Archive of Our Own ^beta

The demon whose lessers called him Prince Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val and whose friends (when he had them) called him Impulse staggers through smoke and corpses and shattered rocks, his side poorly bandaged. He hasn't eaten in three days. He hasn't slept in two.

He'd emerged from the ditch he'd dug the night before in the depths of a gorge- a pockmark of the sacred bombs, really- to grimly discover that any landmarks that may have helped him cross the countryside were long gone, the victims of his bombs or the First Circles'. He trudges now out of the gorge that is filling slowly with the corpses of Ninth Circle infantry, rotting flesh and feathers all tangled up with redstone demons, soft crimson vapor slowly leaking from their decaying mouths. They are dropping like gory rain as the blocks beneath them finally disintegrate, unable to take the onslaught of poison gas and acid.

It will be a hundred years before anything dares to try growing on this crisp and dusty soil.

Impulse is trying to think, to move through a ruined world that is streaked yellow with the taint of magic and gunpowder. There has to be a way. There is always a way. If he can find a nether portal, or another bombardier squad, any allies at all, he can get the hell out of here and back to the Fifth House. Critical design flaws to address, a war to win. He cannot die here surrounded by corpses. He has work to do. He can do this. He can get out, he can get out, he can-

There is a goddamn angel.

Standing on the boulder at the gorge mouth.

less than fifteen blocks away.

Three sets of wings, white and blue and red and all the other colors together and also none of them at all. Spiked halo, so many Eyes.Third Circle. A fucking beacon angel, a powerhouse, a walking bomb.

The angel looks uninjured. He looks like he's eaten recently. He looks dangerous.

Impulse has no chance in any hell, especially not his own.

He should do- something. He has to get out. He has to go home. He has work to do.

Only gazing up into those glowing blue eyes, he does nothing. Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val fell from his own bomber in the midst of a strafing run, and his second in command was torn into two pieces (or was it three?) and there is no point to going home and doing the work because what will the work do? Save him? Save anyone?

Impulse waits for the heat and the burn, to be added to the miasma, to be free of it.

Then the angel speaks.

“Hey man.”

A cough, an awkward little shake of one gauntleted hand. He doesn’t even have a sword out, not that he needs one.

“Hey. You, uh, you ready to get out of here?”

Wait.

What?

Those blue eyes are too bright. Looking at them hurts, but they aren't quite as empty as they seemed a moment ago. Now they hold too much. Now they make Impulse ashamed.

"Look, um. You’re-you’re the only person I’ve found alive? I’ve, uh, been flying the server for a few days now and..and you’re it."

One of his wings- no wing armor, the demon realizes suddenly, or maybe it was blasted off? But the feathers are perfect. No angel heals that fast- stretches out westward before folding back in.

"And I gotta tell you," the angel continues, "I've had just about enough of killing. And I really don't wanna kill you and I don't wanna leave you alone because let me reiterate- we're it."

He takes a deep breath. How can he stand it?

"I, um, haven't gotten anything from Command since I started looking, and I'm a pretty bad liar, so this is a trust exercise, dude," the angel says. "I'm trusting you not to skewer me like a chicken. You're trusting me to not crisp you up. I'll get you out of here, that's the deal. Okay?"

He blinks all of his Eyes, and every single one of them is pleading with Impulse.

Can angels lie?

Of course they can, yet Impulse can't shake the feeling that this one isn't lying. That those big too-expressive blue eyes are telling the truth, and Impulse is the only thing he's found alive, and he'd rather rescue the single life left on this server than add another death to what must be an impressive tally.

"Name." Impulse says. If he refuses to give it, then-

"Sarandiel." The angel answers immediately.

Impulse blinks.

He knows that name.

Everyone in the damn battalion knows that name.

Of course the battalion, if Sarandiel is to be believed, is only him now.

Give us a bomber that takes out Sarandiel, and your House shall be raised to glory.

Impulse squares his shoulders. He is ugly and broken in front of an angel, but he says, "Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val," in return, because you do not ask for a name without giving one.

"Oh. Oh boy and I thought mine was bad. Uh. You, um. You got something you prefer?" Sarandiel asks.

"...Impulse. It was my House's child name for me."

Sarandiel doesn't need to know that. He doesn't need to know that demons get child names, or graduate to their adult ones, or that the longer the name the more accomplished the demon and if he'd had the damn time to prepare for this moment he could have been Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val Mhagnel, the demon who killed Sarandiel and took his beacon from the skies.

Only Sarandiel is holding out his hand, and saying, "Okay, Impulse. You good to go?"

Impulse- in a moment he does not yet know will change the trajectory of his entire life- slowly nods. He takes the offered hand. It is calloused and warm, and without thinking he squeezes. 

Sarandiel squeezes back. 

The angel gives a little laugh. It's borderline hysterical. "Okay. Cool. Let's get going."

And they do.

When Mumbo opens his eyes and sees blackstone, he says, "Oh my."

"Mumbo? Buddy?"

It's Skizz, looking down at him with those vibrantly blue eyes bright and worried. "Hey, man. You're at my base. You, uh, you were on walkabout."

"I was- what?" Mumbo slowly sits up, goes to rub his eyes, and feels wetness.

His fingers come away with moist redstone powder.

Oh.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I meant to finish my work and sleep."

"Yeah, looks like work wasn't finished with you." Skizz sits back and gives Mumbo room to get up. He can see the watery light of dawn outside the window and he blinks. "Skizz, was I here all night?"

"Yeah, pretty much. You sort of followed where I led, once Impulse told me you were, uh. Researching."

Mumbo huffs a soft laugh. "I was. And I believe I've found what I need to continue my project! All in all a good use of time. I'm sorry I alarmed you, I don't tend to wander off when I'm researching."

"That's what Impulse said." Skizz's face is creased with concern. "You need a lift back?"

"Oh, no, I've got my elytra," Mumbo assures Skizz. "A necessity for those of us without wings, you know."

"Heh. Yeah. Grian tried to talk me into using one anyway but- no. No, Mumbo?"

"Yes?"

"Mumbo did you enter into this contract of your own free will?"

Mumbo freezes. He looks up at Skizz. "What?"

"Did you- okay look I'm gonna try it your way, Impulse said you like it better this way, did you- start this research with your partner- willingly? Or was it, like, government mandated?"

Mumbo finds he's pleased at how Skizz words the question, clearly so concerned about Mumbo's welfare and knowing in that way all the very old hermits do that the thing he is talking around is not one that offers a simple answer. Still, for Skizz, Mumbo tries.

"It was...mandated," he says, "but the research is so old now that I can't stop."

"You never struck me as a sunk cost fallacy kinda guy," Skizz says.

"When the sunk cost is my life?" Mumbo asks.

"...Yeah. Yeah I was afraid you were gonna say that." Skizz says quietly.

"I'm alright, Skizz," Mumbo promises with a smile he knows does nothing to reassure his angelic friend. "It's been a remarkably fruitful partnership and I've divested myself of the- worst of the working conditions. I consider it an asset, honestly."

"Okay." Skizz breathes out slow. "Okay. Hey, Mumbo?"

"Yeah?"

"If you, uh, need to take any more walks while you're- researching- you might as well come on over. You can work, I can keep an eye on you, who knows, maybe having you talk circles around a redstone problem'll help me finally get something useful done."

Mumbo smiles a little wider at that. "Thanks, Skizz. I'll do that."

"Okay. Good. You sure you don't need a lift?"

"No, the fresh air will be good for me. Besides, I'll need some cobblestone for the project."

"Don't we all need cobblestone for our projects?" Skizz asks.

"We do indeed."

Mumbo leaves the base built into the crack in the mountain, and he can feel Skizz's eyes on him long after anyone else would be able to see. Between him and Grian, honestly, it's hard to ever feel properly alone.

There is a noise in the back of Mumbo's head, a hiss and a gargle and the dull roar of static.

"No," Mumbo says politely, "no I don't think I will. I like Skizz. And we've talked about this."

The noise comes louder and Mumbo makes an about face towards a deep crevice.

"No llama," he says, "but it will work just the same."

The noise dies down, poutily.

"Thank you," he says primly, and continues on. He hadn't been lying to Skizz, he really will need cobblestone for the next farm build.

He'll need to contact Tango and the others before he starts, though. Is Xisuma around? Doc will be for sure.

They will need to know what his research partner has found.

It's going to be brilliant.

Scar closes the latest chest and has to face the music.

He doesn't own a single tie.

Not one. Not polka dot or striped or creeper patterned, not red or green or black. He's got a lot of hats, a lot of bellbottoms, and a lot of very short shorts, but no. ties.

He can't ask Mumbo for a tie, it would be the height of impropriety! He's the man's representative council! Besides Mumbo's base is laid out so strangely, there just isn't time. And what if he accidentally winds up stealing from Big Ron?

Scar sighs. Well, that leaves one more lifeline and he's got court in less than an hour. He checks on his rockets and climbs up on his train.

It's off to Skizzleman's.

-

Skizz isn't home, hasn't been around in a bit, and that's fine. He doesn't have the massive chest monsters that some of the other hermits do, and his sorted chest-room is easy to understand, unlike Doc's loftier builds or Tango's massive factory of everything.

Scar appreciates this about Skizz, and he wonders privately if the man does such a thing because he knows other hermits might have a need. If he knows how the words sometimes mess with Scar's brain, in the same way Skizz sometimes just- gets stuck on a thought.

If that's why he put the blocks beside their chests, despite it not being the most aesthetically pleasing or useful method.

Scar finds the one with the wool block- he chooses red on a whim- and yes, perfect. Red carpet, red wool blocks, red ties. Skizz has a few, he won't mind one missing for a little bit, and Scar will return it as soon as the defense rests!

(does he need to bring a bed for that? No, surely Bdubs will have one.)

Scar is mid windsor-knot- or maybe it's more a St. Louis or Aberdeen knot, since he can't actually tie a windsor- when he notices the unmarked chest.

It's in the corner, not hidden precisely but with no frame and no block. It's just a chest. Maybe it's a place to dump extra inventory? But it's not a double chest at all, only a regular one. What good is that for inventory dump?

Scar's brain doesn't quite catch up with him before he's leaned over and opened the chest.

He inhales sharp.

-

"Everyone, this is Skizz."

"Hey what's up," says the big man with a truly massive three-layered wingspan, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly like he isn't putting Grian and False to shame just by existing. "Um. Thanks for having me."

He has a nice voice, rough and low. Gem will tell Scar later that it tingles at the back of her head.

He's also armed to the absolute gills.

Scar has never seen diamond armor that patched, and he's certainly never seen a netherite polearm. The satchel that hangs at the angel's hips is bulging suspiciously with what Scar's nose tells him is probably tnt or gunpowder.

There are blades clearly sheathed on his worn gauntlets.

"Welcome to Hermitcraft," Xisuma says and then the angel smiles.

He has the warmest smile many of them have ever seen.

"Good to see you alive, man!" Tango calls and Etho whistles. The moment of grave brevity is thoroughly broken. The celebration welcoming Skizz and Joel begins in earnest.

-

Scar looks down at that armor Skizz had been wearing the first day. It's been expertly cleaned and once again repaired but then untouched. That's weird. Skizz doesn't develop an attachment to useable gear, for the most part. He uses it. Why wouldn't he use this?

Scar carefully turns the chestplate over and notices what he hadn't that first day at Spawn, hidden by the light of the lava they had gathered around. There are words etched into the chestplate. Runes.

Scar traces them, frowning. The angel language, maybe? Did the First Circle HAVE a language? Did-

The runes light up and suddenly, he can read them, like they were beamed directly into his head.

'here is clothed Sarandiel the Seventh Of That Name. Stand Ready For Command, Diligent Son.'

Scar all but throws the chestplate back into the chest and slams it shut, breath coming faster and fingers tingling. It had felt like that day on the beacon. The day they'd asked Skizz if he could power their world and without the words to explain it to them, he'd tried.

The day they all realized that something in the multiverse would hurt them through Skizz, if it could reach.

That the only way he could prevent it was to never do the thing he had- quite literally, he'd told Scar with that heartbreaking smile- been made to do.

"Sorry," Scar murmurs, and steps back from the chest. Why does he keep it? why does he repair it? The name is that- is that Skizz's-?

No.

No, Skizz is Skizz, and Scar has his tie, and he needs to go. Let this chest rot right here, away from Skizz and his pyramid and his games of hide and shoot with Scar. Away from feeding hermits with Tango and helping gather supplies.

Let that armor stay still and dead. Let Skizz wear all the ties he wants, away from beacons, away from pain.

Scar has to go.

He has a court date to get to.

They get to talking shop, after a while, when it becomes clear the dust storm isn't going to be over in a night. It starts when Tango asks Impulse, "Did those bombers really run on recycled hydrogen?"

This leads into the industrial district of the House of Sulfur, and Impulse's rise in the ranks until he was named Prince of the House, and was given the Val that finishes his Royal Name.

"No idea if any of it's still standing," he says as he gazes at the torch on the far wall of their hastily dug bunker. "The smelters, the tunnels, the break rooms. Is it weird I think about the break rooms the most? I slept on those couches more than I did in my own apartment."

"They made you a prince and you still had an apartment?" Etho asks. "That's got to rate a house, at least."

"I mean space was at a premium in our level. I did get a BETTER apartment."

Talk of apartments leads to homes, or at least structures that served as homes, which is how his companions find out-

"What do you MEAN you slept on the beacon?" Tango asks, aghast.

Skizz shrugs. "It was wide enough that you curled up, kept one set of wings under you and put the other set over. When the morning call came there was another Third waiting with food so you could leave to clean up. I can take a five minute shower with the wings out."

"And the Third that got left..?"

"Would either take over beacon duty or just hold out for you."

Talk of the beacons turns to the massive amount of materials needed to build even one.

"Tango?" Etho asks. "I wanted to ask...how?"

"How what?" the blaze demon asks a little too casually.

"I mean, how?" Etho gestures. "I understand me not knowing you were in there, none of the rank and file do, we just assumed they ran on- I don't know supercharged lava."

"You mean the supersmelters?" Impulse asks. Tango nods shortly. "My home away from home," he says with a bitter edge. "Paradise in four blocks."

Skizz winces. "At least I had air," he says.

"Oh I got air. I needed air to burn." Tango looks somewhere far away. The bunker is realistically bigger than anything they might need. Skizz had claimed it was to fit 'him and all his stupid wings' but they all know better. Tango had not done well that first night, when they all dug down to hide from patrols until daylight.

"To answer your question, Etho," Tango says, coming back to himself after a moment, "Snow."

"Snow?" Etho asks, bewildered.

"Yeah. I was- it doesn't matter now, but. My home, I was a part of the volunteer guard. We patrolled outside the walls, kept an eye out for angels, rogue brutes, that sort of thing. A kid had gone missing and I was tasked to help find them."

"Oh no," Impulse says.

"Yeah. The fear was they'd gone through a portal, or were taken. We had a group that specialized in breaking portals down but a new one had popped up just over the border of our territory. The idiots next door wanted to leave it, thought it was good to have a direct link to an overworld where, you know, a war was going on. And we can't fight them on it or we'll have a turf war on our hands and they were bigger than us with more access to lava."

Tango's tail lashes once, twice. He continues, "So I'm searching as close to the portal as I can without setting off any alarm bells in the next village over because we want to avoid an incident, and I hear someone calling for help. It's just on the other side of the portal."

This time it's Skizz. "Oh no."

"Yeah. I thought I'd dash through, have a quick peak, maybe 'accidentally' knock a block out on the way back."

Tango snorts. "They were waiting. At least ten of them, in fire-resistant gear- redstone panels. Had a recording of the kid on a box, just playing over and over.I started lighting up and then someone on top dropped snow on me."

"They were waiting on TOP of the portal?" Impulse asks. "That's- what if they'd MISSED?"

"They'd all be dead and I'd have never met any of you," Tango says. "but they didn't miss."

He doesn't remember much, just the white and then the pain- a sting like nothing he'd ever felt before. He couldn't get air, couldn't light, couldn't spark. A lot of it was like that, pain and nothingness and then more pain.

"When I woke up properly I was inside the super smelter. Nobody much felt like answering questions."

When Tango opened his eyes on the inside of the obsidian-lined prison, he had beaten himself almost bloody on the walls by the time they cracked the grates to let the air in. He'd gone for them immediately only to be burned by a flash freeze against the bars.

"And that's where I was," he finishes. "Until Etho had his coughing fit."

Etho chuckles. It's a dry, wheezing sound. "You're welcome."

"Tango.." Skizz starts, hesitant. Skizz isn't really sure how to talk to Tango yet, and Tango's enjoying making the angel struggle. "if we got you to a portal..could you find your way home?"

"No chance," Tango says. "I don't even think this is the same server. Even if the single Nether theory is true- and I don't believe it is, we had guys working on it- then there's no way I haven't traveled thousands of blocks away. It would take a lodestone to get me home and would you look at that," he makes a show of emptying his pants pockets, "fresh out!"

"You and me both," Impulse says gloomily.

"I could tell you the coordinates of where I used to live, maybe," Etho says, "but there's nothing left there to see. The whole area took a barrage the first day the First Circle posted up. Three whole towns, gone. Or maybe not." He squints outside. "Could be particles of my house out there."

"Yeah," Skizz says quietly. "Yeah, we're...pretty good at that whole..annihilation thing."

"Skizz?"

"Yeah?"

"You didn't have anything to do with it, man," Etho says.

"I-..thanks, Etho." Skizz looks at the dust.

"I'm gonna get you guys out of here," he says suddenly. "I promise."

"Don't go making promises you aren't sure you can keep, Skizz," Impulse says gently.

"Oh no lie to me more, baby," Tango teases. Etho laughs and Skizz laughs too but he doesn't lose that flinty edge in his eyes.

The storm breaks after the third day, and they move on.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

-

It's a beautiful day on the tournament island.

There are no bad days, particularly, except when it's raining or for specific tournament events and in that case everyone is in the designated stadium anyway, and it's part of the excitement. Today in the great ring of food carts, rides, stalls and booths that surround the tournament grounds it's sunny and just a little breezy.

Perfect.

Impulse- a member of the Hermitcraft server, and far older than most would guess- laughs as he watches his friend Tango all but roll around in the grass, enamored with the sunlight.

"Tango you're gonna get stains all over," their friend Etho says mildly, as he says all things.

"I'm with Tango," Scar says. "This is so nice!"

"Good weather for ace race," says Grian, shielding his eyes with both a hand and a curled wing to gaze past the fountain and up the stairs.

"Are you thinking about that already?" Gem asks him. "The tournament doesn't start for another two hours!"

"Hey, it's either think about that or go fishing, and I was told I am not allowed to fish."

"Me neither," Scar says. "which means Cub's gonna pass our fish score."

"We'll crush him later," Grian says. Impulse snorts in amusement.

"Oh relax both of you," Gem says. "This is gonna be a laid back tournament anyway. There's all sorts of important people here today."

"I mean a hundred years of peace is no small thing," Etho says. "I figured we wouldn't even get ten."

"Same," Tango says with a grim little nod as he finishes his grass rolling.

"Okay old men," Gem says. "You want me to go get you some werthers for your sweaters while you talk about the old times?"

"We aren't that old," Impulse argues but Etho just shakes his head. "Give it up," he advises as Gem sticks her tongue out at Impulse with a giggle. "We are but dust in the wind."

"Come on, then, dusties," Grian says, "There's that nice spot by the fountain and Doc said he'd meet us there."

"Did anyone warn anyone else about Doc being loose on the island..?" Scar wonders as they walk.

"He left most of his gadgetry at home," Tango points out. "Ren started monologuing about the respect of old soldiers and Keralis made that face."

"Keralis does make the best faces," Etho says.

"We cannot say the same for Ren's monologues," Gem adds.

The group carries on through the grounds. It's busy today. Gem was right, this tournament was more for unity than glory, because a hundred years ago to the day, the Server Wars had officially ended. The last peace treaty was signed, the last disarming had been completed, and everyone had at last gone home- assuming they had homes to return to.

Impulse has seen more people he can identify as fellow soldiers in those wars today than he ever thought he'd see.

It makes him- feel hopeful. He'd done his time, and so had Etho and Tango. In their darkest hours Impulse had thought there never would be anything like peace in the multiverse.

Now, though?

Now he gets to build. To create and laugh and count stars and fly as far and as fast as an elytra can take him. Now he has Gem, and Grian, and Scar- people too young to remember the earliest parts of the wars, who consider the last dying gasps of it to barely be slapfights worth remembering.

Now he has everything he ever wanted.

Almost.

He looks out over the crowd. So many different people, all mingling and talking and remembering.

God, he thinks. I wish you could see...

then Impulse loses his train of thought.

Or rather, it derails in a fiery crash.

---

The Beacon has been looking forward to this tournament for months.

He's not participating, but it's so good to be out and about, to get some air. To not be followed by nervous angels wringing all their wings as they ask him if he's fine, if he needs something, if it's okay if someone else does the work for a while.

Hell, he's told them, you have a new Beacon, go ask her! She's been doing a fine job!

That works, most of the time, but the angels- especially the ones with many wings- they want to look after him. It's a little awkward, but even now that he's not their leader anymore he can't quite make them stop. He'd barely made it off-server with just the few who insisted and he'd sent them off into the fray immediately.

"I'll be fine. Go! Meet some people, eat some food, enjoy yourselves!"

These had been younger angels, and the temptation to experience new things (which all angels love) had been stronger than their veneration for The Beacon. So he is, thankfully, alone.

He walks through the crowd and listens to the gentle babble of conversation. There's hushed moments when he walks by. It's the wings, he knows- they're flashier than natural avian wings, and even tucked in close they make an impression. It's only ever a moment of quiet, though, and then the talk picks right back up again.

The Beacon knows he should get his own lunch, scope out a good spot to sit for the opening ceremonies (he'd refused a box, though he's certain the organizers are going to try and find a way to get him into one anyway) maybe take a quick flight up to the perch the other winged folks are using to get a good look at the island and its smaller fellows.

Only that would mean he has to leave this.

All these people, young and old, every kind of hybrid and mob, talking and laughing and anticipating together. People with scars he recognizes, people who stay close to their caretakers, people with missing limbs and cyborg limbs and extra limbs.

People who survived.

Because the wars are over.

They're over, and The Beacon looks at all these strangers from different servers and finally- for the first time since he'd overseen the Treaty of Night Watch- lets himself believe it.

He's in a larger area now, before the fountain. It seems to be an accepted area for avians and winged mobs to stretch before they fly, if the wide berth around it and other winged folks doing their warm ups is any indication.

A flight, The Beacon decides, sounds fabulous.

So he picks an area and stretches his wings- all three sets, brilliantly white and rippling with rainbow color. Boy, landing is going to be embarrassing- he's had problems with it for years- but hey. Laughter is the best medicine, right?

Then The Beacon hears something.

He whirls around, eyes darting through the crowd. No. No way. It can't be. It can't-

---

"SKIZZ!"

Impulse's shout startles Scar who yelps and half-falls onto Gem.

"What the- Impulse!" Gem says as she steadies her bigger companion. "You scared the crap out of-!"

Then she is staring, all words gone.

Because Impulse has just demoned out.

The human(ish) facade of his skin has faded entirely, leaving a brilliantly lemon-colored demon with two sharp black horns rising up from his temples. His eyes are yellow-green now and their dayglow orange pupils have widened to almost swallow all the other color.

This is not something Impulse does.

Ever.

"Who or what is a Skizz?" Grian demands. "Impulse?"

He's talking to air.

Impulse has taken off running, really running, tearing through the crowd at a pace that could politely be called frightening.

Etho and Tango, both of whom stiffened and looked where Impulse was looking when he'd shouted, are staring.

"No fucking way," Tango says. "No way no way no WAY-!" the last word is shouted in jubilant glee and Tango's head bursts into flame, the tiny crystalline shards that denote him as an ancient Blaze Demon flaring to life.

Etho is already chasing after Impulse, leaving Tango to take up the rear and their younger friends to stand gobsmacked and confused in the middle of the midway.

"Should we.. follow them?" Scar asks.

"Well since Impulse appears to be running directly at an angel, yes," Grian says, and takes to the air. Scar and Gem look at one another and take off running.

---

"-IZZ!"

No. He imagined it. It's one of those dreams. The ones where he wakes up and everything is terrible until the sun comes up and he makes coffee. It's not a surprise it's happened today, surrounded by all these reminders. He should have anticipated it.

"SKIZZ!"

Okay that. That sounds closer.

The Beacon turns.

He sees the lemon-yellow demon darting through the crowd, which is parting for him now.

"SKIZZ!!!"

He's not imagining it. He's not.

Sarandiel of the Third Circle, The Beacon of the Broken Circle, the angel who had raised up the rebellion against his masters that was the beginning of the long end of the Server Wars, hears his real name- the name he had been given when his first hurt too much- and starts crying.

He opens his arms, and between the beats of his heart, he finds them filled with a demon.

"Skizz," the demon sobs. "Skizz, Skizz-"

The Beacon- Skizz- closes his arms and wings tight around the demon.

"Impulse," he whispers, letting himself say the other man's name out loud for the first time in far too long. "Impulse I'm sorry I tried. I swear I tried. I looked and I looked and-"

"I don't CARE!" Impulse sobs, grabbing the angel's face and looking it over. "I don't care you're here you're okay Skizz I'm never letting you out of my sight again you moron!"

"Hey make room!" comes a raspy voice and Skizz's wings pop open in surprise only to have a blaze demon leap upon him. "SKIZZ! Buddy where the hell have you been?!"

"Tango?!" Skizz whispers. "Oh my god Tango you made it!"

"Of course I did!" Tango says. "We all did you lunatic!"

"Excuse me," says a voice on the other side of Skizz, "I would like to lodge a formal complaint with the Angelic Food And Drug Administration?"

"Oh?" Skizz asks, grinning through his tears as Impulse buries his face in Skizz's neck. "And what's that?"

"Angel wings," says Etho, "are dry and inedible and oh my god Skizz where have you BEEN?"

"Yeah it's only been eighteen HUNDRED years!" Tango says, hanging off Skizz's arm like some kind of fiery burr.

Skizz smiles. "It's both the longest story you've ever heard and the shortest." He looks down at Impulse, who is still hanging on to him. "Dippledop?" He murmurs.

"I never thought I'd hear you say that again," Impulse whispers. "You jerk. You asshole. I thought you were dead."

"I know," Skizz says. "To be fair I kinda figured you were, too."

"Look some of us know how to survive," Etho says. "Uh. Okay we need to pick a spot to go."

"I don't actually think we'll get Impulse off of him without a hydraulic drill," Tango says. "Why?"

"Because Grian's about to crash land on us."

"Oh. OH. Okay damage control- Skizz can you, like, drag him over to that tree?"

"Can do," Skizz says, and hefts Impulse up into his arms as Tango goes to intercept their younger friends. "Come on, Imp," he says. "There's a nice tree over there with our names on it."

"Don't care," Impulse says, though he does shift to be easier to hold. "You're here."

"I'm here," Skizz murmurs. "I'm here, Impulse. Sorry I'm late."

"I forgive you." A pause. "You jerk."

---

Grian, Gem, and Scar are all young people. Well, Scar's age is actually up for debate but in this moment his strange half-life wandering the servers of the fae realms doesn't matter. What does is that he wasn't around to participate (or be forced to participate) in the Server Wars.

Quite unlike their friends Tango, Etho, Impulse, and...Skizz.

Which is apparently what Impulse calls The Literal Fucking Beacon, the angel who had rebelled against the First Circle and cut off their involvement in the wars cold.

A man who smiles brightly at them, vibrantly blue eyes still wet with tears, and says, "Hey what's up?" while Impulse remains firmly beside him, defended by Skizz's wings, unwilling to give up direct contact for anything.

"We met on my home server," Etho tells the kids as Gem spreads out the picnic blanket and messages Pearl and Cleo. "during the wars. There was a really sticky situation and we lost track of one another."

"Don't do that, Etho," Tango says. "Tell 'em the truth. They deserve it."

Etho sighs. "The very idea exhausts me."

"I got it," Skizz says. "Okay, so. How much do you know about Etho's face?"

the three hermits look at one another.

"You mean, the uh," and Scar makes a motion around his face like he's pulling back his lips. "From the ancient redstone?"

"Yeah that," Skizz says. "How bad is it, by the- no that can wait. Okay. So. That was gonna kill him."

They exchange looks.

"Like dead dead." Skizz adds helpfully. "The actual long sleep. But! I knew a way to stop it."

"He says like it's just as easy as popping off to the brewing stand," Tango snorts. "To stop the kind of redstone poisoning Etho had you had to either fully convert into a redstone demon, ACTUALLY become a perfect Conduit, or-"

"Or you could consume the flesh of an angel!" Skizz says brightly.

"..you could..what?" Grian asks weakly.

"So I made him cut off my smallest wings and eat them." Skizz says.

Gem looks a little green.

"Metal," Scar says, eyes wide.

"We were taking heavy fire at the time," it's Impulse, soft and low, eyes half-closed were he's leaning on Skizz, "a First Circle barrage. They knew we had Skizz and they either wanted him dead or they wanted him back."

Skizz shrugs. "So I gave Etho my wings and told them to run. I'd catch up later."

"Only you definitely didn't, dude," Tango says. "This does NOT count as later what HAPPENED?"

"Well, without my landing wings I was only in the air for about eight minutes after you guys retreated," Skizz says. "but that was long enough to crash land into the beacons. I did that thing I do and when I respawned.."

"A first circle picked you up," Etho says, the horror obvious in his eyes. "Oh man, Skizz."

"I mean they figured I'd been goaded into it. I was still more experienced than the guys I'd just taken out. So I played along for a bit, got sent back to Command- home, now, the Broken Circle server. And, well."

Skizz shrugs, and there's tears in his laughter as he says, "in absence of my buddies, only full-throated rebellion would do! You helped me out there, Etho- my landing wings are toast. Can't land soft anymore to save my own skin. They thought if they gave me time I'd heal up. Only time is better spent, you know, convincing second circle angels that there's a life they can live outside their towers."

"I never once thought you were The Beacon," Impulse says.

"Why not?"

"I don't know, doesn't seem much like a you thing," Tango says.

"It's not. I'm not officially The Beacon anymore- haven't been in about seventy five years. We voted on a new Beacon and a new Council. I just can't escape all the honorary hero worship crap, which is why I'm HERE trying to have a nice afternoon instead of THERE listening to the newest angels breathlessly ask me really awkward questions."

Skizz looks around. "I also heard a free agent who helped us out was here. Anyone ever met a guy named-"

"Gem!" comes a call, and it's Pearl and Cleo, Joe Hills and Keralis in tow. Ren and Doc are following behind. "We got your message! What's this about Impulse- oh wow you DID demon out and excuse me who is this?"

"Beacon," Doc says with an incline of his head.

"Doc," Skizz says with warmth. "Good to see you again."

"Wait SERIOUSLY?" Tango asks as Impulse perks up. "Seriously?!"

"I did some work on the Broken Circle," Doc says as he settles at the edge of the blanket, the other newcomers edging into the circle as their friends make room. "Redesigning beacons."

"This man is the mastermind behind freeing every Third Circle created," Skizz says.

"Be fair. You certainly helped. I see you..know Impulse?"

"Yeah," Skizz says, squeezing Impulse tight. "Yeah I do."

"Catching up is gonna take us months," Impulse laments.

"Probably," Skizz agrees as Joe and Gem begin unpacking the various lunches that the hermits had brought to the tournament grounds, "but you know what, Dippledop?"

He kisses Impulse on the forehead, right between his long black horns.

"We've got nothing but time."

-

but I always thought that I'd see you again.

"We stay on the train the whole time?"

"the whole time."

"No getting off."

"No getting off. Well, until the end. We need to hop the next world hub at the end."

Tango looks out the window. It's so peaceful here in this little cafe, on a quiet street in a city on a server that has- no war.

Nothing.

There aren't any First Circle angels patrolling the streets or standing still as statues on beacons dotted around the town. There aren't any demons in protective gear patrolling the square. What redstone exists here runs the copper bulbs that light the brick-lain sidewalks. It doesn't whisper to anyone, not even Etho.

It's also snowing.

It's been snowing for days.

This is the Ever Night server, and the sun never rises, and the snow never stops. Tango doesn't think he'll ever be warm again, and it's been a fight to keep his inner blaze from cranking up and destroying everything he's wearing to defend him from the chill, both real and imagined.

Across from him, Etho stirs his tea. It's a show- Etho doesn't take his mask off in front of strangers or in public areas. They'd tried that a couple servers back and the reaction had been...less than ideal. "The trains are reliable," Etho says, "and we've got a heated carriage."

Tango sighs. "When do we leave?"

"In eight hours. Long enough for a nap."

"Yeah. Let's go." Tango finishes his coffee- a bitter drink that, strangely, reminds him of Skizz.

Don't think about Skizz.

He can't think about their angel friend, the way he'd smiled before taking off into the smoke, blood giving him a tail where angels should have none. He can't think about Impulse, who had parted ways with them just one server ago.

"I have to know. I have to see what's left of the House of Sulfur."

Neither Etho nor Tango had discouraged him. Without Skizz, Impulse had been like a crippled bird trying to fly but only able to hop in circles. That he'd sorted himself out enough to form a cohesive plan of action was encouraging. That the plan was to return to his home server...well.

At least, in theory, it's still there for him to go home to.

"Let's go," Tango says, and he pulls up the hood on the thick jacket that Etho had stolen for him when they got into town. It's a good thing this city is so big. It's harder to miss little crimes like gear going missing or wallets suddenly coming up empty.

Etho takes his tea and follows Tango out of the cafe and into the crowded street. He sticks to Tango's back like glue, waiting behind him as the blaze demon pauses under the cafe awning to steel himself against the flakes piling up around them.

When Tango does at last step out into the snow, he flinches. It's minute. No one but Etho would notice, but Etho does notice, and he puts his hand between Tango's shoulder blades.

"One street down, third floor walkup." he says. Tango repeats it after him like an incantation. One street down, third floor walkup. They can do this. He can do this.

The snow stings his face and Tango grits his teeth, stalking forward. He wants his rods out. He wants to be able to defend himself, but how can he? There's nothing but snow as far as he can see. If he gets buried he won't be able to defend Etho, and someone will take him and hurt him or feed him more redstone, restarting what Skizz's gift of wings had halted.

It's so cold. It's so cold it's so cold it's so-

He feels Etho squeeze his shoulder, say, "I've got the key," and looks up to find that they are at the door of the shabby little apartment he'd managed to talk them into. Etho jams the key into the lock with mechanical precision and pulls the heavy wooden door open, shifting aside for Tango.

Tango takes the retreat that is offered and all but runs inside. The first floor of the building is still cold, and the carpet smells of wet and mold, but it's warmer than outside and it's not snowing.

He stalks up the stairs, Etho close behind him. When they step into the small apartment Tango throws off his coat and his rods ignite around his head, rotating and turning in lazy little circles as he feels the room's ambient heat and judges it wanting.

Etho hands up their gear, removed his mask. He goes to sip his tea, then sighs. "Uh, Tango? could you?"

Tango smiles. "Yeah, buddy. Hang on." He touches the cup and steam rises from the tea again. He watches Etho hold the cup a little tighter, his eyes crinkling at the edges as he smiles in satisfaction.

"Come on," Etho says. "We can see the train station from the far window. Let's plan our routes."

The two men settle onto the ratty couch and look through the huge arched window- standard for the server, it seemed, the higher up the apartment blocks got- and examine the train station. They talk about choke points and spreads and where to go if they're made by- by who?

There's no one looking for them here.

Tango grows quiet and Etho says, "Tango?"

"It's so cold out there, Etho." He says. "Am I ever going to be warm again?"

He hadn't meant for his voice to crack. Hadn't meant for the question to be more than a single question. Am I ever going to be okay again? Will Impulse ever find us again? Will Skizz?

Will all this snow swallow up the time you gave me back, when you stole me from the supersmelter?

Etho reaches out and drags Tango in close, tucking the demon's head under his chin with no thought for the rods. He doesn't need to worry- they extinguish in less than miliseconds, leaving only a faintly toasted smell in the air.

"I don't know," Etho says, because much like Skizz he's honest to a fault, "but let's find out, okay?"

"Okay," Tango murmurs. He falls asleep there, on the ratty couch splayed out over Etho. They'll take a train across Ever Night in the morning, and it will still be snowing.

Just outside Surplus Megacorp's factory gates, surrounded by their artfully stacked cargo containers, its foremost architect- one Mumbo Jumbo by name- is doing redstone tests.

That in itself is not unusual.

The six-winged angel sitting cross-legged on the baked mud naked from the waist up, on the other hand, is. Both his and Mumbo's clothes- his sleeveless shirt and jacket, Mumbo's jacket, both their ties- are draped over the nearest shipping container.

Mumbo are you sure about this?” Skizz asks. "Not to question your expertise but- I mean it's not a very big area. It's a pain in the butt for me but I can't imagine there's a whole lot of juice left in those batteries, if you know what I mean."

“I'm sure, Skizz." Mumbo has his sleeves rolled up, fingers already tainted red. "The potency of redstone now is far less than when you were originally exposed, so one line should do it!"

Skizz shivers as Mumbo finishes painting a line of redstone dust between his smallest wings, right there on the scarring at the base. Mumbo gives his work a critical once-over, focusing on the dust to be sure there are no breaks. On Skizz's bare skin it sits like thick paint or maybe a thin wet clay, unmoving. If Skizz were a number of other Hermits- Zedaph or Keralis, Beef or Hypno- Mumbo would never have dared expose him to redstone-on-skin contact.

Only Skizz has, realistically, encountered more redstone than Mumbo has in his entire life, and the stuff he'd inhaled and touched and been injured by? Well. If it was going to kill him, it would have centuries ago.

"Okay. It looks good. Ready, Skizz?"

"Ready, captain,"Skizz says, his two smallest wings flexing. "Let's go!"

Mumbo completes the connection with one last flick of his wrist- and the piston he’d placed behind the angel snaps out and back in, powered entirely by the line of redstone painted between it and Skizz’s lower back.

“Holy crap, dude!” Skizz says, each word tinged with disbelief and laughter. Mumbo also laughs. “That worked! I can’t believe it. Skizz we could build a farm on you!”

“Please don’t give Impulse ideas,” Skizz says. “If I just sit here will it keep going?”

“I think- yes! Yes it certainly seems it. This…may I tell Doc? I think this could revolutionize his next set of prosthetics and attachments. Or at least it will give him a new avenue to try. An experiment that won't break the whole server, perhaps?”

"What you didn't like being a rat for a day?"

"It certainly made getting around my base more interesting," Mumbo says, "but I'd rather not do it again."

"I hear you there. You haven't lived until you've tried climbing down a pyramid that's strictly wing and elytra access when all you have is a TAIL, dude."

Mumbo bursts into laughter. "Oh yeah! and then you swam to Gem's!"

"I knew Gemmy Bemmy had some nice hay bales!"

"Well so does Grian."

"Yeah but Grian would make fun of me." Skizz pouts. "Gem'd just be mad. But yeah, let's tell Doc. I'd say let's show him, but I like living outside a glass box, you know." 

"I want you to know that there is a terrible beacon joke here, and I'm not clever enough to make it, and I'm sorry about that," Mumbo says sincerely. Skizz laughs and grabs his shirt and jacket. "It's okay, Mumbo, I forgive you."

"Ah, wait a moment," Mumbo says. He bends down and uses a wet cloth to wipe away the redstone. The piston stops moving. “There we are, safe for you to get dressed again. Thank you for indulging me, Skizz, I know you aren’t..wholly comfortable with me. Or my research partner.”

Skizz gets his shirt on, untangles their ties and offers the other man his. "Mumbo?"

“Yes?” Mumbo asks as he gets his jacket back in place and buttoned.

“Impulse- warned me, about your research partner, right before I came onto the server. He told me to have faith in you.”

Finishing with his tie Skizz turns, takes Mumbo’s thin shoulders in his hands.

“And I do, dude,” he says. “I trust you. You know your stuff. You’re a smart guy- way smarter than me-and a good guy. Whatever you and your fellow researcher got going on? Seems to me you've done a lot of good with something that half the multiverse thought was nothing but bad."

He squeezes Mumbo's shoulders before letting go. "That's no small thing, dude."

Mumbo laughs that laugh that says he’s uncomfortable with the sincerity on display but knows he has no reason to be and says, “well, high praise indeed!”

“Stating the truth. Angels can’t lie you know.”

“Liar.”

Skizz grins as he shrugs into his own jacket. “Shhhh I’ve almost got Scar believing it. Come on, let’s go talk to Doc. And we GOTTA show Etho!”

“Are you sure? What with, well.” Mumbo makes the vague hand gesture in front of his face that is Hermitcraft for 'what Etho's got going on under the hood there'.

“Nah, he’ll think it’s cool. Come along, Mr. Jumbo, you brilliant mouthpiece of an ancient eldritch horror. It’s time to do smart stuff!”

"I thought you said i was smarter than you."

"You are. I'm just supervising."

"Oh I see. Well, foreman, let me get my elytra and we're off!"

Doc arrives at his farming complex in the sky to find it, yet again, occupied.

Not by an angel this time, haunted by nightmares in the rain. No, this time it's a demon.

Very clearly a demon, which is unusual. Impulse doesn't wear his most base form often, opting instead for the little cosmetic hints that the other hermits (who are capable) often use. Horns, sometimes, or sharper teeth when he's yelling- for comedic effect, most often.

Now though he sits cross legged in his brilliantly lemon-yellow glory, tail curled up around his knees and the black scaled patches at his neck, elbows and the bottoms of his clawed feet clearly fresh from a shed.

"Impulse," Doc says patiently as he lands, "what are you doing here?"

Impulse looks up at him. "You know how long I've been alive, doc?"

"I don't dare to hazard a guess," Doc says flatly.

"A long time. God so long." Impulse looks out over the land below. "and in all that time I've never changed my name."

Once is coincidence, twice a pattern.

"Have you been talking to Skizz?" Doc asks suspiciously.

"I mean I talk to him every day," Impulse says, blinking his strange green-yellow eyes with their vibrant dayglow orange pupils. "Why?"

"No reason. Why are you thinking about names on my farm, Impulse?"

Impulse laughs a little awkwardly. "Well, I just sort of started flying, and you're the farthest one out with the highest platform?"

Doc pinches the bridge of his nose. "I see. I am going to have to build some kind of rest stop, I think."

"Oh this happens often?"

"Often enough. Impulse, why would you change your name?"

"..it should be longer," Impulse says. "My Royal Name, I mean. It's already a mouthful, and back when- when there were more demons around it was understood you never gave the full one unless you were making a deal or it was formal occasion. The First Prince of House Acetic? His name took two hours to recite."

"That sounds painful." Doc comments.

"I suppose to someone who wasn't a demon it was, but I loved it. All the names run together and- I can't even begin to describe it. The words started to gain new meanings, to sound like other things. A Royal Name can be a dirge or a ballad or a declaration. Beyond that it was- it was what we did." Impulse sighs. "Your Name gets longer with your accomplishments, when your House acknowledges your deeds. I got my last namerune when I finished work on the bombers."

He looks up at the sun as it crawls over them. "but that was a long time ago. There are no more Houses, not really. I know Nitric and Acetic survived, and there's pieces of Citric around, but our culture's all but dead."

"Yet you feel it is time to claim a piece of that dead culture." Doc concludes.

"Skizz asked me about it." Impulse says and of course it comes back to Skizz, because these two are as entwined as night and day, as wind and water, apart and together never one without the other. "He said that it's been a long time, and that I've done so much on Hermitcraft, every time we reset the world- even when things went sideways like with the moon, and wasn't all that enough to get a longer name? To deserve one?"

Impulse squeezes his arms where he's got them curled up. "I snapped at him."

Oh.

Oh dear.

"Why would you do a thing like that?" Doc asks, baffled.

"We were down in the cactus farm and it was cramped and I was tired and he was trying to cheer me up because I'd broken a damn redstone line- the SAME line- twice, and I told him it wasn't anyone's business what his first name had been so it wasn't anyone's business how short or long mine was."

Doc hisses and Impulse nods morosely. "He, um. He said someone else did know. That he'd told you. and that he was sorry, and he didn't mean to bring up painful memories and then he left."

Impulse sighs. "And I- and he's right. I want my Name. I want it! Damn it I DESERVE it! After all the horrible things I did to get the Name I've got, don't I have the right to get a Name that takes two freaking hours to recite because of the GOOD things I did? Because of the wonder and the fun and-"

He shuts up. "but there's no point." He whispers. "My House has been dead for centuries. No one would even be able to pronounce my Name, if I did the ritual. I don't even know if it would work anymore."

"Well now," Doc says sharply, "what a rude way to dismiss us."

"What?" Impulse asks, bewildered.

"Impulse what was the House of Sulfur?"

"It. It was a Demonic-"

"It was your family," Doc says. "It was your friends and your work. It was your home. So what is Hermitcraft now if not your House?"

He throws his hands in the air. "You've been here for eight full cycles! You've built games and shops and massive machines, none of them for war, but all of them for us. If that does not make us your House, then I don't know what does."

Impulse blinks at him.

"Why didn't I ever think of it that way?" he asks, confounded.

"Because I am the Goat and you are all beneath my intellect," Doc grumbles. He sits down beside Impulse. "Tell me about this Ritual of yours."

"It's- not complicated. I'd need my sword, Skizz has it. I'd just need to make a spot for some acid- three by three should do it, I can clean it up after. The, um. The House Elders would gather around and I'd stand in the acid with my sword, and the Elders would ask the Hells if my Name was incomplete. If it was, then the sword would vibrate and we'd hear the new Name in the vibrations. Once the vibrating was done, uh. Party."

Impulse shakes his head. "But who counts as Elders? There aren't any Hells to ask anymore."

"The Elders are simple," Doc says. "Joe Hills, Xisuma, Keralis, BDoubleO and Hypnotizd. Any or all of them would count, I imagine. They have all been here from the beginning. I am sure if we explained things well enough Xisuma could make the right tweaks to allow the ritual. As for Hells- eight cycles, Impulse. Eight resettings of our entire server. Those must count."

Impulse looks at him. It is not often that Impulse looks unsure or worried, at least not to an extreme. This face is new, and Doc isn't entirely comfortable with the fact that it is looking at him.

"You think we could do this? Really?" Impulse asks.

"For the sake of my sanity we have to," Doc says frankly, "or else I'll find Tango up here waxing philosophical about blaze spawners."

Impulse chuckles. "Yeah, sorry. So Skizz really did..?"

"Yes. He was having trouble sleeping and it was apparently easier to land here than in the trees."

"Oh. The beacon?"

"The beacon," Doc agrees. "but that is for a later day. For now, go home and apologize to your angel. I am going to AFK and then this evening we will speak to Xisuma together."

"Doc you don't have to facilitate this whole thing." Impulse protests.

"Apparently I do. You are my friend and colleague, Impulse, and Skizz is right. You deserve a Name that speaks to who you are, not just who you were. It is only fair."

Impulse smiles. "Thanks, Doc."

"If you wanted to thank me you could find the ore snatcher."

"Hey I'm a demon we don't do miracles. You'll get 'em eventually."

Impulse stands up and puts on his elytra.

"Will you fly home like that?" Doc asks, curious.

"You know, I think I will." Impulse says. "Probably time to stop hiding, yeah?"

"It doesn't ever help much in the long run," Doc agrees, and he watches Impulse gracefully take off and turn towards the main bulk of the server.

He heaves a sigh.

"Save me from melodrama," he mutters, and goes about his business.

Secondary forms- be they extra limbs, a whole body transformation, just a quick shift in height or eyecolor- are just as usual on Hermitcraft as they are anywhere else in the multiverse. No one questions it when BDubs occasionally becomes a tree, or a shrub, or something in between. That last one's mostly because someone made fun of his height and he's decided he's done being a person for a while.

No one questions Impulse's disappearing and reappearing horns, in every state of trimmed or untrimmed they could be. Granted you don't often see Tango's blaze shards, but that's because to get them his hair must also be on fire and Tango deals with a lot of stuff that fire isn't terribly friendly with. Joel's antennae come and go, used more like a utility than anything else, but Lizzie's wings are ever-present gossamer regardless of how big she's decided to be.

Sometimes something sleek goes by in the water and it's Gem, of course it's Gem, it's wearing a wide sash around its waist and it has a diamond sword.

Skizz fits neatly with his fellow hermits in this way. His peek a boo wings are the most obvious secondary thing about him, as is his halo with its blue crystal inclusions and sharp thorns, an obvious weapon that nonetheless only ever seems to circle lazily about his head, sometimes a single hoop, sometimes two. Impulse confirms for a curious False that he's seen as many as twenty, though he's not sure if they're just projections of the original or extra copies.

The Eyes, though.

The Eyes are...sorta. Spooky.

They fit in the same category as Cleo if you think too hard, or what's beneath Etho's mask, or when Mumb starts weeping redstone or why precisely Doc has creeper parts. Still a part of their friend, nothing he can change, yet an indication of past and tragedy that no one wants to remind him of.

Since the zombie hoard incident, Skizz has opened more Eyes a couple times- on his arms, mostly, just quick blinks to help him confirm information, a lapis wink that's there one second and gone the next.

It explains the lack of sleeves nicely.

"Do you have eyes in the back of your head?" XB had once asked, exasperated after Skizz managed to foil an arrow prank seven times in a row.

"Nope!" Skizz tells him. "I used to, though."

"You used to?"

"Yeah! I got rid of it."

XB doesn't ask any more questions, but Mumbo nearby hears it, and he wonders.

He of course brings his wonderings to Grian.

Grian, who fearlessly lands on the lip of the tippy top of Skizz's pyramid and peers over him, about to ask another awkward question, emboldened by how far he and the angel have come.

From this angle, he realizes he can see it.

Or where it used to be.

There is a spot at the base of Skizz's neck that is a starburst of scar tissue, a webby knotted mass that looks like chewed gum popped all over and didn't get scraped up before it hardened. There's a clear indentation in it, a spot where something would have been.

Something like an Eye.

"What's up, G?" Skizz asks, and Grian blinks at him.

"Skizz. Your eyes don't all do the same thing, right?"

"Right." Skizz moves another block, unperturbed at the randomness of the question- or just used to how Grian operates. "They read other light levels, mostly. I don't think I've got the same range as Doc's terminator eye, and he can just add new software whenever, I'm stuck with what I've got."

"Um. Okay." Grian shuffles. "So your Eyes can take damage like anything else, right?"

"Yeah. Mostly they respawn just fine with the rest of me."

"I see. So. What happens when they don't?"

Skizz straightens back up, stretches his arms back over his head until they both hear a pop, and then says, "I stabbed it out."

It's said like Etho would say it, or Impulse. Matter of fact, quick.

"The one on the back of my neck." He says. "You mean that one, right?"

Grian slowly nods.

"It's how Command told me what to do. Not control me- they didn't need an Eye for that- but how they issued orders in a way I could understand and interpret." Skizz says. "So, you know. It had to go. And when I decided I'd had enough.." he makes a noise that doesn't mean anything and yet somehow perfectly encapsulates the concept of stabbing out an eye on the back of one's neck.

Grian swallows weakly. "Oh."

"It's been a long time, G. I mostly forget about it." A brief pause. "Well. It's been on my mind lately, but." Skizz looks up. "Grian I want you to do me a favor."

"Yeah?"

"Don't feel sorry for me."

"Skizz?"

"Don't. I made it. I lived. I got off my beacon before it killed me and I can't say that about a whole lot of my siblings. This?" he gestures at the view from the top of his pyramid, at Gem's lighthouse and Scar's trees and the outline of Joel and Lizzie's city skyline. "This is more than I could have ever imagined, Grian. More than I thought I'd ever get."

Skizz hops up beside Grian, sits down.

"What is Hermitcraft to you, Grian?" Skizz asks.

"Uh- it's- it's home. It's family." Grian examines the view, feathers ruffling. "It's all these skies and all the laughter and, being harassed into putting backs on builds and watching new things be created it's so much."

Grian looks askance at Skizz. "What is it to you?"

Skizz smiles. "It's a very old soldier's very happy ending, G." Skizz says. "And I wouldn't trade it for anything in the entire multiverse."

He wraps the smaller man in a one armed, one winged hug. "So forget about it, okay? Scars are scars. I've got 'em. You'll get 'em. That's just life. Besides. I've got more than enough Eyes to compensate, and so do you."

Grian sniffles and laughs. "Mine don't count."

"Ah, that's right. Only above a certain height limit."

"Skizz!" Grian laughs. The angel gets up. "Come on, G," he says. "There's gotta be someone worth hawkeyeing out there somewhere."

"I..do have some TNT."

"HAH! Reliable as Bdubs' clock. Well what are we waiting for? Let's go!"

A very old soldier and his avian friend take off into the sapphire sky, leaving cares temporarily on the earth below.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: Crack Alley

INQUIRY: Dude. Can we talk?

-

"It wasn't your fault, Ren."

Ren sighs and the sigh turns into a chuckle. "It sort of was, though, Skizz, is the thing."

"No it's not. I said yes. It was my fault."

Ren looks sidelong at Skizz, who is sitting on a block of snow beside him. They're watching the mangrove farm do its thing. It's a simplistic machine but it gets the job done and Ren can appreciate that. He's not much of a redstoner himself outside of necessity, and he hadn't even been around for when it was poisoning people and creating demons. It amazes him Etho and Tango are as involved with it as they are, all things considered.

"I still facilitated it. Got the crew together, helped with resources," Ren argues. "that's project management if nothing else."

Skizz shakes his head. "You were curious. You were all curious. I should have just bucked up and told you what would happen, but."

But.

"...Skizz," Ren says, "when you. When you got up there. And when you 'turned it on', it looked like..I mean you were gone, man. You didn't come back until Joel broke that corner block."

Skizz laughs. Then he sniffs. "I wasn't gone. I knew exactly where I was. I never should have gone back. Ren, do you know where you come from?"

Ren's eyebrows crease. "I mean I can tell you about my server, my family. We're all adopted. Lots of cousins it makes holidays a nightmare."

"But you were born. You grew up and played ball and went to school and had a bad haircut you've been trying to forget for forever, right?"

"Yeah. And for the record it was a fantastic haircut and I miss it every day."

Skizz laughs, then says, "I didn't get any of that, Ren. Circle Angels aren't born. We're made."

He looks up past the mangrove farm into the pale blue sky, threatening snow. "The first time I opened my eyes, I was standing on my beacon. The first thing I heard was a voice. It was Command. Closest thing to a mother I had. She told me my name, and my purpose. That was all I needed."

He sighs. "That was all I needed for- centuries. Go here, get on your beacon. Go here, give everyone haste. Go here, enable smite. Go here, activate your beacon rain."

"Beacon rain?" Ren asks.

"You know how beacons made with nether stars have that beam of light?"

"Yeeessss?"

"Imagine that, but lots of it, and a lot hotter, and coming down in a seventy block radius like lightning strikes."

"Oh boy."

"Yeah. But I was- I can't say I was happy. To be happy, you need to understand sadness, and anger. I was ignorant and so I was content. I had a purpose. I had all my siblings. When we were on our beacons? We could feel one another. Every Third Circle Angel on a server could contact the others as long as ONE of us was on a beacon."

Ren watches the TNT take out another section of mangrove before he says, "I'm sorry."

"Ren, buddy-"

"You did it because you wanted it to be different, didn't you?" Ren asks. "You wanted to help. To do this thing you were made for, you were good at."

"It's like going back to a poisoned well over and over," Skizz whispers, "knowing the water tastes like shit, but maybe this time. Only it's never true. I'm a selfish idiot, Ren, and you guys suffered for it."

Ren says what he says next carefully.

"Skizz. If there was a- a way. To make sure when you activated a Beacon you'd retain control. Would you..?"

Skizz snorts. "In a heartbeat." He says, quiet, ashamed. "I miss it so much. It's what I was made to do. What I'm the best at."

He sighs. "But there isn't another way, dude. I've tried before. Different materials, different servers. Bone blocks, cut stone, emerald, it doesn't matter."

"It matters to you." Ren says.

"Yeah. But so does Hermitcraft. So does Impulse and Tango and Etho. So do you, and Joel, and Cub and Doc and Gemmy and Pearliepop and everyone else. I haven't run a beacon for real in a long time. I can't run a beacon, not without letting Command back in, or what passes for Command now."

Skizz stands up. "Enough of this. It's depressing."

"Skizz-"

"I mean it. I never got anywhere feeling sorry for myself, and I don't think that's gonna change. So I'll tell you what. We're gonna go unload my mangrove, and then we're gonna go prank that no good husband of yours."

Ren knows he's being guided away but he can't help it. "How?"

Skizz grins. "How much hourglass sand do you think we can replace with glass before he tries to kill us?"

-

FROM: [email protected]

TO: hivemindinthesky

INQUIRY: Darling. I have an idea.

There is someone standing at the edge of the sunflower field.

They aren't a shadow person, Scar is certain of that. The shadow people are- well, shadows. They don't have nearly this much definition or presence.

When they do have wings, there are only two. Not six.

And no shadow person has ever been close enough to Scar that he could see and smell blood.

Scar slowly puts his basket down. His armor's back at the shop. Everything is back at the shop. It had been one of those days, and he hadn't needed it in so long but he needs it now and-

"Hey, Scar." the bloody six winged angel says. He licks his lips. He's wearing a diamond chest plate and iron leggings, which is a choice. "Um. You busy?"

Scar slowly shakes his head.

"Okay. That's good. You...have no idea who I am, do you? You wouldn't, I guess, not if- it doesn't matter. So! Second chance to make a first impression. Hi. I'm Skizz."

"Skizz?" Scar asks, because this is already insane, this is a new person he's hallucinating, not Scott or Bigb or Grian or Pearl, not Martyn or Ren or Gem. Skizz does sort of sound like something he'd come up with.

"Yup!" the white wings speckled with red flex. "I like your flowers. They're beautiful."

"They keep withering," Scar whispers. "I keep trying and they just won't get any bigger."

"I'm sorry, bud. That sucks a lot." The angel says. "Maybe it's the soil?"

"They grew just fine before," Scar says.

"Yeah but sometimes things change." Skizz says. "Maybe if you planted them somewhere else? Somewhere new."

"There is nowhere new."

"Yes there is. That's why I'm here."

Scar looks up at him. "I can't leave," he says. "The shop, the flowers- I need to stay."

"No, you don't." Skizz says. "And you're not."

"I'm not going!"

"Scar?"

"What?"

"I hope you don't remember this."

Scar moves.

The angel moves faster.

His grip on the struggling flower seller is beyond iron. It is unmoving. It is like being held in the embrace of a dead star.

"LET GO!" Scar shouts and it echoes in a way it shouldn't, here in his flower field, like they're at the bottom of a canyon and not in a sunny field. Why is that? "Let go of me right now or I swear-!"

"I'll see you on the other side, buddy," the angel says. "I promise you. I promise, Scar."

Then his eyes go white.

goodtimewithscar was smited by skizzleman

-

When Scar sits up, he is in a train. The front car.

A train?

A-

He rocks forward like a pillbug swatted by a cat, rolling into a ball as everything comes back like he's- ha ha- been hit by a train.

It comes in flashes and waves- soulmates. A desert. A ring of cacti. 'Do the opposite of what anyone tells you'. A ring of chairs in a cherry blossom grove, Lizzie in a pink and green and white dress, how about we make a deal? Get out, you big oaf-

A flash across the sky.

Skizzleman has made the advancement [ Bring Home The Beacon]

A sudden strike, like lightning but worse because it doesn't end and Skizz's voice, pleading, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, this is the only way, I'll get all of us out of this I promise-

Scar throws himself at the side railing and he pukes until there's nothing left in his stomach.

Then he hears a sound.

It's someone digging.

Scar finds a water bottle in the chest at the bedside, drinks and swishes. He staggers out of the train, half-falling down the stairs. That's right, he'd been here and not in the station when the new game began.

He can see the person digging when he staggers over the tracks, into his carefully built trees.

There are no wings, and there is no armor.

It's Skizz.

He is tearing up every sunflower in sight without a sound.

That's not right, a part of Scar notes. Skizz doesn't do things without talking to himself or singing or arguing with someone who isn't there. Skizz doesn't go through life silently unless absolutely necessary.

"Skizz?"

The angel looks up at at Scar and Scar can see the grief and the guilt and the heartbreak as he says, quiet, "Hey, Scarface. You, uh. You feeling okay?"

"I remember," Scar says because it's only fair. "I- Skizz I remember."

Skizz's eyes close.

"Shit." He whispers, and the word holds so much pain. "Scar I'm sorry. I- everything?"

"Everything." Scar whispers. "Skizz-" he staggers forward and into the angel, the warm weight of him keeping Scar upright. Skizz gets a log out of his inventory, sets the other man down. "How long?" Scar asks.

"I don't know," Skizz says quietly, taking his own tailor seat in front of Scar. "I didn't know until midway through Wild Life. Grian- he did something, and he turned too fast and I don't think the Watcher knew I could see it."

Scar makes a pained noise in the back of his throat. When Skizz takes his hand, Scar squeezes tightly.

"I died too early to be useful, once I knew," Skizz says. "but I knew they'd do it again. So I- I talked to Tango, and Etho and Impulse. Asked them what we should do. So we came up with a plan."

"You won," Scar says hollowly. Skizz's chuckle is grim. "Yeah. I won. You could argue I cheated pretty bad, though. Had to break the equalizing code to get my wings back, had to scrape together a beacon."

"You did that very well," Scar says.

Skizz squeezes his hand again. "I'm sorry, Scarface. I'm so sorry. It was the only way I knew for a fact I could take us all to red and then out before someone could stop me." He sighs. "When I won, they had to bring me to them, to end it. But can I let you in on a secret?"

"What's that?" Scar asks.

"Watchers die easy."

A moment of silence.

"Everyone else died in their world," Skizz says quietly. "It was as simple as breaking the orbs they held them in. Only you never died. You succeeded in the task and then- you stayed. Not all of you, no, but a part of you. Enough that I couldn't leave you there. But you were stuck so deep, Scar, if I'd given you half a second you'd have used that damn cat spine to get away and-"

"And you couldn't let me get away," Scar says. "or I'd still be there."

"Yeah." Skizz says.

He suddenly finds himself with an armful of Scar, clinging around his neck.

"Thank you," Scar whispers. "Thank you thank you thank you. I forgive you, Skizz, it's okay, thank you so much."

Skizz hugs him back, tight. "Sorry to be rippin' up the flowers," he says through his tears, "but I didn't- the idea of you having to see them, if you did remember- it sorta made me sick."

Scar laughs and scrubs at his own eyes when he separates from Skizz. "I did in fact puke over the side of the train."

"Oh no! Did you at least miss the wall?"

"I think so. I gotta go clean it up."

"Let me help," Skizz says, standing up. "Then- maybe we go talk to G?"

"You think he remembers, too?"

"I'm positive he does. He's been avoiding me, but he'd never avoid you."

"Naughty Skizz, manipulating our pesky bird. You're right, though."

Skizz offers his hand and helps Scar up, then looks behind him at the pile of sunflowers. "I think I got most of them, but."

"I'll burn them later," Scar promises him. "I'll let you help."

"Scarface, I will absolutely take you up on that."

The two head for Scar's train.

The sunflowers are left behind to wilt.

If Doc is being honest, he did in fact wait until it was a rainy night to come to Skizz's pyramid. Turnabout is, after all, fair play.

That it's a thunderstorm, well. Sprinkles on the cake, as it were.

The waiting at the end of Skizz's bed for him to wake up is probably not all that necessary but damn it if Doc is going to be forced to be a part of this terrible (fascinating interesting exciting) idea he will do as he pleases.

Skizz does wake up, and not long after Doc has settled. It's a fascinating thing to watch, because for a moment- just a moment- all of his Eyes open, blink, then close again.

Or they would, if they didn't immediately spot Doc.

"NYAGAHAWHATHE- Doc what the HELL?!" Skizz demands as he scrabbles upright, his two great primaries snapping out in surprise and aggravation. Their tips brush the walls on either side of his base and it makes an impressive display, even if it does rather remind Doc of a startled pigeon.

Doc examines the non-existent nails on his prosthetic hand. "Good evening, Skizz. Sleeping well?"

"I mean I WAS!" Skizz shakes his head, brings his wings back in and sits up fully. "Doc it's the middle of the night what are you doing all the way out here?"

"If I built you a beacon, would you use it?"

The peel of lightning that crosses the sky lights Skizz's face for just a second, and he looks like he was carved from stone.

"What?" the angel whispers.

"If I could find a way," Doc says patiently, "to design a beacon that would work on your power and yours alone, would you use it?"

"Doc that's not funny," Skizz says, sounding small and sad. "if you broke into my base just to be mean- what'd I do to deserve that, huh?"

"Skizz," Doc says, "I have never been more serious about anything in my life." a pause. "Except perhaps tunnel borers."

"You're joking and I don't appreciate it."

"I am not joking," Doc says shortly, "and you know it."

Skizz gathers his knees up to his chest. "Doc I- I've tried. It's never worked."

"Yes. You have tried. Skizz, you are many things, but a scientist is not one of them. That is where my strength lies."

"Look I get it I'm stupid but I know beacons better than you, better than Cub, better than Xisuma, better than anyone on this server or in the multiverse and I am TELLING YOU-"

With each word Skizz's eyes are glowing brighter, and all three sets of wings are out now, and the halo is circling with its blue crystal inclusions turning faster and faster.

Doc will readily admit, if asked, that he isn't great with emotions.

Not that he does not feel them or appreciate or respect them in communication with others, rather that he spends so much time amongst the redstone and the cogs and gears, the theoreticals and the dangerous compounds, the stuff of the multiverse surrounding him like a song that emotions just seem- trite. Unnecessary.

Perhaps in his forgotten youth this moment would have become a fight. Once there was a Doc who would not see the forest for the trees, and would act accordingly.

Maybe he's getting soft.

Or maybe, says that niggling little voice that always has a bit of his beloved Ren in it, you can admit now when you care.

So Doc reaches out and takes an angel's hand, patting it gently with his other hand before saying, "I do not believe you are stupid, Skizz. I believe you are hardwired not to try."

The halo stops revolving, the glow of his eyes fades. The wings do not slip away but they do drop limply, the largest pair now brushing the floor like shrouds abandoned before the bed.

"What?" Skizz asks.

"You said it as much yourself. You were built to be on a beacon. A beacon shaped for specific things, in specific ways. I cannot imagine Command would have liked it if their beacon angels started playing with the blocks."

"I- I. maybe?" Skizz is shaking. "Doc I don't want to think about this please I almost put it out of my head."

"You shouldn't." Doc says. "It is a part of you, a part you keep denying, and I do not think you can deny it any more. Ren has asked me to try."

"Why would he-?"

"Because you are miserable, Skizzleman," Doc says, a little sharper than he'd intended. "Because for all the fun and laughter and joy you bring all of us there is something in you that is clawing like a thorn and I cannot and will not stand by and watch it hurt you when it is within my power and expertise to try and alleviate it."

Skizz stares at him, dumbfounded. "Doc.."

He sniffs, scrubs furiously at his eyes with his free hand. "Doc you've got so much to do. We all do."

"I can make time for this." Doc says. "It is a challenge I am happy to take on."

"I- I gotta talk to Impulse."

Doc does not tell Skizz that no he the hell does not have to talk to Impulse. He only says, "When he begins yelling, please send him to me."

Skizz laughs, a sound that becomes a sniffing cough. "If- Doc, I'm not holding you to this. It might be impossible. I- I think it is impossible."

"I have never met anything that is impossible to accomplish, Skizz," Doc says. "I have only ever met increasing degrees of difficulty. This will be no different. So. I am asking you again."

He catches and holds Skizz's brilliant blue gaze.

"If I could find a way to design a beacon that runs on your power, and yours alone, would you use it?"

"Yeah." Skizz says. "Yeah. In a heartbeat. Less than a heartbeat, probably, you'd have to tear me off the thing."

"I hope it does not come to that." Doc says. "Very well. I will begin tomorrow morning. I'll send you reports on my findings. I may- need your help for some tests. I'll set up a creative world for it, just in case."

"Definitely a good idea," Skizz says hoarsely. "Doc, I. Thanks? I think?"

Doc snorts. "Do not thank me until I have succeeded, Saran Wrap."

Skizz bursts out laughing. "You remembered!"

"Of course I did. Now, get back to sleep. I need to go find a bed myself."

"Yeah you're- really far from home. ....also wearing a maid outfit?" Skizz's question tilts high at the end, as though any explanation he could come up with would pale in comparison to the truth.

Doc looks down at his maid uniform and shrugs. "You wear your best clothes to court, don't you?"

There's a moment.

Two.

Then Skizz's laughter fills the room like the rolling thunder outside, and it is the warm and genuine laughter that Doc hasn't heard in a while. He knows in that instant that this venture- however its success might look- will be absolutely worth it.

"Doc came by a couple days ago."

"Yeah?" Impulse frowns, examining the pillar of creaking heart he's just made. It really feels like it should be glowing. "That's unusual, for him. What did he want?"

"He made me an offer. Or asked a question? Same thing, I think."

Impulse looks from the creaking heart to Skizz, who isn't currently wearing his wings. His friend looks a bit perturbed.

"Skizz." He says carefully. "What did Doc ask you?"

Skizz screws up his face for a moment. "This was a bad idea I shouldn't- no. No it wasn't a bad idea and- yes. No. Okay." He inhales slow. "He asked me if he could try designing a beacon I could use."

Through the sudden roaring in Impulse's ears he hears Skizz say, "I said yes."

"No."

"Dippledop this isn't a situation you get a say in," Skizz says.

"NO. Skizz! You can't- you've tried! Hundreds- THOUSANDS of times and every time ends just like it did here! With people hurt, and you upset, and- god why can't you just stop?"

It's meant to be a plea. It comes out an accusation.

Skizz doesn't flinch. Something's gone cold in his gaze. "He's going to set up tests in a creative backup. It will be him, and me, and maybe Ren."

"Ren?! Why- this was Ren's idea, wasn't it," Impulse says. "because he's the one who asked you first. Skizz you can't control a beacon! You haven't been able to control a beacon in years!"

"Doc has a theory about that-"

"Of COURSE he does! Doc always has theories! Doc has ideas and plans and sometimes they're great and other times we all get turned into RATS, or the whole server crashes, or there's a dragon hanging in the air for months!" Impulse runs a hand through his hair in frustration.

"Will you listen to me?" Skizz demands. "He figures I CAN'T build a different kind of beacon. That I'm, I'm hardwired to not succeed even if I try. It makes sense, Impulse!"

It does make a horrible kind of sense and Impulse knows it. It's just the kind of thing that the First Circle- that Command- would build into Beacon Angels.

"Then why do you keep trying?" Impulse asks. "Skizz think about Mumbo, about Cleo! Think about what happens if this goes wrong!"

"Impulse I already said-"

"Yeah yeah a creative world great I don't GET it, Skizz. You're fine the way you are! You always have been! Why do you keep chasing this?" Impulse throws his hands up. "You don't need a beacon! you never did!"

"This isn't about what I need, Impulse, it's about what I want!" Skizz snaps back.

"Then why do you want it?"

"Because I WAS MADE TO DO IT!" Skizz explodes. "do you know how much it hurts? Being around all these beacons, all these dead voices singing, and I can't sing with them? I can't help? I just have to stand here and smile and watch them die again just so they can get a little peace and I WANT that, Impulse, I want that peace!"

"You want peace?" Impulse snaps. "You sure about that? Caus' last time I checked peace for you was, you know, annihilating an entire server in apocalyptic beacon rain!"

"It doesn't HAVE to be that way!" Skizz says. "If Doc can build a beacon that I control, then it doesn't have to hurt anyone! I could make crops grow faster, make fishing easier! I could adjust haste for mining!"

"Skizz you can't do this. You aren't a beacon angel anymore I'm sorry but you can't."

"Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val I am not asking your permission," Skizz snarls.

Impulse reels back as though struck. He glares at Skizz, and nothing can stop the way his black horns fill in and his eyes go that yellow green.

One fist clenches. He can taste acid in the back of his throat.

"Beacons do ONE thing to you," he hisses. "They make you Sarandiel, and they always have, and they always will."

There is a quiet that falls when someone speaks something that can't be taken back. It is a similar quiet to fallen snow, to the silence just after a rain, when all the world takes a deep breath before acknowledging a change.

Impulse and Skizz- Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val and Sarandiel- look at one another over a few blocks in an unfinished neon city, over a smoke and miasma-filled ravine, over the few precious feet of a foxhole.

"..you told me once you believed I was a real person." Skizz says in that horrible silence."that even though I was made, I had the right to live and make my own choices. Were you lying?"

"Skizz-"

"Were. You. Lying?"

"Is it really a choice when it's going back to exactly what you were?" Impulse asks.

The wings snap open, and with one great pump Skizz is in the air and gone. Impulse watches until he's nothing more than a dot and then beyond his line of sight.

A deep, horrible pit opens up in his stomach.

"I didn't mean it," he whispers, but he did, and that's the problem.

That has been the problem all along.

She's been following him since the third game ended.

At first Skizz wasn't sure but now, leaning on the railing overlooking the dodgebolt field, he's certain of it. They're between games before the finals and most spectators and players have gone to the midway for a break. There's maybe fifty or so people scattered around the bleachers right now. She'd come with a big group of other players and while they had all gone, she remains, trying her best to NOT look like she's staring at him while failing miserably. If Skizz had been with his companions- with Etho, with Scar, with Cub- he'd have presumed that she was intrigued by the master Redstoner, the famous Builders. He's just Skizz. He's the guy who fills in the four man lineup.

Which begs all sorts of questions regarding this attention.

She doesn't LOOK particularly dangerous, but then again Skizz has known plenty of things that don't look dangerous. She's shorter than him, a petite build with long dark hair and golden eyes. She's wearing a cute pink sweater with a cat on it. What could be less threatening than a cute pink sweater with a cat on it?

Still.

Skizz watches her. She watches him.

He sees her come to a decision, nodding firmly to herself before finally closing the last few blocks between them with a stride that is as confident as she wants it to be, which is to say she looks terrified. "Hello."

"Hiya." Skizz greets. She blinks at him.

"You need a second?" He asks.

"Maybe. I didn't think I'd make it this far. I wasn't sure- but."

"Wasn't sure of what?" Skizz asks.

"I wasn't sure if you were who I thought you were."

That makes him laugh. "I'm not anybody, really," he says.

She shakes her head. "That's not what I meant." She takes a deep breath and laces her hands in front of her.

Skizz's gut goes cold when he feels the familiar surge of warmth, when the wings start to show. One- two- three-

There are six pairs by the time she's done. Four on her back. One wing behind either ear. A pair- the smallest- sprouting from her shoulders like paldrons.

Skizz says, carefully, "Nice feathers."

"I'm sorry I just wanted you to know up front," she says in a rush. "I- it's been so long since I've seen- well there aren't any and-"

He reads between her fumblings and his heart aches. "When were you made?" He asks gently.

She sniffs. "At the very end. My- my superiors put me on a transport off server, just before Command went to vital functions only. I stayed with my group but there was heavy fighting when we landed and we didn't get orders and I wound up with a, a group of Emerald Collective escapees. We set up on a server far behind the front line and I just stayed with them. No one ever came looking, no one ever-"

She finds herself enveloped by huge white wings, made for distance and power. He embraces her so gently, this brother from a land unknown.

"I'm so happy you're here." He says quietly. She begins to cry. "I'm so happy you made it."

"Are you him?" She sobs. "I heard- we all heard- that you found a way, that it was really you."

"It wasn't me." Skizz says, gently rubbing her back between her wings as she shuffles closer to him. "It was very smart, very good friends, who didn't give up on me when I kept throwing myself into a wall. There is a way, and they found it for me, because they loved me enough to keep trying."

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm sorry I'm a mess I shouldn't be crying I'm just so happy."

Skizz laughs, and he's crying too. "Don't worry about it. May I ask your name?"

"I'm D- no. I'm Shelby, but- but you can call me Shubble."

The first beacon angel she has ever seen alive, a man whose declaration of Independence she heard in her dreams in a moment that had connected her to a world she'd thought had forgotten she existed, grins down at her.

"Nice to meet you, Shubble," the angel who once was Sarandiel says. "I'm Skizz. You wanna go get fried dough?"

"I would love to go get fried dough," Shubble says, and the two angels, wings gently bumping together as they walk, head out to the midway to do just that.

Lizzie, unlike Doc, isn't surprised to find Skizz on her rooftop garden. The angel often rests there between his base and the shopping district, so much so that she'd actually made him a bench after complaining for the hundredth time and finding him making an earnest attempt at seating that didn't disturb her flowers at four AM on a Tuesday.

She is surprised to find him curled up on that calcite bench like a child and weeping.

"Who am I killing, dear?" she asks as she sits lightly beside him. Today Lizzie is the same size as any of the hermits to scale, and her gossamer wings are tinted a little purple.

Skizz doesn't even laugh, which is how she knows she might actually wind up killing someone. He uncurls and sniffles, turns from her to rub his face and miserably allows her to turn him right back around, offering a hot pink silk handkerchief. He mops his eyes and blows his nose.

"It's not- it's nothing like that." He says. "Promise."

Lizzie smiles. "Skizz," she says, "a promise like that from you is as meaningless as asking Joel to control himself around horses."

Skizz snorts. Then he sits up a little straighter. "Did you add more lavender?"

"Skizz."

"I'm serious!"

"I did. I thought it looked nice next to the roses. Skizz. What happened?"

"I had a fight with Impulse."

Lizzie's head whips around so hard if she wasn't an ageless immortal fae one would expect some bone cracking. "You had a what?" she asks.

"I- it's stupid. I'm stupid."

"You most certainly are not," she says. "Skizz you will tell me what happened this instant that is an order."

Lizzie has not been a queen in any capacity nearly as long as Skizz has been gone from battlefields, but he nods anyway and makes a report. He starts with the initial meeting with Ren, and the building of the beacon. Its consequent activation, the fallout. Doc making his offer and Impulse-

"I'm not a thing." Skizz whispers. "I'm not. And I know he doesn't think I am but you should have heard him, Lizzie."

Lizzie gently pats Skizz's calloused hand. "Oh, Skizz. He's afraid for you."

"He doesn't have to be! I haven't even DONE anything yet!"

"That's not the point," Lizzie says. "The point is he's seen what happens when you try, and he knows how much you hope, and he doesn't want to see you hurt like that again."

"Then why not just say that?!" Skizz exclaims.

"He was trying to, I think," Lizzie says thoughtfully. "But you know Impulse. He's a demon of figures and angles and outcomes. He's also a man who cares deeply, as much as you do. And I think that smacked him in the face."

"How?" Skizz asks bleakly.

"Oh, Skizz." Lizzie says. "If this is hurting you- you're not the only beacon angel left in the multiverse. It must be hurting others. If you can mourn and want to change this dangerous part of you into something better, then so can they."

"Obviously!"

"To him it probably wasn't obvious," Lizzie reminds him. "You approached him, remember? You made the first overtures. That made you different, made you special. Impulse is far from the only person in the multiverse to make assumptions on the personhood of Circle angels. Only if you want a beacon, if you want to utilize this part of you, then that means every other Third Circle he ever fought was the same."

She leans back and looks up into the soft gray sky. "Even without a beacon, all the other angels obeyed orders, anyone who fought them could tell you that. You and your Circle might have been the most obviously shackled but you were far from the only ones."

She looks at Skizz, smiles sadly. "And Impulse has just realized that if it hadn't been you, it could have been any other Third Circle who decided to take pity. To prove they were more than the beacon they were on. And that's a very long time, and a lot of dead people."

Skizz is quiet for a while, watching the bees go about their business through the fae queen's riot of flowers and water features. Then he says, "I'm still doing it."

"Of course you are." Lizzie says reasonably. "Doc's a genius. A mad genius, sure, but a genius all the same. If anyone can make you a beacon, it's him. And you deserve that chance, Skizz."

"Impulse is still going to be angry."

"Let him be," Lizzie says. "this is something you can work through together but not now. Not yet. Impulse needs time, you know that. You know it better than anyone."

"He didn't have to be such a jerk about it." Skizz mutters.

"No, he didn't," Lizzie says, "but isn't that the nature of loving someone? When they scare you, or surprise you, you don't know how you'll react. You'd like to think it will always be with love and care, but occasionally it's the exact opposite."

She gazes down the line of the city. "Joel and I had a terrible row about the train."

"The train?" Skizz asks, bewildered.

"Oh it wasn't really about the train. It was about closeness and control and where we were at that moment. Goodness how we yelled. It was stupid, start to finish." Lizzie sighs. "but we heard one another, eventually. You'll hear Impulse, Skizz, and he'll hear you."

"Promise?" Skizz whispers. Lizzie pulls the far larger man into a hug.

"Promise," she murmurs, petting his hair. "Now come on inside. I think it's time for tea."

"Skiiiizzzz!"

The voice isn't one he immediately recognizes, so it takes Skizz a moment to clock it.

"Falsie!" He greets the falcon avian, hopping up to the top of his pyramid to meet her. "What can I do for you?"

False lands a little strangely, favoring her left wing. "I certainly hope you can help. Do you preen?"

Skizz blinks. "Um. Not often. It's not required, exactly, but I've done it before."

"Good enough." False picks a block, sits down, and spreads her wings. "Do you see it?"

"Oh wow."

He does see it- one of her brown-gray secondaries is sticking out at an angle, clearly half-pulled from the skin. "Oh that can't be comfortable, False."

"It's not and I'd like it gone, please."

"On it!" Skizz carefully crouches behind False and grips the feather firmly. He can feel that the shaft is snapped. "Arrow?" He asks.

"Skeleton," False says. "I didn't see him beyond my tramway."

Skizz carefully tugs and the broken feather comes loose. False sighs in relief and Skizz carefully puts the feather down. "The rest look good," he says with a critical eye. "You want me to look over the other one?"

"Sure. Then I'll do you."

"False you don't have to."

"It's only fair. Never preened an angel, could be interesting."

Skizz chuckles awkwardly. "Probably not, but I appreciate it." He does a quick inspection of False's other wing. She keeps them neat and clean, and he spies no further problems.

"Alright, lemme at 'em," False says. Skizz shrugs and turns, stretching out the primaries. "Okay, but I don't think you'll find much."

It's quiet for a long moment, long enough for Skizz to laugh akwardly and say, "they aren't that bad, are they?"

"Your feathers are very iridescent, did you know that?" False asks. He feels her begin combing through the primaries. "They look white but then they're pink, or blue, or red. And they don't feel like feathers, either- not like mine or Grian's. They're- softer. Liked all of them are down, but they aren't shaped that way."

"All our feathers were like that." Skizz says. "I mean you can ask Grian all about it, my wings don't make a lick of sense."

"Well, no," False says, and keeps working, "I suppose every time you put them away any broken ones must just slough off and disappear."

"Maybe?" Skizz says. "I haven't put much thought into it, to be honest."

"Hmm. Skizz?"

"Yeah?"

"You said preening wasn't required."

"No. Pretty much like you said- whatever needs to go just goes."

"So other angels never touched your wings?"

"...I never said that." Skizz says quietly.

"Should I stop?" False asks kindly.

"No. It's- it's been ages. Way back at the beginning, they grouped Beacons in threes, so we were grouped, too. My- I guess you'd call them squadmates were Dabriel and Hayliel. We did one anothers' wings, in the downtime."

"Didn't get a lot of that, I imagine."

"You'd be surprised," Skizz says, looking up at the sky. "Anyway we got split up as soon as Command expanded outside the ring of servers that surrounded the Quire."

"Quire?"

"That's what it's called. The- server name, I guess. Hermitcraft, Quire."

Skizz shrugs, the movement shifting his wings under False's hands. "And after that there was no one to bother and then no time."

"Well, that's unfortunate." False says, neatening the smaller feathers near his spine. "It's rotten work sometimes but I do like getting it done, even if Grian thinks I think he talks too much."

Skizz chuckles. "He just doesn't want to annoy you."

"That's because he is a wise man." False gently pats his back. "Done. You're all set."

"Thanks!" Skizz moves away to give her room to take off. "I'm glad I could help."

"You did. Skizz?"

"Yeah, Falsie?"

"There are people to bother, now. And there's time. If you'd like."

He smiles.

"You know, False? I think I'd like that a lot."

"Good. We'll make it a regular thing. Between the two of us, Grian won't be quite the disgrace he is currently."

False takes off and Skizz waves as she flies away. He returns to his work with a lighter heart, humming the silly little song that Dabriel made up for when they were combing their wings.

pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more-

He can almost remember their fingers in his wings.

It is a perfectly normal and lovely day to be adding little details to a train station that leads to a massive zoo.

"Scar."

It is no longer a perfectly normal and lovely day to be adding little details to a train station that leads to a massive zoo.

"Grian."

The avian shuffles, making an aggrieved sound at the back of his throat. "We need to kill Impulse."

Scar looks up from his last perfectly placed luggage tag and frowns. "Okay, let me get my bow."

"Aren't you going to ask me why?" Grian presses.

"No. Why would I do that?"

"Too bad I'm telling you." Grian crouches on one of the passenger waiting benches, face stormy. "So Gem stopped by earlier."

"To tell you to kill Impulse?"

"No. To tell me she'd gone to Etho's to see if he wanted to pvp, only to find Etho and Tango brainstorming ways to make Skizz and Impulse talk to one another."

"Why would they need to come up with ways?" Scar scoffs as he sits down across from Grian. "Those two are attached...at...the.."

He sees the look on Grian's face fully.

"Oh noooooo," he breathes, horrified. "Grian what HAPPENED?!"

"Well, as Gem told it to me, Doc told Skizz he was gonna figure a beacon for him that didn't make him do the-" Grian holds his arms and wings out straight like he's been crucified and stares dead eyed for a moment before returning to normal. "-thing."

"Oh that's great!" Scar says. "that's wonderful."

"Yeah you'd think so, right? Only apparently Impulse didn't."

"They had a fight over it?!"

"They haven't seen one another for three days, Scar."

"Three- three DAYS? Did you say DAYS?"

Grian nods grimly.

"Oh we are killing Impulse," Scar says.

-

"Okay," Scar says as he lowers his bow again, scowling down the length of the wall at PixelPulse Valley and its cavernous wreck of a cyberpunk city.  "has he always been this good at moving around?"

"Scar will you please focus." Grian hisses. "He's bright yellow he can't be that hard to find."

"I'm trying but he keeps ducking into another alleyway. And the yellow doesn't matter! This city's almost as bad as Joel's! What if we just TNT'd his store room?"

"Then where would we get our STUFF?"

"Oh. Good point."

"Right. We're going to Mumbo's."

-

"Hey Scar, hey Grian! Why..are you robbing Willy's Woodyard?"

"Mumbo there has been a miscarriage of justice and we need this white oak to set it right."

"White oak is going to help you with a miscarriage of justice?"

"Yes."

"....you know what, okay. Sure."

-

"So let's recap. We buried forty seven creaking hearts." Grian says.

"Yup." Scar says morosely.

"And he found. And dug up. Forty seven creaking hearts."

"Yup."

"...you know everyone thinks Skizz is the one who's a little off kilter but I don't think that's true."

"We could just go back to trying to shoot him?"

-

"...hey when did Beef get goats?"

"I don't know but they're so cute!"

"They are. Can't you move them in boats?"

"Yes, why?"

"You think he'd miss a few?"

-

"Scar."

"Yeah, Grian?"

"He's found the goats."

"Yeah."

"The goats we hid in his subway system."

"Yeah.."

"I can't believe I'm saying this."

"Saying what?"

"Scar. Get your creeper costume out of storage."

-

<goodtimewithscar was slain by impulsesv>

-

"I don't GET it!" Grian stomps in frustration. "We've never had any pranks go this wrong before! It's like seventy in a row now!"

"Are we washed up?" Scar asks.

"NO. No, you can't think that way, Scar."

"Grian I think we might be done. Over. Kaput. Wrung out."

"We can't be!" Grian says. "I refuse!"

"Maybe we should talk to Skizz," Scar says.

"And admit we heard about their fight third hand?"

"Heard about our what, G?"

"AUGH-!"

-

"I appreciate it, you two, really," Skizz says with a small smile, "but it's okay."

"No it's not!" Grian cries, knowing he sounds petulant and not caring. "No it's not. Skizz-"

"Grian," Skizz says quietly, "I can handle this. So can Impulse."

"But he hurt you," Scar says plaintively.

"Yeah, I know. And you two hurt each other. Gem says things that hurt Pearl, Etho just stomps all over peoples' feelings by accident. I drive top up a wall and down the other side. That's what happens with friends, boys, sometimes- we hurt one another. And Impulse and I have known one another a very long time. So we know the best ways to hurt."

Skizz sighs. "but it's the ability to accept that you've hurt someone and do better that counts. Impulse and I aren't there yet, we just need some time. Lots of stuff ratting around in these old heads, you know?"

"I hate that you need time," Grian says. "I hate it. I hate when you're sad and I can't do anything about it."

"I know, G." Skizz pulls the smaller man in for a brief hug. "But it'll be okay. I promise."

"Skizz?"

"Yeah, Sir Scar?"

"I hope it works out," Scar says. "I think it'd be really cool to see you on a beacon that worked."

Skizz smiles. "You know? I think it'd be really cool, too."

-

 "Do I fire?" Scar whispers as they watch Impulse come down Grian's pier. Skizz is sitting at the end, kicking his feet in the water.

Skizz moves his wings to give the demon room to sit down beside him and Grian groans.

"No," he mutters resentfully.

Scar sighs and relaxes his hold on his bow. "Too bad. would be a perfect shot."

"I know. It's the worst. This is the worst."

"It kinda is."

They watch the two men embrace.

"But it's kinda the best, too." Scar says, and Grian can't disagree.

Let's go in the garden

you'll find something waiting

right there where you left it

lying upside down

when you finally find it

you'll see how it's faded

the underside is lighter

when you turn it around

"Hey, have you seen Skizz lately?"

"Impulse I saw Skizz at the snow shop and-"

"Quick question, Imp, have you and Skizz-?"

"You need to talk to him."

"We are going to start testing tomorrow. He will need you."

Impulse comes down Grian's pier, wound tighter than a spring. The sun is just starting to go down, bathing the server in pink and orange and red. Skizz is sitting at the end, his diamond boots propped up beside him and pants rolled up, feet kicking idyly in the water.

"Should be careful of sharks," Impulse says before he can stop himself and he seizes up immediately as Skizz's wings flick and tighten, pulling in. Is he going to- but no. He doesn't take off.

He's making room beside him.

Impulse tries to swallow around the lump in his throat and takes off his own boots, hastily rolling up his pants before dropping heavily down beside the angel.

Neither of them speak for a little while, nor do they look at one another. They just watch the sun.

"Do you remember when you threw an apple at me?" Skizz says suddenly.

Impulse blinks. "Yeah. We'd been traveling together- what a week? Maybe two? I...I thought.."

"that the Eye on the back of my neck could see. You beaned me directly in the head, dude."

Impulse giggles almost reflexively. "I did. But you got me back."

Skizz snorts. It's a wet sound. "Nearly half killed you, you mean."

"You thought I was fireproof."

"I thought all demons were fireproof. It was stupid."

"So was the apple."

"Impulse?"

"Yeah?"

"When did we stop learning things about one another?"

Impulse blinks.

"When," Skizz says, finally looking at him and damn it his eyes are full of tears and Impulse is trying but he can't and his eyes fill up too, "did we decide we knew enough?"

Impulse shrugs. "Don't know," he chokes out. "Maybe between years 1550-1551?"

"I'm sorry." Skizz says.

"No. You don't get to say that first. Skizz I-"

"Let me finish."

Impulse falls silent.

"I'm sorry I never told you what being on a beacon meant to me. I'm sorry you only ever saw how it hurt and I never let you know any more than that. I didn't want you to worry. I didn't- want you to see me like you saw all the other angels."

Impulse makes a pained noise in the back of his throat as Skizz continues, "it didn't work today. I mean I knew it wouldn't, right? But I got it turned off and no one got hurt and. And you weren't there. And that felt right and wrong at the same time."

Skizz slowly, hesitantly, reaches for Impulse's hand. When his fingers brush the demon's Impulse closes them in an iron grip and Skizz smiles. "I have to do this, Impulse." He says. "no matter how much it scares you. Or me. Hell it scares me a lot. But you just want me safe and I know that, and I love you for it. I'm sorry I never told you that. I'm sorry you didn't know."

"Is it my turn now?" Impulse asks, strained, and Skizz nods. Impulse yanks the angel against him, pulling him into a tight hug.

"I'm sorry I told you you couldn't." He says. "I don't know if you can. I'm scared to death you can't. But trying to stop you was wrong."

He draws in a shaky breath and continues, "it was cruel to bring up your old name and I did it because I wanted to hurt you and I'm sorry. You trust me with that name and I cut you with it."

"Impulse-"

"No." Impulse says. "I told Tango I was afraid Command would, would find a way to get you again, but if that were true, if she could take you away you'd have been gone before I asked you to come here. You were always strong enough to try as many times as you needed and I ignored that because it was easier."

He pulls back, cups Skizz's face in his hands. They're both a mess, crying and splotchy. "Remember when I snapped at you about my name? And wound up talking to Doc?"

"Poor guy should start charging therapy rates," Skizz says.

"Yeah, but. He said something. He said- what is Hermitcraft if not my House?"

Impulse presses their foreheads together. "A House is uplifted by the deeds of its Princes," he says quietly. "and laid low by their failures."

"You aren't a failure, Impulse."

"When you get your beacon."

"what?"

"When you get your beacon," Impulse says, pulling back a little to look Skizz in the eyes, "then I will ask for the ritual to continue my Name."

"Impulse-!"

"A House is uplifted by the deeds of its Princes," Impulse repeats.

Skizz smiles. "Am I a prince now?"

"you always were." Impulse smiles. "Might not want a longer name-"

"No, thank you, Skizz is just fine."

"So I'll carry it for you. Least I can do. Skizz you are not a thing. No angel is a thing, and I- am still working on that because oh boy I kinda feel gross about it, not about you not being a thing but- about how I feel about that, but anyway-"

"You sound like me."

"I know I'm giving it my best shot Skizz-"

"you don't have to say it."

"I really do, though." Impulse takes a deep breath. "You aren't any different from any other angel. You're just the angel that showed me mercy. Tango said the wars are over. And they are. So we need to start remembering they are. We need to talk about them, when people ask- really talk."

Skizz's laugh is humorless. "Even the destroying whole servers bit?"

"Even that bit. Maybe especially that bit. I don't think I can be there, for your tests."

"I know."

"but I'll be here afterwards. To take care of you. And- and if it doesn't work, I'll still be here."

"I know you will," Skizz says. "steady as a redstone tic, my Impulse."

Impulse laughs and leans on Skizz, closes his eyes when one huge wing comes to wrap around him. "You know the best part?" he murmurs.

"You mean aside from Scar putting down the bow where he's hiding on Gem's powerpoles and ruining Grian's intricate revenge plot because he arbitrarily chose my side?"

"Eh we'll get him for it later."

"What's the best part, Dippledop?"

Impulse kicks his feet a little in the water as the last of the sun forms a bright golden horizon line.

"We have so much more to learn about one another."

"Yeah," Skizz says. "Yeah, we do." He kisses Impulse softly on the head. "It's gonna be awesome."

Everything stays

right where you left it

everything stays 

but it still changes

ever so slightly

daily and nightly

in little ways

when everything stays

Skizz looks down at the latest assembled beacon, a strange double sided diamond with more varied blocks than any attempt before. He looks up at Doc. The goatman nods firmly, once, pretending like the angel and the werewolf hadn't found him slumped asleep over his notes just two hours earlier. Skizz inhales slowly. He exhales.

Blessed be the ninth, the feet that anchor.

He takes the first step onto the iron tier.

Blessed be the eighth, the legs that stride.

Another step up onto the diamond blocks, both precious and ordinary.

Blessed be the seventh, the hands that touch.

The last step up onto the final tier, a riot of colors and textures.

Blessed be the sixth, the mouths that feed.

There's so much. There is emerald and netherite, gold and lapis.

Blessed be the fifth, the ears that hear.

There is calcite, at either end, and it makes Skizz smile. Does it even do anything? Does it matter?

Blessed be the fourth, the eyes that see.

He carefully positions his feet as Doc instructed, looking down and shuffling a little to make sure he's solidly on the emerald blocks.

Blessed be the third, sword that cuts.

"Ready?" Ren asks, and no of course he's not ready.

Blessed be the second, the words that recall.

"Ready." Skizz lies.

Blessed be the first, over all.

"Do it," Doc barks, and Skizz lets out all his breath in a deep whoosh and and with the next drag in opens all of his Eyes.

Like all the experiments before it is like trying to ride a storm but Skizz can sense the difference this time. This time he is not a single droplet being battered by the wind, no. This time, Skizz is the wind.

He yards on the surges of energy and they break easy as glass, twisting around and up and down and into and out of him, through his perfectly designed body in paths that are new and strange.

There is a moment of silence.

Then Skizz hears them.

Voices. Whispers. Songs, cries, some he knows, some that are long gone and some that he's never heard before and all of them have given notice, all of them have turned gazes he cannot see upon him and there are so many questions and so much pain and love and hate and fear but overwhelmingly it is how, how, how?

-

On the other side of the creative world, all of Hermitcraft's beacons go dim with a low hum.

"Huh." Says Cub. "That's not normal."

-

"What is your name?" Doc calls, the question they'd agreed on to snap him out of it, to help him come back if he's slipping.

Skizz hears it like he's underwater. It comes again, sharp, accented. "What is your name?!"

sarandiel! comes the shriek across time and space, carved into armor and whispered into his ear, used like a flog for failure and touched with sweetness at success. An ill fitting thing he has outgrown. you are sarandiel and you are mine!

Skizz smiles.

It is a smile so perfect it would put even Baal, beautiful Baal the first angel ever made, to shame.

"My name is Skizz," he says to his friends, to the multiverse, to the voices, to the dying snarling howl of the thing that made him that cannot reach him any more. "And this is my beacon."

Skizz opens his eyes and they are filled with brilliant white light that traces through all his Eyes and every feather of his wings.

Like a candle snuffed in an unrelenting hurricane, the shrieking ceases, the clawing stops.

There is no Command, and there is no Sarandiel.

Not anymore.

Skizz can hear Ren cheering and Doc muttering but all of that pales before the quiet in his head now.

Like someone, somewhere, is waiting.

He repeats it, quietly, an image of the strange new construction as clear in his head as he can make it, beamed to the minds and hearts of people he isn't even sure can hear. A solo voice amongst a scattered choir of angels, a single note in an ever changing symphony.

This is my beacon.

-

Joe Hills is knocked clean off his iron beacon as its light reignites in a beam that could have singed his felt.

Grian, likewise, is startled into flight when his own beacon begins to blaze.

Impulse stares, stone bricks in hand, as the beacon he and BDubs are using to finish up the apartment building returns to life and for a moment it- like Joe Hills' beacon, like Grian's, like every beacon across Hermitcraft- blazes not white, but blue.

A familiar, brilliant blue.

-

On the other side of the Creative world, Ren is whooping and the whooping almost sounds like barking, he's so excited. "It WORKED! Darling you did you did it you brilliant man-!"

Ren dips Doc into a kiss that makes his horns curl even tighter, then jumps the edge of the testing ring despite Doc's protests. "SKIZZ! Skizz my dude how are you feeling?!"

Then Skizz- aware, in control Skizz- grins down at him, and despite the brilliant glow of his eyes and wings and body Ren can't help but grin back. "Like THIS!" he shouts.

Ren feels Regen activate, fill him up, energy like he's never known before coursing through his veins.

He could kill an entire forests' worth of mobs. He could tunnel down to bedrock and back up with ease. He could be flung into space on the most complicated of his husband's machines and come down laughing like a hyena.

Hell Ren IS laughing, charging up the beacon to throw his arms around Skizz and nothing hurts, there is no burning, no demands, only Skizz hugging him tight and radiating warmth and power and the best fucking high Ren has ever known.

There's a step on the beacon behind them and Doc climbs to the top. He looks around, nods.

"Satisfactory." He says.

"Oh shut up!" Skizz cries, and hugs him tightly. Doc makes an undignified noise he would never cop to and Ren would never admit to hearing before he hesitantly wraps his arms around Skizz as well.

The beacon slowly powers down. Skizz is sobbing into Doc's shoulder.

"It's mine." He whispers. "It's mine Doc thank you thank you thank you."

"You may want to sit down," Doc says gently, helping Skizz with one side as Ren gets the other. "Running this beacon will not be as easy as in the past, I'm afraid. You are all you have now. No more hours-long sessions for you."

"Don't care," Skizz murmurs, the exhaustion hitting him as he leans into Ren. "Doesn't matter. S'mine. Gonna sleep on it."

"That seems extreme."

"Missed it. Sleepin' on 'em. This one's nice an' wide. Tell Impulse-" Skizz yawns. "Tell 'em I'm okay. I'll be home in the mornin. Gotta..build that city.. on rock an roll..."

Then he's asleep, leaning on Ren.

Ren smiles down at him, and then at Doc. He reaches out and cups the goatman's face.

"A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee." he murmurs.

"Oh quiet, you." Doc says, but he is smiling, and maybe his flesh eye has a tear in it.

Maybe.

It's been raining since the fight ended and Impulse can't make Sarandiel move from the shattered remains of a stolen beacon.

Before them is a blasted hellscape of corpses, demon and angel alike. One of the angels had been a Third Circle. It had been her beacon, once.

First Circle Command has noticed its missing chess piece, and it would very much like Sarandiel back.

Pity for it that Sarandiel has no plans on returning.

The rain falls harder and one broad white wing comes up over Impulse's head, shielding him. The demon huffs out an appreciative noise and moves in a little closer, gazing out over their killing field. They work together so well now, he and his angel; like they'd been fighting side by side since the start.

Still, there's no time to analyze the fight or worry about fallout. They need to get out of here.

"Come on, man," Impulse says gently. "They're going to send someone soon, it's fifteen minutes past standard check in. We gotta get back to camp, get our shit together."

"She asked why I abandoned them."

Sarandiel sounds far away, his blue eyes unfocused but gazing in the direction of the eighth circle angels that don't have quite as many limbs as they did about thirty minutes prior. They had been defending the beacon, and the Third Circle on it. She is behind them somewhere, body half-charred by a smite that had Impulse's ears ringing.

"Everyone was dead but you," the angel continues, "not a single salvageable thing left on the server they didn't bother searching for me on, and she asked me why I abandoned them. She called me by name."

Impulse sits down beside Sarandiel. "Hey. you didn't do anything wrong by leaving."

"I hate it."

"Hate what?"

"My name." The angel whispers. "Everyone knows it. Sarandiel and his beacon. It'll be fine, Sarandiel is here. Don't worry about the far flank, we put Sarandiel there, no one will get through. Sarandiel could you, Sarandiel will you, Sarandiel-"

"Hey, hey-!" Impulse yelps as he watches his friend's fingernails begin to break skin where he is clenching his fists.

"I'm a puppet or a saint or a weapon or a symbol and I don't want to be those things anymore!" Sarandiel whispers through clenched teeth. "I don't want to be Sarandiel!"

"Then don't."

Sarandiel looks at Impulse, who gently takes one of his hands and uncurls the fingers. It looks like they'll be taking a little more time after all.

"Do you know how I got my name? My Royal name?" He asks as he digs a rag out of their supplies.

"No." Sarandiel says miserably.

"My name is for my deeds. For all I've done. But no other demon gave it to me." He daubs the blood from Sarandiel's hands. "There's a ritual. You take your sword, you stand firm in the acid that bore you, and the universe tells you your name through the vibrations of the sword in your hand." Impulse moves to the other hand.

"I don't have a universe." Sarandiel says. "I've only got Command."

"No," Impulse says, "you don't. You have so many other things. The wind, the- the rain."

They both look up at the densely pewter sky. A good day for it- the rain doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. It will muddy up the battlefield even more, hide how the fight played out and where they might have gone.

"Maybe the rain can name you," Impulse says as he finishes his ministrations to the angel's hands and puts the supplies away.

Sarandiel snorts. "Rain doesn't talk."

"No," Impulse says quietly, "but listen."

They don't speak for a minute or two and Sarandiel is about to apologize for the whole damn fiasco and get Impulse somewhere dry when he hears something.

The rain, falling on his halo. When it hits, it evaporates in the heat with a soft little sound. What is that?

He listens harder, sees out of the corner of his eye Impulse smiling.

"You hear it?" Impulse asks, looking up into the falling shroud of drops.

"I- yeah."

skzz. skzz. skzz.

"Skizz," Impulse says.

Sarandiel- no. Skizz- inhales so sharp he'd be worried about his ribs if he wasn't already positive they were bruised.

"For the deed of saving this demon's sorry ass," Impulse says quietly, "and leaving all you've ever known to keep him safe and survive, your name is Skizz."

He leans in and kisses the angel softly on the cheek. "Come on, Skizz. Let's get out of here."

Skizz throws his arms around Impulse for a moment, hugging him tight.

"Thank you." He whispers.

Impulse, warm in the blanket of his angel's wings, says, "Don't thank me until we're off this server and a hundred hubs away. We can't do a fight like this again without supplies."

"Ah, we'll manage. We always do."

The two disappear into the gloom back towards their camp, leaving the death and the pain and the shattered beacon- for the moment- behind them.

Skizz places the last block and looks at Joe Hills one more time. "You're sure about this?" He asks.

"Of course I am!" Joe says, opening his felt arms to gesture at his massive base. "It's just you and me and the committee for more than a thousand blocks-"

"Despite Grian's best efforts," Doc mutters loud enough to be heard.

"-It's the perfect place to test." Joe finishes.

"We're a committee now?" Ren asks as Impulse gets comfortable on a grass block. Doc, who has a lectern set up and is poised to take notes, shrugs. "I do not usually do science by committee," he says, "but this is as good a time to start as any."

"Okay." Skizz says. "I don't know how long I'll be able to run this thing. I had a pretty good track record back in the day but it wiped me out on the creative world."

"I'm not planning on doing anything important with the buffs," Joe assures him. "Don't worry if you have to cut off."

"Okay. Doc you want a countdown, or?"

Doc shakes his head. "As naturally as possible, Skizz, please."

Skizz nods. "Alright."

His eyes find Impulse's, and the demon smiles and gives him a thumbs up.

Skizz unfurls his wings, takes the three steps up onto the beacon, situates himself on the center block, and opens up.

It's much faster than it was in the creative world, a rush of light and energy, a beam wider and taller than any nether star foci could manage and Skizz at its center, the heart of a white inferno.

"Holy cow!" Joe exclaims as he feels the buffs- haste, regen- fill him up to the brim with energy, more powerful than any beacon he's used before. Ren and Doc, braced for this, handle it better than Impulse.

Impulse, hands dug into the sides of his grassblock so hard he is tearing out chunks, can barely breathe.

-

"I don't know if this is gonna work but if I don't do it we're dead!"

Impulse is pretty sure he's holding in important organs. He coughs in response.

"Stay with me, buddy. Hang on. I've got you, Impulse, I promise!"

Skizz drags him onto the beacon top, kicking aside the corpse of the angel who had manned it, and holds him tightly.

It shouldn't work. Not on Impulse. Not on anyone who isn't an angel.

Yet he feels his skin knit back together, the organs clear of blood and settle where they belong. He feels regeneration fill him and overfill him until he thinks he might be sick.

He also hears, faintly, someone calling a name that isn't Skizz's. Demanding he come home. He obey.

"Shut up," he hears Skizz whisper as the beacon goes dark, as death passes Impulse by like a ship in the night unaware it is not alone on the silent water. "shut up, shut up, shut up."

He is still whispering it when they pack up their camp and flee.

-

The regeneration wraps around Impulse and it doesn't feel the same as it did before. It is warmer, gentler, like a good coat in the cold or a bowl of soup on a rainy night and it feels like Skizz.

He starts to cry. Ren and Doc, politely, ignore it.

"Skizz," Doc calls, "can you feel your range?"

"Hundred blocks," Skizz says. "Should be more, I'm rusty."

"You'll get there, my friend. Joe, could you confirm?"

"On it!" Joe says, and with a quick burst of fireworks he's off.

joehillssays: can confirm, we're a hundred blocks out and still going strong! Skizz this is amazing!

"Yeah baby!" Skizz cheers, actually cheers, able to move around on top of his beacon like he never could when chained to a Command post. Then he stops and tilts his head. "Huh."

"Skizz?" Doc asks immediately. "Do you need to halt?"

"Skizz buddy don't overdo it," Impulse warns.

"I can feel them. They want help."

"Who wants help?" Ren asks.

"The- hang on. I need to listen."

skizzleman: Joe, can you see most of your beacons from where you are?

joehillssays: I can see at least two.

skizzleman: okay. Keep eyes on them.

"Skizz," Doc warns, "we really shouldn't be changing the parameters of the-"

It's a hundred blocks out but everyone still hears the faint yelp of surprise from Joe as all the beacons within their sightline suddenly surge in power, their beams brightening significantly.

"Skizz what did you do?!" Ren yelps as Doc frantically writes in the notebook.

Docm77: Joe we need the new range of your beacons NOW I don't know how long Skizz can keep this up

joehillssays: on it!

Impulse can't remain on the block anymore. He jumps off and runs up the beacon. "Skizz-!"

"I'm okay, Dippledop," Skizz says, turning his burning white eyes- all of them- onto Impulse. Once it would have been horrifying to catch a Beacon Angel's gaze. Now he can see Skizz behind the fire, and now Skizz can look at him and smile. "they're helping."

"Who's helping?"

"All the ones that came before." Skizz says. "Three skulls. Three angels."

"Wait." Ren says. "Wait you can hear the angels? The ones we turned into Withers?" He looks reasonably alarmed at the thought.

Doc swears brilliantly and at length in German. "There were no other beacons on the creative world!"

joehillssays: doc these beacons are firing at almost eighty blocks I've got nearly full area coverage.

"How do you hear them, Skizz?" Impulse asks.

In response, Skizz offers his hands.

Impulse takes them.

And he can hear.

The chorus of voices aren't saying anything distinct, at least not to Impulse's ears. Still they are singing, and the song is joyous and restful and old.

Impulse takes in a breath and realizes he's sobbing, that Skizz has curled a hand around his head and brought him in close so that they are standing together, Impulse's head on his shoulder.

"I think I'm happy," Impulse whispers. "Skizz am I happy?"

"I hope so. I am. Doc, I'm gonna wind her down. That okay?"

"That's fine, Skizz," Doc says, sounding baffled. "We have- much to discuss."

Slowly, the glow fades. The beacon powers down. The other beacons on Joe Hills' plot ease back into their regular range and power with no damage or fuss.

The man himself lands a few moments later. "Skizz that was incredible!" He says as Skizz dries a fussing Impulse's tears with his tie. "You supercharged all my beacons!"

"They wanted to be supercharged," Skizz says. "I could hear it in the song."

"You hear the dead angels?" Joe asks. "Like. Louder than before? In actual words now, or..?"

"Before? Before?!-I," Doc announces, "am going to need a bigger notebook."

Skizz stands at the edge of Keralis's tropical bungaloos and looks through what certainly appears to be a crack in reality hanging about three blocks up from the water and maybe four blocks out from the edge of the whitewashed pool deck. It's barely a half a block wide, with tiny tendrils whisping here and there out of it.

It's a little like looking into an End portal, in a way.

Of course End portals don't usually have eyes to look back, if one discounts the crystalline eyes of Ender.

These eyes are definitely not those. Hilariously, though, they are still round and bright, and match the man standing beside Skizz in a brightly colored flower printed shirt, sandals, and straw sun hat.

"You know," Skizz says thoughtfully, "I know it's been, like, a century and a half- maybe longer- but dang, dude, I forgot you people were so BIG."

Behind him, Keralis laughs. He adjusts his straw hat on his head as he too looks up and into the void that is looking back. "It is nice to be tall in at least one dimension," he says, taking a sip of his pina colada. Where does he get them? No one knows. Also, no one has asked. You just don't ask Keralis these kinds of questions. The answer could blow your mind.

Literally.

"Do you get to taste that twice?" Skizz asks.

Keralis shakes his head. "Sadly, no."

"Well that sucks, dude." Skizz glances between man and tear in the sky. "Okay I don't know which direction I should be looking. Does it matter?"

Keralis shakes his head. "You might as well look here," he says, gesturing with a human hand. "It's what you're used to. I am a little put out you aren't a babbling mess, I have to say."

"Keralis, buddy," Skizz says with one of his trademark grins, "give me a little more credit than that."

"I know, I know. Impulse is the same way. I got Grian good once though!"

Skizz snorts. "Did he crash land?"

"He crash landed. It was great. So, will this work? "

"Oh yeah you're definitely still in my radius. I mean, the peeking part of you, anyway." Skizz turns and heads for his beacon, which has been set up over the pool (and the chatty Drowned that have been left there, whispering malevolently about coming storms that passed centuries ago). "Doc! We're good!"

"Are you sure?" Doc replies from his workstation in front of the tiki bar. "You realize his actual imperceptible being is an incalculable size, correct?"

"Aw, Doc, I'm blushing," Keralis teases. Doc snorts as Keralis continues, "as long as a part of me is in Skizz's beacon range, it should affect all of me."

They could have done this test with Keralis's human shell, but as Skizz had pointed out when they were in the planning phase, "the last thing we need is the physical you cracking under the strain and then explaining to Xisuma why we need him to restore you AND why there's a smoking crater where his favorite tiki bar used to be."

"Okay," Skizz says, climbing up on the beacon. "Regen only to start. That's the sticky one."

Keralis sits down on a lounge chair, taking another sip of colada. "Oh?"

"The energy resonance doesn't play well with some people," Doc says as he lays out his notebook, measuring compass and pens. "We've done extensive testing now with Cleo and Mumbo. It's his results we are worried about in this case."

Keralis winces. "Mumbo? I cannot imagine."

"Yeah it wasn't a conversation I liked havin'," Skizz says as he settles, "but hey, getting to call your- cousin..?" at Keralis's shrug and nod he continues, "a prick to his sort of face was nice."

Keralis bursts out laughing. "I hope you apologized to Mumbo!"

"I did, I did!" Skizz insists. "Okay. Doc?"

"Keralis, if you're ready?"

Keralis toasts them with his drink, adjusting its little umbrella. "Ready and able."

"Alright. Skizz, go. As far as you can."

Keralis watches in interest as Skizz spreads his wings and fills with white light.

Then the beacon he is on, so strangely shaped, ignites.

And Keralis is somewhere else entire.

-

"Keralis? K? Buddy talk to me."

Keralis opens his eyes. Well, no, he doesn't have eyes. He likes the eyes he's built into his shell, so squishy and magnifying, so fascinating. A reflection of the world that isn't. Not like here where everything is strings and pieces and nothing at all.

"Skizz?" he rumbles without a voice in a place that is not a place.

"Papa K you can hear me! Oh good."

"Skizz you should not be here," Keralis says. He would frown, if he could frown with a human mouth he doesn't currently have. There is movement in the void that instead infers a level of frownieness.

"I'm not! Well. Okay, physically I'm not. And mister I have a bone to pick with you. Were you ever gonna mention how beat up you were?!"

Oh.

"It is old. I got it near the end of the Eighth Cycle. Nothing to worry about, I promise."

"The eighth- one with the moon?" Skizz, who Keralis cannot see, for he does not need or have or conceive of eyes, still somehow manages to convey crossing his arms in the same way Keralis has achieved frownieness. "Papa K tell me you didn't try to CATCH the MOON."

Keralis, whose true name much like Impulse's is older than stardust and redstone and time, but is unlike Impulse's in that to hear it would drive the people he loves into madness, finds he is embarrassed.

"I wanted to help."

"So you let yourself get turned into moon cheese?!" Keralis can almost imagine in the parts of him that are imagination the way Skizz has uncrossed his arms to stare aghast.

"It is healing."

"Not fast enough! That was two whole cycles ago! If you decided to get into a rumble with a, another relative or a nebula or the overall concept of time or whatever, you'd be toast!"

Keralis laughs, or at least is amused. "I don't plan on getting into a fight that big, Skizz. I am a lover, not a fighter, you know that."

"Ugh shut up man is it working?"

"Is what working?"

"Are you HEALING, dude?"

That gives Keralis pause. The idea of healing, of having flesh that is hurt, of the festering crushed parts of him filled with dusty moon rock- it's not pleasant. It's why he's been avoiding returning to himself for so long, staying within his shell with his friends in their- his?- simple, closed world.

Still, Skizz has asked. So Keralis does his best to rebuild his recollection of self, to pull together the threads and pieces left in the echoing dark of his birthplace.

He finds, with a start that brings him more into a physical being than before, that he is in fact healing.

He can feel the remnants of moon rock falling away, the rebuilding of tissue and rerouting of blood. Old, oozing wounds expel the last of their puss and close like they have been zipped back together. A mouth that had been a victim of debris straightens out and chitters in pleasure as star rending teeth grow back. An eye that had been a sticky smear begins to slowly wink again in the evernight.

Keralis knows he would have healed himself. Left long enough in this soft black velvet void, cared for in his shell by his friends, eventually he would have been whole again. With no enemies left to fight, no territory to claim and no interest in the lands beyond this dimensional cluster he had been content to wait, even if it sometimes, aggravatingly, itched.

Yet an angel- a construct of a lesser One, a plaything in one of a million dust kicking contests (wars, bloody and violent, they aren't games, they aren't toys, what arrogance to believe oneself apart from the dimensions one inhabits, as though ants do not feel anguish they do they do and Keralis knows this well because he is here and he is an ant and he would be lesser if he was not) is healing him.

Keralis doesn't mean to do it, doesn't think before he speaks.

"Thank you," he says, not with his voice but with his Voice. 

-

In the material world where Keralis has gone prone and still Skizz is silent, all glowing white Eyes locked on the void through which he can see a fraction of their friend's true body.

The void itself is glowing the same gentle white along the edges, only occasionally allowing one of Keralis's thousands of eyes to gaze through it.

Of all the things Doc had theorized would happen, that light in particular was not it.

"Was zum Teufel?" Doc murmurs. "Skizz? Skizz! Is everything alright?"

"Yeah Doc, everything's fine," Skizz says, looking away from the void and back at Doc. "I'm just reminding K why people don't lie about getting hurt."

Doc blinks. "Keralis is-?"

"It's okay. I got it."

"You've got it? What is THAT supposed to mean-?!"

Then the void through which Keralis is gazing vibrates with an Old One's true and rending Voice, a noise that makes Doc's ears hurt.

Skizz drops like a stone, becoming a crumpled mess of feathers on his beacon top. Keralis starts and is tripping over himself to get off his lounge chair, colada forgotten and spilled on the pool deck.

"Skizz!" Keralis runs up the beacon and turns his friend over. Skizz groans and opens his regular eyes, all others remaining closed. He touches his face and frowns when his fingers come away from his nose bloody.

"You gave me a nose bleed, you jerk," he murmurs. "That any way to repay a guy?"

Keralis stares at him, then up at Doc who has also abandoned his post to climb the beacon.

"Tell me what happened." Doc orders as he gets a water bottle out. "Leave nothing out. Skizz, drink this." He gets a handkerchief out and mops at Skizz's nose as the angel grumbles and drinks.

"His regen made it into the void," Keralis confirms. "It was- he- Skizz you were healing me. I said thank you. I'm sorry I should have thought about it before I did with the Void open like this."

"Yeah I know! It's kinda what I do! Doc could you talk some sense into this idiot?"

Doc frowns. "Heal- healed your real body? From what?"

"From the MOON falling on him!" Skizz yelps.

Doc blinks.

He blinks again.

"....Keralis."

"Yes?" Keralis asks guiltily.

"Keralis did you try to stop the moon?"

"Maaayyyybbeee."

"Keralis did you have an impact event with the moon and then never tell us about it?" Doc sounds very calm, very rational. If Ren had been available (gigacorp emergency and a base full of creaking to show for it) he'd have already hit the deck.

"I mean. If I did, hypothetically, perhaps, say no here-"

"Liar liar super metaphorical multidimensional eldritch pants on fire!" Skizz shamelessly tattles. "Doc there was still debris!"

"KERALIS!" Doc growls.

"I mean we aren't here to talk about me really, though, don't you want to know how impressive it was that Skizz's regen could even work through the layers of- Doc put the notebook down. Doc, come on, be sensible about this- ACK! Not in front of the paying guests!-"

"YOU DO NOT PAY YOUR DROWNED HOLD STILL YOU SHALL SUFFER FOR YOUR IDIOCY."

Turns out Skizz's Regen works just fine on Keralis's shell, too. Even with all the papercuts.

"Once a month until I've got the real big you in tip top shape," Skizz scolds him.

"But you can't leave your beacon here, Skizz!" Keralis protests.

"I'll get more blocks!"

"He will get more blocks," Doc thunders and Keralis, sipping a fresh colada, sighs.

Impulse backs up and eyes the area that he has just cleared with the aid of a chatty angel and his new and improved Beacon.

“What do you think?” Skizz asks, climbing down. “Good bedrock, room for seats. We can build the pit right here!”

“Yeah,” Impulse says with a slow nod. “Yeah. This’ll do.” He walks the area he’s cleared out with Skizz’s help. They can still see the dark oak trees up above and that’s good, it casts shadow down onto the chunk Impulse has cleared out of the edge of the forest. “Maybe..you think we could do a little waterfall? Well. An acidfall?”

“Right here, maybe?” Skizz pats a section of stone wall. “Need to build it out though so it looks interesting. And make an infinite acid source, can you do that, buddy?” He looks worried. “Impulse it’s been a long time since you generated acid..”

“I can do it.” Impulse says firmly. “It’ll take time and..I REALLY don’t want anyone around while I do, but I can do it.”

“Let me be here.” Skizz says.

“Skizz, no, man, come on. You remember. It’s not pretty to see or hear.”

“Come on, you think I care about that? My regen’ll make sure you don’t dry out. And I don’t want you out here alone, that’s a dark oak forest up there!”

“We have torches, Skizz.”

“That’s not the point-!”

“Fine, but you have to be at LEAST thirty blocks out, okay?” Impulse says. “I- I want to do this by myself. As much by myself as I can.”

“Dippledop-” Skizz sighs. “Okay. Alright.” He looks around their cleared out area. It’s not huge, and will likely be repurposed once the ritual is done, but for the moment he can see how the terraforming might be improved, how it will look like a forgotten amphitheater here in the wilds of their server. Of course he's not the guy to do it. Impulse, he knows, will try and take the work all on himself despite the fact that PixelPulse needs his attention. The angel starts making a mental list of hermits to beg. He'll start with BDubs. BDubs thinks he's funny, or at least pretends to. 

“Impulse?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t wait to hear your Name,” Skizz says, and Impulse can only helplessly grin at his angel as he says, “Me too.”

-

As Impulse explained to Doc, the ritual isn't complicated.

"I'd probably line the pit in obsidian just to be safe," he says as Xisuma, Hypno and Joe Hills look over the small model he's constructed of the area.

"But a pit full of acid is the only requirement?" Xisuma asks.

"I mean that's it, yeah."

"Are we allowed to-decorate, at all?" Xisuma asks. "Terraform the area around the pit, maybe?"

Impulse blinks. “I was sort of planning on doing that myself? You don’t have to do anything.”

"Dude it's your Name," Hypno says.

Impulse blinks a couple more times.

"Impulse," Xisuma says, "you didn't think we were just going to watch you jump in a pit full of acid, recite something you told us to, and be done with it, did you?"

"I- well- maybe?? I mean this is all OLD stuff, guys, way before your time and I didn’t want anyone to get bored or feel beholden.”

"Nah. No way, man." Hypno says. "Absolutely not."

"What I think our associates are trying to say," Joe says, "is that this is clearly important to you. That it was an important thing in your past, and we'd like it to have similar gravitas, because you deserve that. It won't be the SAME, but it doesn't have to be, I don't think. Does it?"

"…No," Impulse says slowly. "No, it doesn't have to be."

"Impulse if you want it to be a small affair that's fine," Xisuma says, "but I'm willing to bet a lot of Hermits would like to be there to support you. In fact if BDubs doesn't get to 'make it really fancy' he might cry. Or that's what he said, anyway."

"Gem might actually kill us if she finds out we didn't say anything," Joe notes.

"And we all know Grian would be insufferable." Hypno adds.

“Besides Skizz already tattled with your setup coordinates,” Joe says, and Impulse cannot help but start laughing.

-

Impulse is busy lining the acid pit with obsidian when Joe Hills swings by, still soaking wet from the riptide that had gotten him over the upper part of the forest and down to the newly excavated amphitheatre.

"I had a question I wanted to ask," he says to Impulse as he helps lay out blocks, "but it wasn't the right time when you were showing us the model."

"Ask away."

"Impulse do you want me to Change for your ceremony?"

Impulse freezes, then his head snaps up. "Joe?"

"I didn't know if it would be insensitive to offer," Joe says. "then I decided, well, Skizz always shoots straight with you. I would, too."

"Joe it takes you months to save up energy for a Change like that!" Impulse protests.

"I know. But like Hypno said- this is your Name. It's important. And I didn't know if having another acid demon there would be comforting. Or I could be completely wrong and it’s an incredibly rude and appropriative offer, please be honest with me."

Impulse is touched, deeply. Joe Hills is changeling, and thus has looked different every time a new Cycle starts. He plans his next faces well in advance, asking his fellow hermits for their input if he gets stuck. Some of his standard shifts are easy and temporary- Impulse has watched Joe become a piglin, a villager, and a creeper, just to name a few- but a wholly new mob? With innards as complicated as those Impulse has? That would take all the energy that Joe has, and might leave him without enough to make a new change for their next Cycle. 

There are no sponsors here to offer their acid and service to Impulse, but this- this is close, and Impulse is a little teary eyed as he says, “Thank you, Joe. It wouldn’t be rude, but no. I want you there exactly as you want to be. I appreciate the hell out of the offer, though."

Joe Hills smiles. "Thank you for being honest. I do like this one." He gives his felt arms a little wiggle. 

"It's a good one," Impulse says while laughing, and they go back to laying out obsidian. 

-

As Skizz promised, he sets up his beacon about forty five blocks out from the Ritual area.

Skizzleman: ready dude?

Impulsesv: hit it

Impulse feels the Regen lace through him and he stands over his obsidian pit. He’d insisted to BDubs and the small terraforming coalition that had formed in the thirty seconds it had taken Skizz to fly from the new amphitheatre to BDubs' base that they all had to wait until the acid was already in place. If all that work was done and then Impulse's acid additions went south in any way then it would be a waste of good work.

Impulse breathes deep and as he does, his outer more human skin fades away. He opens his neon green eyes, day glow orange pupils shining like pinpricks of radiation. For a moment he simply stands there, feeling the pop and fizz, watching the vapor slip between his pointed teeth and rise like dragon's smoke. 

Then he opens his second throat.

Skizz had been right about how long it had been. Impulse hasn’t had to spit acid at anyone or anything since coming to Hermitcraft, save a few incidents in the very earliest cycles where he’d been unpleasantly surprised. At least Scar had fallen off a cliff after that blast of acid, so he respawned whole and with no burns.

He stopped using the creeper costume on Impulse, that was nice.

It comes first in a reluctant trickle, brilliantly yellow and hissing. Then it comes in a flood, a visceral torrent from his mouth that both is and is not similar to another humanoid mob’s stomach rejecting food. Definitely not pretty, absolutely something anyone else would find disgusting.

Which is mostly why Impulse had wanted to do this without witnesses. He’s never been ashamed of this ability, was renowned for it once, but that was a long time ago. It’s one thing for your friends to know that you are an acid spitting demon. It’s another for them to witness the acid spitting.

The obsidian isn’t effected by the acid and as Impulse empties his acid sack he can feel it refilling thanks to Skizz and his beacon. Still he has to pause when the pool is half full, to drink water and take a breath. He can feel sizzling behind his teeth like after the end of his longer workdays, feeding his own acid into his bomber models to prove that they could work before building to scale for the huge acid generators.

Still, he does it. He’s exhausted and absolutely dehydrated by the end but when Skizz shows up to check on him after Impulse messages him to shut the beacon down, the pit is entirely filled with saffron-yellow acid, and it’s falling from a hole in the rock four blocks up down over a small pile of obsidian.

“Holy shit, dude,” Skizz says. “I haven’t seen that much sulfuric acid since I dropped one of your bombers on the FateNorth server.”

Impulse laughs breathlessly, tail coming up to gently whack Skizz across the back. “And that wasn’t even the pure stuff,” he says. “Skizz everything hurts.”


“I just bet it does, you sound like you’ve been gargling rocks.” Skizz neatly bundles Impulse up in his arms. “Come on, buddy. Tea and bed for you.”

He looks at the pit thoughtfully. “You think if we extinguish the torches we’ll get some zombies? Some bones in the bottom could be really cool..”

“They’d dissolve before it’s time,” Impulse says weakly.

“So we just leave ‘em off longer!” Skizz laughs, and Impulse manages a chuckle before falling dead asleep in Skill’s arms.

-

BDoubleO100, Geminitay, and VintageBeef all stand in the cleared out space just below the dark oak forest and stare at the bright yellow acid fall and pool that until about a week ago they would have insisted, independently and with no peer review, wasn’t possible.

“I have,” Beef says. “so many questions.”

“Me too but we have work to do,” Bdubs says. “Squad? Let’s get it.”

“Please don’t ever say that again,” Gem says.

They lay out shulkers, compare notes. There’s arguments over where to put the custom trees (one on either side is the eventual decision, low hanging things like what BDubs had built around his swimming hole dotted here and there with azalea blooms) and Gem has to keep Beef from sticking random things in the acid.

“Did you see that? It just ate a stone pickaxe-!”

“Yeah yeah come on we have seats to build.”

“How’d he do it, though?” Beef wonders as he and Gem begin laying out the layers of the ruined amphitheater.

Gem shrugs. “He told me once he has a- a second throat? Connected to a sack?”

“Oh. That. Sounds wrong.”

“I mean it’s not the weirdest thing we’ve ever seen,” Gem points out. “Skizz has magic disappearing wings. Tango has fire hair. Etho’s mouth? Doc’s- EVERYTHING? Keralis?”

“Good point,” Beef acknowledges. “Is this curve too extreme?”

“No but the layer behind it isn’t quite right. What if we-”

The last touch is soul fire lanterns hanging from the trees, casting the acid pool in a green glow.

“I kinda wish we could get some skeletons in there,” BDubs says and Gem groans.

-

It’s a full moon the night of the ceremony.

That's not culturally necessary, but it is a spot of good luck. It means that with the lighting set up in the amphitheatre no one has to worry about hostile mob spawns, 

Not everyone can make it, of course, but there’s definitely more hermits than Impulse had thought would show. Even Wels is here, and he’s wearing his quietest armor, sitting beside Jevin and barely making a squeak as he looks all around.

It’s a beautiful sight. So different from the Naming Chambers back home, more vibrant and alive. The soulfire lanterns are a perfect touch and it’s both so familiar and also so new.

Down on the small raised platform where they have taken pride of place as the Elders, Joe Hills and Xisuma stand. Everyone falls silent. There is no joking, no last minute firework setoffs. It’s eerie and solemn.

“We gather here as witnesses,” Xisuma says, repeating the words that Impulse had managed to recall and crib together, “to the Deeds of our Prince. Let them be judged, and Named.”

“Prince Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val,” Joe says, pronouncing it perfectly and warmly in that soft southern drawl, “Do you rally?”

Impulse swallows hard. His tail swishes right, then left.

“I do,” He says.

Joe nods towards the pool. “Then stand, and be Named.”

Impulse turns to Skizz, who has been standing beside him. The angel grins at him and then-

Reaches a hand impossibly and bloodlessly inside his own chest, bringing a soft murmur to their friends. Grian stands up and leans forward to see what the heck is going on only to be hauled back down by Zed.

When Skizz pulls his hand back, he is holding something black with yellow striations. He drops his hand to the side, leaving it balanced there.

Impulse grabs it and pulls.

What he takes bloodlessly from his angel’s chest is a sword- or one has to interpret it as one. It is an ugly pick of a thing, iron? Maybe. It is entirely matte black save the pulsing yellow lines that crawl across it almost like a rot.

Impulse takes a moment to step forward, press his forehead to Skizz’s. The angel smiles and then heads silently towards his own seat beside Lizzie and Joel.

Impulse takes a moment to recognize the feel of it. Of the blade that had risen with him out of the acid pools when he’d been baptized. How proud his father had been, he’d been told time and again. ‘Such strong markings, such a keen edge, he’ll be an inventor for sure’.

Then he turns and walks towards the pool he has made, stepping down into the knee-deep acid and feeling nothing but a pleasant bubbling as it hisses around him. He is siezed for a moment by a virulent homesickness, a longing for a place that isn't there and people who are gone. It passes, leaving only a lingering nostalgic sadness. Impulse glances up at Xisuma and Joe, then brings the sword tip-down in front of him and kneels until he is up to his chest in the pool he made with his own acid sack and a will.

For a moment he thinks it won’t work.

For a moment he feels nothing, and despair opens in him like a pit and it’s not for him, he realizes, it’s for Skizz and Xisuma and Joe, for all his friends who want this thing for him that he knew wasn’t meant to be because they aren’t in the Naming Chambers on the Acid Houses server, they are here, on Hermitcraft, and it just isn’t the same and he has to be okay with that and-

Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val.

He hears it.

The others hear it.

It is as though something immense, like Keralis in his full ancient form or the gods be damned moon, has suddenly filled the clearing all around them.

Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val, named for death and glory and machines that snuff the air from worlds.

Impulse does not dare breathe. He does not dare move. The multiverse has never been so chatty at a Naming before.

Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val.

Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val Ebhaklo Thuldi Mloux’dra Bhaiol’drest Vraapuh Iashaazte Qun’al Kavros-

On it goes.

On and on and it sounds like music, like a triumphant symphony and if Impulse thought he could keep from crying he was wrong because in the shape of the words he can feel his life, all his failures and all his glories and every moment of love and hate and retribution, every weapon and game and quiet moment.

You didn’t forget me, he thinks, and some small part of the multiverse answers, Forget you? Forget YOU? Perish the thought.

Never.

And of course it didn’t, Impulse realizes as his Name washes over him, because turning your blade to a plowshare does not mean the blade is forgotten and it does not make the plowshare less.

-Viklob Ghaghn Muhontian Glithurmrata Thonshamas Leendeh Gos Ronduil Tyrn Exnodus Hurntala’dyne Fural.

First Prince of the House of Hermitcraft.

You are so Named.

Then the feeling of something immense is gone. The pressure is gone. It is only Impulse, slowly standing up in an acid pool, surrounded by the victorious cheering of his friends.

Of Hermitcraft.

His House.

“HELL YEAH DUDE!” Ren yells. Cub has already begun setting of the fireworks up top. Tango reaches Impulse first and throws the bucket of water at him with glee, followed swiftly by Etho. Impulse sputters and Etho says, “Did we get it all?”

“Better try one more to be sure!” Skizz says at the same moment Grian comes swooping down with bucket number three, and it’s a sopping wet cursing Impulse who gets mobbed by Gem and Pearl.

“It’s so long,” Gem says. “Impulse it’s SO LONG how are you gonna fit that anywhere?”

“You don’t,” Skizz says with a grin as he joins the throng surrounding the demon. “It’s easier that way.”

Impulse makes a rude hand gesture at him and Skizz sticks out his tongue before he says, “Do I get it back now?”

People make room and Impulse casually shoves the ugly black sword back into Skin’s chest, where it neither creates a wound nor punches through the back of his body. Instead, as before, it seemingly sinks into nothing, disappearing beneath Skizz’s white dress shirt like it and he have both become immaterial.

“Someone is explaining how that works,” Doc says.

“All in good time, Doc,” Impulse says. “For now- I know SOMEONE brought food.”

The party lasts all night and into the next day. Skizz settles on his beacon, which Hypno had helped him cover in juke boxes, and gets to work learning how to sing his soulmate's new name with the help of thousand dead angels. Cub and Tango both have small mini games set up, and the swapping of old tales and bits of ancient culture between the Hermits who have lived through the war flows easier than it ever has before.

After everything is cleaned up Xisuma says, “Impulse, if it doesn’t bother you, I don’t see why we can’t keep the pool here. Once we reset you’d need to build a new one, but.”

“It looks cool,” Beef says. “I still think it could use some bones in the bottom.”

Prince Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val Ebhaklo Thuldi Mloux’dra Bhaiol’drest Vraapuh Iashaazte Qun’al Kavros Iubhacnol Dolthe Ocxaziss Gxulki Nethin Touxo San Jidvix Shaggdixz Yvregdeh Utabrarh Ctuvha Noudhuth Uthobren Yighivh’krarh Iautrouggd’itress Zignne Iauthuvha Kaadhrux Bhoudra Iuxuzust Fet Morowai Hist’mugit Ciknalta Pnum lalini Resnum Tempusdei Waynar Oridinis Tu Mahgnel Glintnius Fopvendir Pnir’hast’lupcalia Tor Firmnet Socalnadar Giuevribbel Imlolp’krath Nachashath Viklob Ghaghn Muhontian Glithurmrata Thonshamas Leendeh Gos Ronduil Tyrn Exnodus Hurntala’dyne Fural, called Impulse by those who love him, laughs.

“It could,” he agrees. “It really could.”