Cub pushed his sleeves up, and scanned the area. Everything looked perfect for the spell. No distractions, no objects to get in the way. He'd even sent a message asking hermits to leave him alone. Cub took a deep breath, focused, and began, drawing upon the vex magic naturally occurring in the area and channeling it into the delicate spell. The magic danced in front of him, beginning to coalesce into a window-

"AHHH NO PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE ETHO!"

BDubs ran through Cub's Nether portal, screaming and followed by Etho. Distracted, Cub lost control of the spell. The magic exploded everywhere, causing all three hermits to yelp as the ground began to shake. And then? And then it stopped. All three seemed to be okay, breathing a collective sigh of relief.

BDubs and Etho suddenly remembered what they had been doing, and the former ran out of the front door. Or, rather, he tried to, before skidding to a halt as he realised that there was nothing out of the front door to run to. He shared this information with the others by something that was definitely not a scream.

"So... We're stuck here?" Etho asked, mildly disbelieving.

"We're stuck here." BDubs confirmed. "Well done, Cub!"

"Hey! I was doing a delicate spell! I asked you to leave me be!" Cub yelled in his own defense.

"Let's not fight. We're stranded in a pyramid in the void. If we're going to survive, then we can't have infighting." Etho cut in. He had a point, too.

Meanwhile, in the Hermitcraft server...

Xisuma paced by the massive black hole in the landscape, exactly where Cub's pyramid had been. Now there was just a pit down to the void. Nothing in between. If it was a rendering error, it was quite stubborn.

Beef landed by elytra nearby, shaking X out of his thoughts. He was closely followed by Keralis, then Doc, then Scar. When the last of those hermits arrived, he gave a little gasp as he looked into the bottomless pit, assuming the worst. And boy howdy was he correct.

"What happened?" Beef asked, glancing at the pit and then quickly looking away. "Why are we here?"

"I dunno what happened, but..." X took a deep breath, "I figured you four ought to know."

"Know what?"

"I was looking into whatever happened here, and... It's Cub, Etho and BDubs. Their files are missing."

X summoned up an admin screen to show something that was supposed to be Etho, but everything except for his name was a meaningless jumble of characters. It was the same for Cub and BDubs.

"No." Scar gasped. "No no no no no no no no-"

Keralis pulled Scar into a hug, giving Scar a literal shoulder to cry on. Scar went quiet, save for his shaking breaths. Everyone was quiet; talking would've been rude.

They were gone.

Meanwhile, back in the void...

"Look. Staying here is not being productive. We can't survive out here on our own, we need to find a way back." Cub explained to nobody in particular.

"Nether's a bust." Etho sighed. He'd gone to see if they could get back via the Nether and nearly fell into the void from the portal. "We might as well throw ourselves into the void at this point."

"That's what I'm planning to do." Cub shrugged.

"WHAT!?" BDubs sat up from where he'd been lying, on top of Cub's workstation thing.

"Either we die here, alone, for certain, or we face possible death but also a chance of getting back home." Cub explained, going through his storage system and putting all the stuff he could into his ender chest. In the end, all he had in his inventory was a stack of dirt.

"If I don't die, follow me." He said, before taking a running leap out the door. And he was falling... Falling... Falling...

Thud.

"Cub!" A voice gasped. X, maybe? Cub opened his eyes. He was surrounded by people. The fall had completely winded him, though, so he just gave them a smile. He was back, and the others would soon follow. Hopefully his house would come back, too.

Sorry about how late it is, I sort of passed out writing it.
CharoletteBuurn for some reason I'm not in the list even though I signed up?
Anyway, here it is.
OdalRune, signing off from the past!