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There was a message sent out only to a select few people on the hermitcraft server as soon as Etho realized he was back. They would be meeting to discuss what was happening, and Etho was about to rip X to shreds in front of those he chose to finally take action against Them. Xisuma messaged back saying that he’d set up a meeting with some of the folks from Empires, who also had players disappearing. Etho sat in a chair in his home, both his elbows on his knees. He was thinking, and waiting for the meeting.
He had a message from Bdubs asking to talk, but truthfully Etho couldn’t bear to talk with the man until after he knew whether he’d feel safe on hermitcraft, after he demanded X tell the council.
One button and server IP later and he was on a server with a few other people already sitting down at an oak meeting table.
“X, I said no one that went missing. I didn’t send him the message for a reason.” Etho was fuming, and Doc and Beef stood by him, ready to stop him from launching himself at their exhausted admin.
“Etho, he’s also an admin of hermitcraft. He has every right to be here.” Xisuma said, the exhaustion imminent in his voice. With a brief glance towards Tango, whose blaze rods were spinning rather aggressively, he could tell that the two admins didn’t get much sleep overnight. It’s not like Etho did either.
“I’m not going to the admin council about this unless we’re in over our heads.” Scott said. Etho was taken aback by what the man said, especially because he was a member of the council. Doc dragged Etho to sit down, and got his attention briefly to try and figure out what this was about. All Etho had to do was narrow his eyes and Doc dropped his hand from his shoulder and paled.
Scott began recapping the events they all knew had happened, missing one minor detail of it. “Four times.” Etho had said, albeit a bit aggressively.
Xisuma spoke up, “I agree with that statement. We have evidence from our resident code doctor that has also been confirmed by Doc that the players that have disappeared at each occurrence have a matching memory gap. We have also checked on our player Ren who had not disappeared at the most recent skip that although his memory code hasn’t been removed, it is jumbled.”
“Ren’s case is fragile though.” Doc said, taking a deep breath before he discussed more of what had been happening to his friend. It was hearing how broken Doc sounded that made Etho lose his anger and resolve to just listen to what others knew. Tango ended up calling into question why Martyn was at the meeting in the first place, and it was Scott going to his rescue, seemingly dividing the table into different groups.
“Regrettably, it’s been a while since I learned about different obstacles that admins may face while running a server, but are we familiar with any sort of monster that can undetectably snatch and return players from a server AND clear their memories?” Beef’s question made Etho freeze because how could anyone forget that They existed? Did they truly not know what could be causing all of this havoc? When Etho's eyes settled on Xisuma who had shrunk in on himself, his anger returned marginally. Of course their admin knew, he just wasn’t doing anything about it.
The rest of the meeting ended up flopping. No one came forward about anything new other than Martyn being exposed for lying about being a part of the missing players whether he knew it or not. But if Martyn lied about not knowing whether he went missing, then both he and Scott knew something was up, just not who was behind it all.
“I figured you’d be here overthinking again.” Doc said as he walked into Etho’s home.
“Shouldn’t you be checking on someone else who wants your attention?”
Doc raised his cybernetic arm to his chest. “You wound me Etho. What if I wanted to make sure you were alright?”
Etho threw his arm forward to shoo the creeper hybrid away, before facing away from him. “Do you really believe it’s Eyes?” Doc asked.
“I’ve been hunting again. Popping in on public servers where angels hang around to try and get more information. Not even they know anything new. The Eyes we’re dealing with now are much better at hiding than they were back then.”
“Etho..” Doc wanted to stop Etho from talking further, to try and talk him out of hunting them again.
“I think we have Ears in hermitcraft. I’ve been trying to figure out who they are, and I’ve narrowed it down to Pearl and Grian. I swear I’m gonna ki-”
“Etho.” Doc said more sternly. He was right to tell Etho off, but it didn’t make him anymore calm about the situation. “They are our friends. They wouldn’t put us in danger like that.”
“Not knowingly, no. I think they don’t know that they’re Ears. But they know more about wherever we’ve been disappearing to. I’ve talked to them and subtly brought up memory gaps and voices, and they avoid any conversation about it like the plague.”
“Okay. And what if you are right. What then?” Doc said, frustration ebbing into his voice.
Etho didn’t have an answer to that. He didn’t want them to be jailed by the admin council for something like that, they were a part of his family after all, and if they had no control over being an Ear then they shouldn’t be punished for it.
“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet.” Doc walked across Etho’s room and sat down next to him on the bench.
“I’m telling Bdubs about Them when I see him later.” Was that tears threatening his eyes? “I can’t keep this a secret from him anymore.”
“Do you need me to be here for that? I know I don’t know everything..”
“I’ll be fine. I need to do this alone.”
Etho knew that they weren’t just going to be talking about Eyes and Ears. Bdubs had been hinting about wanting to know what happened for weeks now. He hated that he needed to tell him what happened, about everything. That he had… How was Etho going to tell Bdubs what happened if he couldn’t admit it himself?
“Message me if you need help at all. I’ll fly over as fast as I can.” Doc took off to the skies afterwards, leaving Etho to his lonesome once again.
***
The wind was gently tugging Bdubs cloak as he flew to Etho’s base. It was time that he demanded answers, but if Bdubs was a little nervous about it he would never admit that to anyone. He landed with a soft splash on Etho’s race pad and as he was about to knock on Etho’s door, it opened. Etho stepped out with a hand fidgeting with one of his jacket pockets, the other shutting the door behind him.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said. Bdubs carefully observed each of his movements only to find that he was serious. They made their way into the forest where no other bases would appear and continued walking away from any sign of life. Bdubs didn’t try to start a conversation despite wanting to because Etho kept flinching at every exaggerated breath that Bdubs took. He’d need to wait for Etho to begin this conversation if he was ever going to get answers.
They walked for a good ten minutes before Etho finally slowed down and sat on the ground against a tree. Bdubs immediately took a seat across from him, so that he could see his eyes when he talked. He didn’t expect Etho to take off his mask for this conversation.
It wasn’t something new, Bdubs had seen Etho’s face a couple of times since he had known the player but never for a prolonged period of time. He made sure to watch any twitch of his mouth and how it matched whenever he blinked, committing it to memory so he could better read Etho in the future, to see the smiles and frowns beneath the mask.
Etho took notice of Bdubs studying his face. “You’re making this a lot more difficult by staring.”
Bdubs tutted in response. “Well I’m sorry that I don’t get to see your beautiful face often enough to understand how it moves beneath the mask.”
There was a ghost of a smile on Etho’s lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Bdubs wished he could see Etho with a full smile, through his whole face, not just his eyes.
“You flirt.”
“I’m only saying the truth.” Bdubs said, before he added, “I want you to be honest with me.”
Etho’s face fell at the statement. “I know. And I can’t keep a secret anymore.”
Bdubs wanted to reassure Etho that he was still allowed his secrets, but something told him that he was going to be told more than what he had originally come for. The sun was getting lower in the sky, and the stars were starting to come out. Bdubs was going to suggest putting down a few torches, but Etho made no move to do anything about it.
Bdubs began to see the twirls of magic around the player, his supposed witch abilities coming to a red light, along with the swirls of electric green of the admin abilities and the orange glow of being touched by the gods. It was earlier than normal, the sun still glowing gold over the treetops, but Bdubs ignored the anomalies within his own magic. Etho watched as Bdubs stared at something that was on himself that he couldn’t see, before Bdubs began looking at his own arms, a frown riddling his face. The black whirls were always the most prominent at night, and even though Bdubs didn’t see them every day anymore, they still were attached to him like veins throughout his body.
“I wish I could see what you do sometimes. Being able to see the magic in players must be something special.”
Bdubs gave a mirthless laugh. “Its novelty has worn out now that I’m on a server so full of it, but I can’t ask about it.”
“Could you explain it to me?” Etho asked, sincerity written in his eyes.
“Well, you know that I see purple whenever we go missing. Whatever takes us is so full of purple magic, but I’m never able to get a read on its details because it covers my vision like purple film. You have four colors of magic around you almost constantly now, though you didn’t used to.”
“Tell me about them. What they look like, and what they mean.”
“Etho.. are you sure?” But the witch nodded so Bdubs continued. “The one I see you use the most like most of the players on the server is the electric green lines. They’re smooth lines that float to your hands whenever you use it, but that’s how it is with most admin magic.
“You also have an orange glow around you, though it brightened since I had seen you when you joined season 9. It means that you have been touched by the gods at some point in your life. I’ve had to avoid asking you and others about that for so long now, but it's not my place to ask.
“The one I’ve never seen you use is red, and I have no idea what red means. I’ve never met another player with red magic, but I’ve also not met any true blooded witches, so I assumed that’s what it was.” Etho’s breath hitched at that.
“I’m not a witch.” He said, his voice barely above a whisper. He looked so scared, but Bdubs didn’t try to coerce anything out of him. “My adoptive parents were witches, and I was told to say I was a witch for my own safety.”
Bdubs hand fell into his lap, playing with a few of the leaves of his moss cloak. “Oh.”
“I don’t know what I am, only that I’m most likely the last of my kind. They made sure of that.”
“Who are they?” Bdubs asked without thinking, slapping a hand over his mouth for the question.
“They are only some of the worst beings ever to exist. I’ll only say their name once because I don’t want to attract any more of their attention to the server, but I’ll also refer to them as Eyes.” Bdubs nodded for Etho to continue. “They were Watchers, beings that manipulate memory and thought themselves superior to everything other than the gods that made them until they began abusing their power. The Eyes were forsaken by the gods, and they took it out on everything, but my species specifically for some reason. They were what started the Code War all those hundred of years ago.” Bdubs didn’t mention anything about the memory bit, already putting pieces together himself and waiting for Etho to catch up.
“The ones that Cleo tells stories about?” Etho hesitantly nodded his head.
“I didn’t know that she had lived that long until that one sleepover, but because no one knows my history in them, it wasn’t like I could ask her to not share that part of history. It’s important, and I’m realizing now more than ever that despite everything, the Eyes still managed to erase the memory of how horrible they are to everyone except the angels and bounty hunters still after them.
“I became a bounty hunter myself once I had turned 17. In witch covens, that’s the age of adulthood and I happened to be very good at war based spells and potions. They would have sent me back into the war that my parents tried so hard to get me out of, that is until I got their letter from my adoptive parents. My real parents only ever wanted me to be safe, to avoid the war wherever possible, and since all of the other witches didn’t know I wasn’t a witch, I’d need to accept whatever position they gave me.
“But they walked into my room while they thought I was asleep and gave me the last thing I have from my birth parents, explaining to me how to use my magic that I’d been born with. The first was a way to sleep through time, a risky endeavor but it would allow me to pass anything dangerous if I was in a safe location. The other were ways to travel quickly through servers, and if I had been lucky, a way to travel between servers. I was lucky.
“I was also so unbelievably angry at the Eyes for taking away my family from me. My species. Leaving me alone in this world and constantly at risk of being discovered. I probably did the opposite of what all of my parents wanted of me, but I couldn’t let the Eyes get away with this. So I hunted and killed many of them and also avenged my parents by ridding the universe of their killers. I actually met Doc that day, and I met the gods.
“The gods, including Lady Death and the Dragon, all thought that my species was gone, but when they found me and saw that I had been killing Eyes, they gifted me some abilities and a favor, because they couldn’t give me back my parents or the Eyes disappearance. Instead I got some shitty prophecy ability, and to choose when I die. Plus the favor whenever I wanted to use it.
“I was done hunting Eyes because the gods wanted me to find peace. I went to sleep for a few hundred years longer than I had wanted, and found myself in a little corner cafe not knowing how to pay for pastries.”
Bdubs smiled at the memory of meeting Etho. “I always wondered how Doc knew you beforehand. You were always so careful about everything. Doc didn’t seem like the type you would have interacted with normally.”
His joke got a small smile out of Etho. “You were always too loud for my liking. Beef was at least better mannered.”
“Hey!”
“But I’m talking to you at the end of the day. Who would’ve guessed.” Etho didn’t meet Bdubs eyes as he took a deep breath.
“I had a prophetic vision before I had gotten to the cafe about a purple mass flying towards this player I didn’t know and red feathers floating in the wind. And then I had met you, and I couldn’t let anything happen to you, and the feathers made me wary of all avians and Eyes, because of course the Eyes also had wings. Even though Doc reassured me that peace had been in the universe for some time, I never could feel completely safe. I always thought that the Eyes would find me again and hurt the players around me. The players that too quickly became my friends and then my family. You wormed your way into my caged heart and set up camp there to stay.”
Etho wiped his eyes, and Bdubs nudged his foot a bit against Etho’s to say that he was there. Etho suddenly vanished from in front of Bdubs and reappeared by his side, wrapping an arm around him. Bdubs saw Etho’s eye glow red, and the red magic was stronger for a moment, waves becoming more violent before settling again.
“When we first went missing, I was so scared that the Eyes had found me again. I wanted to go into hiding but I already promised Beef to stay for Season 8. And then I find out that you disappeared in Season 8, and with the moon getting big and everything going to shit, I needed to leave. I couldn’t be endangering anyone on the server for something that was because of me. I code traveled away, but I made sure to keep watch of hermitcraft to make sure everyone got away. But…” Etho took a ragged breath, “I couldn’t join season 9 if the Eyes were after me. I was so out of shape that training would do me good, and finding the Eyes that thought they could mess with our server was my goal. So what if Xisuma didn’t go to the admin council like he should have. So what if my family would miss me for not joining the longer season. I had Eyes to kill to protect you.
“But then you messaged again about the purple vision. Me leaving didn’t work. So as much as a blow to the ego it was, the Eyes weren’t just after me. I forced out of Beef who all went missing each time, and I got a list of names, and I stayed on the server to try and protect the players from the inside. But I’m not finding anything about the Eyes anywhere.
“The Eyes have these minions called Listeners, I call them Ears, but I think there are Ears on the server. The thing with being an Ear though is that you could not know you are one the entire time if the Eyes don’t talk to you, and all the Eyes really need Ears for is to watch servers for potential feeding grounds. I’ve narrowed it down to Pearl and Grian but I don’t know what to do about it because I don’t want them going to prison over something they can’t control.”
“That’s certainly rough, and I’ll be happy to listen to theories later, but you skipped over something Etho.” Bdubs spoke up, once again looking at his arms.
“I found TFC because of the black magic staining the world. It’s not normal, but I could see it in the daylight.” Bdubs felt the rapid rising and falling of Etho’s chest. “Those same marks are ingrained into my skin. I used to see them in the day, but now I only see it in the dark like it’s a part of my magic, and I also have an orange glow that is a lot brighter than yours. Why do I have Lady Death’s magic covering me?” The question was finally out there, spoken into the world. Bdubs needed the answer, but he wasn’t sure he’d like what he’d hear.
“When I was watching Season 8 end, making sure everyone else got out, there was one player still on server. My prophetic vision decided to force me out of code state at that moment and make me watch you die to the moon again. In its great purple glory. And when I went to find hermitcraft again, you were gone. I used my favor to bring you back, but Lady Death did it for free. You hadn’t passed through the gates into the afterlife. You died, and I almost lost you forever.”
It wasn’t just Etho that was shaking, but Bdubs was shivering in fear. “I died. I died and you didn’t tell me.” Bdubs shook Etho’s arm off of him and stood up, Etho scrambled for Bdubs hand.
“I’m sorry.”
Bdubs didn’t know what to think, and although the apology felt nice for a moment, it didn’t do anything to stop the disappointment from Etho not telling Bdubs. “You didn’t tell me I died! And I had to find out that it was Lady Death’s magic in my body! I waited for you to tell me what was going on, because I knew that something was seriously wrong, and you make me wait until after I had an idea of what happened to me! You abandoned me after I woke up from death! You wouldn’t tell me anything! You didn’t tell anyone anything!”
“I know, I know,” Etho said as he stood up, hand still in Bdubs’s.
"The last thing we spoke about was how you were going to tell me later about what you were stressed over! You didn’t even say goodbye! I died alone!” Bdubs stumbled into Etho, clutching at his jacket while Etho held him tightly. “I died alone watching Xanati’s damn moon.” Bdubs sobbed. It seemed to hit him then, that he died permanently, that he would have not woken up from whatever nightmare he could have been in, that he didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone. Who knows if he would have walked through Lady Death’s gates without anything keeping him tethered to the mortal worlds.
They stayed like that until the sun shone through the trees in its golden glory. Bdubs and Etho huddled together, Etho in apology, and Bdubs to make sure that everything was real, that he was real.
“You never told me about the fourth magic you saw in me. I didn’t know I had four kinds of magic.”
Bdubs snorted, a wad of snot escaping that he wiped away with his sleeve. “Yeah, huh. You have purple swirls that have ever so slowly been growing more vibrant with time. Everyone seems to have those swirls though, some stronger than others, but not everyone did until season 6.”
“What do you mean?” Etho pulled back from the hug a bit, Bdubs already missing the warmth it had.
“Everyone has these purple ties around them and it just started showing up one day. It develops at different rates for everyone and I’m not sure if I should be mentioning other players' magics but it’s been growing stronger for everyone since season 6.”
“Bdubs, I don’t have any other magic, and not everyone on the server is a hybrid that even has magic like that.”
“I know that. But it’s not like I can outright ask players what magic they have, especially because some players don’t seem to be aware of it.”
***
Dread filled Etho at that moment as another flash of Bdubs dying to the godsdamned moon again, enshrouded in purple which Etho could only now assume was magic.
“It’s not the same purple as the moon, is it?”
Bdubs eyes flitted back and forth as he remembered the color of the moon. He had made the comparison of it being similar to Grian’s and Xanati’s and Zed’s… and he knew that Xanati couldn’t have enough power to send the moon crashing into hermitcraft.
“You don’t think… Etho, what would that mean?”
Etho paled as he began searching the sky. “It means that there are Eyes on the server, and we aren’t able to track them.”
“I’ll look more into Eyes to find out more magic wise. If I’m able to pick out the specifics, I’d be able to tell you who’s magic is different or find anomalies within the server. They won’t be able to escape my eyes.”
Etho nodded as he began leading them both back to his home rather quickly. “Shouldn’t we tell X about this?” Bdubs asked. Etho searched the ground for an answer he wasn’t going to find.
There were Eyes on the server, and as soon as Etho found them, those Eyes were going to die.
“He’s known this entire time and he hasn’t done anything about it. Unless you want to expose your abilities to him, we need to find irrefutable evidence that they are here. It’s not normal Eye behavior, so angels won’t want to touch something like this anyway.” Etho said, leaping up to his platform and reaching down to help Bdubs up.
“We’ll get that evidence. We’ll get them away from the server Etho.”
Etho sighed and rested his head on Bdubs’s shoulder. “I just hope that that’s enough.”