The shelter was progressing well. It was no longer just an altered cave. Destiny hadn't taken much interest in the facilities though, aside from her bedroom. There was a farm somewhere in there, though she hunted her own food so she never used it. Fire and Urist had built a spider grinder, but she hadn't visited it since they tamed the spawner. And so on.
It wasn't that these facilities weren't useful or well-made, she just couldn't bring herself to remain inside long. Unlike in the village, the base wasn't yet expansive enough to avoid people in.
She was doing better, for sure. She wasn't just sitting around in her room waiting for her own death or his resurrection anymore. But people were too much. David would have been too much. And she didn't know these people, nice as they tried to be. The most contact she had was when she gave Lucy the odd lesson. Rose was doing good work, but sometimes she forgot that Lucy was:
1. A housemaid, not a hardened killer bereft of squeamishness.
2. Incapable of magically summoning copies of the blades she uses, much less of throwing them with pinpoint accuracy.
The latter issue was mostly the reason Destiny had been asked to help out. She trained Lucy how to throw small projectiles and use a bow. It helped that Lucy was as friendly as she was. In fact, these lessons almost didn't suck.
As for the others, she kept away from Fire and Urist as much as possible. Fire would try to get her to be around the others, and she just wasn't ready for that. He was well-meaning, but too piercingly attentive. She felt like a project, sometimes, in the same way as the shelter. Sometimes, it was as though he were trying to solve her, like a riddle or a dilemma. She'd take orders when he gave them, but she felt a distance was necessary.
Urist was just too much, generally. Too chatty. Too loud. Too energised. Too much of a dwarf.
The only one who didn't pose the same problem was Voidblade, the enderman. He kept away from everyone except Fire. She wondered if it was a race thing. If he just didn't like humans. Maybe he was just not used to hanging around them. It was hard to tell. She always had trouble reading the faces of endermen, except the ones who had captured her and killed David. Their emotions were plain as day.
She spent all her time hunting and wandering the landscape. It gave her space to think and made her feel productive. Efficient. Lonely, but efficient.
She'd taken to trying to reconstruct her life with David up until Nexus. From the cave, through Sandshard and all that had followed. She had just reached the moment she ended up in the Eternal Mine, captured by The Sovereign. She didn't let a detail pass by. The feel of the stick she had used to fend off the zombies before David had come to help. The shock of the water after she jumped into the lake. The queer warmth that had filled her when she summoned her first blast of ice and rescued David from Martin at Sandshard.
But then, something interrupted her thoughts. Passing over a rocky hill something caught her eye: a body and a banner that stopped her heart. An enderman lay on the ground, a spear-like flagpole crushed into its skull. Atop the flagpole was the sigil of Herobrine, of the Sovereign. Even so many years after Carter beat him, his troops insisted they fought for him. Destiny wondered if many had survived the collapse of the Eternal Mine as she formed razor-sharp icicles between her fingers.
She reached the body, and her heart rate returned to normal. It was years old at that point. The blood was dried to dust, and the scales were shedding. The banner was barely still attached. The Sovereign hadn't been here in a long time. She remembered how, shortly after her capture, the Entity had brought her and the other prisoners to negotiate. How Marinus Bul, its attorney, had spoken to her:
"Honestly, we owe you a favour," Bul had oozed. "We tried dealing with the Sovereign some time ago and that kid leading them - Martin? - attempted to storm Nexus. We drove him back of course, but it was an unpleasant experience."
She was almost disappointed. Retribution was a great healer, and if she couldn't get it from the Tower, her old enemies would have proven sufficient.
Nonetheless, there was a story here, and she scanned the landscape for it. She saw a small pass between the hills, and the corpse of a man outside it. Even at that distance she could recognise the dark cloak of Martin's disciples. She approached, and found a small valley that had once housed a Sovereign camp.
It gave her great satisfaction to see it in ashes. The site had been burned, but not totally. You could still identify shreds of banners, the distinctive armour sets and in places even stores of propaganda seemed to have remained intact. Destiny set them alight quickly.
If Destiny hadn't known the Sovereign as well as she had, she would have thought this fight was one-sided. Their corpses were everywhere, but aside from the enderman corpse on the hill, she couldn't find a single corpse that obviously belonged to the Entity's forces. She reckoned that they'd probably just recovered their own casualties and left the Sovereign's behind as a message. If it had been intended for Martin, it wouldn't have made a difference. He would have come back, no matter what. He and David had always been alike in that way.
But then she saw the reason he hadn't. At the end of the little valley, she saw the cracked portal of obsidian. She tried to remember what it would have looked like. She remembered the portal being red and gel-like, but it didn't feel real. She hadn't been paying enough attention to really recall what it had been like. Her entire reminiscence was that way. It was all constructed. A retroactive reality. It brought her no closer to him...
She switched lanes and for a moment wondered what would have happened if Martin had somehow been able to come back. Maybe he and the Entity would have cancelled each other out and she and David would never have needed to fight as long as they did.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a version of things where the Tower fell with Martin inside and she and David had just lived their days out in Sandshard with Janax, no wiser as to what they were, but no less happy for it.
Then again, this was a vain thought, an empty speculation. David had beaten Martin. While she was captured, he had near enough beaten the entire Sovereign. And yet, one of the Entity's lowly captains had killed him. It was unfair.
She realised she had been clenching her fist when the icicles cracked. The warmth of blood and the chill of ice mingled. She let them drop, wiped her hand off in the grass and then summoned more.
The portal didn't seem to grow larger as she approached it. It just seemed to look more frail and more likely to collapse. After a walk that felt far more arduous than it probably was, she stood before the portal's frame, and there was nothing to it bar crumbling obsidian. She didn't know what she had expected to find, but it disappointed her. She sat down in the empty maw and looked out on the open grave of her enemy. It occurred to her that she should say some words.
"Well," Destiny began. "It's been real. All those times you almost killed me are pretty much the only memories I have. I'm glad you're all dead."
The wind whipped a banner indignantly. She felt the urge to justify it.
"What can I say? My memories of you aren't good. I wasn't even happy whenever I beat you. I was pretty happy when Martin died, to be fair, but that was about it and it wasn't about you, the rank-and-file. Most of you were just crazies I didn't think about. Without Martin or Herobrine or whoever whipping you up into a frenzy you probably wouldn't have killed anyone. You may have just been normal, garden-variety douche bags. The crowning point of your awfulness might have been spreading a nasty rumour, or trying to get someone fired for no reason or yelling at an old lady. For that, I'm sorry I killed so many of you. I'm sorry the Entity and his guys killed you all. I'm still glad you're dead, though."
She didn't like how this part came out, so she shouted it again:
"I'm still glad you are all dead, because that means someone else probably lived! Because it meant I lived! I won, assholes!"
The banner whipped, but it seemed sheepish this time. Satisfied, Destiny resumed a more measured tone.
"The happy memories I had weren't to do with you. They were all about David. Our friends too, but he was always there, so he was always a part of the happiness. I don't know if you appreciate this, but I am no one without you guys. If you all hadn't flocked to Martin, we might never have been reincarnated to fight you. Thanks for that, I guess. Doesn't change the fact that because of you I've only ever known violence and despair. All apart from one guy, who was great."
She felt a tear run down her cheek. Now seemed a good enough time to launch into her reconstructed history. An obituary of sorts. A sermon, perhaps. All she knew was that she might never get back up from it. Destiny felt one of the icicles in her hand lengthen, sharpen, and began her speech.
"I don't know who woke up first, but we must have been pretty close. I only woke up around an hour before I went into that cave and-"
"You ran into the zombies."
The voice was sad and sweet and familiar. Destiny turned around and saw her past self.
Appearance-wise Anya was absolutely unchanged from the last time she'd seen her. Same grey hoodie/blue jeans combo. Same ponytail. Same backpack. Destiny supposed this was to be expected. The spirit world's extensive wardrobe wasn't exactly attested to. Then again, she hadn't changed her clothes in the same period. Had barely even washed.
In fact, Anya looked like a slightly older, cleaner version of herself, who was unaffected by the whipping of the wind.
"How are we doing, Destiny?" She drawled, trying to force a smile. It was pretty obvious she knew the answer.
"Pretty awful," Destiny nodded. "You?"
Anya sat down beside her weightlessly. Both their heads were bowed. Legs spread-eagled.
"About the same."
"Then, I suppose Carter's-"
"Shuffled off this mortal coil?" Anya mused. "Mosied on into the sunset of existence? Gone to hang out with the proper dead people? Yeah."
Destiny allowed herself a long, bitter but cathartic cackle: "I would have just said passed on, but go mad."
They shared a few moments of silence.
"Do you know what happens? I know you're supposed to be a past version of me. If I died, would we just become one or something?" She asked because the thought of it terrified her. She and David might never know each other as they once had, if they ever met each other again.
"You mean, when I realised I was a ghost, did I keep pondering my shelf-life? No, of course not, I naturally assumed that for all the heroic dying we would just get a free pass to persist indefinitely as we were."
Destiny leaned back and looked Anya up and down. She had a hard look about her eyes that kind of terrified Destiny. She wondered if she had that look about her. Was it inherited?
"Maybe he is just waiting there on the other side."
Anya sighed, "Probably."
"And David's there with him."
"That's assuming you guys aren't to do a term like us," Anya spat cruelly, suddenly glaring at Destiny.
The thought chilled Destiny to her core. Having to guide another through the same pitfalls they fell into. Rendered bystanders in the story they failed to tell… And that was assuming Destiny died in a timely enough manner to rejoin David. A million things could happen to separate them. As she had said before, they were out of sync.
"Yeah, that seems fair!" Anya was screaming at the ruined camp, twisting the knife. "We had to stick around, denied paradise because we didn't stay alive long enough to ice Martin, a teenager! So it's only right you guys have to stick around for not killing the thing that did this to the Sovereign! And then you'll just vanish into the next person, like I will when you die! The price of failure!"
That's when Destiny broke down, crying tears of fear. Anya stopped, and remorse sank her features. Her arms were around Destiny within, motherly and tender. Warm in spirit if not in a physical sense. Destiny didn't resist. She moved her head so it might have leaned on Anya's shoulder. The forgiveness was immediate and unconditional, for they were of one soul.
"I'm sorry," Anya said. "That wasn't right. I don't know what happens next. I don't know if I'll see him again, and that scares me. I tried to make you feel that, without appreciating that, y'know, you're me, and Carter's David. You're already feeling that."
Destiny moved her arms to hug the ghost back, then withdrew to wipe her eyes.
"We're in this together," Anya concluded, moving to look Destiny in her newly-cleared eyes. "And I am always here if you need to talk. There seems to be a connection here, for some reason. Maybe it's that dumb rock door. Maybe this is a chunk of our world. I don't know how, I don't care why it's here, but I can tell you we will use it. We will get through this. You get me?"
Destiny smiled back, "I get you."
Anya straightened up and gestured for Destiny to get up. "Then, on your feet, finish that eulogy you were about to do, and get back amongst the living for a bit."
Destiny, a terrible, marvelous hope burning in her, arose. She walked forward, back straight and shoulders back. She breathed in, ready to force the pain from her in view of a friend.
Then, Anya interrupted: "Or not, I think you have company."
Like in times of old, Anya was gesturing to the newfound threat. Destiny summoned fire in one hand and an icy javelin in the other. From the heart of the sky a large, formless mass could be seen barrelling down toward her. Destiny crouched into a stance from which she could hurl her projectiles. She glared at the flying beast. Her heart was racing.
"Stay calm," Anya warned. "You know how to handle this. Aim for anything that looks like a wing first. Don't let it land properly."
She could start to make out details. Scales of stone arranged like wings framed a slim body of… green fur? Then she heard the faintest outline of a call made against the wind: "Help!"
"Don't worry. It's not an enemy," Destiny concluded, casting aside her conjured weapons. She leant back against the portal and gestured to the mass to land.
As Tyron neared the ground, the stone wings that had carried him fell away shattered across the ground. He stumbled as he tried to land and ended up buckling and rolling down into the valley of the camp. When Destiny neared him, it became clear that he was breathing heavily and utterly spent. His fur was still patchy from obviously recent wounds. Someone had healed him, but only part-way. He needed medical attention. She could only imagine what had happened to the others.
"Tyron," she shook him and he groaned. "Tyron! Where are the others?!"
He groaned and tried to rise but fell.
Anya came to the lip of the hill and called out, a look of utmost shock on her face.
"Is this one of your new friends?"
"Yes," Destiny muttered. "It's complicated."
"You do realise he just flew in on wings of stone."
"Yeah, I haven't seen that before either but you don't see me complaining do you? Nexus is weird. You'll get used to it."
Tyron's stupor didn't seem to be abating so she reached out with her mind.
"Kir? You there little guy?"
A tiny voice stirred, weak and weary. Tyron's sword was still awake, glowing from its sheath. This stone wings thing had evidently drained them both terribly.
"Destiny? Friend!" It was awake now, but still weak. "Others injured. Need help. Were scouting but…" A location appeared in mind, accompanied by an immense sense of urgency.
Destiny fumbled around in her belongings and drew an arrow with a firework attached that Fire had prepared for such a situation. She fired it into the air in the direction of the shelter. A trail of red sparks cascaded across the countryside. A minute passed and a trail of green sparks cascaded in retort. They were coming.
And so Destiny propped Tyron up and looked back at Anya. She tried to beckon to her to come, but Anya shook her head. She either wouldn't, or more likely couldn't, stray too far from the portal. Destiny took off at full pelt. Catharsis would have to wait.
Some time later, Destiny emerged into the clearing. She saw the red-headed miner-woman, Jennifer, sat there in her armour, a bow in her lap. She looked terrible, covered in half-healed wounds and eyes red and skin pale from exhaustion. Somehow her armour, skin and hair remained impervious to dirt.
Fristad was beside her, axe at the ready. He looked wary and apologetic and relieved all at the same time as Destiny approached. He looked to be in much better form, only seeming to have suffered some cuts and bruises that were healing naturally. Maybe a scar or two to gawk at. Nothing serious.
He also seemed cheery despite it all. Destiny reckoned it was probably down to getting rid of that book. Probably nice not to have something like that messing with your head... She then decided she probably owed Fristad an apology once things calmed down. Or not. It was a weird situation.
"Well, Destiny. Welcome back," Jennifer said as she rose, smiling. "I was just getting some fresh air."
She produced a shovel and shakily opened the door to their little hovel. "We would have hooked up a door but…"
She didn't finish the sentence, but her appearance provided the only necessary answer. Destiny nodded and ran down after her. She noticed as she passed Jennifer an awful wound on her side, just about healed up. It wasn't exhaustion, this was blood-loss.
And so they entered, Jennifer laughing ahead of her: "Hey guys, look who's back!"
The hovel was a sorry sight. It was obviously a rush-job. The floor was a mix of dirt and stone. The only signs of organisation were the beds and the map on the wall, which had a circle on it signalling the location of the shelter.
Steve was hunched over by a fire in the centre of the room roasting a pig on a spit. He obviously wasn't much used to it, and Astro was giving him constant tips. Steve seemed rather annoyed, and the advice sounded like it mostly consisted of adding salt strategically. Both looked exhausted, even a little diminished by hunger but weren't as obviously injured as Jennifer, so there was that. They both looked at her with relief.
"Destiny!" Astro called, as he ran to hug her. She grinned tolerantly and patted him on the back. "We were wondering if we'd not taken a wrong turn. Is Tyron okay?"
"Should be. Fire and the others should have reached him by now. I sent up a flare and got confirmation. He'll be fine."
He seemed calmed and Destiny took a moment to survey the room. Warnado and Amanda were asleep on neighbouring beds, their hands touching tentatively on the ground. Both of them were awash with bruises and just as pale as the others. Destiny ruminated on their youth and then put it from her mind. They would be safe in the shelter. She would assure it. She drew up Amanda's blanket and turned to face the person sat on the next bed over.
This was Shadow, who was attempting to look as serene as usual but seemed obviously perturbed. She looked smaller than ever, and there was an empty puncture wound in her abdomen. There was no blood as far as Destiny could tell, and she was obviously still alive, but it couldn't be a good thing. She rose and brushed her white hair from her eyes.
"Hello Destiny," Shadow greeted. She had something of Fire's distance, but it was different. It wasn't a lack of feeling, but an outright difference of it. As though her idea of happiness or sorrow didn't quite line up with everyone else's definition. Destiny couldn't quite describe it, but she seemed out-of-step with the rest of humanity.
"So, what happened?" Destiny asked flatly, regulating her emotions as best she could.
"The village was attacked by the Entity's forces," Shadow concluded. "The Ender pursued us, and though we were able to kill those she sent after us, the fighting was fierce. Astro and I have done our best to heal them, but healing magics are demanding no matter what world you're from, it seems. We reached this point and could go no further, so we sent out Tyron. I am glad he found you, we were beginning to worry."
Destiny leaned and took Shadow's shoulder. The mage felt terribly fragile so she loosened her grip.
"Who would you say needs the most attention?" Destiny asked. "Fristad and I could probably carry them back to the shelter and then return with the medical supplies you need."
Shadow nodded and gestured to the corner of the room, where Destiny saw the most injured: Kay. His torso was bare, though he wore armour from the legs down. His ribs looking nearly misshapen in places and dominated by large, half-healed welts. There were burns about his neck, but those looked like old wounds. These great gashes across his chest were fresh, and magic had tried and failed to dispel them. There was bruising across one forearm indicated the markings of several thick, heavy fingers. He was completely unconscious.
"Did he go shirtless or something?" Destiny scoffed in disbelief. "His breastplate was obsidian. I don't know about your world, but in mine that stuff doesn't break!"
Astro looked at her sadly and drew out several shards he had been storing in his robes. He placed them in her hands. Sure enough, these jagged vestiges bore the markings that had covered Kay's breastplate.
"It doesn't in ours, either."
Destiny's entire pulse flattened.
"What happened?"
"The Entity happened," said Astro simply, gravely.
Destiny looked down at the broken chunks of the unbreakable chestpiece in her hands. She felt the edge nick her palm, but she held firm. In the cracks between these remnants, she saw the gravity of her situation. She saw in them the price of her peace, and the warlike path that would lead her back to him.