meetings

by SagittaOfTime

Summary:

Pixlriffs discovers the End is not as uninhabited as he thought.

Notes:

aaaaaaaaaaa

Chapter 1: oh hey it's chapter 1

“I’m gonna go on ahead and scout the area, you guys can wait for Pearl,” Pixlriffs said.

“Okay! Stay safe and have fun,” said Sausage. 

“Don’t die,” Katherine added. “Or get anyone else killed.”

“I will and I won’t,” he said, walking into the forest.

Most worlds he’d played on before didn’t have forests in the End, since he didn’t play modded. However, this world was old enough for quirks to develop. How old exactly, none of the emperors knew, but old enough that they were sure it had been abandoned, and long enough ago that spawn showed no signs of what had once been.

The typical chorus plants stretched around him, twisting in the sky, but they were accompanied by various purple flora. The End really had a thing for purple and obsidian, he noted, staring at a mushroom that towered above his head. It had a lavender cap and a black stem. 

He continued working his way through the forest, keeping track of his coords so he didn’t stray too far from Sausage and Katherine. 

The forest thinned out, giving way to a barren expanse of end stone. Well, it would’ve been barren, if not for the bodies.

There were a lot of bodies. Most looked humanlike, though some resembled endermen.

… Okay. This was spooky, but there was a chance someone had set it up as a prank. A really sick prank, but a prank nonetheless.

“Hello?” he called. “Is anyone here? … Fwhip, was this you? This isn’t funny.” Carefully stepping through the battlefield, he looked closer.

Where the bodies didn’t cover the ground, blood did, and in some places, gore did. He grimaced and looked to where it didn’t.

Bright pink flashed in the corner of his eye. He turned to see it better, but it had vanished.

What he did see was an ender dragon egg, sitting beside a tied-up person. They had pink hair, but it wasn’t the same shade that had caught his attention. Blood covered them as it did the other bodies.

“Huh.” He walked over and knelt beside the egg. “What’s a dragon egg doing here? I don’t think the dragon has been killed yet…”

In the silence of his wondering, he heard the pink-haired person breathing.

“Uhhh… excuse me?” He gently tapped them on the shoulder. “Are you awake?”

They didn’t respond.

“Well, it couldn’t hurt to untie you.” He carefully started untying the knots.

After doing that, he decided to give Katherine a call to let her know what was taking so long.

Pulling his communicator out of his pocket, he was punched in the face.

“Ow, what!” Another punch followed, then a kick and he was solidly on his back at this point, stars flicking in his vision.

“Who are you,” said an echoing voice, “and what is your purpose here?”

“My name is Pixlriffs.” He shouldn’t have said that, names have Power. “I’m here to explore the End.” 

“To explore the End… and why would that be?”

“Well, me and my friends are looking for elytra because we don’t have any yet.”

“Elytra… so you’re raiding the Lost Cities?”

“Sounds like it.”

They paused for a moment, and Pix hoped they were leaning towards not getting him and his friends killed a second time.

They sighed. “Be on your way then.” The foot lifted off his chest. He rolled away and stood up, taking a better look at the person.

They were dressed in black clothes, thoroughly ripped and showing fur underneath. The clothes themselves were loose, similar to the ones Pixandria’s small militia wore: designed to protect the wearer from the elements without restricting armor or movement. Their pink hair, streaked with purple, was matted with blood. Their clothes likely were as well, but the black hid it.

“Can I have your name, first?”

Pix could see them consider it.

“I don’t have one.”

Pix could see ‘NOT THAT DUMB’ play through their face.

“Please?”

They grimaced. “It’s Ceris.”

“It’s good to meet you, Ceris. Can you tell me what happened here?”

“No.”

“Alright. Um… do you need anything? You look pretty banged up.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Sure you don’t want some food or anything? I have some fish.” He pulled cooked cod out of his pocket. It was a little charred.

“I’m sure.” They picked up the egg. “Now go.”

“Alright.” He turned to the forest, then paused. “Just… stay safe. Watch out for vampires.”

They didn’t respond.

When he got back to Sausage and Katherine, he didn’t mention Ceris or the battlefield, and decisively steered them away from it. Whatever civilization this End did have, it wasn’t their business.

Notes:

Pixlriffs is talking about Fwhip when he refers to vampires. Remember how Fwhip was initially going to be the villain? Yeah me neither.

Anyways! Comments always appreciated, and you can come say hi over @starry-storm-writing on tumblr

Keep adventuring!

Chapter 2: to err is human (and even gods are)

Summary:

In which Pixlriffs makes a mistake, and tries to apologize.

The dragon’s body levitated into the sky, bursting open as though it were burning magnesium. The yellow-green magic of experience poured from the sky, and the egg appeared on the fountain.

The void ripped open with a terrible, silent, deafening, roar.

“Guys, I think—”

Pixlriffs’s vision cracked and shimmered, past, present, and future blurring together.

His chest burned with pain and anger. Their family was dead, he had found a way to use the very thing that had killed them for his own purposes, to strengthen even the weakest, and this was how his brother chose to repay him? By exiling him, and then having the nerve to fight him on the mountainside their parents had died on?

Oh, he was going to pay for this.

Time sped up and blurred, emotions fading away as sharply as they had come.

He was an elf, standing in a cave. Red plants curled around his arms. It felt like home, in the way that home can take and take from you until you realize you were raised in Hell.

He was holding rockets between his teeth, aiming a bow with scary accuracy from mid-air. He fired. A blast rippled through his elytra.

Huge, writhing tentacles of plant matter rose from the ground. The ground shuddered as he scrambled for footing. People screamed around him, and he heard his name being shouted, over and over and over and—

“Pixlriffs! Thank you—”

“Sausage.” The world shattered into place around him, endstone and obsidian pillars and a bedrock fountain. “This isn’t good.”

Guilt tossed him like a wave, and shame sprung around his feet like the vines he saw. 

The world was going to end, and it was his fault.

“Pix, what’re you talking about? This is great! Xornoth is free.”

He could’ve said something. He could’ve said anything, anything to let them know that this had consequences none of them could stop, that Xornoth would be the end of them all.

Instead, he fled into the void’s sky.

###

Ceris wasn’t sure how she knew that Pixlriffs would be here. Call it a premonition, or maybe just having ears. Things that crawled up from the Void never did so quietly.

On the battlefield she had failed in those few years ago, Pixl was standing. The bodies were mostly decomposed, and plants hid the bones. It looked a little better than he did.

Pix’s elytra were near to breaking, and his clothes were shredded in ways that clothes usually didn’t shred. She could almost swear black smoke drifted around his legs.

“Did you do this?” she asked.

His silence was enough of an admission of guilt.

“Why?”

“I thought,” —his voice cracked— “I thought it was the right thing to do. I didn’t… know this would happen.”

She took a breath to speak.

“But I’m going to make this right,” he interrupted. “Me and the others— we’ll fix this. We’ll stop whatever’s coming before it gets to you.”

“If you don’t…”

“If we don’t, I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

Ceris stared into copper eyes that would never weather, would never age. Her hatred of eye contact won after a few seconds, and she looked away.

“If nothing else… remember me.”

“We will.”

She watched as he turned, elytra fanning out behind him, stepped into the void, and rose with a strange pew sound. 

###

Scott Smajor, soul-bound to Xornoth Smajor, vessel for Exor, god of destruction, killed himself, and in turn ended his brother’s life.

However, in their ill-fated attempt to bring Salmon and Cod together, Count Fwhip and Codfather Jimmy brought about a calamity that wrought the bedrock from the deepslate. When the land was at its weakest, it was torn into ruin. Forests burned, oceans dried up, and people fled en masse.

In the desert of Pixandria, a sand storm so great it would not falter for seventy years began. It and the shifting sands shrouded the city in a funeral only foreseen by an absent future.

And so, the Great Empires fell. The glory age of mankind was over.

The End, however, would take longer to fall.

This is the story of a prophet and a queen.

Notes:

don't expect anything more, i know that reads like the start to a long fic, it isn't, i promise

... but you can ask about this au over @starry-storm-writing on tumblr. ask box is open!