian told him, the group’s name dripping with poison and sparking lightning in Luke’s mind. “And they certainly don’t do whatever that was.”

“Vision.” Luke said reflexively, unhelpfully, as he mentally skimmed through the aforementioned where it kept writhing in his brain. “A thousand eyes of violet violence…”

“That’s them.” Grain confirmed. He sounded furious. He sounded scared. He sounded tired. “I don’t know what your, uh, vision told you, but they’re bad news.”

“I got that impression.” Luke admitted, claws of starless night flashing behind his eyes. “I have something else to apologize for, then.”

“What?”

“Lured by power they’ll seek to know but never will.” Luke repeated, shrugging helplessly at Grian’s confused eyes. For all that coming to Hermitcraft had changed about his curse, Luke could still feel a force as strong as diamond, as bedrock, as the universe itself digging into the base of his tongue, a harsh reminder that some things would never change. “I can’t speak past the bounds of the prophecy. I can’t- I can’t explain it to you. I can’t.”

Mumbo patted Luke’s arm. “That’s alright. You said we have three days, right? We can figure something out in three days.”

That’s what they all say, Luke thought but didn’t speak. He didn’t want to risk his tongue saying more than he was allowed. He didn’t want to explain the inevitability of a prophecy, the doom of self-fulfillment.

“I don’t- how could they get in? How will they get in?” Grian dragged his hand across his face. If it weren’t for the circumstances, Luke would have been touched at how readily his vision had been accepted. Dire prophecies especially usually took at least one day of denial-processing. “They couldn’t get in when I first moved here. Why would that change now? Sorry, Luke, I’m not- don’t say what you can’t.”

Luke watched Grian dissolve into muttering to himself, trying to make sense of Luke’s words, their meanings, their methods. It reminded him of El, sister of a prophet and doomed by her own blood, scrambling to find an escape to a fate Luke knew was unavoidable. Trying to help her had been the first and last time Luke had tried to interfere with his visions. Delivering a prophecy and fulfilling it were functionally the same thing, but the former had a layer of separation Luke could hide behind.

But this was Hermitcraft. If his foretellings could change- if the immediate future could change-

Luke closed his eyes. Walked himself back into the vision. Prophets weren’t allowed to speak, but they were allowed to know, if only they were willing to take the time necessary to hack their way through the vision and tear out its meat. After El, Luke had never bothered. It didn’t matter how much he knew. It didn’t matter what he did. The dominos always fell the same.

Luke curled his fingers tight around a special dagger and started slitting purple, taunting, visionary eyes.

In the unwanted space in his head, the unbleeding eyes bled the future, trails of understanding that soaked into the soles of Luke’s feet. The moment of arrival, the moment of leaving, gleeful wanting and taking and terrible, frustrating, razing anguish over the unknown. Luke waded through the future memories, unsatisfied. Grian had the right questions- Luke needed the how, the why now, not the terrible afterwards.

Two eyes, three eyes, four eyes and there was code dripping down Luke’s arms, a purple mockery of his visual foresight that burned into Luke with the importance of a sword cut. The words made no sense to him, but they sang with significance, twisted into the angles of a key.

Luke opened his eyes with a cough, more yellow smoke drifting out. Against him, Mumbo managed to shift in a way that felt concerned. “Is that… are you going to keep doing that?”

“It’s non-toxic.” Luke responded distractedly, looking again towards Grian, who also seemed less than satisfied with Luke’s smoke. “Come over here.”

Grian did not come over. “I- let’s- why?”

“Can’t say.” Luke twitched his foot at Grian. He felt stupid. The whole idea was stupid. Rule number one of being a prophet: give up on the idea that you have any control. You are never above fate. You are never above the future. But this wasn’t his old world. This wasn’t his old life, where fate killed his sister and he couldn’t do anything but watch, where the future had handed him Inscryption and laughed. This was minecraft, Hermitcraft, and Luke was so fucking tired of being destiny’s middleman. “I also can’t stand up without falling over. If you’re- you can take out your sword, or something, if you’re worried, just- just come here.”

“I wasn’t-” Grian cut off his own protest, hesitating for a moment before doing as requested, moving over to be sitting next to Luke and Mumbo. “I’m not pulling another sword on you.”

Luke hummed, more focused on finishing what he technically hadn’t yet started. He had never been a ‘prophet of the people,’ had never made a career out of giving fortunes, but he knew that oracles who did were able to provide visions for specific people by connecting to them. Some used objects or rituals, but most did so through touch, creating a direct livewire between the person and the prophet’s ability to reach for their future. The science behind it wasn’t well understood, but the best guesses all boiled down to something having to do with the core ‘essence’ of a person.

What, exactly, the ‘essence’ of a person was in Luke’s old world wasn’t clear. But in the new one, Luke knew code was- quite literally- everything. If Luke could connect to that… well, he could possibly mess up disastrously and cause the equivalent of taking scissors to someone’s nervous system. Or he could help fulfill the prophecy exactly as it was intended. Or he could possibly, possibly, flip fate the bird, redirect the prophecy, and give Grian an incredibly solid reason to continue with not-killing him.

“How badly do you want to stop it?” Luke asked, putting the decision he couldn’t explain out-loud into Grian’s hands.

Grian set his expression, an impressive display given it consisted only of two eyes. “I’ll do anything.”

“Great. I’m going to hold your hand.”

“What?”

Luke ignored the confusion from both Grian and Mumbo. Surely his spitting up yellow smoke and predicting the terrifying future had to be more unnerving than him holding Grian’s hand. Mumbo put up with it no problem, and Luke hadn’t ever been trying to rearrange his code. Luke reached out, not so much ‘holding’ Grian’s hand as he was laying his over Grian’s. All he needed was the point of connection.

With both Mumbo and Grian doing their best to frown at him despite their lack of mouths, Luke closed his eyes again, pushing past the remnants of the vision and doing his best to channel his entire focus towards Grian, his code, the one line that was still wrapped around Luke’s metaphorical arm.

It took a few minutes for Luke to successfully shove the vision out of place, the bleeding eyes following him angrily until he managed to find the sliver between them leading out. The nightmare space faded into one of nothing but lines upon lines of blocky white code, all somehow compiling into Grian. The words scrolled past Luke in a rush, constantly moving and running and jumping around as they processed- presumably- the action of Grian sitting and judging Luke heavily.

Luke let it all pass him without trying to acknowledge them, focused single-mindedly on finding the line from his vision, the line that would lead the Watchers to them if Luke wasn’t able to do something about it. It was all a blur of white to Luke, theoretically useless, but Luke wasn’t looking with his actual, physical eyes.

The line he had been looking for appeared, and the code slammed to a stop like it had been frozen.

The string of code was isolated from the others, sitting plainly on its own line, self-contained. As code, Luke couldn’t understand it, but the matching words on his arm burned with cryptic explanation- a variable in waiting, a hidden backdoor, a trap waiting to be tripped. Luke’s vision, mostly but not perfectly contained to its own section, spliced itself with the code, overlaying the words with prophecy: Grian, trying to predict the tactics of the Watchers, accidentally letting them in all on his own, calling them not only to himself, but to an open Hermitcraft, to the newest hermit and his infinitely useful powers.

Luke scowled at the vision, scowled at the code, scowled at the promises they tried to make him, scowled at the way they tried to deter him. He was already so close. He was already so tired. If fate wanted to stop him, it was welcome to materialize and try.

Luke walked up to the line of code he needed, hefted his dagger, and started slashing.

When Luke opened his eyes next, the chunk of Grian’s code he had been looking for had been reduced to nothing, the letters having fritzed purple at Luke as he painstakingly tore each one out of place. Grian, for his part, didn’t look like Luke had accidentally killed him, which Luke took as a good sign in spite of the fact his entire body had shifted into feeling like it was made of lead.

Using much more effort than it reasonably should have taken, Luke pulled his hand back into his lap. “There.”

Grian pressed the hand Luke had ‘released’ against his chest, forehead furrowed. “I… feel different. What did you do?”

“Mm. Something. Should have helped. No more prophecy.” Luke answered without answering, less out of a caution for what he could-and-couldn’t say and more due to the mental fog that had settled over him alongside the weight in his limbs. Maybe… maybe he wasn’t made for messing with the pure essence of a player. Maybe that had been a ‘bit much’ for him in his already-drained state.

“You- you can do that?”

“I just did.” Luke tilted his face further into Mumbo’s chest. Remembered he wasn’t supposed to do that. Un-tilted his face using monumental effort. “I can… ten minutes? I can be gone in ten minutes.”

“You’re not leaving.” Mumbo said, firmly, at the same time Grian rudely reminded Luke, “You can’t even stand up.”

Luke frowned. Who said he couldn’t stand up? He could stand up. All it took was-

Mumbo pulled Luke back against his side before he could successfully face-plant into the grass. He sighed. “If you… if you don’t want to stay, we won’t force you to, but-”

“I can’t stay.” Luke interrupted. “Prophet.”

“Misunderstanding.” Mumbo countered. “Hermitcraft allows prophets, even if we don’t know what they are.”

“And I shouldn’t have attacked you.” Grian added, nudging Luke’s leg with his foot. “I did it because I thought you were one of them, not because you’re a prophet.”

“But… the blood? I shouldn’t… no blood in Hermitcraft.”

“If you had the mod in your old server, it might have carried over with you into this one.” Grian offered, sounding a touch guilty. In an attempt to convey he didn’t hold his blood against Grian, Luke thoughtfully bumped him with his foot.

Mumbo, clearly wanting to join in on the bumping-fun, bumped his leg against Luke’s. “Grian’s right. A rogue blood mod isn’t server-threatening.”

“It’s messy.”

Mumbo huffed, a sound that Luke’s severely exhausted mind chose to interpret as fond. The hand that had been resting on Luke’s further shoulder lifted as Mumbo started to comb his fingers through the hair at the base of Luke’s neck, an action that was both wonderful and not at all helping Luke’s already poor grasp on reality. “If it’s yours, I don’t mind.”

Grian, sounding slightly as if he were underwater, made an exasperated noise. “Get a room.”

“I think that’s the plan.” Mumbo joked. “Unless you think we should leave Luke to fall asleep out here.”

“You could.”

“We’re not.” Mumbo and Grian rebuked at more or less the same time.

Luke huffed. “You won’t let me stand up.”

“You would fall over.”

“Stop insulting me.”

Mumbo chuckled at Luke and Grian’s exchange. “Luke, do you want to fly right now?”

“...No.”

“Then we’re not going to make you fly.” Mumbo’s logic made sense to Luke. It was extremely considerate of him. Included no insults. “Do you want to go back to Boatem? Or someone else’s base?”

“Boatem.” Luke answered before Mumbo fully finished. “If. If I can.”

“You can.” Mumbo said softly, the response followed by the beeping of a communicator. Luke opened his eyes- when had he closed them?- and found it was Grian, typing something into his.

“Xisuma says voi can teleport us back.” Grian said after what had either been a minute or ten, Luke being too distracted trying to keep his eyes open to focus on the passage of time. “And that voi’s glad you’re ok, Luke.”

Luke hummed in acknowledgement. Briefly lost the battle against his eyelids. Started rapidly blinking in an attempt to beat back the urge to sleep.

Grian, who was not acting nearly grateful enough for someone who’s future Luke had helpfully changed, laughed at the display. “I don’t think he’s going to make it back to Boatem awake, Mumbo.”

Mumbo, secondary reason Luke was not going to make it back to Boatem awake and who was being forgiven on account of being so warm, also laughed. “It’s probably best he doesn’t. Teleporting when exhausted is quite, er, unpleasant.”

“I’m right here, you know.” Luke mumbled, fairly certain he had said at least half of the words out loud. His eyes had fallen shut again and seemed content to remain that way.

The arm around the back of Luke’s shoulders shifted, pulling Luke closer and allowing his head to rest more comfortably on the soft-warm-solid surface. “Go to sleep, Luke. I’ve got you.”

Luke, exhausted, happily listened to his pillow’s advice.

Four days later, Luke found himself sitting outside of his house, appreciating the beauty of a Hermitcraft that hadn’t been split open by false gods of wine-purple eyes.

Even with Luke feeling fairly certain he had circumvented his vision, the server had been tense for the three days after it. Luke’s foresight proved he wasn’t lying about his ability to predict the future, after all, and the mix of his inability to speak of the prophecy past its given lines and his uncertainty in whether or not avoiding it was even possible hadn’t exactly filled the hermits with hope. The three days of waiting had been filled with open-secret preparations, every hermit with admin knowledge helping Xisuma to run through the server’s protections with a fine-toothed comb, and a lot of anticipatory glancing at the sky.

(Admittedly, Luke had missed most of these things occurring during his nearly two day long recovery sleep. His visions were usually tiring in a way a long nap could fix, so Luke was forced to assume his exhaustion had come either from altering Grian’s code, interfering with the future of his prophecy, or both.)

But the third day had passed, free of any Watcher appearance, and Luke was left to conclude that he had truly done it. He had defied a vision. He had changed the future, short-term and long-term. For the first time in his lives, Luke was free of the prophet’s curse, even as golden words continued to wind themselves around him.

Luke turned his head a second early as those gold words told him of Mumbo’s approach, because he could, because the hermits didn’t care, because he wanted to revel in how he could know and alter. He did wait until Mumbo actually came around the corner of his house to speak, out of politeness. “Hey Mumbo.”

Mumbo, for his part, didn’t seem put off by Luke’s unnatural readiness. “Hello Luke. Might I join you?”

“Please do.”

Mumbo moustache-smiled as he took a seat in the grass next to Luke, sitting close enough their legs were touching. Luke didn’t mind. The proximity was nice. “How are you doing?”

“Better. Awake.” Luke answered, getting a chuckle out of Mumbo. “I think Phantoms fear me now. I might start chasing them around during the day.”

“I don’t think Phantoms exist during the daytime.”

“They will. That’s how afraid of me they are.”

Mumbo shook his head, but his smile remained. “Glad to see you’re in good spirits as well.”

“I’m a prophet who can defy the future and isn’t having to engage in any impromptu sword fights because of it.” Luke watched his foresight wiggle on the ground as he did just that, switching around the phrasing it had offered him solely because it couldn’t stop him. “My spirits have never been better.”

“You really weren’t joking when you said prophecy was a curse on your old server, huh?”

Mumbo’s tone was light, but Luke could make out the undercurrent of worry in it. Luke hadn’t had a chance to go too in-depth on all the details of being a prophet- he hadn’t yet had the time- but he had explained a few things to Mumbo, in between his naps and the Watcher watches. Unsurprisingly, Mumbo hadn’t liked much of it, biased by the fact that Luke didn’t like much of it either.

“For me at least, yeah.” Luke bumped his shoulder against Mumbo’s. “But I’m here now, remember? And it’s… it’s good here.”

Mumbo hummed, clear he still had something on his mind. Luke waited patiently for him to get to it, no creeper around to ruin the moment. In front of him, Luke watched his foresight turn into ellipses, blinking at him before draining into the grass, as if choosing to leave him and Mumbo alone.

“Your old server was a hardcore one, right?”

“Are those the one-life-only servers?”

“They are.”

“Then yeah, hardcore server.” Luke answered, not entirely untruthfully. His old life had been a one-chance set up, as far as he was aware.

Mumbo nodded, hesitating for a second before continuing on with his line of inquiry. “When you… did you know-”

“When I was going to die?” Luke finished for Mumbo, sighing and looking out over Boatem. Inscryption was an entire bundle of thoughts he had largely left untouched since coming to Hermitcraft, and while he knew he wouldn’t be able to ignore it forever, he had been doing his best to pretend that the only part of his death that mattered was that it had happened. “I did. Unfortunately.”

“Oh, that’s- I was going to ask if you knew you would end up here.” Luke turned back to Mumbo, finding him frowning in concern.

“Oh.” Not the question Luke had expected, but one that was much more preferable. “You know, I actually didn’t. Falling into Hermitcraft was a complete surprise to me.”

“A good surprise?”

Luke grinned at Mumbo. “The best.”

Mumbo returned the grin as best he could with only a moustache. He scooted a little bit closer to Luke. “Luke, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Is it something I said during my two day long nap? Or while I was pretending I wasn’t falling asleep on top of you?” Luke hazarded as guesses, aware that he had, at some point in his rests, sleep-talked some fairly odd things. Including, based on the various notes Boatem had kept while watching over him, some rather inspired Catch Monster teams. “Which, I did mean to apologize for at some point. I know you hadn’t planned on playing pillow to a half-mad prophet that day.”

“It’s alright.” Mumbo reassured Luke, waiting a beat before adding on, “You were cute.”

Despite being a prophet, Luke had not seen that coming.

It must have showed in his expression- or in the way he had frozen in surprise, or in the way he was speechless, or in anything, because Luke was pretty sure not a single cell of his being was currently behaving in a normal, unshocked way- because Mumbo laughed, smile softening.

“I didn’t think I was being subtle.” Mumbo told him, teasing but kind. “Especially for a prophet.”

“Prophets- I- we- I predict the future, Mumbo, that doesn’t make me observant!” Luke found enough of his voice to protest, although given the way his face felt like it was burning, he doubted it was a very effective one. He considered trying to hide his face in his hands, but he was fairly certain it would only make his embarrassment worse.

“And you didn’t see this coming? Even a little bit?”

“My foresight’s not here right now.” Luke defended, as if that explained him missing every other sign along the road to that exact moment.

At the mention of his briefly MIA foresight, however, Mumbo hesitated. “Do you… should I wait til it comes back?”

“Actually, Mumbo, I think- I think I can figure this one out from here.”

Another second of pause, and then Mumbo’s smile grew as he leaned into Luke’s side, getting as close as he had been the day he had given Luke the blue orchids that now lived in a flower pot on his bedside table. “Why don’t you tell me the future then, lucky prophet?”

If Luke’s face got any redder, it was liable to explode. “Yes. I see- I see the prophet saying yes.”

“You do?” Mumbo asked, and he was still teasing, still amused, but there was something so earnest and hopeful in his eyes Luke couldn’t help but wonder how the hell he hadn’t noticed anything before that exact moment.

“Yes.” Luke repeated, fulfilling his own prophecy, created just for him and Mumbo. “I do.”

And as Luke leaned in, surrounded by green grass and blue sky and not a single drop of spilled blood, he finally felt peace.

#lucky jumbo #i really cornered myself with the whole ship name = my series name thing huh #luke carder #mumbo jumbo #grian #hermitcraft #inscryption #m.y funky words #mumbo carder universe #anyways . this is ~11k i wrote in 3 days bc i was seized with the madness of luke . please enjoy #i cannot be trusted with these blorbos but no one is strong enough to take them from me

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