There leapt a creature downwards, silent under a spread of feathers larger than an elytra and broader than any cape. In the reddish embers of the dying torch's light, Etho watched in wordless awe at the disgusting thing the hue of burst plums, the speckling sickness of a bruise on pale skin, the ill fated colour of a nether rose wilting after its time. It lunged itself more than it flew, gliding on partially opened appendages fused together with feathers and flesh at the elbow like it forgot how to fly and forgot how to crawl.
In three days, the contraption was built. Donations were provided heartily, Scar going so far as to bring shulkers of materials- some helpful and some consisting of random objects. Supplying them with shulkers of baked potatoes and chocolate, the occupants of Boatem kept the redstoners happily fed.
Pearl dropped by nervously on occasion, fretting over the state of their nervous bird. Apparently the creature had barely budged, staying high and hidden on the tiny silken shelf it had created. It did move, apparently adjusting and exploring the cave late at night, holding true to their theory that it felt comfortable in the dark. If Scout hadn't despawned at this point, there was a chance it was immune to sunlight damage. The first test could only be conducted once it was in a safe sterile container (blueprints provided happily by Zedalph) for medical treatment. The mad scientist himself confessed that running tests on Scout was beyond his comfort zone, since his experiments tended to verge more on curiosity and weren't necessarily productive at the end of the day. Etho and Doc combined had more knowledge of early mob experimentation than some servers had with all their occupants combined.
Now, the only thing left was to lure the creature down via old classic curiosity, and slowly trick it into its new home. Some were excited, some were nervous and fretting so badly they buried themselves in unimportant builds to bide their time. Bdubs on the other hand, fluctuated between rage and dread over the potential outcomes their new feathered friend had.
"Please don't have mites," Bdubs muttered, pacing back and forth. His normal anxiety had blossomed into a dangerous sort of terror brought by their requested meeting at night. The moss-lover hated phantoms, and hated being outside of his comfortable bedroom past dusk.
"If this goes well, we'll have one birdy in this box by sunrise," Tango stated, patting one mossy shoulder, "relax, Bdubs!"
"You try relaxing!" Bdubs shouting, gnawing on his hoodie tassels angrily.
Doc chuckled, settling himself on the main control panel. They had to build the machine and container so quickly, there was no time for spatial reasoning where exactly knobs and levers should go. That led to the classic problem of 'wow-everything-is-right-here-isn't-is?'. The previous record with the Boomers indicated both Tango and Bdubs were not to be trusted with a highly delicate control panel. Any other day, Etho would have happily taken a stand at the operating table, but today he was required for bait.
Etho had been seen by Scout before, or smelled by him depending on how exactly Scout navigated in the dark. Scout would hopefully recognize Etho, and with how the creature had slowly been exploring, would hopefully follow the man if he acted just odd enough to pique its curiosity.
Thankfully, Etho had a natural talent for being generally odd. Sitting in a large underground cavern with a blindfold on wasn't the weirdest thing he had done in the past week, although it was up there. Scout had no knowledge (hopefully) that Etho's eye was anything more than an unusual color. As far as it should know, Etho was completely blind with cloth wrapped over his vision. Even Doc would struggle to see through the material with his synthetic eye, not nearly as adaptive as Etho's. The ninja-hermit wasn't normally so easily swayed to using his biomechanical prosthesis, since extended use could potentially damage it and there was no replacement on hand unlike Doc's easy repair.
"Aw, don't worry about little old me," Etho teased them, waving them off with the thick black scarf Pearl had provided to be his makeshift blindfold, "I don't mind, honest."
"You better not mess up that eye of yours!" Bdubs fumed, face puffing and flushing a low red from the intensity of his worry, "I mean it this time! No funny business in there!"
"Aw, but I was thinking Scout may be a real champ at knots-and-crosses," Etho teased, winking dramatically just to rile his friend up even more.
"If you think it is a threat, bail out, my dude," Doc warned him, chuckling heartily at Etho's antics, "I don't know what that thing is in there, which is weird."
"Look at Doc," Beef said, clicking his tongue in mock disappointment, "one glimpse at something breaking the rules of physics and he gets all flustered."
"Now you know how we feel!" Bdubs hollered, eyes bright and excited. "Oh! But Xisuma said not to do anything he wouldn't do, Etho!"
"What, me? Oh I'd never."
"I don't think Etho knows how to be safe on a good day," Doc chuckled, patting Etho heavily on one shoulder. With one last lingering look and multiple wishes for good luck, the group waved and slowly left FiFi's cave with reluctance. The sound of pistons and grinding redstone contraptions set into place, sliding and slotting to secure the front entrance shut just as intended.
Before long, Etho found himself in the quiet echoing chamber of FiFi's lair, settled with his only company being a handful of torches, a single soul lanturn, and a good deal of wood with his favourite tiny carving knife. He had left most of his armour behind- since he decided to forgo wings this season, he found himself with a lot of time on his hands and smaller projects in the making. It turned out attempting to carve bunny rabbits and beavers was a wonderful way to work off some nervous energy.
Just because Etho had plenty of time and insatiable boredom, it didn't exactly mean he was good at carving. It was something to keep his hands busy, an interesting little bit of action that reminded him to work on his knife skills he once prided himself on. Maybe he should take up ice carving, it would be a good use of his faulty pickaxe.
Time drifted on, slow and leisurely. Etho found himself waiting patiently for the creature above to stir if only slightly, or perhaps it already had and was waiting for Etho to make a move. It didn't matter to him, Etho knew the plan by heart and was ready to tie the thick scarf over his face and obscure his sight. All he needed was for the great creature to show the slightest bit of interest, or awareness for Etho's presence.
Perhaps it took hours or some time more than that. Etho was seriously considering the benefits of taking a nap when he heard the faintest soft scratch, a noise that echoed like the scurrying paws of mice somewhere just on the periphery of his hearing. He knew that there were no mice in here- Bdubs had been careful to seal off and insulate the cave since he had intentions of making it into a storage. That soft noise meant only one thing: Scout had woken up and was taking note of him.
'Well, at least my last torch is coming to its end,' Etho thought, shifting to stand casually. At once, he felt a surge of anxiety, nervous tension grasping his heart and coaxing it into a faster hummingbird beat. He gasped quietly, the sudden rush of adrenaline tilting the world and hazing his vision with instinctual panic and paranoia. Hysteria bubbled before he could quell it, tighten his careful control on the unnecessary feelings and choke it into submission.
'You're fine,' Etho thought to himself, his hands shaking with small tremors as he lodged his last torch into a rock outcropping to stand at the base of a small outcropping. 'Stop panicking!'
Did Scout have some sort of effect? An ability that plays on other's emotions so easily? It would explain why the other mobs stayed clear of it- there should be plenty of zombies and skeletons spawning in such a dark cavern but Etho heard only his rapid heart and soft breathing. Scout was awake, he knew that, but he refused to address the creature so openly.
Etho stepped a few paces away from the torch, glowing dimly in its last dredges of light. The man fumbled with the scarf wrapping it around his head securely to completely blind him of the world around. He waited, breaking through his mouth as his nose was partially compressed under the dark fabric. He waited, struggling to hear through the cloth barrier that dulled his senses.
He settled, waiting in the damp dark. There was something watching him, peering into his soul and body, analyzing every layer of his code with unknown intentions. Was it an admin? Did it have the ability to somehow pull and pluck apart the fabric of Etho himself to warp him beyond recognition?
'Calm down,' Etho thought under the strange animal terror, swallowing thickly. 'Listen, did you hear it move?'
Etho waited until he was certain that something had changed, and then he waited even longer. The raw panic surged to a new level, dangerously close to drowning him. Etho waited. Then, when he could wait no longer, he opened his eyes.
There leapt a creature downwards, silent under a spread of feathers larger than an elytra and broader than any cape. In the reddish embers of the dying torch's light, Etho stared in wordless awe at the disgusting thing the hue of bruised plums, the speckling sickness of a bruise on pale skin, the ill fated colour of a nether rose wilting after its time. It lunged itself more than it flew, gliding on partially opened appendages fused together at the elbow like it forgot how to fly and forgot how to crawl.
It drew closer, landing clumsily yet quietly. If one of Etho's chickens had demonstrated a similar collapse, he would have taken it immediately to Stress for a thorough examination. He would have suspected a broken bone, a concussion or the bird equivalent.
'They were right over in Boatem,' Etho thought as his heart raced in his throat. 'Scout isn't well.'
This close to something undeniably dangerous gave Etho a rush of hypervigilance. He was suddenly aware of every sensation: the pebble under his rear, the scratchiness of his trousers where he forgot to wash away clay, the ache in his head from working too long into the recent nights.
He had an opportunity here, one he knew he couldn't afford to ignore. Impulse had obtained a single feather from the creature. Mumbo had noticed one deep gouge in the lid of a chest. Scar had touched the thing, blind and only for a fraction of a moment with spread fingers.
Etho had more than that, already he could scour the creature's confusing proportions with his eye. The reddish haze saw more than colours, it filtered his mind with snippets of bastardized code an admin would scoff to see. He wasn't Xisuma, but he didn't need any sort of command to see more than just the visual world. He saw the fluctuations in heat and light, where small crescents of iridescent invisible lines painted themselves with an ultraviolet pen. The overworld didn't use ultraviolet often, only in flowers to lure insects in- was Scout truly some sort of spider abomination?
'No, ultraviolet is in the End as well,' Etho recalled hastily, counting more than a dozen crescent moons in faint pastel lines across the creature's exposed sickly flesh and between oddly matted feathers. Elytra originated in the barren dimension, absent with exception to the great leathery wings of the Ender Dragon herself. Was Scout a parallel to her? A king of a different dimension, separated and trapped below the dirt?
No, being trapped below ground couldn't explain the other abnormalities. The idiosyncratic in how Scout moved as it slowly awkwardly forced itself around Etho, drifting into the lost visual field of his normal unmodified eye. Enormous feathers or the remnants of what once were dragged across the dirt and gravel, fractured vanes and center shaft dragged and caught like an unraveling coil on linen cloth.
Oh Notch, it appeared in his periphery slowly circling around his backside before emerging in the corner of his sight. Etho dared not move and alert it, but he watched with increasing worry as the ambling creature dragged itself with soft scrapes on the ground. Its front limbs looked like they may have once been human. The joints were placed approximately in the proper places, lacking the distinct bony prominences and rotations to be comfortably normal. Scout's elbow, craned backwards as if he were using his arms to carry something flush to his chest and hands, were fused to the first joint of a ratty wing. The gap between the joints clumped with dirt, running parallel between its humerus and the first thick bone of the wing before the two combined like a horrific failed experiment. There was no purpose to it, no reason or benefit.
'Can it even move properly?' Etho wondered, disgust twisting as he noticed the true extent of its odd fusion- it could no longer reach its arms in front of it beyond the simple open and closure of its elbow lest it pull on the movement of its primary wing. Conversely, the first pair of wings could no longer fold or close and looked affixed in a partially open stance that collected dirt and only hurt it.
'This can't be normal,' Etho thought, knowing that Scout was in no way a mob or at least not one made with a merciful hand, 'it's not simply sick. This thing needs Xisuma.'
Etho had been determined to coax the creature into their trap, but now a horrible urgency cleared his mind of all distraction. Scout waddled oddly, twisting its head back and forth in a way that would be painful on a human neck, perhaps it was painful for it.
Etho didn't know if the thing could see. In the darkness, he could barely discern the edges of feathers along what should have been its skull. Perhap it used echolocation, but that wouldn't correlate to its obvious preferences for red wool.
'Slowly, Etho,' he thought to himself with a careful exhale, 'just move a little.'
Scout startled, rearing on its hind limbs like Bdub's horse ( Amore, Etho remembered distantly). The movement wasn't natural, it looked a bit like an armadillo attempting to turn around quickly but lacking the anatomical flexibility to do so. Scout had hind legs of some sort, hidden below a stunted asymmetrical flare of yet another pair of wings anchored somewhere by its lower back. Etho couldn't figure out how many wings the creature had, it was feathers and fluff and confusing limbs.
Etho waited a few seconds, tilted his head to pretend he was listening for Scout's silent movements, and shifted himself further back. The creature did not move, freezing itself in its precariously balanced slanted pose.
Etho watched it with one eye, careful to avoid it's head in case it did have some form of unique vision, and scooted himself closer to the exit.
He licked his lips, his mouth dry as once more he pretended to look around and listen for the movements of the thing in front of him. He asked with an unexpectedly raspy voice, "hello? Is anything there?"
'Yeah, the giant eldritch monstrosity in front of you,' he thought to himself. Reaching around to trace the ground with his fingers, using it to guide his path.
If Etho were actually blind, he would need to use his hands to guide his path from wayward rocks and gravel. He could easily see the differences in texture and heat still glowing bright in his vision from the remaining coals of his dead torches. They scattered like breadcrumbs, etching a path towards the entrance of FiFi's lair.
Scout moved silently beyond the soft brushing of feathers scraping the ground. Etho's shaky hands easily overshadowed the sounds- Scout freezing in place when Etho stopped moving or made a physical movement to listen. Etho turned his back to the creature as every instinct demanded he turn around. He shakily stretched one foot in front of him, scraping it against the ground as he shuffled towards the exit.
Scout followed him, watching him intently. Etho still couldn't figure how the unnerving paralyzing sensation of being watched worked when the creature had no obvious eyes. It followed him curiously, watching his every step as slowly Etho traveled the distance to the cave. It felt long and painful, anxiety thumping under his sin in a way he wasn't accustomed to. He stepped forward, he wondered if Scout would take his momentary weakness to pounce and kill him quickly, he stepped forward, he wondered if Scout would grab his ankles and drag him somewhere far below the cave where he wouldn't die but clearly would wish he had.
'Keep going, Etho,' he coaxed himself, feeling sweat absorb into the scarf Pearl had knit so carefully, 'you're almost there.'
Scout shuffled on his side, brushing over a small rock. The piece of diorite clattered, sliding down a tiny ledge where it clacked and banged off other bits of stone with a catastrophic orchestra of sudden noise. Etho flinched, twirling around to face the noise instinctively. Scout shied away from it, balancing on long distorted fingers not quite birdlike but not human either.
"Hello?" Etho croaked raspily, his hands shaking and sweat cooling his nervous body. He knew Scout was watching him, surely Scout had caught on at this point?
Etho turned around once more, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment to gather his courage before he shuffled one step further. 'One step at a time, just one more.'
He was going to go home after this and take all of Iskall's diamonds. Hell, he was going to take all of Keralis' diamonds and spend every last one. He'd buy crates full of ladders with no intent to ever use them. He was going to buy so many flowers they'd have a bee infestation soon.
How had Scar touched the thing? Etho felt like he'd pass out if he stepped one bit closer to the thing. There were eyes watching him, unraveling every bit of his identity and carving out things Etho defined himself by. Each minute under the heavy eyes left him feeling lacking and insignificant, miserable under such expectations as the passion bled from him worse than any wound.
He shuffled and finally the edge of his metal reinforced sandals tapped the granite wall trapping him within the cave. He reached out, exhaling a hitching breath as he traced the wall for all its intricacies; feeling the chisel marks from diamond tools that carved the rock from its home.
"Okay," Etho spoke, unable to bear the silence any longer. His voice echoed despite how soft it was, merely a whisper, "this…this is blocking the entrance."
Scout was beside him or behind him. Etho couldn't figure out where exactly the thing was, but he knew it was there. Looming over his shoulder, watching each movement with the interest of a viewer separate from action.
'Well, not any longer,' Etho thought, hands scrabbling across the rock. To anyone else, it would look like his desperate attempt to find an invisible exit in the dark. He looked, eye piercing the shadows and recognizing the microscopic flickers of garnet gemstone. The hues of ruby and ochre dancing in that which was redstone.
Etho shifted into position, pressed his entire palm against the stone button camouflage into the rock face, and compressed himself flush to the cold stone. A repeater clicked, a circuit connected, and the stampede of a hundred pistons firing simultaneously deafened his sensitive ears.
Scout reacted clumsily with panic, scrabbling loud and hastily over rock as pistons erupted in a perfect perimeter around them. The rock Etho pressed himself into recession just large enough for his body to slip through, escaping to fresh air and open sunlight.
It felt overwhelming, suffocating paradoxically in the fresh air. Etho tore the blindfold from his face, blinking with one bloodshot crying eye as his head ached with sudden photophobia.
"Ladders!" Bdubs howled, launching himself towards the taller man frantically, "oh are you okay? Oh what am I saying, of course you aren't? Come on Etho- speak to me!"
"Dude, chill out," Doc argued, flipping a lever to automate the system before he approached Etho a bit quicker than his normal walking speed. He hastily scoured Etho's body for any open wounds or (more likely) any hidden bleeding injuries. Etho had a reputation to protect, which was taking a big hit with how he felt absolutely terrified.
"I'm fine," he wheezed, clasping one fist to his chest where his heart was racing frantically, "just…must have a- a mob effect."
"You need a potion? We got potions!" Bdubs shouted, jerking away to scramble through a barrel set aside for emergency first aid. "What do you need? Health? I can get you health!"
"He's fine, man," Doc reassured the builder. He patted Etho down, checking Etho's hands for some unknown reason, "your pulse is fast. You okay?"
"Yeah," Etho wheezed, rubbing one fist into his watering crying implanted eye. "It's in the perimeter for sure, I don't think it's a mob."
"Not a mob?" Tango asked, approaching from where he had been overseeing the careful depositing of gravel for their curtain to help block light from the many sea lanterns inside the containment zone. A wall for gravel separated them from the tinted glass which hopefully would allow them to see inside without distressing it too much. All they needed was to get prepared, settle down, and drop the final barrier.
"Yeah, it's something…different," Etho said, finally feeling a bit more sure of himself. Tango watched him, a small frown warping his face into an expression of confusion.
"A glitch?" Doc guessed, knowing more about bugs and glitches than most.
Etho shook his head, running one hand through his hair hastily. His skin prickled, feeling weird in his body. "No, it's…I don't think…I don't know what it is."
"That bad, huh?" Tango asked, glancing at the wall of gravel nervously. "Should I call X right now?"
Normally, Etho would shrug off the worry. He didn't like Xisuma getting too close with his projects and testing, partially from their differences in ethics and Etho's tendency to cause unneeded Hermit-death and redstone monstrosities. With Doc at his side, he had felt competent and capable to face any sort of server-based weirdness.
This though, felt far out of his area of comfort.
"Yeah," Etho said after a lengthy pause. He felt the concerned gaze of his fellow hermits on him, not nearly as overwhelming as the sightless watching force of the entity contained in glass, gravel, and light. Etho said meekly, "call Xisuma."
Doc shuddered, something icy and clinical overtaking his expression. The creeper hybrid nodded jerkily, fishing out his communicator before entering a longer sequence for off-server calls, presumably to contact his hivemind. The joking nervous humour of Bdubs altered into something much more serious, watching Etho with a heavy look.
Tango cursed quietly, fumbling through his buttons to presumably send the server alarm and announcement for the admin to pop by as soon as possible.
"What do you think it is?" Bdubs asked Etho, all laughter gone.
"I…I don't know," Etho confessed, and that scared him. "It's too complex for a mob, it reminds me of a player but it…clearly isn't. "
"You think this place is corrupted?" Tango asked, red eyes flickering to the gravel curtain, "think maybe a player's code got duplicated somehow and glitched out?"
"No, that rarely ever happens and they aren't sentient then," Etho told him. Such an occurrence had been often in his early years, well before Tango ever came along. Thankfully, errors like those were more myth than reality at this point.
"So what then?" Doc asked him, hurriedly flicking both hands and all his fingers to frantically type into his open communicator, "a corrupt code?"
'It may be a corrupted player,' Etho thought, but knew better than to voice the worst case scenario, 'if so, there may be nothing left we can do.'
"Xisuma said he's on his way," Tango reported dutifully from his communicator, gaze flicking between them and the wall of gravel, "just a head's up. Pearl said she was already en-route before we sent the warning. You know how Pearl is…"
"Insatiable," Bdubs growled, trying to hide his worry. Pearl was a recent addition to their family. She was bold, brave, and determined. Her gentle heart and trickster antics disguised her rarely seen harsh side to her personality, where she acted firm and took role as the leader they hadn't known was necessary. Pearl potentially was the best of the Boatem crew to show up if things turned for the worst, but it wasn't a fun idea.
"What if we get this over with before she arrives?" Etho asked, not having much personal experience with the woman. "Let's drop the gravel and get an idea."
"Xisuma can always do that teleportation thing," Tango reasoned warily, his voice trailing off towards the end.
Bdubs and Doc shared a look, glancing towards the cage. With a heavy sigh, Doc muttered under his breath in his native language, speaking something to himself as he snapped his communicator closed and strolled towards the main communication panel filled with switches and buttons.
"Fine," Doc said reluctantly, "but if this goes bad, you tell X."
"Yeah, I'll deal with the grumpy salamander," Etho stated, eyes fixed on the gravel wall, "let it drop, Doc."
It fell, descending into the depths below once the pistons retracted. The wall fell, sunlight breaching the dark cube lined with rock, sea lanterns, and finally obsidian. The tinted glass obscured most of the sunlight but still some flickered through. A flurry of movement too dark to understand drove Doc to hitting another unassuming button made of Acacia wood.
"I'm withdrawing one quarter of the shaders," Doc informed them, grimly watching as the ground withdrew on approximately one quadrant. As the gentle blue light illuminated the box, random movement made more sense.
There was something fluttering in the furthest corner, scrabbling against the wall with animal terror. The many wings Etho had spotted all opened and closed uncoordinatedly, splaying out broken primary feathers and scattering loose downy from frantic movements. It scrabbled, glass shrieking shrill as its clawed appendages scratched across the tinted surface.
"It can't see us, right?" Bdubs asked, petrified in place. The man's skin had palled, all blood leaving him as he trembled where he stood. Etho winced under the familiar sensation, grasping the edge of the control panel with a white knuckle grip. Tango staggered, swaying slightly until he recovered with a wide stance. Doc cursed in a harsh language, slamming yet another button which revealed yet more sea lanterns.
The creature made a noise that was not a bird cry but was not a cat hiss. It was something in between, made from behind a curtain of feathers obscuring its face from any sort of sight. It's hands- bruised and sickly with blue hued veins visible below the sallow flesh, clawed at the black tinted glass. Etho felt grim that his earlier guess of the strange joint fusion was correct.
"What is that?" Tango shouted, recoiling as the thing flinched at Tango's voice and fluttered to hide itself from sight yet failed miserably.
Bdubs laughed from stress, looking ready to cry. Doc said something, still unknown as the language was not one any of the group spoke.
"You were in that cave with that thing?" Tango asked, sounding strangled. Bdubs had drawn his sword, holding it in a trembling hand. The caution was warranted, as the thing was equal parts disgusting as it was terrifying.
'It's watching you,' Etho thought, somehow feeling invisible eyes staring through him. He winced at the sensation, somehow lessened now compared to earlier. Did the creature know it was doing that? Was it aware?
"Xisuma!" Bdubs screamed at the top of his lungs, the creature flinching back and flaring its shattered broken tail feathers like a peacock from the nether. Doc averted his eyes, shivering under the sunlight. The creeper hybrid's hand crept towards shifting away the last barrier of blocks and releasing the full illumination of the cage.
As the final barrier withdrew and the full visage of the creature came to light, Xisuma appeared in a stuttering mirage of light. There was an odd pop in their ears like pressure equalizing, atmosphere stabilizing from where there had been none. Admin commands were like that, sometimes bending reality with the nearby hermits the unfortunate victims to the experience.
"Get back!" Xisuma ordered, his gentle persona gone and a battle hardened guardian in its place. The man wore netherite incorporated into his general armor, the axolotl decoration not nearly so cheery under his stone cold expression.
"X, what is that?" Tango asked, leaping for safety behind a console table.
"It isn't a mob," Etho said unnecessarily, flinching away as the creature lunged itself in its weird disjointed way at the glass again, "it's too sentient for that."
"It's panicking," Doc said, marveling at it openly, "look at it…it's learning."
Xisuma watched with a grim expression, hands frozen while suspended, ready to summon his console. He watched the creature with an odd expression, perplexed and wary of some sort of unspoken cue.
The admin said slowly, "it isn't registering on any of the server chunk scans. It's somehow outside of the register."
"A glitch?" Etho asked, fearing for the worst. 'Is that a broken chunk of code, shattered from one of us?'
"I don't know," Xisuma said damningly, "but I intend to find out. It can't get out of this for some reason, it only reacted negatively once the light was placed on it?"
A whistle grew louder as the sharp smell of gunpowder assaulted Etho's hypervigilant senses. For once, it wasn't Doc's leaking anxiety but the approaching smell of a rocket, packed to the brim for three times the duration.
"Pearl," Bdubs explained, craning his head upwards to try and spot the approaching hermit, "oh no, oh no she isn't going to like this-."
The woman circled above them, glancing for somewhere to land. Initially, her expression was open and curious, then it transformed to worry at the obvious anxiety of the group. She lowered herself into a gentle spiral, scanning for open ground.
It was obvious the moment she caught sight of Scout. Something changed on her face, but not in the way they had expected.
She did not look afraid, nor did she flinch in terror. The heavy sensation of eyes crashed over them, piercing their thoughts once more and yet Pearl appeared to be the only one unaffected. Xisuma staggered, catching himself on Doc's shoulder as Tango sank to one knee. Etho pressed one hand to his synthetic eye, forcing the ache of I see you, I see you, I see you to recede.
Pearl stormed their landing like a gladiator stormed an arena. Her face was one of rage and dark fury, tightly leashed and wild like a lion behind iron bars. She drew her sword, purple and gleaming and held it aloft with flames dancing along the blade.
She asked, heavy and damning: "when did a Watcher get on this server?"