Chapter Text
The marketplace of Farville bloomed around Wemmbu like a garden of noise and color.
Stalls lined the cobblestone path in orderly rows, their wooden frames draped with canopies of yellow and white that rippled in the afternoon breeze. The air carried the scent of fresh bread, smoked meat, and something sweet that Wemmbu couldn't identify.
Players moved through the spaces between shops in a steady flow, their voices overlapping into a pleasant hum of conversation and barter. The cobblestone beneath his netherite boots was worn smooth by years of footsteps, and the lanterns that hung from wooden posts along the main road had been lit early, their flames flickering gently even in the daylight.
Farville wasn't a large civilization. Two hundred people, maybe a few more. But it carried itself with the confidence of a place that had never known scarcity.
The stalls were heavy with goods. Diamonds glinted from display cases. Netherite ingots sat in locked chests beside enchanted tools that shimmered with purple light. Golden apples were stacked in neat rows, their surfaces catching the sun and throwing it back in warm gleams. Players traded diamonds for weapons, iron for wool, XP bottles for potions brewed in stands that bubbled and hissed at the edges of the market.
Wemmbu stood at the counter of a small shop tucked between a bakery and a leatherworker, his fingers resting on the worn wood as he waited.
The shopkeeper, a woman whose nametag read [Ater_ink] above her head in faint dark letters, was humming softly as she gathered his purchases. Her movements were unhurried but precise, each item wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine before being placed into a cloth bag.
“Four bundles of leather, as requested,” she said, her voice carrying the comfortable cadence of someone who enjoyed her work. “And the paper. This batch is good quality, I tell 'ya. Pressed it myself last week. You'll want to keep it away from anything damp though.”
Wemmbu nodded, filing the information away. Eggchan would know how to store it properly.
A small tug at his cloak drew his attention downward. The child who had attached himself to Wemmbu earlier stood pressed against his side, one tiny fist clenched around a fold of navy wool.
He couldn't have been older than eight, with a mop of brown hair that fell into his eyes and a round face still soft with baby fat. His nametag read [Tomu]. He had appeared beside Wemmbu somewhere between the marketplace and the residential sector, silent and starry-eyed. He had been following him ever since.
A few stalls away, a cluster of other children played some game involving sticks and a leather ball, but their attention kept drifting toward Wemmbu. They would look, whisper, then look again, their faces bright with the particular fascination kids reserved for things they didn't quite understand but desperately wanted to.
It had been this way since his first visit. The children of Farville had decided, with the absolute certainty only kids could manage, that Wemmbu was someone worth following or sneaking peeks at.
The first time he had come here, Eggchan had walked beside him. Wemmbu remembered that day with sharp clarity.
The Seraphim's wing had brushed against his back with every step, a constant pressure behind him. Eggchan's gaze had swept the market with the cold assessment of someone cataloging threats. His hand had rested on Wemmbu's shoulder the entire time, guiding him away from certain people, certain conversations that he deemed unsuitable.
It had taken years to reach that day. Months of arguments conducted in the quiet, stubborn way that Eggchan always argued. He never raised his voice or lost his temper; he simply repeated his refusal in the same flat, final tone until Wemmbu’s protests crumbled against it like waves against a cliff.
The Seraphim had hidden him from the world with the thoroughness of someone burying a secret. No players, no villages. His best friend ensured he had no contact with anyone beyond the oak forest, the cottage, and the Far Lands peak; a place Wemmbu was allowed to visit only because Eggchan couldn't physically fence off the edge of the server.
The isolation had been total. Wemmbu hadn’t seen another face besides Eggchan's for years after leaving the End. He hadn't even heard another voice. He hadn't known, during those long and quiet years, that he was being kept from anything at all. He had accepted it without question, as naive people often do, never imagining there might be anything beyond the boundaries drawn around him.
But the restlessness had grown.
It had started in his muscles, an ache his training couldn't fully soothe. Then it had spread to his mind, a hunger for something more than the same trees, the same rooms, the same blue eyes watching him from across the room. Those eyes that never seemed to blink quite often enough. Dark irises that followed him from the kitchen to the stairs to the door, steady and always there.
Eventually, Wemmbu had begun to ask questions. What was beyond the forest? What did other players look like? Could they visit a village, just once, just to see?
Eggchan had refused, his wings stiff and his gaze heavy with a worry that Wemmbu didn't fully understand.
And then, slowly, incrementally, the refusals had begun to soften. Maybe Eggchan had realized that Wemmbu's restlessness wasn't a phase he could outgrow. Perhaps he had understood that keeping Wemmbu locked away forever would eventually breed resentment, and resentment was a crack in the foundation of their friendship he had so carefully cultivated.
Or maybe he had simply grown tired of the constant arguments. Wemmbu could be stubborn too, in his own way, and years of asking the same questions had worn grooves into Eggchan's patience.
The compromise had been this: Wemmbu could visit the nearest civilization, but only with Eggchan. And later, once Eggchan had deemed the town safe and the townsfolk trustworthy, Wemmbu could visit alone. But only when Eggchan permitted it, only when Eggchan said yes.
The arrangement had been presented as a gesture of trust, and Wemmbu had accepted it with gratitude. He had been required to promise, in exchange for this small freedom, that he would never go anywhere else without Eggchan's explicit command. He had promised, and Wemmbu meant it. He had never broken that promise.
Six visits in total. This was his sixth. Each one had required permission, and each permission had been granted like a gift.
It was fine. It was better than fine. The townsfolk were kind, the civilization was lively, and for a few hours every few months, Wemmbu could remember what it felt like to be part of something larger than a cottage in the woods.
“Here are the ink sacs,” The shopkeeper continued, pulling Wemmbu back to the present. She placed three small glass vials on the counter, each one filled with a dark liquid that shifted thickly when she moved them. “Squid ink, fresh from the river trade. Your friend will be pleased with these, I think. He always did have an eye for quality.”
Wemmbu smiled, the expression tugging at the corner of his mouth. “He's particular about his writing supplies.”
“Particular is good, it means he knows what he wants.” The shopkeeper returned the smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “And how is your angel friend? Keeping well, I hope?”
“He's fine,” Wemmbu replied. The answer came easily, the way all vague answers came easily after years of practice. “Busy with, uh, research. You know how it is.”
Ater_ink nodded, though her expression suggested she didn’t, in fact, know how it was. No one else did.
Eggchan's research was a mystery to Wemmbu as well, a constant background hum of books, notes, and late nights in the upstairs office Wemmbu wasn't supposed to disturb. The Seraphim studied history, psychology, and the architecture of the mind. Wemmbu had asked about it once, early in their life together, and his best friend had explained in a way that was both thorough and utterly opaque, leaving Wemmbu with more questions than answers.
He remembered the way Eggchan's head wings had fluttered when he spoke, the way his blue eyes had brightened with feverish intensity.
Although he was happy for his best friend’s enthusiasm, Wemmbu hadn’t asked again. Whatever Eggchan was studying, it seemed to exist somewhere beyond the limits of his understanding.
“You should visit more often,” The shopkeeper said, her voice warm.
She gestured toward the child, who was still clutching Wemmbu's cloak with the devotion of a limpet. “The little ones adore you. Look at him. You'd think you were his older brother, the way he follows you around.”
Wemmbu glanced down at the child. Tomu gazed back up at him with wide, unblinking eyes, his grip on the cloak tightening as though he feared Wemmbu might leave if he let go.
‘This kid is strange,’ Wemmbu thought with a little fondness.
Quiet, clingy, and entirely too trusting of a stranger who didn’t belong in Farville. But he was also kind of cute, in the way that small things were cute, and Wemmbu found himself reaching down to ruffle the brown hair with his free hand. The strands were soft beneath his fingers. Tomu made a small, pleased sound and pressed closer.
“He’s just curious,” Wemmbu pointed out.
Ater_ink laughed, a bright sound that cut through the market noise. “The kids like you. Well, we all do. Farville's a friendly place, but you bring out something special in some of us. Maybe it's the mystery, y’know? A demon hybrid who lives in the forest with an angel. It sounds like the start of a fairy tale.”
Right, a demon hybrid. That was what he told them, exactly what Eggchan had instructed him to tell anyone who asked.
Demons were common in the Unstable SMP, just another variant among the countless hybrids that populated the server. His horns and tail drew no suspicion, especially when the latter was mostly covered. No player looked twice at a demon browsing the market stalls, and no one wondered why an angel might be guarding one so closely. “It was a necessary disguise,” Eggchan had explained.
A dragon was a trophy waiting to be claimed. The Ender Dragon's sole offspring, the last of a bloodline that players had tried to exterminate, was something most would kill to possess.
Thus, Wemmbu pretended to be a demon for his safety, and he had repeated the falsehood plenty of times now that it felt like honesty.
The shopkeeper's kindness was genuine, and he had no desire to dim it with the thoughts of his casual deceit. So he only shrugged, the movement casual, and reached into his inventory for the diamonds.
“Here,” he said, placing five diamonds on the counter. They caught the light and scattered it in rainbow fragments across the wood. “For everything. Keep the change.”
The shopkeeper's eyes widened. “Uh, that's far too much. The leather alone is worth maybe two, but the rest—”
“Keep the change,” Wemmbu repeated with a casual tone. He was already gathering the cloth bag, tucking it carefully into his inventory.
“Uhm, you do good work, and good work deserves good pay.”
The shopkeeper stared at him for a moment, then shook her head with a smile that was half exasperation and half affection. “Aren't you sweet? Most traders would've haggled me down to an emerald. But not you. Not our Wemmbu.”
‘Our Wemmbu.’ The phrase settled over him like a warm blanket, unfamiliar and unexpectedly pleasant.
He wasn't sure when he had become theirs. He wasn't sure if he had earned it. But the shopkeeper said it with such easy sincerity that he found himself believing it anyway.
“There's a festival coming up,” Ater_ink added, leaning her elbows on the counter. “Annual devotion for the God of Order. We celebrate it every year around this time. A week of feasting and offerings. The priests say it's to honor the god who keeps the SMP stable, but really it's just an excuse to eat too much and dance in the square. The farmers bring in their best harvest for the blessing ceremony.”
The shopkeeper smiled at him. “You should come. Bring your angel friend too. The two of you would definitely be welcome.”
Wemmbu listened with half his attention, the rest of it drifting toward the children still playing in the corner of his vision.
He knew about the God of Order. Everyone and their mothers knew about the God of Order. The being who had once been a king, who had ascended to godhood after the wars and now ruled the Overworld with a steady and watchful hand.
Eggchan was the one who taught him about the gods in the SMP. His best friend had told him many things about the gods, and none of them were flattering. They were unreliable, self-serving. Even the End gods had abandoned the Ender Dragon when she needed them most. Wemmbu had absorbed these lessons the way he absorbed all of his best friend’s words, which was to say completely and without question. The gods weren't to be trusted or worshipped. The gods were, at best, a distant irrelevance, and at worst, a threat.
‘But a festival sounded nice,’ he thought.
“Maybe,” Wemmbu said, noncommittal. “I'll ask Eggchan first.”
Ater_ink beamed. “You do that. And if you do come by, participate in the dance. It'd be fun.”
Wemmbu laughed, surprised by the offer. “I'll keep that in mind.”
“Mhn. Oh, you mentioned you’re looking for meat earlier, yeah? The butcher's shop is two streets over, just past the fountain. You can't miss it.”
“Thanks,” Wemmbu said, and meant it. He gave Tomu's hair one final ruffle, then gently pried the child's fingers from his cloak and took his small hand instead. “Come on, little guy. Let's go find some porkchops.”
The child nodded solemnly, as though porkchops were a matter of great importance, and fell into step beside him.
The walk through the marketplace was slow. Not because the distance was great, but because the townsfolk wouldn't let him pass without acknowledgment.
A woman selling wool waved at him from her stall, her face bright with recognition. An older man clapped him on the shoulder as he passed, his grip firm and friendly. A pair of teenagers loitering near the fountain straightened at the sight of him, their expressions shifting into eager grins. One of them mimicked a spear thrust with enthusiasm, and the other called out something about the combative tricks Wemmbu had performed during his last visit a few weeks ago.
More voices joined the chorus as he walked. A baker leaned out of his shop door to shout a greeting. A group of women sorting herbs at a stall paused their work to smile and wave. Even the players who didn’t approach him directly watched him pass with small smiles. They had long since decided he was one of their own, however infrequently he visited.
Wemmbu fielded these greetings with a mixture of warmth and awkwardness.
He wasn't accustomed to attention. The cottage was quiet, and the forest was often empty. Eggchan's presence was a constant, but it was a quiet constant, a watchful silence rather than an outpouring of noise. At home, there were no unexpected hands reaching for his shoulder, no voices calling his name from across a crowded square. There was only the soft rustle of wings and the unblinking gaze that followed him from room to room.
Here, in Farville, everyone seemed to know him, and while the kindness was genuine and the smiles were real, he didn't quite know what to do with it. He smiled back. He nodded. He lifted a hand in a wave that felt slightly stiff.
Wemmbu hoped his discomfort wasn't as visible as it felt. The cloak helped. The heavy navy wool gave him something to hide behind, a barrier between himself and the world. The tip of his tail peeked out beneath the hem as he walked, swaying with each step, and Tomu kept trying to step on it in a way that might have been intentional.
A woman approached through a crowd, her expression a mixture of relief and exasperation. Her nametag read [Mika01], and her brown hair was the same shade as Tomu's. The resemblance was unmistakable.
“There you are,” she said, her voice carrying the particular exhaustion one would hear from a parent. “I'm so sorry. He slipped away while I was talking to my friends. Tomu, you can't just run off like that.”
Tomu looked at his mother with the betrayed expression of a child who had been having a very good time and saw no reason for it to end. He didn't release Wemmbu's hand.
Wemmbu crouched down, bringing himself to the kid's eye level. “Go on,” he said, trying to be gentle. “Your mom's looking for you.”
Tomu's lower lip jutted out. It was a formidable pout, the kind that had probably won him many battles against parental authority. But Wemmbu was immune to pouts, or at least he pretended to be. After a moment of silent negotiation, the child released his hand and trudged toward his mother.
“Sorry,” Mika01 said again, scooping Tomu into her arms. “You know kids. He's been talking about you for weeks. Ever since your last visit. I think you've got a fan, dude.”
“It's fine,” Wemmbu said. “He's cute.”
“Say bye bye now,” the mother instructed, and Tomu lifted one small hand in a wave that was more tragic than cheerful.
Wemmbu waved back, a small smile tugging at his lips. He watched them disappear into the crowd, the mother carrying her child toward the residential streets. A second later, he turned to continue toward the butcher's shop.
A fountain burbled behind him. The sun was warm on his face. The market hummed with life, commerce, and the easy peace of a civilization that had known nothing but safety for years.
Wemmbu glanced up at the sky, noting the position of the sun. It was still a few hours before sunset. He had plenty of time. He would finish the errands and be home before the light began to fade. Eggchan would be pleased. Eggchan was often pleased when Wemmbu returned on time, his expression softening from that watchful tension into something warmer, something that looked like relief.
All of a sudden, every communicator in the vicinity pinged at once.
The sound was unmistakable. A sharp, synchronized chime that cut through the marketplace noise like blade through silk.
Wemmbu stopped walking. His hand, already reaching for his inventory, froze mid-motion. Around him, the other players were doing the same. Conversations halted, laughter died.
Wemmbu pulled out his communicator. The screen flickered to life, and there it was, stark black text against the pale blue background:
CptFallow was slain by green_0fficer using [Viridis].
CptFallow left the game.
The marketplace erupted into confusion and panic.
A player nearby gasped. A man near the fountain was already running, his boots slamming against the cobblestone path as he headed toward the entrance gates. Others were backing away from the main road, their faces tight with anxiety. The woman who had sold Wemmbu his ink was standing by her shop, one hand braced against the frame, her expression stricken.
Their reactions made sense. The Unstable SMP had been a peaceful server for several years now, more specifically in the Overworld. The civil wars and the conflicts that followed had faded into history.
Most of the players in Farville had probably lived most of their lives without hearing the ping of a death notification. Some of the younger ones, the teenagers who had been loitering by the fountain, had probably never seen one at all. The message on their screens wasn’t just alarming. It was a relic of a time they had been raised to believe was over.
Wemmbu stared at the message. The name meant nothing to him.
The nametag [CptFallow] wasn't someone he knew. He wasn't someone he had ever met. But a death message in Farville, a civilization that had been peaceful for as long as he had known it, meant something had gone wrong.
"If something goes wrong, you come straight home."
The Seraphim’s voice echoed in his mind, flat and certain. It was the rule. It had always been the rule. Trouble meant retreat; it was as simple as that. Wemmbu could almost feel the weight of Eggchan's gaze, the way it pressed down just firmly enough to guide, to steer him away from anything that might threaten the careful safety of their life together.
In this scenario, Wemmbu was supposed to put his errands aside, walk back into the forest, and let whatever was happening in Farville happen without him. That was what his best friend had warned him to do. And if Wemmbu disobeyed, if he involved himself in something that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the violence Eggchan had spent years protecting him from, then there would be consequences.
Eggchan would be angry. His wings would go stiff and his blue eyes would fix on Wemmbu with that heavy, unblinking stare that made the air feel thicker. The Seraphim might lock him in the basement again, without anything but the clothes on his back.
But the death message had made his heart skip.
Not with fear, but with something else. Something that felt like the moment before a jump, the breathless anticipation of a fall. Something that sang in his blood and made his fingers curl around the ghost of a weapon he wasn't holding just yet.
It had been so long since he had seen a death message. Years of living in the oak forest, hundreds of blocks away from the nearest civilization, where the communicator's range didn't reach and the only announcements were the ones Wemmbu gained after a basic accomplishment. The silence of the forest had been complete. No deaths, no kills, no violence. Only the soft rustle of wings, the quiet scratch of Eggchan's pen, and the suffocating peace of a life with no edges.
Wemmbu had trained for combat almost every day. He had practiced until his muscles screamed and his spear had worn grooves into his palms. He had struck training dummies until their wooden frames splintered, and he had done it all without ever feeling the resistance of real flesh, the jarring impact of a blow that landed on something that could bleed.
Wemmbu had never once used those skills against a real opponent. But his body knew what it wanted. His body had been waiting for this without his own knowledge.
The Unstable SMP was peaceful, supposedly. The soldiers of Capital City enforced that peace with an iron hand, across the many civilizations of this realm. Anyone who disrupted it was dealt with swiftly and permanently.
'So why had someone killed in Farville?'
Curiosity was a dangerous thing, and Wemmbu knew this. His best friend had told him this, had repeated it so many times. Curiosity led to questions, questions led to attention, and attention led to potential discovery.
But curiosity was also the thing that had driven Wemmbu to the Far Lands’ edge, the thing that had made him wonder what lay beyond the forest, the thing that had fueled years of arguments until Eggchan had finally relented, allowing him to visit the town. Curiosity was the reason he was standing here now, in this marketplace, with the sun on his face and the smell of fresh bread in the air.
Curiosity was as much a part of him as his horns or his tail.
And right now, curiosity was a drumbeat in his chest, a pulse that matched the rhythm of his heart. It whispered the same thing over and over: find out what's happening.
Surely Egg wouldn't know. Wemmbu would check what had happened, just a quick look, and then he would leave. He would be back before sunset. He would walk through the cottage door with the supplies in his inventory and an innocent expression on his face. Eggchan would never have to know. He would be back before Eggchan even had time to worry.
Wemmbu slid his communicator back into his inventory and began to move.
The crowd parted around him without seeming to notice he was there. His senses sharpened, the way they always did when something interesting was about to happen. His ears caught fragments of conversation as he walked, snatches of panicked words that he pieced together like puzzle pieces.
“At the gates—soldiers with green shields—They killed him—they actually killed him—”
His purple eyes tracked the flow of the crowd, noting who was running toward the gates and who was walking the opposite away. His instincts hummed beneath his skin, a low and familiar thrum that had been dormant for too long. Wemmbu wove between players with fluid ease. His body strangely remembered how to move like this, slipping through gaps with a grace that his training alone couldn’t teach.
Some of the townsfolk were retreating into their homes. The woman who had greeted him earlier, the mother, was ushering other children through a doorway with hands that slightly trembled. The marketplace, so lively moments before, was dissolving into chaos. Stalls were abandoned mid-transaction.
Wemmbu followed the current of fear to its source.
The entrance gates came into view after a few minutes of fast walking.
They were tall structures of oak and iron, flanked by watchtowers that rose above the perimeter wall. The gates themselves stood open, which was wrong. They should have been closed the moment trouble appeared. But the soldiers manning the gates had been caught off guard, and now they stood in a tense line before the threshold, their yellow shields raised and their swords drawn.
They faced a group of armored figures whose shields were painted a dark, unfamiliar green.
Wemmbu ducked behind the corner of a house near the gates, pressing his back against the stone wall. His navy cloak blended into the shadows, and he peered around the edge with the stillness of a predator observing prey.
The green-shield soldiers were arguing with a man who appeared to be some kind of mayor figure. The mayor was an older player with a weathered face, and he stood behind the line of yellow shields with his hands raised in a placating gesture. His voice was calm but strained, the voice of someone trying very hard to prevent something that had already begun.
“We want no trouble with you,” the elder was saying. “We’re a peaceful town and we trade fairly. If your players are struggling, we can discuss terms, but this is not the way.”
The lead green soldier laughed. It wasn't a kind sound. “Bro, discuss terms? We've been discussing terms for months. You sit here with your diamonds and your golden carrots and your full storehouses, and you tell us to wait? Our people are hungry and our farms are failing. And you assholes refuse to share even a fraction of what you have.”
“We… we have offered what we can spare.”
“Offered? You offered scraps, bastard.” The soldier took a step forward, and the yellow shields tensed. “We're done negotiating. You will open your storehouses, or we will open them for you. And if more of your people have to die for that to happen, then so be it.”
Wemmbu's gaze swept the scene, cataloging details with automatic efficiency.
Six green soldiers in the front line, heavily armored but moving with the clumsiness of players who weren't accustomed to real combat. Two more flanking the group, their shields raised to protect against arrows from the watchtowers. The mayor behind four yellow soldiers, who held their swords with a grip that was too tight and their stances too wide. Their eyes darted between the green soldiers and each other, looking for reassurance that wasn't there.
They were scared. It was obvious they hadn't expected this.
The green soldier who had been speaking raised his hand. The motion was casual, almost lazy. But his fingers were curled around an ender pearl, its surface shimmering with the promise of teleportation.
Wemmbu moved before he knew he was moving.
His own ender pearl was thrown in the space between two heartbeats. He didn't think about it. He didn't weigh the consequences. His arm knew the motion, and the pearl sailed through the air in a perfect arc that intersected with the soldier's trajectory.
The world shattered into purple static and reformed with a lurch. In an instant, Wemmbu was standing in front of the mayor, his body interposed between the old man and the soldier who had appeared at the same second.
The air crackled with the residue of two simultaneous teleports.
The green soldier's sword was already descending toward the mayor, a diamond blade cutting through the air with a whistle.
Wemmbu's netherite axe was rising to meet it.
The clash of metal on metal rang out across the square. The impact jarred up Wemmbu's arms, a shockwave that traveled from his wrists to his shoulders. It felt nothing like striking a training dummy. It felt alive.
The soldier's eyes widened behind his diamond helmet. He had expected to cut down an unarmed civilian. He hadn't expected a navy-cloaked figure with silver-gray horns and a netherite axe to materialize in front of him. He stumbled back, his sword arm vibrating from the force of the parry, his boots skidding on the cobblestones.
Wemmbu advanced. The fight began in earnest.
It wasn't a fight like how Wemmbu had imagined fights would be. It wasn't a spar, a practice session with the training dummies that didn't hit back. It was fast, brutal, and real, and every nerve in Wemmbu's body was alight with the thrill of it.
The world narrowed to a series of sharp, vivid moments. The glint of a sword swinging toward his ribs. The scrape of his netherite boots against stone as he pivoted. The harsh rhythm of his own breathing, faster than it ever was in practice.
His cloak billowed around him as he moved, the heavy wool catching the air and snapping like a banner. A soldier lunged at him from the left, his sword aimed at the gap between Wemmbu's pauldron and chestplate.
Wemmbu sidestepped without looking, his body reading the angle of the attack before his mind could process it. His tail swept out, hooked the man's ankle, and wrenched it sideways. The soldier crashed to the cobblestones with a clatter of armor and a grunt of pain.
Another came from the right, his shield raised to bash against him. Wemmbu's axe was already there, the netherite blade catching the edge of the shield and wrenching it aside. Wemmbu reversed the swing, slamming the flat of the axe head into the soldier's helmet with a sound like a bell being struck. The man staggered, his eyes unfocused.
The Farville soldiers had fallen back, their yellow shields forming a protective wall around the mayor.
They were watching with expressions that shifted from fear to disbelief, then to something that looked very much like hope. Someone in the watchtower was cheering, a distant voice that barely registered. But Wemmbu wasn't listening. He was fighting.
The green soldiers regrouped and came at him again, three at once this time, their swords swinging in multiple arcs.
Wemmbu ducked under the first sword. He spun past the second, feeling the blade miss his ribs by a finger's width. The third he caught on the haft of his axe, the impact ringing through the wood and into his palms. He shoved back with enough force to send the soldier stumbling into his companions.
Wemmbu moved without thinking, his body responding to stimuli before his mind could process them. It was as if some deeper part of him remembered how to do this even if the surface of his consciousness did not. His movements didn’t feel learned; they were remembered.
A soldier grabbed at his cloak, fingers twisting in the navy wool and yanking hard. Wemmbu felt the fabric pull tight against his throat.
He unclasped it mid-strike, the brooch releasing with a flick of his thumb, and let the cloak fall away in a pool of fabric at his feet. The soldier stared at the netherite armor revealed beneath, the enchanted plates glinting with purple light, and in that moment of hesitation, Wemmbu smiled at him.
It wasn't a kind smile.
He had the strangest urge to unfurl his wings as he fought. They were hidden now, folded into whatever pocket of reality that kept them invisible when he didn't need them, but he could feel them straining against the barrier. They ached with the desire to spread wide, to lift him above others and give him the height advantage he craved.
Wemmbu wanted to use his spear. The axe was good, but the spear was an extension of his body in a way no other weapon could match. He wanted to fly. He wanted to show these soldiers what an Ender Dragon could do when properly motivated.
He wanted to feel the wind beneath his patagia, the weight of the spear in his hands, and the raw, terrifying joy of combat at its fullest expression.
But he didn’t. There were too many people watching. The wings would raise questions he couldn't answer. The spear would draw attention he couldn't afford. And Eggchan would already be furious enough without Wemmbu adding a full public reveal of his heritage to the list of transgressions. So he kept his wings hidden, and his spear in his inventory.
The soldiers were retreating now. They had come expecting a helpless town and instead found something they couldn't comprehend. Their formation had crumbled. They stumbled backward, shields raised defensively, swords held in grips that had gone slack with fear.
Wemmbu pressed the advantage. His axe was a blur of netherite and enchantment, its blade tracing arcs of purple light through the air. A sword thrust came at his chest, and he twisted, letting it glance off his pauldron with a screech of metal on metal. A shield bash aimed at his head, and he dropped, feeling the edge of the shield pass through the space where his horns had been a heartbeat before. He swept the soldier's legs out from under him, hooking one ankle with the haft of his axe and pulling. The man hit the ground hard, his shield clattering away across the cobblestone.
Wemmbu was laughing. He didn't know when he had started laughing, the sound wild and slightly unhinged. It made the green soldiers flinch.
One of them broke formation and ran for the gates. Another followed immediately, his boots slamming against the stone in a panicked rhythm. The watchtower archers had found their courage and were shooting arrows at the fleeing soldiers.
The square was chaos, loud and alive, and Wemmbu was at the center of it, his blood singing, his heart pounding against his ribs like a caged thing demanding release.
His axe swung in an arc that would disarm the last soldier standing before him. The motion was clean and practiced, a move he had performed a thousand times against his training dummies.
The strike connected.
There was a sound. A wet sound, different from the clash of metal and the thud of shield against armor. A sound that stopped Wemmbu's heart mid-beat.
The blade had bitten into the gap between the soldier's helmet and chestplate. It was the place where Wemmbu had been aiming, because a strike there would force a surrender without causing permanent damage.
But he had miscalculated. The soldier had turned at the last moment, trying to flee, and the blade had slipped. It had found the soft flesh of the throat instead of the armored collar.
It was a sound that Wemmbu hadn't meant to make. He pulled back his axe and saw, with a shock that hit him like cold water, that the netherite edge was slick with too much red. The soldier was on the ground. His blood was spreading across the cobblestone, a dark stain that seeped into the cracks between the path. He wasn't even moving anymore.
Wemmbu's communicator pinged.
The sound cut through the noise of the square. Every other communicator pinged a heartbeat later, a chorus of chimes that spread outward from the gates in a ripple of notification.
Wemmbu didn't need to look at the screen. He knew what it said. He could feel the words burning themselves into the air around him.
green_0fficer was slain by Wemmbu using [Verdict].
green_0fficer left the game.
Silence fell right after.
The remaining green soldiers had fled through the gates, and someone finally had the presence of mind to close the entrance. The heavy iron groaned as it swung shut, the bar dropping into place with a thud that reverberated through the square and up the soles of Wemmbu's boots. The watchtower archers lowered their bows. The yellow soldiers stood in a loose cluster, their shields still raised, their eyes fixed on Wemmbu.
The corpse shimmered. It dissolved into motes of pale light, the particles rising before winking out one by one. Within seconds, there was nothing left on the cobblestone path but a cracked green shield and a few scattered items from a dropped inventory.
Wemmbu stared at the spot where the soldier had been. The blood was spreading across the cobblestone in a slow, dark spread.
Wemmbu had killed him. He hadn't meant to kill him. He had been aiming to disarm and incapacitate. But his body had moved faster than his intentions, and his axe had struck true. Verdict. The name he had given it in a moment of grim humor, because an axe didn’t judge. An axe only did what the hand wielding it asked, and Wemmbu's hand had asked for this, even if his mind had not.
‘Oh… the Farville people,’ he thought distantly.
They were peaceful, and they were kind. They had smiled at him, patted his back, and invited him to their festival.
But they would look at him now and see a killer. The blood was still wet on the cobblestone, still glistening in the afternoon light. They would see what he had done and they would be afraid. They would—
The square erupted into cheers.
Wemmbu blinked. The sound was so unexpected that it took him a moment to process it. The Farville soldiers weren't shrinking away from him. They were surging forward, their shields lowered and their faces split with grins. The watchtower archers were shouting his name. The mayor was being helped to his feet by a woman, and even he was smiling, a weary but genuine smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
“Wemmbu!” someone shouted.
“Did you see that? He took on six of them!”
The townsfolk who had been hiding in their homes were emerging now, their faces shifting from fear to relief and excitement as word spread.
And there, near the back of the crowd, Mika01 was holding Tomu in her arms. Tomu was waving at Wemmbu with the same small hand he had held earlier, the motion frantic and joyful. His face was bright with the uncomplicated admiration of a child who had just watched his hero save the day.
“Wemmbu! Wemmbu! Wemmbu!”
The chant was growing, spreading through the crowd like fire through dry grass.
Wemmbu stood in the center of the square, his axe still in his hand, his armor splattered with blood that wasn't his own. The blood was already drying, turning tacky and dark against the purple enchantments. He didn't know what to do with the adoration being poured over him. He had expected fear, perhaps rejection.
He hadn't expected this at all.
The crowd continued to press closer, their voices overlapping, their hands reaching out to touch his shoulders and his arms. Someone was patting his back. Someone else was trying to shake his other hand. The Farville soldiers were looking at him with expressions that bordered on wonder, and the townsfolk were laughing and shouting his name. Wemmbu let it happen.
He didn't know what else to do. His muscles were still singing with the memory of movement. Every nerve in his body was alive in a way it had never been before.
That was what combat felt like. That was what it meant to use the skills he had honed for so long against something real, something that bled, fought back, and lost.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, beneath the roar of the crowd and the pounding of his heart: a small, quiet voice was whispering.
It was whispering that the sun was sinking lower in the sky, that Eggchan would be waiting at the cottage door, his wings stiff and his eyes fixed on the treeline. There would be questions, answers would need to be given, and no amount of cheering from the people of Farville would protect Wemmbu from the consequences of what he had done.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a familiar voice was reminding him that his best friend would be so, so angry if he found out.
But Wemmbu couldn't hear it over the sound of his name being chanted by a hundred voices, couldn't remember it over the exhilaration still singing in his blood.
The afternoon light caught the blood on his armor and made it gleam.
High above the square, in the branches of an oak tree that grew near the fountain, two parrots were perched.
The larger one was a macaw, its feathers a bold mix of scarlet, blue, and yellow that caught the afternoon light and splintered it into gleaming fragments. The smaller was a sun conure, vivid in yellow, green, and orange, its body half-hidden among the leaves. Their beady black eyes were fixed on the scene below with an intensity that no ordinary birds could possibly possess. They observed as the blood spread across the cobblestone, the body dissolving into sparks of light.
They had seen how the Ender Dragon fought.
The macaw tilted its head. Its claws tightened on the branch, scoring the bark with faint lines. It watched the dragon stand in the center of the cheering crowd, his chest heaving and his silver horns catching the light. It watched the blood drying on his netherite armor and the way he smiled: uncertain, overwhelmed, and secretly pleased.
The macaw made a sound. It wasn't a squawk or a chirp but something softer, something almost musical. It was the sound of recognition, of a search that had spanned decades and finally, finally reached its end.
The sound was swallowed by the noise of the crowd below.
Then the macaw spread its wings and launched itself from the branch. Its body arrowed through the air toward the horizon, toward the distant spires of a kingdom that sat at the center of the Overworld, toward the god who was waiting for news.
The sun conure remained. It settled deeper into the leaves, its yellow-green feathers blending into the shadows. Its black eyes stayed fixed on the dragon below, still watching, still waiting.