Chapter Text
The sky stretched endlessly before Wemmbu, a pale blue expanse brushed with threads of cloud that thinned toward the horizon and dissolved into nothing.
From this height, perched upon the edge of the Far Lands, Wemmbu could believe the Unstable SMP belonged to him alone.
The wind came in gentle increments, carrying the mineral scent of ancient stone and the distant sweetness of oak sap. It caught the ends of his braid and made them dance; the violet strands woven into a plait that fell to the small of his back, shorter now than when left loose, when the ends would brush against the backs of his knees.
A ribbon the color of morning sky held it in place, its trailing ends fluttering against the fabric of his shirt. His best friend had tied it there this morning, working through Wemmbu's hair with the quiet concentration he often reserved for his research.
He hadn’t asked if Wemmbu wanted it braided. He simply appeared behind him after breakfast, comb in hand, and begun parting violet hair. Wemmbu had sat cross-legged on the floor before the armchair, listening to the rustle of feathers each time the Seraphim shifted, and hadn’t minded. His best friend’s hands were always gentle. His fingers never pulled or caused the small pains that Wemmbu associated with his own clumsy attempts at braiding.
It was easier to let him do it; it was always easier.
Now that same blue ribbon caught the fading light as Wemmbu tilted his head, watching the world far below arrange itself into a microcosm.
The oak forest ended in an abrupt line, a border drawn by nature and something older than nature, where the trees simply stopped to exist and the Far Lands began. From this vantage, Wemmbu could trace the contours of his entire known world. The forest where his cottage hid among the dark trees. The winding paths he had memorized years ago, their twists and turns as familiar as the silver ridges of his own horns.
And there, a far smudge of yellow against the dark forest, the distant shapes of Farville catching the amber glow of the afternoon sun.
The townsfolk would be finishing their work by now. Wemmbu had visited the town only five times in the years he had lived here, but each visit had been carefully negotiated, a privilege earned through days of good behavior and promises to return before dark.
Farville was a place he had slowly began to like. The townspeople didn’t stare too long at the sight of his horns, sharp gray with silver scales. They didn’t flinch at the scaled length of his tail, peeking underneath his cloak. Instead, they laughed at his jokes, pressed fresh bread into his hands, and asked when he would come again.
And every time Wemmbu returned home with the taste of their kindness still warm on his tongue, his best friend would ask him to recount the visit in full: who he had spoken to, what they had said, whether anyone had looked at him too long or asked too many questions. Wemmbu always told him the whole story. There was no reason not to.
Eggchan was only concerned for his safety, and concern was simply another word for care.
His mother had used to warn him, in the deep and echoing dark of the End, that players were creatures of greed and cruelty. His best friend had confirmed this, his voice soft but certain, his blue eyes holding Wemmbu's with the weight of absolute truth.
Players couldn’t be trusted. Players would hurt and kill him if they knew what he was.
‘An Ender Dragon.’
The people of Farville were an exception, maybe, but exceptions didn’t disprove the rule.
Wemmbu understood this. He had accepted it the way he accepted the color of the sky—as fact, immutable and beyond argument. And yet sometimes, standing at the edge of the server with the wind in his hair and the distant houses glimmering below, he felt something restless stir beneath his ribs. A curiosity. A hunger for more than five visits in as many years.
He didn’t voice it, of course. Eggchan would disapprove. He would worry, and worrying made Eggchan's wings go stiff, his voice turning flat in that particular way that made the air feel heavier.
The sun slipped lower, bleeding gold into pink, then into the first hints of lavender dusk.
Wemmbu shifted his weight on the precipice, feeling the rough grass bite through the fabric of his trousers. His tail coiled behind him for balance, the dark scales catching the light in brief iridescent flashes.
He wasn’t wearing his netherite armor—it sat folded in his inventory beside his spear—and the poet shirt he wore instead was loose at the collar, the sleeves billowing slightly each time the wind picked up.
Wemmbu had spent the afternoon here, as he often did, watching the sky, the forest, and the distant town, letting his thoughts drift without anchor. The peak of the Far Lands was the only place where the horizon didn’t feel like a wall. The only place where the world opened up instead of closing in.
Eggchan didn’t like him coming here. His best friend said it was dangerous, that the edge was unstable and the fall was too great for even a water bucket to guarantee safety. But Eggchan wasn’t here now. Wemmbu had left while his best friend was deep in his usual work, bent over his office desk with research papers spread before him like wings. Wemmbu hadn’t said where he was going. He never needed to say, because Eggchan always knew anyway.
Below him, impossibly far, a fox circled in lazy spirals before vanishing into the treeline.
Wemmbu tracked its movement, then he pushed himself to his feet in one fluid motion. He stood balanced on the very edge, arms stretching above his head, spine curving as he yawned. The drop before him was immense. But Wemmbu didn’t fear it; he had never feared heights, not even as a child clinging to his mother's scaled back while she soared through the endless void.
‘Falling was only dangerous if one didn’t know how to land,’ he thought absentmindedly.
He drew the water bucket from his inventory with a flick of his wrist. Then, without ceremony or hesitation, Wemmbu stepped off the edge of the world.
The wind became a roar. It whipped past his clothes, stirring the ribbon from his braid until it streamed behind him like a banner. The oak forest rushed up to meet him, individual trees resolving from a green-black blur into distinct trunks and branches. He aimed for the narrow gap between two oak trees, and just before the ground could claim him, he emptied the bucket at his feet.
The water broke his fall with a splashing sound, and Wemmbu stepped onto solid earth without so much as a stumble. He scooped the water back into the bucket, placed it back in his inventory, and began walking.
The forest closed around Wemmbu immediately. Here, beneath the dark canopy, the light was dimmer and greener, filtered through layers of leaves that rustled with unseen movement. Mushrooms clustered at the bases of trees, their red and white caps glowing faintly in the shadows. Wemmbu's boots found the path without conscious thought. He had walked this route so many times that his body knew it better than his mind.
Left at the fallen trunk carpeted in moss. Right at the clearing where the ground grew thick with ferns. Straight through the copse of birch that stood pale and strange among the darker trees.
Wemmbu could have walked this path blindfolded. The path was etched into his bones by now, every root and stone memorized through years of repetition. Eggchan had taught him the route when he was still new in the Overworld, walking him through it again and again until Wemmbu could trace it in his sleep.
Along the way, the Seraphim would pause at certain trees, clearings, and patches of earth that looked no different from any other. He would place a hand against the bark or the soil and murmur something resonant that made the air shiver.
“Wards,” his best friend had explained.
These were protective measures to keep dangerous players from wandering too close, to turn away those who might wish them both harm. Wemmbu had accepted this explanation the way he accepted all of Eggchan's explanations: with trust, with gratitude, and with the quiet relief of being so thoroughly protected.
Of course, Wemmbu didn’t notice that the wards ran along every possible route out of the forest. He didn’t notice that they formed not a wall against intruders but a circle around a center, and that he was the thing being kept at its heart.
His tail swayed behind him as he walked, occasionally brushing against a low-hanging branch or sweeping fallen leaves from the path. Wemmbu hummed a tune, a meandering melody that rose and fell with the rhythm of his footsteps. His thoughts turned to their dinner tonight.
Potatoes, he had harvested them just yesterday. Carrots too, their orange roots thick and sweet. His best friend had gone to the town the day before; Wemmbu remembered the slight tension in the Seraphim's shoulders when he returned, the way his wings had refolded before settling. His jaw had been set in that rigid line that meant he was displeased about something but didn’t want to share it.
Wemmbu had offered to go in his place. He always offered. And Eggchan always refused, his voice flat and final, a door closing without a handle on Wemmbu's side.
It was simpler not to argue. It was easier to accept his refusal, to nod and ask what had been purchased, to help put away the materials in the darkness of their basement where the shelves were always fully stocked. Eggchan had brought back cuts of beef wrapped in brown paper and fresh eggs nestled in a cloth-lined basket.
Wemmbu hadn’t asked what else his best friend had done in town. He had learned, over the years, that some questions made Eggchan's gaze turn unreadable and his wings draw inward. Wemmbu didn’t like it when this happens. It always made something cold settle in his stomach that he couldn’t name and didn’t want to examine.
The forest began to thin, and Wemmbu slowed his pace. The transition was subtle: a gradual increase in light, a shift in the quality of the air from close and damp to open and warm. He passed between two oaks whose branches intertwined overhead like clasped hands, and there it was.
The cottage stood in a wide clearing, as though the forest had been asked to step back and had obliged.
Two stories of oak and deepslate cobblestone rose from the earth, their lines clean and well-maintained. Flowering vines climbed the walls in cascades of purple and green, their petals trembling in the early evening breeze. Soul lanterns hung from iron posts along the gravel path, their blue flames flickering with a light that cast no heat. The windows were dark behind their pale curtains, save for one on the ground floor where the soft golden glow of froglight seeped through the fabric. The front door stood open.
And there, in the doorway, leaned Eggchan.
His best friend was motionless. His arms were crossed over his chest, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled to the elbows and wrinkled at the joints.
His wings—the great white primaries that rose behind his shoulders, the smaller pair that framed his face—were held stiff, their feathers slightly lifted as though stirred by wind Wemmbu couldn’t feel. His shaggy hair fell across his forehead in pale, disordered strands, and his blue eyes were fixed on the treeline with unwavering focus.
He didn’t shift his weight. He stood in the doorway as though he had been standing there for hours, as if he had known exactly when Wemmbu would emerge from the trees and had positioned himself accordingly.
Maybe he had. ‘He always knew,’ Wemmbu thought.
Wemmbu grinned. The cold thing in his stomach dissolved instantly, replaced by the familiar warmth of homecoming.
“Yo,” he called, stepping onto the gravel path and hearing the familiar crunch of stone beneath his boots.
“Bro. You're late. It's almost sunset.” Eggchan's voice was flat, but there was a sharp edge beneath the words. His gaze didn’t move from Wemmbu's face. It tracked him with the precision of a hawk watching a field mouse, missing nothing: the wind-tangled braid, the dirt on his boots, the way his tail still swayed with the leftover energy of his walk.
Wemmbu shrugged, his tail flicking lazily behind him. “My bad.”
He didn’t sound sorry. He knew it, and he knew his best friend knew it. He passed through the doorway, close enough to catch the scent of parchment and ink that always clung to the Seraphim’s clothes, and stepped into the warmth of their home.
As Wemmbu crossed the threshold, he felt the faintest brush of feathers against his shoulder; covetous, there and then gone.
The cottage opened around him. The ground floor was a single wide space, divided by function rather than walls; the living room and dining area bleeding into the kitchen, all of it lit by the soft luminescence of froglights set into the floor in clean geometric patterns.
The furniture was mismatched but deliberate: an oak dining table surrounded by chairs with mismatched cushions in faded indigo, a pair of armchairs arranged before a fireplace that sat cold in the summer warmth, and bookshelves that lined the walls and spilled their contents onto side tables and windowsills. Purple and blue accents appeared in the throw pillows, the woven rug, and the ceramic vases that held dried lavender and wild grass.
It wasn’t messy, but neither was it organized. Books lay open on the arm of the sofa, a mug half-full of cold milk sat forgotten on the mantelpiece, and a violet blanket had been draped over the back of an armchair.
The windows were covered by light blue curtains. No one could see in and no one could see out. The curtains were always drawn, Wemmbu realized vaguely, though he had no memory of ever closing them himself. Eggchan must be the one doing it.
He crossed the room toward the kitchen, his tail brushing against the leg of the dining table. Behind him, he heard Eggchan sigh; a soft exhale that wasn’t quite exasperation or relief but something suspended between the two.
“Dude, at least try to sound sincere.”
Wemmbu rounded the kitchen island and turned to face his best friend, who had followed him across the room and settled onto one of the high stools on the other side of the counter. The island sat between them like a border, its surface slightly scarred with knife marks and ringed with burn stains.
Wemmbu leaned his palms against the wood and met Eggchan's eyes. “Hey, I'm always sincere,” he joked, his tone light.
Eggchan's frown deepened. The smaller wings beside his face twitched, a brief flutter of feathers that revealed and then hid his cheekbones. His skin, sun-kissed in the overhead light, seemed paler now.
“And be more careful. Jumping from the Far Lands’ edge with no armor and just a water bucket? Stop that.”
There it was. The knowledge.
Wemmbu's smile didn’t waver. He didn’t ask how Eggchan knew; had not asked in years, because the answer was always the same.
Eggchan always knew where he was. It was a constant, as reliable as sunrise, as predictable as the way the soul lanterns flickered to life each evening without Wemmbu ever needing to light them.
He had asked once, when their friendship was still young, how Eggchan always knew. The Seraphim had tilted his head and regarded him with those depthless blue eyes and said, simply, “You’re my best friend. How could I not know?” The answer had seemed sweet at the time. It still did. Wemmbu had never questioned it further, and thus Eggchan had never elaborated.
“Alright,” Wemmbu said, lifting his hands in mock surrender. "I'll get down in other safer ways."
Eggchan's expression didn’t change. His wings remained stiff, the great white arcs of them rising behind his shoulders with a tension that made the air feel thicker.
For a moment, something moved behind his face: a flicker, or a ripple, as though the human architecture of his features was a mask laid over something far older and far stranger, and that something was pressing against the underside of his skin. His pupils didn’t contract in the light. His breathing was too slow, the chest beneath his wrinkled dress shirt rising and falling with the mechanical regularity of a bellows.
“I'd prefer it if you didn't go up there in the first place. It's dangerous.”
The words landed with a different weight than before. The flatness of Eggchan's voice had given way to something edged, something that pressed against Wemmbu's chest like a hand and pushed.
The Seraphim's blue eyes held him in place; not staring, not exactly, but regarding him with an intensity that felt almost physical. His wings didn’t move. The smaller pair beside his face had drawn back, exposing the full severity of his expression: the hard line of his jaw, the faint tension in his brow that most would miss but that Wemmbu had learned to read over years of careful observation.
In that moment, Eggchan didn’t look like his best friend. He looked like something holy in the oldest sense of the word.
‘He was a Seraphim, after all. Not just an angel, but a Seraphim.’
Wemmbu held his ground. He had weathered worse from Eggchan. His best friend’s protectiveness was not new; it was a constant.
Sometimes it flared into sharpness, into arguments that ended with locked doors, long silences, and the hollow sound of Wemmbu's own breathing in a black room that felt smaller than it had before. There was a stretch of days—weeks?—that Wemmbu couldn’t quite remember. A door that wouldn’t open. The taste of food passed through a gap too narrow for his shoulders.
Wemmbu tried to not think about it. It happened for a reason, of course.
His best friend had explained it to him afterward, had held his hands and spoken in that low, steady voice about dangers that Wemmbu had been too naive to understand. The confinement had been for his protection, and the isolation had been for his safety.
Eggchan cared about him. And care, real care, sometimes meant doing things that hurt. It was normal. It was okay.
“Okay, fine. I won't, alright?” Wemmbu let out a breath, letting his shoulders soften. He looked up at Eggchan with a smile that he hoped would smooth the furrow from his best friend’s brow.
“Anyway, what do you want for dinner?”
Eggchan didn’t move for a moment. His gaze remained fixed on Wemmbu's face, searching, evaluating, peeling back the layers of his smile as though looking for something hidden beneath.
The light from the floor caught his eyes, pale blue against the tan warmth of his skin, and in that glow his pupils seemed to have swallowed the irises entirely: two dark wells in a face that was otherwise composed. His wings shifted, a slow motion, the appendages rustling as they resettled against his back. The smaller wings near his face relaxed by degrees, folding forward again to frame his jaw, but not before Wemmbu caught a glimpse of something in the Seraphim's expression.
Something strange. Something that watched him the way a dragon might watch its hoard.
“Hm,” Eggchan said, and the tension in his posture began to dissolve. “I think I want steak.”
Wemmbu snapped off a mocking salute. “Aight, bet.”
He turned toward the stove. Behind him, he felt rather than saw his best friend settle more comfortably onto the stool, elbows resting on the counter, chin propped on one hand.
The Seraphim’s gaze was a physical weight between Wemmbu's shoulder blades, steady and unblinking. It didn’t waver as Wemmbu retrieved the wrapped cuts of beef from the cold box. It didn’t shift as he set out salt, pepper, and a knob of butter that glistened under the light. His best friend’s stare remained fixed, a constant pressure.
The stove flared to life with a twist of Wemmbu's wrist, blue flame licking the underside of the cast-iron pan.
He moved through the kitchen with the ease of long practice, his tail swaying behind him, the scaled silver tip occasionally curling around the handle of a drawer and pulling it open without his hands. He seasoned the meat with a generous hand, pressing the salt into the red flesh until they dissolved, and laid the cuts in the pan with a satisfying sizzle.
The kitchen filled with the scent of searing meat and melting butter. Wemmbu moved from stove to counter and back again, retrieving carrots and potatoes from the basket by the window, washing them under the tap, setting them to boil in a pot of salted water.
Outside, the sun completed its descent. The light filtering through the curtains shifted from gold to a soft violet, and the soul lanterns along the path outside began to glow more brightly in response, their blue flame a counterpoint to the dying day. The cottage walls seemed to draw closer in the dimness, the froglights on the floor pulsing with a rhythm that matched no heartbeat Wemmbu had ever known.
Eggchan watched him.
He hadn’t looked away. His chin rested on his hand, his expression smooth and impenetrable as polished stone. His blue eyes tracked Wemmbu’s every movement with the stillness of something that didn’t need to blink.
The firelight caught the edges of his wings and made them glow faintly. The smaller wings beside his face had gone utterly motionless, as though even that small movement would distract from the act of observation. He looked, in that moment, less like a friend sharing an evening meal and more like a collector admiring a prized possession: a painting hung in a locked gallery, a jewel kept in a velvet box, a songbird that had been taught to sing only for him.
There was something strangely settled about him. The faint tension that had shadowed his features earlier had eased, leaving behind a stillness that was almost serene.
His gaze never left Wemmbu. As though reassuring himself that he was still there.
Wemmbu, his back turned, didn’t see any of this.
He was humming again, prodding the steaks with a fork, checking the sear and adjusting the flame. His thoughts drifted to the carrots, and whether he had added enough salt to the water. Then to the potatoes, debating whether to mash them with butter or serve them roasted.
Wemmbu wasn’t thinking about the weight of the gaze on his neck. Because that weight was as familiar as his own heartbeat, as predictable as the curtains that were always drawn, the windows that never opened, and the front door that locked from the outside when Eggchan thought Wemmbu was asleep.
“Medium rare,” Eggchan said, when Wemmbu glanced over his shoulder with a question about doneness.
“A man of taste,” Wemmbu replied humorously, and returned his attention to the stove.
The night came on in full, drawing itself around the clearing. In the kitchen, Wemmbu plated the steaks, mashed the potatoes with butter and cream, and arranged the carrots in a neat line beside the meat. He set the plates on the counter and pulled up his own stool across from his best friend, their knees nearly touching beneath the overhang of the island.
The Seraphim's expression had softened into something almost warm, the hard edges of his face gentled by the golden light. He looked like Wemmbu’s best friend again.
"Bon appétit," Wemmbu announced, and began eating.
They ate in companionable silence. The food was good. Wemmbu ate with the enthusiasm of someone who had spent the afternoon perched on the edge of the world and had worked up an appetite on the walk home. Eggchan ate more slowly, cutting his meat into precise pieces, chewing each bite with measured deliberation.
Across the table, Wemmbu had the faint impression of being watched. And whenever he looked up, Eggchan was already looking back.
“So. Did you enjoy your walk?” Eggchan asked. His voice was calm now, the earlier sharpness smoothed away, but the question wasn’t quite casual.
Wemmbu nodded, swallowing a mouthful of mashed potato. “Yeah, bro. The sky was really clear today. You could even see all the way to Farville.”
“Right, Farville,” Eggchan repeated. His words were neutral. “You were watching the town?”
“Just looking.” Wemmbu shrugged, cutting another piece of steak. “From the edge, I mean. You can't really see people from up there. Just the rooftops.”
“Okay,” Eggchan said, and his tone was agreeable and pleasant, the inflection of someone making conversation over dinner. But his fork had paused halfway to his mouth, and the smaller wings beside his face had drawn back just slightly, just enough to reveal the subtle tension in his jaw.
“I guess that's harmless enough.”
There was a pause. Wemmbu continued eating, unbothered, his tail curling contentedly around the leg of his stool.
The silence stretched, filled only by the clink of cutlery against plates and the soft hiss of the dying flame on the stove. When Eggchan spoke again, his voice was lighter, almost idle.
“Y’know, I was thinking of adjusting the wards tomorrow. Some players from the town were getting a little too close.”
Wemmbu looked up, a question forming on his lips. The perimeter wards were interesting and strange. He remembered bits and pieces of Eggchan’s explanation: something about detection, boundaries, and the way his strange powers could distinguish between a welcome guest and an unwanted intruder. The details, however, had long since dissolved into a blur of Seraphic terminology and concepts far beyond him.
More than once, Eggchan had attempted to explain the system in greater detail. Wemmbu had listened with interest, following along for as long as he could before the conversation inevitably wandered into territory he couldn’t quite grasp. By the end, he usually found himself nodding and hoping the important parts would stick.
A few of them had. The wards watched over the forest surrounding the cottage and helped keep dangerous players away. Beyond that, Wemmbu was content to leave the finer details in the Seraphim’s hands.
“Sounds good,” Wemmbu said, because it always sounded good, and because Eggchan’s expression had relaxed again into that familiar, gentle attentiveness. “Uh, need any help?”
“No.” The word came quickly, too quickly, and then softened. “I mean— thank you, but it's delicate work. You don’t need to worry.”
Eggchan smiled, and it was a kind smile, the smile of someone who wanted only the best for the person across from him. "You've already done so much recently. You should rest, bro."
Wemmbu didn’t feel particularly tired, but he nodded anyway.
His best friend was usually right about these things. Eggchan knew what Wemmbu needed, often before Wemmbu knew himself. It was one of the things that made living here so effortless. There were no difficult decisions to make, no uncertainties to navigate. There was only the cottage, the forest, and the edge of the Far Lands on days when Eggchan was too absorbed in his research to notice Wemmbu sneaking away.
There was only this life, peaceful and protected, a life that asked nothing of him except that he stay within its strict bounds.
Wemmbu finished his steak. He reached for his glass of water and drank deeply, the cool liquid washing away the salt.
Across from him, Eggchan had finished eating as well, his plate nearly clean, his cutlery arranged in parallel lines. He was still watching. Of course he was still watching. His blue eyes reflected the froglight in pinpricks, and his expression was unreadable.
“Thanks for dinner,” Eggchan said. His voice was soft, genuine.
And Wemmbu, warm and safe in the golden glow of their kitchen, smiled back at him. “Anytime, dude.”
Outside, the soul lanterns flickered. The forest pressed close against the clearing, dark and silent. Inside the cottage, behind the drawn curtains and the locked doors, the evening settled into its familiar rhythm: the quiet clink of dishes being gathered, the soft rustle of wings.
And beneath it all, there was the steady, unending gaze of a being who had once failed his precious friend, and who would burn the SMP to embers before he failed him again.