Tw for panic attacks

"Grian! Dude, where on Earth have you been?" Those were not the words Grian was expecting when he arrived home. He looked at Mumbo, confused. Why was he in his house? "I've been sending messages, haven't you seen?"

"What do you mean?" Grian replied, had he missed something? Was this the danger the Watchers had mentioned? His heart seemed to get louder in his chest and the panicked tone the moustached man was using made his breathing want to increase.

"What do you mean what do you mean? You've been gone for three days! Me and Pearl were looking for you and you were absolutely nowhere, you weren't even replying to messages." He said.

"Oh," Grian replied. He'd been gone for three days? It was quite common for time to work a bit differently when going between servers, but he'd been pretty sure it hadn't been that long since it was night when they left and also when they arrived back. Mumbo frowned. "Why were you so worried?" It wasn't unusual for hermits to occasionally leave completely for a few days and sometimes even weeks without saying anything.

"I don't know, just... Pearl seemed to get worried half way through searching for you and I guess I just... did the same." He said.

"Sorry." His mind had been elsewhere and he hadn't considered his friends. Maybe he'd been paranoid that they were a danger, maybe he had been too self-centred.

"It's okay, as long as you're good. Where were you? Out of interest." Mumbo asked, clearly calming.

"Er, just resource gathering, y'know, off the continent." Mumbo nodded. "Why were you looking for me?"

"Pearl said she wanted to talk about something and then I was just helping her." Mumbo said. Grian thought back to Pearl, building her base in Evo. Did she remember him or was this unrelated? It was yet another question that needed answering.

"Okay." He said.

That night, Grian struggled to get to sleep. But this time, not because of the cold - he now had his cloak which he used as a blanket - but because of his mind rioting. All his questions and ideas and fears were whizzing around his head.

* * *

<Xisuma> server meeting today at 11:00

The vibrating communicator pulled Grian from his sleep and he read the message with hazy eyes. Great, he thought sarcastically. The meetings were never particularly interesting, and normally he ended up having a kicking battle under the table with Scar or sometimes Tango and Zedaph while the Sensible (er) Ones like Impulse gave them hard stares.

He sighed as he folded up the warm cloak and put it in his Ender chest, he couldn't exactly go around wearing it without receiving a few odd looks. As he did so, he noticed that his fingertips had gone slightly purple. When he'd been a Watcher and had been regularly using magic, they'd gone dark enough purple to seem black at the ends and the colour had spread between his first and second knuckle. Right now, they were a fairly vague colour and it only made it's way just past his nails, but he could probably expect them to get worse.

He grabbed a pale blue pair of woolly gloves he wore in winter and slipped them on, before pulling some rockets out of a chest and making his way to X's base, where they'd agreed would be their meeting place that season since there was no shopping district.

About half of the hermits were already there when Grian walked into the small meeting room situated in an out-of-the-way spot in the admin's base. He wondered vaguely whether there was a meeting room in Evo and how similar it was to Hermitcraft, but pushed the thought to the side when he saw Tango and Scar sitting at the opposite end of the table to Xisuma, glancing at him with mischievous glints in their eyes. He smirked and went over to them, reciprocating the glance.

"No messing around today please, the meeting is about something quite, uh, serious." Xisuma said, and all the present hermits looked at each other. Grian only then noticed that Pearl was sat next to X.

It was probably a coincidence, but anxiety started to lurk in the back of his mind like a cat would in a shadow, watching mice walk past them unaware of the deadly danger, and it was ready to pounce whenever it saw a mouse tasty enough. He went to fiddle with his fingers but his gloves stopped the action from being as comforting or grounding as it should've been.

The Watchers had warned him. Was this what they were warning him about? Was Pearl against him or just an onlooker? He took a deep breath, although it manifested more a shakily than he would've liked.

He didn't know yet. He sternly told himself not to jump to conclusions. He could panic later, but for now he had to listen to the full story.

A few more breaths later, he'd managed to slightly block the adrenaline that had decided now was it's time to make an appearance. He hoped no one noticed that he was now shaking slightly from panic as well as from the cold.

"Okay, now that you're all here," Xisuma started, and Grian looked around to see that, indeed, everyone had arrived without him noticing. He was sitting next to Iskall. He wanted to see a friend but instead he saw a PvP-er. He checked his sword was in his inventory and moved it to a position it would be easy to grab from. "-but Pearl has told me about some experiences she's had in a previous world and she thinks that there's potentially some related danger on Hermitcraft." X was still talking.

Grian took a deep breath and convinced himself to continue to listen, although it was difficult to hear over his chattering mind.

"Thanks X," Pearl said, seemingly taking over. He knew near to nothing about her but it was possible she knew everything about him, it was unsettling to say the least. "I'll try and keep this short, but there are a group of people, well, maybe that's a generous term for them... they're called Watchers. There's a chance some of you might've heard of them. In simple, they're bad. They have powers. Strong, dangerous powers. They're much stronger than admins, and they use magic rather than coding. They... they're a threat.

"And I think they may be here, on Hermitcraft." Grian was really struggling to get air in by this point and barely noticed the pause here when everyone looked at each other with worried expressions. "I was travelling, looking for someone, actually, a few thousand blocks away off the island when I saw a portal, the kind I've known Watchers to build before."

"How do you know it's definitely them?" Tango asked, and Grian hoped that no one would notice at him (since he was near to the demon) when they glanced at where the voice had come from.

"Only Watchers have the ability to create and move bedrock." Pearl answered simply. They can do a lot more than that, Grian thought, still not sure whether to be more scared of the Watchers or the hermits. Pearl sat down.

"I don't want anyone to be scared of this or panic about it, but I thought you should all know. Thanks for sharing that, Pearl." Xisuma said.

"No problem." She replied.

"So, should we try and kill them if we see one?" Iskall asked. Kill.

Kill.

Grian fidgeted, pressing down his right foot on his left and squishing it. They would want to kill him, because he was part Watcher again. He had his mask and his cloak and had the side effects, he was clearly turning back into what he was before joining Hermitcraft.

"Yeah, what do they look like?" False asked. Grian would have no chance against her unless he used his magic, in which case he'd probably kill her accidentally. Permanently.

"I don't get the impression you'd be able to kill them." Xisuma said. They were talking about Watchers like they were animals or pests. They would see Grian like that if they ever found out. "Really, I'm not sure what we can do about them if they are here."

"To answer False's question, I don't really know. They don't show themselves often, mostly just leave signs to show that they were there, and they leave messages. I have read about a couple of times people have seen them, though, and they're usually described as tall, dark figures with black and or purple wings. Their magic is depicted as purple fire. They also wear white masks covering the eye part of their faces that has a Watcher symbol on." Pearl said.

They'd recognise him if they saw his wings or mask or magic. His breath was shaky and he tried to even it out, if only until he could be alone and safe.

"What does the Watcher symbol look like?" Bdubs asked. Pearl pulled out some paper from somewhere and drew a very rough sketch before showing it to everyone. A few people nodded and she put it back on the table.

Grian felt like all of his secrets were being put on display to everyone, and, in a way, they were. It felt like any moment, after telling everyone about how horrible Watchers were, Pearl was going to step up onto the table and point at him and tell everyone that he was one.

And he wouldn't be able to deny it.

And if everyone took out their swords, he wouldn't have his magic to defend himself.

He didn't know how he'd deal with all of his friends looking at him like he was a monster. He didn't want them to see him and be scared. He didn't want to have to leave them. But it was looking like eventually he would have to.

"Grian? Are you okay luv?" Stress asked.

And now all the attention was turned on him.

All the sets of eyes fixed on him and the single tear that had made it past his eye as he shook in what could've been the cold, a panic attack or complete and utter fear.

He nodded, because at this point he couldn't tell whether he was thinking in English or Galactic and it wouldn't look good if he suddenly started speaking in the Watchers' home language. They would hate him if they found out, so he couldn't let them. He wouldn't.

Unfortunately, a nod wasn't convincing enough.

"If it's about the Watchers, don't worry. We'll find away out of it, we'll defeat them." Xisuma said. The words didn't go past his head but it must've looked like they did because a hand tapped the side of his arm.

"Do you need one of us to take you home?" Iskall asked. He glanced at X unsurely. They might put two and two together while he was gone.

"The meeting's pretty much over anyway." The admin said.

He took a deep breath, feeling slightly sick, although that wasn't what he was worrying about.

"I..." he said, testing his voice, "I can go on my own."

"You sure?" Scar asked. He nodded and took it that he was allowed to leave, so he stood up suddenly, his chair scraping against the floor, and left.

After a few minutes of flight he arrived back at his base. He didn't know what to do or where to go; he wanted to leave because his friends were no longer safe but his only option was to go to the Watchers, who were also not safe, even if they were playing 'nice'. He tried to regulate his breathing, although it was harder than it should've been.

After a solid five minutes of counting to three repeatedly, the panic wore off and what had happened started to feel very real. A few tears ran down his face, and all he wanted was the mask. He wanted the magic because that was the only thing that made him feel like more than an ant faced by a human's foot. He wanted the power, and the safety and security, he needed the magic's lush, soft touch.

But it was barely half past eleven in the morning, everyone was out and about and now they were on look out for things like him.