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Transferring lives creates a bond unbreakable even by death.
Grian discovered this soon after he tricked Scar into giving him a life. Scar wouldn’t stop following him around. When Grian was mining, Scar was always hidden around a corner. When Grian was traveling through the woods, Scar was right behind him, poorly hiding behind trees. When Grian was building his tower, Scar was crouching behind a hill. For a while, he was confused. Was Scar lonely? Scared? Bored? But after contemplating for a while, Grian realized that he felt it too. Something was calling him to Scar. Something so subtle it was hard to put into words, but the connection filled Grian to his very core. It thrummed through his very lifeblood. As soon as he noticed it, the buzz wouldn’t go away. Grian would never admit it though, especially after what happened between him and Scar on the previous server. He tried his best to put it out of his mind, although he never called out or confronted Scar about his stalking.
Due to his hesitance to grow close to Scar, Grian did all he could to forget about the bond, so when his friends suggested that they pass a life around between each other to promise loyalty, Grian didn’t even stop to consider what the consequences would be.
“Alright, Mumbo?” Impulse asked, and everyone watched as the green particles of life fled from Mumbo and circled around Impulse. Impulse immediately darted into the forest, pretending to steal the life, but he quickly returned and passed the life onto Martyn.
“Ooh, there we go!” Martyn exclaimed as the green particles encased him.
Grian was next to get a go with the life, and he too pretended to flee with the borrowed life before passing it over to Jimmy.
“There you go! And then, back to Mumbo!” Grian said as Jimmy received the life. Mumbo was the final person to experience the life-giving green particles as Grian said, “Right, that’s it. We are bonded by life here.”
Bonded by life. As soon as the words left his mouth, Grian realized what he had just done. What they all had just done. It probably meant nothing. They were all more connected now, which couldn’t be a bad thing, right? That just meant they were less likely to betray each other. Besides, nothing bad had come from his bond to Scar, at least not yet. Surely it would all be fine.
At that moment, each of their communicators simultaneously pinged. The boogeyman was about to be chosen. As all of his friends burst into fearful chatter, Grian took the opportunity to slip away. He walked calmly into the forest surrounding his and his friend’s towers, but as soon as he was out of their sight, he ran. Grian bolted away from his home, and his friends, and the fear of what would happen when everyone else learned of the bond. Finally, he stopped running, but the racing of his mind didn’t. He pulled out his communicator, afraid to see if he was the boogeyman, although the definitive lack of bloodlust made him quite sure he was curse-free for another day. As Grian suspected, he was boogeyman-curse free, and he allowed himself to slump to the ground in relief. However, the anxiety of what terrible things the life bond could lead to didn’t let him relax for long.
After a while, Grian got up and wandered out of the forest. He stumbled across a ruined portal, and a quick check of his communicator let him know that most other people on the server had entered the nether already. After a moment of consideration, Grian decided to fix up the portal and follow in the footsteps of the others. Besides, maybe the change of scenery would clear his head.
The heat was so overwhelming that Grian was almost able to forget about all that had happened earlier in the day. Almost. He carefully stepped across the red, rocky land, fearful of taking a wrong step and losing a valuable life. The silhouette of a nether fortress loomed in the distance, and Grian decided to check it out. Most of the loot was probably already gone as many people had already explored the nether, but he could gather some potion materials. Those could certainly be useful later.
As Grian expected, the nether fortress was teeming with activity. Almost immediately, he ran into Ren, which was a relief. He didn’t think he was ready to explain to his friends why he slipped away earlier. Together, they fought off some wither skeletons and gathered some blaze rods. Both men gasped in shock each time a new death message appeared on their communicators. It made Grian sick to think about how quickly lives were being lost. After a while, the two decided to call it quits and went on their separate ways. Grian had cooled off a bit, which was ironic due to the sweltering heat of the nether. Grian was wiping away sweat from his brow while making his way back to the nether portal when he heard a shout.
“Help! Please!” Scar’s terrified voice called from somewhere, although Grian couldn’t see him.
“Scar?” Grian shouted back.
“Grian?” Scar’s voice was shaking, and Grian knew that his conscience wouldn’t let him leave the man alone. Plus, he didn’t think the bond would either.
“Ok, don’t move. Are you up?” Grian began building a tower up to the source of Scar’s voice.
“Oh, I see you!” Grian called. “If you kill me I’m gonna be really upset, Scar.” He had meant for that to sound light-hearted, but he cringed at how serious, and scared, he sounded.
“Thank God you found me. I was stuck, and Etho tried to kill me because he thought I shot at him, but it was actually a skeleton, and it was really scary, and I’ve been lost ever since then because I ran from him.”
“I’ll help you. The portal is this way.”
They walked for a little while, and then Grian finally spotted the portal across a chasm of lava.
“After you, Scar,” Grian laughed. “I’m definitely not going first.”
After crossing the bridge, Grian looked at Scar, sighed, and guiltily said, “I know I lost your life, and I’m sorry, but that was Bdubs! It was the boogeyman!”
Scar smiled and reassured him that it wasn’t his fault. Grian’s stomach churned, although he couldn’t tell if he was happy Scar forgave him, scared of how easily they could move on from what happened on the last server, or if it was something else entirely. It didn’t matter though. Grian needed to keep his distance. He didn’t believe that his and Scar’s relationship could be anything but toxic, and he didn’t want to know what happened when the life bond was added into the mix.
Despite Grian’s desire to get away from Scar, he certainly didn’t want to be out on the server alone, so the two began traveling in the direction of Grian’s house. They stumbled across Skizz, Scott, and Pearl and decided to hang out for a while, but eventually, Grian decided that he needed to get home. Scar decided to stick along, and he offered that they stop at his mountain top house to get some food. The offer made Grian realized that he was hungry, really hungry, so he begrudgingly followed Scar up the mountain. They gathered some food, and on the way down, Grian heard familiar voices.
“My friends! My friends!” Grian shouted. He was still nervous about the bond, but at this point, he was too exhausted to avoid them any longer. “Bye Scar! My friends are here!”
He ran down the mountain towards his friends. Scar hurried down after him, not wanting to be left behind again. Joel was there as well, explaining to everyone where the greatly sought-after enchantment table was.
“It’s in that cave over there,” Joel announced.
“Is the enchantment table being held hostage?” Grian asked as he crossed the bridge to the cave.
“It is kinda being held hostage, yeah,” Joel responded.
Grian was the first to enter the cave, with everyone else right behind him. He was eager to find the enchantment table and get some more shiny gear. More often than not, enchanted gear was the difference between life and death. He reached the end of the cave, and no enchantment table was in sight. There was, however, a ladder, descending into who knows where, and a lever.
“This looks trapped,” Grian observed. He then, against his better judgment, pulled the lever.
The floor retracted and revealed a pit between him and Joel and the rest of his friends as Mumbo cried, “Hang on, wait! Joel! Joel, what is this?”
Grian peered into the deep pit that had certainly been placed there to kill one of them. Everyone looked around at each other, confused as to who set the trap, but eventually, all eyes settled on Joel.
“Jump over, guys,” Joel said nervously. Everyone began laughing in confusion, and a few people took the leap over the pit. “Do it again, come on. I dare you.”
“Wait! This is a clear boogeyman!” Grian cried, finally connecting the dots.
Everyone ran out of the cave, screaming.
“Who is it?”
“Is it Joel?”
“AAAAAAAAH!”
Blades started flying as everyone began to attack Joel. The air echoed with sounds of screaming and metal blades crashing against each other. Joel managed to place a few hits on people here and there, but he was sorely outnumbered. Grian was knocked off of the bridge in the panic, and just as he looked up at the entrance of the cave, he saw Mumbo stab his sword through Joel’s chest. A chorus of cheers and laughter rang through the crowd while everyone began to celebrate the victory. Mumbo rejoiced in the new diamond gear he had just acquired, and Joel’s respawned self mourned the gear and life he had just lost.
Suddenly, the crowd erupted into screams once again. Grian watched in horror as Scar, the man who was once his friend, the man who he was bonded to, the man who he was just beginning to once again trust, poured lava on the ground where Mumbo was standing. It felt like the world slowed down as Mumbo burned. Grian couldn’t do anything as he watched Scar bring his sword down onto Mumbo. He couldn’t do anything as Mumbo brought his hands to the wound on his chest. He pulled his hands away, and they were red. Too red. Grian fell to his knees and grasped at his chest. It felt like his entire body was on fire. Mumbo was screaming, Grian was screaming, everyone was screaming. In between waves of white-hot pain, Grian looked around and saw that everyone but Scar and Joel were also on the ground, clutching their chests. Before he could even process what was happening, Mumbo’s body dissolved into the all too familiar white death particles.
The phantom pain subsided, and Grian looked up to see Scar and Joel staring at him and all of his friends in shock. Grian and his friends exchanged terrified looks. Scar’s smug face fell as he observed the state of Grian and his friends.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’m the boogeyman! I had to! Oh my gosh!”
“What was that?” Jimmy cried.
Grian shakily rose to his feet and was about to state his theory as to what happened when his eyes landed on Joel.
“Joel’s still the boogeyman! Run!” he warned, before sprinting away on still shaky legs.
Grian didn’t stop running until he reached the familiar towers of his home. Mumbo was laying on the grass in the middle of the circle of towers, and Grian let himself fall on the ground next to him. Jimmy and Martyn were close behind. Suddenly, Impulse ran out of their mine and began to shout, but his words died out as he saw all of his exhausted friends collapsed on the grass.
“Did you all feel it too? I was mining when I saw Joel’s death message on my communicator. Then a little after that, I felt the worst pain in my chest. I could barely breathe, and I fell to the ground! I nearly fell into lava! And then as soon as it went away, I checked my communicator, and I saw that Mumbo had been killed! I ran here as fast as I could!”
Mumbo sat up and looked around at his friends. “I was the one who got killed. Why did you all feel the pain too?”
Grian sighed and whispered, “It’s because we transferred lives.”
“What?” Martyn asked, shocked.
“It’s the bond. When one person gives a life to another, a bond is created between them.”
Impulse sat down on the grass next to Grian and asked, “How long have you known this? How do you know this?”
Grian remained silent for a while. Finally, he said, “Remember when I tricked Scar into giving me a life? Something strange has been happening ever since.” He took a breath and tried to ignore the looks his friends gave him when he mentioned Scar. “He’s been following me around, and some strange force is calling me to him too.”
Mumbo spoke up after Grian went silent. “So when we passed that life around, to promise we wouldn’t betray each other, we created a bond. But that doesn’t explain why you all felt my pain when I died. Did Scar say anything about the pain when you died to Bdubs?”
“No, he didn’t,” Grian responded, “But he did start following me around more after it happened.”
“So, we’re stuck with this, then?” Jimmy asked.
Grian looked around and said, “I suppose so.”
Mumbo took a deep breath. “I guess this means that we not only need to protect ourselves from dying, but each other too. We’ve all got to be careful.”
“Yeah,” Impulse sighed. “I was terrified when it happened. I was all alone, and I thought I was gonna die, for no reason, and without anyone around…”
The group fell silent. They all laid in the grass and shared a moment of peace. Together they watched as the sun moved across the sky. Slowly, each member got up and went on their own ways until only Mumbo and Grian remained.
“Hey, Mumbo, I’m so sorry you lost a life. I can’t even imagine what a lava death in this server is like,” Grian said.
“Yeah, it hurt, quite a bit, but I’m alright now. It helps that I have all of you,” Mumbo responded.
Grian pulled Mumbo into a hug and whispered, “You’re my best friend, Mumbo. Never leave me, please?”
“Of course,” Mumbo whispered back. A tear rolled down his cheek. “Of course, Grian.”