Chapter Text
My heart is in my throat, the weapon’s in my hand
Thought that I could stop you, make you understand
Bodies in the back, I swear it’s not my fault
Don’t blame me for defense if you started the assault
- - -
“Disappearing already?”
Wemmbu is crouched and elbow-deep in his enderchest when the voice sounds, familiar enough that he doesn’t bother to look up from reorganising his supplies. A random spruce biome less than a hundred blocks out from the prison isn’t exactly ideal cover for this particular task, but it’s the first opportunity he’s had, and he’s damn well going to take advantage.
Law has a lot to answer for. Several weeks of captivity (and now finding himself on the run again, how does this even keep happening) has left him desperately in need of provisions - made worse by the fact that he’d been forced to leave behind a shulker and several backup chestplates during the escape, which he isn’t done being pissed about. His elytra is shot, too, and he makes a mental note to track down a source of exp as soon as possible; hopping aboard that train of thought as an excuse to continue ignoring the approach of his visitor. The man’s long evening shadow falls over the shulker he places next, steps slowing to a halt as he continues to rummage.
Not an enemy, not this time around. That confirms one of them got out, at least. It’s something. There haven’t been any especially concerning death messages to ping his comm, so he can only hope the others successfully scattered without being captured again.
He still hasn’t responded to the question. The intruder continues anyway.
“Didn’t you promise Spoke your unwavering loyalty?”
Wemmbu almost laughs.
(Splitting his knuckles against copper over and over just to make a dent, turning back from the exit to try and free Flame’s friend, Loppezz you might wanna start running-)
“Loyalty’s not really my thing.” He tells a sealed invisibility potion. It clinks against several other bottles as he sets it gingerly aside.
“I remember.”
That- that feels like a slap in the face, actually. He doesn’t let it show.
The final shulker presses closed with a grinding clunk, and he slots it neatly back into his echest. He’s still missing a ton of gear, but he’s back in netherite (halfway, his helmet and leggings are still tragically blue), stocked up on wind charges, and the comforting weight of his favourite mace sits in his palm. Most importantly, the mining fatigue has faded. He can breathe again, and even the bruises from the fight feel dulled under the lingering effects of the gapples he chugged to get away. He’s out.
They are out.
Zam, when Wemmbu at last looks up at him, still wears scavenged armor - weak enchantments barely visible in the late light, diamond chipped and gouged where it’s been pummelled during their escape. One of the shoulders is dented unnaturally, caved inwards in a way that suggests Crucible had crushed the collarbone of its previous owner before they died. He only vaguely recalls the blow - riding on adrenaline and manic glee, propelling himself up into the sky with a crunch-
Zam himself doesn’t look much better. The low sun doesn’t do his hollow cheeks any favors; he’s paler even than he used to be, malnourished from months of half-starvation, eyes gone from gold to dull straw and a haunted edge to his pervasive smile. Every inch the broken prisoner. Not a fraction of the ruler he once was. None of the man who’d put Wemmbu on his knees, who’d laughed as the home he’d built burned around him-
(You’re like a little bug! A little bug I could crush under my finger!)
“Thought you didn’t want to talk about the Empire?” The words are a challenge, direct and indelicate. A dare.
Zam backs down. Like a miracle.
“I don’t.” Faded eyes slide away from his face to settle in the middle distance. He shifts from foot to foot, and Wemmbu can feel the words he’s chewing on, the conversation he’s angling for now they’re away from listening guards and backbreaking labor.
Nope. Not dealing with that.
“Whatever, bro. Restock if you need, I don’t have silk touch anyway.” He pushes himself upright and nudges pointedly at the enderchest with his foot. Then watches Zam’s face twist.
“I don’t have anything in there, Wemmbu. I don’t… have anything.”
It’s not sympathy, wringing in his chest. It can’t be. At best, it’s satisfaction, or schadenfreude, or complete apathy- he’s gone years without having to care about Zam, he’s not about to start now.
He turns on his heel. Dirt grinds beneath his boot.
“Well, that sucks. Later.”
Before the words are even out, he’s striding away; gaze fixed on the trees ahead, looming in the failing light; fingers curled around the grip of Gambit in a practiced hold that would intimidate anyone with sense. Of course, he ought to know by now that PrinceZam doesn’t fall into that category.
“Wait up!”
Footsteps crunching through dry twigs are all the warning he gets before his pursuer falls into step at his side. Crappy armor and downy blond hair grown too long for his face (he’s not even wearing a helmet, the guy is trenches) come into view at his periphery. Wemmbu grinds his teeth and tries not to lament the broken elytra in his inventory.
“Where are you headed now?” Zam asks.
“Away.”
“Away where?”
“Far.”
Even his annoyance can’t quite smother the grin that touches his lips and colors the tone of his own dumb joke - he doesn’t care to hide it, and it‘s not like Zam would catch the reference anyway. Egg would’ve appreciated the humor, if he were here.
If he were here.
That thought erases the smile.
He’ll fix it. He has a plan. If it means wiping out the entire scant population of the Farlands, he’ll do it. Free Egg from his exile. Revisit the Forge. Build himself back up to full strength again, gather an arsenal he can use to destroy Law - then annihilate every fragment of the server Lettuce cares about before he bans him for good. He wants to watch that man suffer.
Step one of this infallible plan? Get away from Zam.
He expects - hopes - that Zam will lose interest and wander off soon enough. As long as he makes himself as uninteresting and noncommittal as possible, he’s certain to get the hint eventually.
Unfortunately for Wemmbu, the years have worn away the memory of just how incapable the guy is of leaving him alone.
Despite him fighting against every impulse to ramble and quip and complain, Zam fills the silence with blithe commentary and observations he doesn’t have the bandwidth to concern himself with, chattering like his life depends on the noise.
“-not actually sure where the others went, don’t even know if they all got out, that fight was a shitshow - I wasn’t expecting them to get reinforcements there so quickly, honestly, there must be an outpost near to here or something. I think they came from the west, thinking about it… hey, have you got any food?”
Oh my god.” Wemmbu groans, head falling back on his shoulders in a clear and necessary display of his abject suffering. He can only hold his silence for so long, it seems, and it would appear his limit is about ninety seconds. “Bro, we killed like, twenty guards! Did you not loot anything?”
“I got armor.”
He scoffs and looks at him askance. “That armor’s smashed to hell.”
A pale hand lifts, traces thoughtfully along the twisted wreckage of chestplate barely holding together at the pauldron. His fingers are thinner than they used to be, like the rest of him. Fragile. Wemmbu pretends not to notice the glance he flickers towards Gambit - but he lifts the weapon to rest on his shoulder, rather than swinging it at his side as they walk; a silent confirmation of a question neither of them asked. The weight is reassuringly familiar, the hum of enchantments wrapping around the cool handle and buzzing against his neck like a promise, a reunion. I’ve got your back.
It’s all he needs. All he dares rely on. That’s still true, isn’t it? Even after everything.
“All the more reason for me to have extra food, if you think about it.” Zam continues after a pause. “If we get into another fight-”
“There is no ‘we’, dude.”
“If we get into another fight,” Zam repeats smoothly, cutting off the complaint, “-I won’t be much help if I’m starving to death.”
“You won’t be any help anyway.” He retorts, and Zam makes an affronted little noise in the back of his throat and stops in his tracks like Wemmbu just insulted his entire family line.
“What happened to working together?”
Wemmbu halts long enough to round on him. The sun is starting to set. He can only hope they’re far enough out from the prison to avoid pursuit by whatever reinforcements Lettuce had summoned; macing in the dark is a pain.
“Only to escape!” He argues. “I don’t want your help, I work better on my own anyway-”
“Wow, okay FlameFrags.” Zam drawls the name like an insult, but Wemmbu can’t quite stamp down a flicker of traitorous pride at the comparison to his rival, the way his spine straightens and his chin lifts stubbornly. He’s certainly been called worse. “Since when?”
“Since I outgrew chunguses like you holding me back!”
He watches Zam’s eyes narrow. A little of the gleam he remembers flickers behind the insipid irises, familiar gold glimmering in the sand.
“Ooh, big bad Wemmbu, thinks he’s invincible now because he can-” He stumbles over the words for a second, hands flailing expansively before him like they can shape out the mockery before it comes; “he can kill a thousand people, and summon TNT strikes with his mind-”
“I did kill a thousand people.” Wemmbu argues, indignant. He doesn’t bother to clarify the technicalities of the nukes - partly because he’s all out of rods for now and it’s a moot point, but partly because letting people speculate that he has psychic explosion powers is kind of hilarious.
Zam doesn’t flinch, but he holds his stare for a moment longer than he should, words stalling in his mouth. It occurs to Wemmbu that he isn’t even sure how that rumor made it to the prison. He certainly didn’t bring it up himself. Had any of them had actually believed it? Fantst and Baablu have already witnessed firsthand what he’s capable of with a mace, but Zam…
Zam had known him before he’d learned what it takes to win.
“And then you got yourself captured.”
It breaks a silence he hadn’t even realised was building.
“Wh- so did you!” Wemmbu almost chokes on an incredulous laugh as he’s dragged back into the argument, disbelief colouring the tone and hauling the pitch higher. “Oh my god, Zam, what do you actually want?”
The man folds his arms over his chest, and looks more like a petulant child than a fallen Emperor. The fading light stains his hair golden where it falls nearly to his chin. (He always used to wear it shorter, neatly tucked beneath his crown and meticulously styled; just one more thing about him that’s changed.)
“What makes you think I want anything?” Is his obstinate response.
Wemmbu throws up his hands. The weight of Gambit rolls in his wrist with the motion, and though the weapon swings clear of actually making contact, Zam still ducks away and quickly backs up, palms raised.
”Because everyone always wants something, bro!” He insists. It’s the truth. Spoke, Loppezz, Parrot - even Flame, Theo, Sharpness, WyLL - the only time anyone on this damned server ever comes to him is when they want to fight him, or use him for their own ends. “You’re out, you’re free, you’re welcome for that, by the way. What else could you possibly need from me?”
Zam blinks.
“Well, like I said, some food would-”
Wemmbu throws a golden carrot at his face.
The vegetable hits its mark, sailing like an arrow and colliding against his forehead while Zam scrambles to catch it, but the fucker is already laughing like he’s won a prize.
“Wow, one carrot, how generous-”
“You’re actually trash, bro.” Wemmbu stalks close to roughly force a half stack more into his hands, and gets a blinding smile for his troubles which only makes him more tempted to punch the man in the throat. If he didn’t think doing so might shatter the last fraction of durability on his chestplate, he would.
Zam holds eye contact and takes a deliberate bite of carrot without losing his grin for a moment. He doesn’t step back.
“Thank you, my good friend.”
“I hate you.”
His head tilts to one side - there’s still amusement on his lips, but the spark behind the gaze which studies his face is one of genuine curiosity. A sight he knows, one that used to feel dangerous, and Wemmbu actually hates that he can read the guy so well even after so long.
(Thunder roaring overhead, rain pouring through cracked armor into open wounds, stumbling through the rubble of a levelled city-
Everything that I’ve been working for, since the beginning of the server, gone in an instant because of you!
Yeah, how does it feel?)
“Still?”
It’s like it’s designed to be aggravating, and it works. Wemmbu shoves him hard in the chest, the force of it prompting a huff of air and a stumbled step back, heels scuffing against pine needles in an effort to maintain his balance. He doesn’t follow through like he might once have done, doesn’t push and goad and chase, doesn’t close up that distance - but the damage is already done.
With a groan of abused material, the chestplate finally breaks and falls away. It lands with a pathetic thump on the podzol at their feet before the item disintegrates.
Zam pauses.
So does Wemmbu.
“Well that was rude.”
“Bruh.”
He snickers and turns again, abandoning the conversation in favour of continuing to wind a path between the trees without bothering to see whether Zam will decide to follow. Maybe he’s finally made his point clear.
Of course, it doesn’t deter his pursuer.
“You’re gonna have to replace that, I heard you’re rich now.”
“I’m literally wearing half diamond, why would you think I’m rich? And what makes you think I’d replace your shitty two-dura chestplate anyway?” He kicks aside a branch before either of them can trip over it.
“But I’m vulnerable! If we get jumped right now, I could die.”
“Good! Maybe then you’ll stop annoying me!”
Zam throws a weak punch at his shoulder, and only succeeds in scuffing bare knuckles against rough netherite. Wemmbu barely even feels the impact. But it’s still enough provocation that he twists and swings his mace around to retaliate - none of his usual deadly force, but quick enough to make Zam yelp and fumble to intercept with an iron axe whipped from his inventory. Metal clangs loud enough to spook a handful of perching birds into the sky, and Wemmbu can’t help but grin.
It’s like stepping back in time. Like bickering their way across the server in a simpler life, when the worst of their problems could be solved by chunkbanning a handful of idiots.
Before all of it. This was how it started, wasn’t it?
He could let up. From the indulgent amusement spreading on Zam’s face, he clearly expects him to. To pull back from the offensive, to smirk and snark and quip with no real bite to back up his bark.
But he’s got something to prove, now. He’s a different beast than what he used to be.
He shifts his feet and leans his weight behind Gambit to push, just a fraction more. Enough to make the locked metal screech and slip before it catches again, to make the other adjust his grip and strain while the dense macehead inches closer to his skull. He watches his opponent’s expression flit from surprise, to alarm, to a pout.
“If you actually kill me for real, I’m gonna haunt you so bad.” Zam locks his gaze and tells him with utmost sincerity.
It’s inescapable. It’s dumb. It’s not even a good joke, but laughter bubbles behind his teeth all the same, stupid and ridiculous. Infectious enough to catch the smile on Zam’s face, to draw it into something wider than the shadow it’s been.
And the guy’s suddenly cackling like a madman, discarding the axe as soon as Wemmbu releases the pressure of the mace and nearly bending double, a flailing arm grasping at his shoulder to keep himself upright instead. It’s stupid, and contagious, and he can’t stop himself from laughing along.
“There he is!” Zam declares between giggles, slapping his shoulder and grinning like he’s uncovered some great secret. “There’s our Wemmbu!”
Wemmbu shoves him again. This time, he doesn’t go far.
“You actually suck so much, bro.” The laugh infecting his tone prevents him from putting the bite into the words that they probably deserve.
“And yet you haven’t flown away.” Is the preening response.
“Only ‘cause my elytra’s dead.”
Zam beams, and he regrets the admission immediately.
“Ahh, so you’re stuck with me!” He sounds entirely too delighted at the revelation that Wemmbu cannot, in fact, easily escape the torment of his company.
“Yeah, this is the real punishment, fuck the prison-”
He giggles, and they fall into step again. The sun has dipped below the horizon, now, only a crimson glow at the edge of the world remaining of the day.
Wemmbu twists the grip of Gambit absently, letting the heavy core spin in place where it rests behind his shoulder. Lifts it. Passes it from one hand, to another, then back again.
There’s a musical hum of amusement from his left. A sideways glance tells him Zam is still watching - when isn’t he? - except the smile on his face is closer to wistful now than teasing.
“Same old Wemmbu.”
(A miniature mesa under an artificial sky, his hands going numb with cold from the bucket as he scoops and places the snow that could be their only salvation, like he can distract himself from the vicious hunger gnawing at his gut. A fond, exhausted little chuckle. You can’t stop fidgeting, huh?)
He stills his hands. Rolls his eyes. Zam doesn’t react.
“Is it the same one?”
“What?”
“The mace. Is it the same one? From the escape room?”
His fingers twitch again on Gambit’s handle. The weapon feels like it purrs in response, something lazily possessive - a promise never to lose like that again.
“No. Clown took that one.”
He tilts his head.
“So you killed someone for it?”
The automatic assumption grates on Wemmbu a little. He isn’t exactly sure why.
(Whispered urgency in the back rooms of a palace thousands of blocks in the sky, cool metal pressed into his hands, a plea he’d never answered. You’re the best PvPer I can trust in this meeting. You need to have this.
Jaron had been wrong to trust. He’d learned the consequences of loyalty, by then.)
“It was given to me.” He says eventually. Zam raises a brow, like he’s unconvinced, and he adds, “Well, this one was. This one,” He hefts Crucible into his other hand from his inventory, holds the pair out side by side. He swears he senses them thrum twin frequencies of contentment, watches the glint of enchants sync up perfectly with the other. “-I killed someone for.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have been affronted by the assumption. Both maces have plenty of metaphorical blood on them, after all; and he’s lost and regained them enough times that it’s true to say he’s killed to get them back.
He doesn’t look up, but he feels Zam’s eyes studying him.
“Two maces.” He hums thoughtfully. Then; “Compensating for something?”
That’s enough to regain his attention, and he directs a scowl at the grin flashed his way.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Hey, bro, no judgement here, I’m just saying-”
“Oh my god, stop.”
A screech overhead interrupts their squabbling before it can begin again. A dark shape wheels in the sky, outline visible only where it blots out the spreading stars. The piercing noise is joined by another, and another - until there are three creatures circling above like scavengers sensing carrion. Emerald eyes glint and glow down at the pair of them.
Wemmbu swears loudly.
“Of course you have phantoms. Of course you do. Did you not sleep at all in solitary?” Zam complains, all mirth gone.
“No.” He grumbles. Crucible is tucked quickly away, leaving him free to offhand Gambit and break apart a stack of breeze rods. “Shut up, they’re gonna get us found, let me-”
“We need to get underground.”
“We need to kill them.”
“We don’t have wings! We can’t just hang around waiting for them to come down, someone’s gonna see!”
Wemmbu pauses in his preparation to stare at him.
“Have you not been paying attention, bro?”
He doesn’t wait for a response.
One wind charge propels him halfway up the nearest giant spruce. The second puts him at the top, catching himself and balancing his weight on a sturdy branch just feet from the howling purple demons. One of them sees him and tilts his way, needle-teeth bared, torn edges of its wings fluttering against the air like tattered fabric pulled taut over bone.
He holds his position for one, two, three seconds while it approaches.
Then jumps.
The delightful thing about phantoms is that their wide, flat wings make them excellent target practice for a mace. The first mob learns this quickly as Wemmbu uses the force of his impact with its spine to launch himself high, high into the night sky, and sends the creature spiralling into dead code and falling particles.
The less delightful thing about phantoms, is that when they angle their narrow bodies vertically up to climb towards their new attacker, they become nearly impossible to accurately hit.
He still manages to deal one a glancing blow as he plummets back down - enough to reward him with a visceral snap and a death scream, enough to prompt Gambit’s wind burst to activate again - but the angle is wrong, and it propels him in a direction that will make it impossible to strike the third.
And then he’s falling, and he’s too high up.
Air rushes past him, roars in his ears, whips through the joins in his armor and stings his skin. There’s no totem in his hand, he doesn’t have pearls, his bucket is empty and he didn’t check to see if these boots had feather falling before throwing them on but if they don’t this is definitely going to hurt-
A hastily tossed wind charge softens the fall, but he still tumbles and rolls off his feet to collide painfully with the ground, pursued by the screeching third phantom. It barrels towards him, nightmarish jaws snapping, unnatural teeth bared-
And the tip of a blade bursts between them as Zam drives his sword through the back of the creature’s head.
With a last shrill scream, it goes still.
He exhales in a rush and flops against the spongy podzol. At least it was a somewhat soft landing, though his ribs burn in protest when he tries to draw that sigh back into his lungs. The dead phantom dissolves into experience orbs, the largest of which trickle their way lazily to the most damaged parts of his armor.
Zam smirks down at him.
“‘Have you not been paying attention, bro?’” He parrots, mocking.
“I’ll kill you.” Wemmbu deadpans right back.
“Sure you will.” He grins and stows his sword, before offering out a hand which Wemmbu accepts, grasping his wrist to haul himself upright with a grunt of pain and gritted teeth.
Zam squeezes just briefly before letting go. He pretends not to notice.
Instead, he digs a golden apple out of his inventory and devours the thing in a few quick bites, barely tasting the sickly metallic flavour over the rush of regen which jolts through his limbs and prickles his skin. It immediately numbs the worst of the aches, pushes back the dark threatening at the edges of his vision. That had been a rough fall.
He blinks away the lingering blur to find his companion still watching him.
“Yo, are you good?”
He scoffs. Rolls his shoulders, assuring himself that the pulse of agony from his ribs has abated.
“It’s just phantoms, bro.”
“Yeah, and we just spent weeks being tortured in prison.”
It’s a remarkably candid description of their recent history, one Wemmbu wouldn’t ordinarily have dignified with words. ‘Torture’ sounds so… traumatic. But looking at Zam, at the sharp angles of his face and dullness behind his eyes, the way his hand trembles even now where it’s come to rest on his sword hilt, narrow fingers seeming lost against the grip- maybe it’s accurate.
Wemmbu wonders if he looks the same.
“What’s your point?”
It’s easier not to think about it. To relegate the last several weeks to the ever-growing pile of ‘Shitty Situations Wemmbu Ultimately Got Out Of’, and not examine it further.
(The feeling of bare-knuckle beating his fellow inmates to death while the sergeant bellowed demands, the spatter of hot blood across his face and bared teeth and the ring until a popped totem could knit the wounds neatly back together again. Zam had looked just as fragile then, too.)
(The memory of the oppressive, suffocating silence that had come with solitary, a week of his own thoughts wearing circles into his brain with no reprieve, until he couldn’t even be sure if the Spoke who appeared to him was real or a hallucination.)
Zam is still watching him. There’s something knowing to the stare, something he refuses to recognise. He won’t call it sympathy, because that would mean he’d have to start a fight for the affront to his pride, and Zam knows better than that.
He certainly knows better than to comment on it.
“We should get underground before more spawn.” He hums once the pause has stretched a fraction too long, casting a nervous glance at the sky. Wemmbu dips his head in agreement. The phantoms themselves aren’t the problem; they might have dispatched the first three quickly enough, but circling, screaming beacons betraying their location to any Lawmen in the vicinity is the last thing either of them need right now.
He slips Gambit back into his inventory.
“You got a pickaxe?”
- - -