There was something inside the Boatem Hole.
Objectively speaking, there were many things inside the Boatem Hole. Spare remnants and broken shards that signified far too many goats that met an unfortunate end. Bits of fur that looked suspiciously like fluffy alpaca scraped on the jagged edges down. Occasional bits of slime from where they had launched themselves through the crevice separating their makeshift farm and a deathly drop. Impulse spotted scraps of maroon cloth that looked a bit too much like Scar's enormous hat to only be a coincidence.
Breaking bedrock was a tedious task that often required a respawn after, if only for the irreparable state of Impulse's eardrums. Doc was perhaps the only hermit insane enough to bother with the task (not to mention Impulse doubted Doc even had eardrums). Shifting one block was not as simple as any casual build- it took hours to rearranging and mathematical calculation to establish the pattern necessary. It was a shell of layers, peeled back one chip at a time via explosions and obsidian. Gunpowder filled his nose, burning his sense of smell and the tingling touch receptors now void in his fingers. Explosions burned the air with a horrid smell of something melting despite no obvious source.
No sane person would ever willingly hop into the pit when Impulse was working, even Scar would stay away (although that didn't exactly mean much). Mumbo, with all his insatiable curiosity for redstone contraptions, swore off visiting the pit until it was safely finished and ironically much more lethal.
Impulse knew that Pearl had bid him her farewell before vanishing off in search of a new sand to quarry. Scar had mentioned offhand traveling East to visit the slowly growing Big-Eye commune. As far as Impulse knew, there shouldn't be anyone here.
But there was. Well, there was something. Watching him with longer sustained attention any mob had to give. Longer than the duration of any potion. Impossibly, against every bit of logical reasoning Impulse knew he had- something was watching him.
Yet…he could feel it with each slab of bedrock broken. Treating it with a bit more levity than it deserved, Impulse ignored it. He had a mission to complete, one that involved plenty of explosions and the monotonous tautology of arranging pistons and obsidian with care.
Five blocks, ten blocks. Fourteen blocks and he could feel the curiosity or unseen attention of something beyond his acuity. Hiding in the many crevices dotting the cliff of the Boatem Hole, Impulse knew it would be impossible to find anyone from here.
"Hello?" he asked, cupping his hands and shaking off bits of gunpowder from his fingers, "Cub? Are you guys trying to prank me here?"
In the distance, a sheep bleated from the surface. The gelatinous echoes of slime bounding about within their cavern echoed distortedly. Bedrock held the innate uncanny ability to swallow sound, filtering and absorbing each whisper like expensive enchantments carved into each shade of striated black. Impulse swallowed, feeling his throat shift and his heart thrum strongly near his neck.
"Man, of all times to not have an elytra," Impulse muttered, huffing slightly at the intense climb ahead of him eventually. "Maybe I should have gone End-busting…"
There was no company at the bottom of the hole. There were no guests, no hermits or curious silverfish darting below cobblestone.
'Maybe it's Tango pulling a prank,' Impulse wondered, smiling despite the slight paranoia. 'Eh, it's probably nothing!'
Yet…the break did draw attention to his dwindling supply of explosives and the increasing risk that came from the thin layer of rock between him and Void.
"Is this a good time to take a break?" he asked rhetorically, wiping his hands off on his trousers, he shed his diamond leggings earlier with how much squatting he needed to do under precariously placed trapdoors. "What time even is it?"
It was difficult to tell in the pit, sunlight filtered through only when directly overhead. He guessed someone would come visit him if it started to get late- maybe Pearl would send a vine-lowered barrel down with bread or steak. Mumbo undoubtedly would poke his head in when curiosity finally won out.
"Well, if you are up there," Impulse called out to the pit, squinting across the rocky outcroppings to try and spot the faint glimmer trails of invisibility potions, "you got me! I'll admit, I'm a bit spooked down here!"
'Nothing? Really?' Impulse thought, a bit baffled by the silence. He was certain someone had been watching him- he was used to it. Sometimes his antics and builds were rather fascinating to watch. He didn't mind the company, in fact, it almost made the time go quicker.
"I'll be heading out soon!" he shouted up the cliff, counting the number of explosives he still had. "If you could ah, casually forget some shulkers behind, or more explosives, I'd appreciate it! Bedrock doesn't break itself!"
The wind whispered, sliding between shattered edges of deepslate. There was no response, no sly giggle of a prank or unexpected waterbucket heading his way.
'Huh,' Impulse thought, tempted to fish out his communicator to toss a small message in chat. 'Did someone's cat fall in? Is it a trapped phantom somewhere?'
Four more shattered bits of bedrock, he finally carved something of a lopsided L in to the floor. The smell of sweat and molten rock and bedrock formed an acrid stench a tad too overpowering for Impulse's stomach. It was no wonder Etho avoided breaking bedrock at every chance, his hypersensitive sense of smell already gave him trouble.
"Ugh, I need a break," Impulse muttered, kicking his armoured boots against broken bits of tuff. The climb out of the pit to his slime cavern was tedious, but a welcome relief from the static burning bedrock and void often made.
The damp cavern was uncomfortable at worst, but in rare occasions a fresh moment of relief. If Impulse ignored the squishy sounds of oversized slime hopping about, the cool underground breeze felt nice on his sweaty back.
He stored a collection of baked potatoes (lovingly hurled at him by Mumbo Jumbo in a fit of manic spud-excitement) in one of the chests, carefully hidden over a layer of wool and chilled on packed ice. They were significantly better hot, but Impulse didn't have the taste for something warm with how overheated he felt.
"Whoo, I should have charged to do this," he complained, peeling bits of potato away from the wrapped spud. "What do you think, goober?"
The slime, now named goober, hopped around with a wet squelch. Impulse huffed, tossing tiny bits of potato like birdseed to the mindless mobs. They ate it like how Impulse imagined jellyfish ate- he didn't understand it and it became more disgusting the longer he pondered it.
Plucking his communicator, he flipped through a few of the different messages. Nothing had been sent to him directly, but a few messages had been sent in his hard work. Bdubs had requested food on his pilgrimage to carve a path across the continent. Mumbo had apparently heard his call and attempted to market his potato vending machines on the global message account. From the looks of things, his marketing campaign had spiked something of Etho's notorious shopping interest, which Iskall (his current base-roommate) was failing to stop.
It took only a few seconds to type out a hasty message to the general communication line they all used. Anyone by Boatem Hole?
Of course Ren would instantly assume he had tripped or gotten stuck somewhere in the bedrock chunks. It was that exact reason Impulse made sure to carry a heavy stack of Enderpearls for a hasty escape. He typed with one hand, finishing the remnants of the baked potato as quickly as he could. Im good i thought someone was by here earlier?
Impulse's smile started to falter as he realized the depth and ramifications of each incoming message. All members of the Boatem Community were absent, excluding Impulse. In fact, the closest location would be Keralis who was still quite a distance by land and then boat. It would take some time to get back, and from what Impulse knew Scar hadn't gotten an elytra yet.
By all the quick dismissive messages filtering in, nobody was in the area.
"I'm just getting paranoid," Impulse muttered, trying to shake off the lingering doubt. They were still new to this world, building their first starter base and making small tentative steps towards new designs. Some people had yet to settle completely, still flickering from one location to the next. Xisuma had promised that this world was safe. The admin only allowed the hermits to enter after he spent a solid week reinforcing the complex code and firewall protecting and simultaneously isolating this world from the server hub. For all others, they were completely hidden in a world of their own making, to colonise and claim until they ran their course and moved on to the next world.
Xisuma had said this world was completely uninhabited, difficult to find at first but perfect on his examination. It had been touched by the spreading update, already modified and requiring only small tweaks to be considered perfect for new habitation.
'Maybe that's what this is,' Impulse thought, gazing at the few slimes hopping about oblivious, 'is there a new mob here? Something we hadn't met yet since the update?'
It would make sense why others hadn't yet met it, Impulse was the only hermit to spend this long at such a low level. Down here, the occasional bedrock mist would lift in nostalgic memory of years ago when the fog had been pervasive and tangible. He was thrilled when that hadn't lasted.
"Well, that Boatem Hole isn't going to break itself," he decided, stretching his sore arms in front of him with a small crack through his shoulders. He fished around, finding his diamond boots and sliding them on, securing the buckles and checking the blast protections were still in place.
"Just five more pieces to go," he said, speaking out loud both to deter the uncomfortable silence and to remind him of the task at hand, "hopefully it shouldn't need anything more than the outer shelf to be taken off. Maybe ten more blasts then I'll call it for tonight-."
Impulse paused, his words dying in his mouth. He stared down the ledge into the bottom of the hole, surveying his worksite with a critical eye. His explosives hadn't been touched, the trapdoors and bits of chiseled deepslate still lay off to one side. The obsidian stacked itself in a pristine pile, ready to be placed and used.
The Boatem Hole stared at him with it's open eye, the Void gazing at him with indistinct shapes and cold gravity. The obsidian he placed was mysteriously gone, absent or perhaps it had fallen into the void itself.
More concerningly, the five blocks of bedrock he had yet to remove from the 3 by 3 square were no longer a consideration. In fact, both the plugged obsidian and the bedrock had vanished, leaving a perfect square of bottomless absence.
"How the…" Impulse trailed off, quickly calculating the area around the hole. The shelf hadn't been touched, his things were unmoved. He would have heard any explosions or the vibrations that came from conflicting with code. Even Doc, the only man capable of server-defying stunts would have needed to remove the outer shelf and hull of bedrock to establish enough space to place the reversed piston.
"That's not possible," he said, staring dumbly at the miracle. Unless Xisuma had appeared randomly and destroyed the foundations of the code itself- but Impulse would have heard Xisuma appear.
A part of Impulse wondered if it was a figment of his imagination. He had half a mind to grab a rock and throw it into the hole of the world. He knew logically that it was there, he had broken enough bedrock to recognize when it was real or fake. He simply didn't understand how it happened.
"Okay," Impulse said a little stressed, his voice tight and shaking towards the end, "apparently bedrock is glitching. That uh, that sure seems like a big problem."
'Although…now I don't need to mine it out,' Impulse thought, which was a bright side to such a horrifying thought like the world randomly falling apart.
Cleaning up the Boatem Hole didn't only include drilling through the bottom of the world. As the builder of their little community, he was the designated underground specialist since Scar was banned from stepping close to instant death, and Mumbo had a healthy phobia of the pit. Pearl was new to the server and their little family and was to be protected at all costs from a traumatic loss of everything.
Cleaning up the hole didn't mean clearing away the bedrock. It meant stealing one of Scar's jukeboxes, setting it up next to a collection of ladders and scaffolding and having a relaxing day chipping away at andesite and diorite speckling the rim of their lovely pit. The Boatem Hole deserved a beautiful drop into death, not one stuck with variated rocks with no pleasing aesthetics.
The collection of llamas along the rim of the hole watched him curiously, staying well enough away to not die. The poor goat suspended by a harness from the base of the Boatem Pole watched him dumbly, awaiting Doc to swoop in and rescue him eventually. The sun had barely risen, the heat of the day not yet at its peak. Overall, it was almost something to sing about.
Impulse felt the eyes watching him almost as quickly as he heard the scuffle. It came from below him, which was a concern since every other hermit was definitely above him.
He paused, setting his pickaxe and chisel safely on the nearest scaffolding. He peered over the edge, slowly pulling out his eyepiece to glance into the hole.
The rising sun cast shadows into the pit, obscuring any detail any further than a few meters. There was no way to see the bottom from this angle, let alone isolate the source of the odd scuffling sound. If Impulse had to guess, it sounded almost like scratching of claws on a hard surface. Had a chicken fallen into the pit?
"Hello?" he called into the hole, pulling the eyepiece away. He listened keenly, sighing after a short while. 'Well, I guess my little visitor isn't the talkative type.'
He could work with that. Whatever the mob was, it was the quiet silent type. Hopefully, it wasn't the explosive type like a creeper. Or the climbing type like a cave spider.
"Well, if you're going to watch me dig this all away," Impulse said into the void, beckoning one hand to the wall he was shaping into something much more pleasing to look at, "I guess I'll narrate what I'm doing! I'm sure things will seem a lot quicker with a bit of sound!"
The void did not answer him, but he hadn't expected it to. Scar's music kept him in a lovely mood, energetic despite his progress or the slow tiring effort of hauling stone away from the site. He discovered quickly that any bits of scrap he had could be tossed into the pit and swallowed by the void, an easier clean up than hauling it up and over the lip of the cliff.
He made decent progress, carving a wide cut into the earth on both side. He had descended maybe a quarter of the way when the sun was now starting to set.
"I'm done for the night," Impulse called into the pit, "I'll be leaving now, but I'll be back tomorrow to keep working. Thank you for keeping me company!"
He had no idea if the invisible entity watching him could understand his words, but Impulse had a good gut feeling about it. Something told him that his new guest knew just enough for it to be worth the conversation.
"Impulse!" Scar shouted, waving him down from the balcony of his swagin'-wagon. The man's large hat toppled, nearly being swept away to flutter the considerable drop to the ground below. The man hurriedly grabbed it, slamming it down on his head with both hands.
Impulse waved back, patiently stopping his walk towards the Boatem Hole. Scar shouted something else before vanishing inside his house, presumably to hurry down the ladders indoor.
Impulse settled himself on the lip of the Boatem hole, placing his tools and bits of food to keep him going for the day. He doubted he would be able to hear the jukebox from halfway down the hole, although hopefully he could rig something to work inside the slime farm so he had music for the bottom portion.
"There you are!" Scar shouted, clumsily running over the path from his small starter wagon to the pit itself. He waved with one hand, nearly knocking his hat off of his head once more.
"Careful there!" Impulse shouted, nervous to have the man so close to the edge, "I got the bedrock removed."
"Already?" Scar asked, inching towards the hole with visible awe and terror, "oh boy…so If I fall in…all my stuff is gone?"
"Yep, completely gone," Impulse said with a small nervous laugh, "so uh, let's not do that?"
"Yeah, let's not do that," Scar agreed a bit too quickly. "What was with the creepy spooky ghost here the other day?"
"The spooky ghost?"
"Yeah, who was it that pulled a prank on you?" Scar asked, cocking his head. His hat started to slip, but he caught it and righted it so quickly it seemed choreographed. "Also, can I chuck like…an apple in there?"
"It wasn't anyone, and sure?"
Scar pulled an apple from behind his back and with a great deal of enthusiasm, hurled it directly into the pit. They watched it spin and tumble out of sight, plummeting straight down into the depths below. Scar huffed, deflating some at the lackluster reaction.
"Aww," Scar whined quietly, "I wanted to watch it go splat."
"Throw in another one?" Impulse asked, wondering if he had an apple somewhere in his collection of items nearby.
"Yeah but…I was going to eat that one."
Impulse snorted, trying not to laugh too much at the antics of his friend. Scar pouted, sneaking the slightest bit closer to the edge of the hole once more. Impulse readied himself, prepared to grab Scar at the slightest stumble into the hole.
"So…we have a creepy Boatem Golem?" Scar asked, craning his neck to look over the edge.
"What? No-."
"Uh, you should probably look at that then," Scar said, pointing into the cliff.
Impulse did so, leaning over carefully with one hand braced on the nearby scaffolding. He scoured the edges of his last progress and saw the immediate change for what it was.
Gouges had been carved against the wall, descending downwards in heavy arced strokes. Bit of rocks had been removed, torn away from the edge like the marks of an enormous pickaxe or the shredded edges of Jellie's scratching post. The bits of stone that had been clawed free sat in a clumsy pile near the tools Impulse had left the day before. This time, each tool was carefully placed next to each other with equal space.
"So uh," Scar asked awkwardly, "did you grow like, really big claws or is there something you're not telling me?"
Impulse gawked at the clawed portion of stone removed simply overnight. He scratched his head, trying to fathom the size of a creature capable of doing such a thing, and the time required to do so. He said solemnly but also a little hysterical, "I guess we do have a golem."
The two stared into the empty pit. Temptation stirred, driving them closer to the edge as simultaneously, an act of caprice compelled them to hurl bits of food and objects into the void. It wasn't smart, but it was oddly satisfying. Bits of steak and bread plummeted into the foggy depths. A spare set of shears, loosened from overuse. Scar tossed a golden apple into the void before squabbling a mere half-second after as he realized what he had done.
"Aw, my apple," he moaned quietly, staring wistfully into the pit. "Why does the Boatem-Golem get to eat better than me?"
"I don't think I even have any food left," Impulse admitted, checking his pockets quickly. He had half of a golden carrot trapped along the edge of his pocket, spared from its demise. "At least it won't be hungry."
Scar gasped, eyes alighting in sudden genius thought. He turned to look at Impulse, his sly smile stretching so far it gave the impression of someone manic. Quietly, Scar asked under his breath: "what…what if we…could ride it."
"Ride…the pit-monster?"
"It would be so cool," Scar whispered, gazing into the depths longingly, "Bdubs would be so jealous with his stupid horse. We would be cruising in style."
Impulse snorted at the thought. With Scar's luck, the mob would end up being twice as aggressive as a wither with half the patience of a Drowned. He patted Scar's back gently (mindful of how a heavy thump could toss the man into the hole), shaking his head with mirth. "Good luck on that one, buddy. I've got some walls to carve out still."
"Aww, bye pit-monster," Scar said, waving at the empty hole with sad eyes. "I'll come feed you tomorrow! We'll be friends- oh, what if it likes cakes?"
"Better go find some eggs then," Impulse teased, sending the taller man off in a mad scramble to hunt down some wayward poultry. Chuckling, Impulse waved him off, spotting Pearl on top of her house working with some unruly shingles. A wave in her direction signified his entrance into the pit, and a potential rescue in the making if he lost his balance.
The scaffolding wasn't wet or slippery until a certain point. Luckily, his work for the day was well above that threshold and wasn't a concern. His tools had been arranged parallel to one another, staggered just enough so the blades of his Silk-Touch pickaxe and regular pickaxe didn't touch. It was rather considerate, and something precisely done. The torches were a little lopsided, and the buckets of water were at a significantly lower volume than the day before, but it was still rather nice.
"Thank you, pit monster," Impulse called into the ominous depths, waving at all edges of the cliff. Hopefully the unseen beast would hear him, or was watching him from somewhere in the crevice.
It was…oddly nice. The company drove off some of the boredom, and for unknown reasons significantly fewer mobs stumbled in. Impulse had prepared himself to fight off a few skeletons, maybe even an ambitious creeper falling from above. Yet, as the hours stretched on, he saw no mobs or things beyond falling bits of rubble and the occasional scratch of something just out of sight.
Keeping a monologue wasn't as hard as he expected. He was quite a talker, although normally he was talking to someone. Babbling about a patch of diorite came second nature to him. Complaining about unforeseen gaps where he expected smooth rock was barely a thought. By the time he accidentally struck a patch of redstone towards the bottom of the crevice, his throat had turned sore.
"Ah-hah," he crowed, alternating his pickaxes to chisel away at the red powder. Ideally he'd have a mask of some sort, although Mumbo never wore one and seemed perfectly sane after years of dealing with the glittering material. Redstone fluttered around finer than sand, caking his hands as he sorted it into a small pile. Fishing out his shovel, it took a bit of effort to scoop it into one of the many bags he brought with.
"You never know when you need redstone," Impulse told the cavern cheerfully, "I have a good mustached friend who would appreciate this! You know, I can wire up some systems and know how to use it, but I'm not that much of a redstone user…hmm, maybe I should consider putting some doors down here…"
He babbled away, chiseling through the vein until he could see no more from this point under the gentle glow of his torch. He knew there would be more in the area if he took the time to chisel out the rock, but he hadn't anticipating a solid mining expenditure.
"It's a nice find," he explained to his watching audience, "but I'm just trying to pretty up the Boatem hole! Maybe later I'll expand and make a mine out of this, but for now I'm just trying to neaten it! Scar is the man you want to talk to about mountains, oh he can work miracles with rock, and Pearl has one heck of a colour palette!"
He continued to work, finally stepping into the exhausting process of climbing up the scaffolding ladder to cut bits of chiseled slabs and stairs to alternate the edge of the crevice. Then, he hauled it downwards into the void on his shoulder, one hunk of rock at a time. It was much more difficult than simply mining away. It was a universal mystery how Scar was so thin and wiry with the amount of manual labour he did recreationally.
"Well!" Impulse called out, slotting his last slab into place for the day. He had a tedious amount of work ahead of him, multiple days maybe a week of work before the hole would be a perfect monument to instant death. "I'll be off now! Thanks for keeping me company, little fella'!"
"Well," Mumbo Jumbo said, precariously perched on a bit of deepslate with his elytra wings spread for balance. He stroked his mustache, squinting at the conundrum below them just adjacent to the bedrock floor. "I see the problem now."
"Yeah," Impulse said, stretching the word out slowly. "So uh, what do we do with this?"
"Well, use it I reckon," Mumbo said, voice shifting a bit higher as he gazed at the heap of redstone. It wasn't the most either man had seen before, but it was a hefty amount to appear (quite literally) overnight. When Impulse found it the following morning, he had needed to sit down quite quickly to think through his life decisions.
"...Would it be considered rude to not use it?" Mumbo asked, squeaking nervously. His elytra fluttered as he peered over his shoulder, clearly unsettled by the heavy weight of the omnipresent watching. "Like, uh…would it- would it get…offended?"
"Hm? Oh, probably not," Impulse told him with a grin, "I mean, it's been keeping the mobs away. It carved out a good chunk of the wall too, saved me a whole day of work!"
"It can break rock?" Mumbo asked, squawking at the thought. He blinked quickly, visibly frazzled by unavoidable proof of something intelligent living in their community pit. "So uh…It just…mined out redstone for us? No strings attached?"
"We have a nice pit monster," Impulse summarized pleasantly, contemplating how many bags and trips it would take to haul their cargo to the surface. "Hmm…we should name it. How do you like the name Sparky?"
Mumbo laughed, the sound spilling out of him in a rush. Baffled, the man stuttered: "isn't that uh, a name for a dog?"
"You're right, our pit monster gets a better name," Impulse agreed.
Mumbo settled on his heels, adjusting into a much more comfortable sprawl. He swung his legs, mindful not to lose a boot into the void. The sound of slimes above them squelched a rhythmic background sound, almost comedic to their current crisis.
"Does it, uh…" Mumbo trailed off, craning his neck to peer all around the pit with flickering eyes, "...just…watch you all day?"
"Yep, doesn't really talk or anything," Impulse told him. He pulled out a pair of shovels, pointedly placing one on the ground for the mustached man. Mumbo paled and pointed to the close proximity the redstone shared with the void, choking out his refusal.
Impulse rolled his eyes and got to work, sorting the mound into smaller bits which slotted into little pouches. Mumbo kept commentary, talking about his new adventures into automated potato vending. He had visited the furthest point of their island, meeting with Iskall and Etho on their shattered savannah and nearly died twice getting to where they were building a home.
"It's a dangerous place!" Mumbo told him, "I swear those two don't have a spare torch between them. They live above a mob of- well, mobs. You know what I mean."
"I bet they're so jealous of our pit monster," Impulse laughed, tying off yet another bag of redstone. "I bet it'll start clearing out phantoms too!"
"Wouldn't that be a sight," Mumbo agreed, still glancing around the rock formations, "sure is a, ah…spectator. No! A spec-tater!"
Impulse groaned at the potato pun, ignoring the obvious delight of the other man. He scowled playfully, shouting in good jest, "you're just excited to finally find a use for that joke!"
"I didn't honestly think I could use it in a sentence!"
"You're a little stinker," Impulse told him jokingly, going so far as to stick out his tongue. "Don't upset our friend here with all your potato nonsense!"
"My nonsense- what- I-," the man spluttered, fumbling to form any sort of words.
With the last bag of redstone tied, the two men awkwardly struggled to connect it to a spare lead. Fashioning the weight shared between the two of them with a severely questionable knot, they hurried to haul themselves up the climb.
"Maybe we should have done this in trips," Impulse wheezed. He felt his joints strain under the weight of a good hundred tiny sacks of redstone dangling below them. Mumbo laughed, sweat plastering his hair onto his scalp.
"Yeah, I guess I could have figured out a better system," Mumbo agreed, although made no efforts to actually construct said system.
"I hope you're having fun, pit monster!" Impulse called into their cliff, ignoring the way Mumbo spluttered on an exhausted laugh. "I hope this is really living up to your expectations here!"
"Expect- tater- tions!" Mumbo shouted with a laugh, nearly sending Impulse down the scaffolding with how difficult it was to withhold a laugh.
It wasn't that funny of a joke, but both men were tired from hauling so many objects from bedrock to the surface. The breeze of fresh air felt clean and crisp on their sweaty skin, slightly itchy from small specs of redstone. A nearby llama, still attached to a post curtesy of Pearl, bleated at them in surprise.
"Oh, that was a workout," Mumbo panted, bracing his hands on his knees. He took a moment to strip off his suit jacket, revealing the drenched white undershirt and loosened tie, "couldn't our friend have piled all this up a little higher?"
"Aw, but that would take away all the fun bonding we had," Impulse teased, collapsing to lay spread eagle on the grass. He giggled as Mumbo scowled at him.
Mumbo stumbled to the nearby chest, courtesy of Pearl at some point during the day, and fished around. With a triumphant noise, he snatched two bottles of water still cold from the slab of ice carved to nestle inside.
"Here you go," Mumbo said, offering a bottle. Impulse accepted it, pausing to click his bottle against Mumbo's in a silent cheers before popping the cork. It was refreshing on his overheated body, he hadn't noticed how dehydrated he was until now.
"You know, that would have taken hours to mine," Mumbo admitted, pondering their haul. "Especially without fortune enchantment."
"I heard Keralis has books for sale, but they're expensive like always," Impulse told him, chugging down the remains of his water. Gesturing towards the chest, he asked: "is there anything else in there?"
"Some food, more water," Mumbo told him, making no effort to get up as Impulse dragged himself to the chest. Opening it, he was delighted to see the great deal of food and refreshments available. Although there weren't any golden apples or golden carrots, he did grab a loaf of freshly baked bread.
Mumbo made a noise of appreciation as Impulse passed a hunk over, nibbling on the crust immediately. It was well done, grainy with oats and specs of wheat still within the crust. Pearl was shaping up to be an excellent neighbour.
"Oh, right," Mumbo said after a moment of silence. He tore off a bit of bread, chucking it into the pit. With a small laugh, he shouted: "thank you pit monster!"
"I wanna' name it," Impulse pouted, tearing off a significantly larger chunk of his half. He had plenty of food at home, and the pit monster deserved it after all its help. "Let's see…it doesn't really talk much. And just kinda watches."
"It's not actually that bad, honestly," Mumbo agreed. "I mean, it takes a bit to ignore the uh, constant feeling like someone is staring at you."
"It's part of the charm," Impulse agreed, "hmm, seems too smart for Boatem Golem."
"Love the rhyming," Mumbo said, trying not to grin. "What about…uh, I can't think of anything. Calling it 'looker' sounds too much like Keralis' old shop."
"Looky-Looky-at-my-Booky?" Impulse guessed, noticing the problem, "plus that isn't much of a name. And if you call it 'Watch' it might make Bdubs go insane thinking we're talking about clocks."
"Fair point," Mumbo agreed, sipping on the last bit of his water. He hummed, staring up at the sky and the gorgeous colours of pink and orange appearing in the dawning sunset. "How about Scout? That's something people name dogs, yeah?"
"Scout?" Impulse asked, testing it on his tongue. It didn't instantly make him think of a strange word, and it did seem like a name someone would give a pet. He didn't mind it.
"Yeah, not the dumbest thing?" Mumbo said, although the phrasing turned it into a question.
"I like it," Impulse assured him, holding the hunk of bread he had dedicated to the pit, "here you go, Scout! Thanks for the help!"
Inside the Boatem Hole, something with claws and feathers and appendages that were once wings now forgotten, clutched bits of carrot and bread and a single shining golden apple.
It cocked its head, soft feathers brushing tentatively over its gilded surface, caressing each defect with a gentle touch no mob could ever imitate. Silent, except the accursed scratching of its claws along the cavern stone, it listened and watched the two humans chatter on top of the crevice.
It had been… long since there were humans. Time moves differently in the void, memories are harder to construct and form- encode, organize and allocate to appropriate areas of recollection. It knew conceptually what humans were, what players were, but it had been too long. He knew the basic attributes- two arms, two legs, no wings- but couldn't recall how they all slotted together. How did they function? How did they move and speak and build things so creatively?
The humans talked, throwing bits and things into the passage they called Boatem Hole. Curiosity (It shouldn't have curiosity, yet It did. It shouldn't interact, but It had been alone for so long- ) compelled It to snatch each dropped thing, collecting tokens in a pile of makeshift odds and ends. The humans spoke to It, gentle and curious. They kept It company, called It a friend. It didn't understand, but something beyond walls and walls of frosted glass and impermeable fog whispered pained and haunted behind It's eyes with a voice that hurt to dwell on, don't you remember this?