wc: 1860

"...Hallo?"

Iskall poked his head into X's base, the door left open. Stress was next to him, her eyes darting across the room.

"Anyone home..?"

Papers were scattered across the tables, drawings and observations and old books flung wide open. Stress picked one up, frowned, and showed Iskall. The pages were covered in runes and old etchings.

"Do you know what this is?" Iskall asked, frowning at the paper as Stress moved to go to another room.

"It does look like some dialect of faerie," she replied, poking her head into another room before sighing and closing the door. "I don't recognize it, though."

Iskall tapped on his bionic eye. The words were highlighted in blue before the system wrote "LANGUAGE OF NATURE AND LIFE FAERIES" in bold words across his vision.

"It is faerie dialect," Iskall reported. "Nature and life faerie?"

He didn't know much about faeries in general, only that a couple of people on the server belonged to its people, Stress included. He was fairly sure that Tango was some sort of Nether faerie, and that Doc was... something, but that was the extent of his knowledge.

"I don't know any life faeries on this server, though." Stress picked up another paper. "A portal?"

Iskall peered at her paper. Descriptions of spells were scrawled across its surface with near illegibility, the handwriting slightly familiar.

"Well... the only ones missing right now are Scar, X, Mumbo, and Grian," Iskall pointed out.

"X is of the End, and Mumbo and Grian didn't come back to the server from.. Last Life, so it's probably Scar," Stress said. "He is a kinda nature-y guy anyhow- Oh!" Stress' gasp made Iskall freeze, then immediately rush to the entrance of the room where she was standing.

"What??" He stood in front of her, glaring at the room . "What?"

Stress pointed slowly. "...a rift." Iskall took a step forward, but Stress caught his wrist. "You can't see it yet. I'll go."

He started to protest, but she'd already started stepping forward, hand outstretched. A faint pink glow began to shine from her palms, and as he watched, shimmering cracks began to appear in the air. They spread a bit further, before Stress gasped and her arm dropped.

"Stress?" Iskall said, inching closer. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

She backed up into the hall. "That portal leads to the Watcher world." Her eyes were blown wide open. "I can't open that any further, I'm not strong enough." She turned to Iskall. "If they really are in the Watcher world..."

He didn't answer. He didn't have one.

Stress turned and opened her communicator. "The people who got back from- from whatever Last Life was might know something." A ping sounded from his communicator as she sent whatever she had typed. "Mumbo and Grian never came back. Maybe something happened over there." A sigh. "I don't know what happened, but the people who came back have been acting very weird."

"Definitely," Iskall muttered, walking back to where the papers had been and picking one up again. His eyebrows rose as he recognized the language as Galactic. Two taps on his eye and the words were being translated. "Watcher portals," he read. "These are very difficult to open, and near impossible with only one person, but two or more strong enough individuals can open one by using these encantations. Please note that if you are not strong enough to open this portal, trying this may be very dangerous."

"These idiots," Stress said, pacing back and forth. "No one goes into the Watcher world. No one. I mean- what do they think they want to do?! Die?!"

The doors slammed open as someone came in- Tango and Zed, judging by the shouts.

"What is going on??" Tango yelped, the flames on his head spiking as Zed shrunk away from the fire a bit.

"What he said," Zed piped up. Iskall shrugged and looked at Stress for explanation.

"There's a recently used portal in one of X's rooms," Stress explained. "It leads to the Watcher worlds. I'm of course not strong enough to get it open. Scar's almost definitely a fae, cuz he's the only other one who could have opened it."

"The two of them opened a portal to Watcher worlds??" Tango asked skeptically. "That's- not very possible??"

"I bet X would have been strong enough," Zed suggested. "I didn't know Scar was fae, so we don't know how powerful he is."

Tango huffed. "Well, anyhow, what are we supposed to do? Get them back?"

Stress looked down and shrugged. "Without X, I honestly don't know what to do. I always kinda listened to him."

Zed checked his communicator. "Well, if we get enough magical entities on the server, I bet the whole group could get the portal open."

Tango smacked Zed's arm. "Do you have a death wish?"

He glared back. "Well, those two apparently do, so we might as well be able to drag their dead butts back over here."

"Hey, don't talk like that," Stress chided.

"Sorry, Stress," the two chimed.

"I'm here!" Armor clanked as Welsknight made his way into the room. "Cleo's on her way, and so is Jevin- I think Gem is, too."

"Great!" Zed exclaimed. "I bet... 7 people is enough to get it open. Since X and Scar apparently could."

"What?" Wels exclaimed. "Get what open?"

"Portal to Watcher world," Stress said, and he immediately shook his head.

"Do you have a death wish?"

"That's what I said!"

"Both of you, shut up."

Iskall showed them a couple of the papers with diagrams of the portals. "I don't know much about this stuff, so I'm here for moral support."

"If the portal's already been open before, we just have to catch it before it disappears entirely," Tango noted.

"Yes, and the hard's part already been done," Zed replied. "We just gotta pull it open again. Wels and I are angels, so we won't have as much power to open a portal to a place like the Watchers, because they go off of darker magic. But I don't think we're too shabby either."

Wels nodded in agreement. "Between all of us, we should be able to open it. But I don't want to."

"Four of our members are in there," Iskall pointed out.

"Isn't there any other way?" Wels said hopefully.

"Unless you can come up with one," Stress sighed. "There's no spying or sneaking around Watchers.They're too powerful. Communicators won't work to contact anyone over there and it's not a very good time."

The door opened and slammed again, heralding the arrival of the rest of the group, and the next hour dissolved into shouting over each other and worrying.

~~~

Grian awoke in a flurry of panic.

There were bands looped around his arms and legs, and his hazy mind could barely remember where he was. A glance out the window, and the gray, gloomy landscape and angry sky only ignited the fuse of his fears.

He was back there. A doctor of some kind was holding a needle over him; a doctor he couldn't see, but the doctor was on the way, wasn't he? To insert fire into his veins; to force him to swallow vile substances that had him throwing up blood and crying tears of acid. The sterile white walls laughed at him with their gleaming purity; and he was so dirty, so bloody, so in need of fixing.

He was not a natural Watcher. He was a scientifically made Watcher; magic literally put into his blood and forcing him to mutate over one agonizing week; wings sprouting from his back and eyes burning with their supernatural glow.

And his disorientation only grew when, as he thrashed, his veins began to shine golden.

His arms flexed in some attempt to get away from himself- what was happening, what was wrong with him, help help help-

The bonds melted away from around his skin; the leather eaten through neatly by golden embers. He immediately threw himself away from the bed and at the door- his hand landed on the knob, which immediately shriveled and burned to nothing. He placed his palms on the door and watched the molten gold dissolve the wood.

The confusion and awe seemed to push the panic away for a moment. Until he saw Xayla come around the corner, and the fear surged again.

"Grian?" Her voice made him jolt as her hands reached towards him.

"No- don't-" Grian backpedaled rapidly, yanking his hands out away from her. "No- I'm dangerous," he managed. "Don't- touch me." He sank down against the wall, holding his hands awkwardly so that they didnt touch anything.

"Okay," Xayla said calmly. "Sure. Just breathe, okay? It's fine."

Grian sucked in a shaky breath, still holding his hands behind his back. She sat on the floor in front of him.

"We've done this before," Xayla said. "You can do this. Just breathe with me..."

They spent a few moments just breathing together, the room silent with only Xayla's quiet inhales and Grian's stuttered wheezes.

"What's happening?" Grian whispered, holding his hands out to stare at their golden glow. "I don't understand."

"Me neither," Xayla replied, staring a little closer at his palms. "But once we learn how to... turn it off, then it'll be okay."

"Is this admin magic?" Grian wondered out loud. "If it was because I have two magic forms, then it should have started earlier."

Xayla tilted her head. "When you first made the Watcher transformation, there was definitely some gold in there."

When Grian looked at her bewilderedly, she continued. "When you were healing. Your hands would spark sometimes, and your wings, too. Sometimes the sparks were golden. I figured it was because it was the mix of magic, but I'm not sure now." She stared contemplatively at the floor. "It could be something else."

Grian looked down to see the glow in his hands fading as his breathing returned to normal. He touched the floor. There was a slight hiss and some steaming, but as he stared, the glow disappeared, and all that was left was a small scorch mark.

"Was this happening earlier?" Grian asked. Xayla winced.

"You had a nightmare," she said. "Xisuma was there."

"X?" Grian asked, looking up.

She nodded. "He was holding your hand or something when the whole-" she gestured with her hands- "glow thing started."

Grian lurched. "Is he okay?!"

Xayla rushed to have him sit down again. "He's fine, nothing burn salve and some magic won't heal. It's alright. You couldn't control it."

"Xayla, I burned through a door," Grian stressed, pointing at the melted mess of a door.

"It had just started," she said soothingly. "He pulled his hands back pretty fast, anyway. He's okay."

Grian bit his lip and nodded, before abruptly standing up.

"Where are you going?" she asked in a way not unlike a mother. "Hey, don't ignore me!"

"I'm going to go train," he replied. "If I have this, maybe I can use it to fight."

He ignored her protests as he made his way down the hall and locked the door of the training room behind him.