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lunarsands · 1 year

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Empires SMP S1 Fanfic: The Future Foretold Ch 1

Characters: MythicalSausage, PearlescentMoon, Pixlriffs, Jimmy Solidarity, LDShadowlady, Smallishbeans, Shubble, Joey Graceffa, fWhip, GeminiTay, Scott Major, Xornoth, Katherine Elizabeth, and three special guests

Relationships: platonic MythicalSausage/PearlescentMoon, implied MythicalSausage/Scott Major

Tags: Empires SMP S1 with allusions to Afterlife SMP, and allusions to Empires SMP S2, Canon Divergent, scosage adjacent

WARNINGS: Angst, New for Part 4:, Major Character Death (it’s the end of S1 what do you expect?), Everybody Dies but also Everybody Lives

Summary: During his multiple attempts to save Pearl, Sausage ends up in the reality he and Scott created for The Wither of Mythland and The Angel of Aeor. He realizes that perhaps with their help he might be able to achieve his goal.

Sequel to The Past Unmasked, Phantom Solitude, and Glimpses of Fate

(Also available on Ao3!)

[ A/N: Hey yeah so, this got completely out of hand for a storyline that started as mild fluff about Sausage and Scott getting possessed by benevolent spirits and kissing at a masquerade ball, but here we are. | This was going to pick up where Glimpses of Fate left off anyway, but yes, the idea for this came before Sausage’s S2 episode 37, and yes, I changed the direction of it after the big lore reveal.]

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Chapter One

Pearl… No matter how many times, no matter what it takes… I will save you!

Sausage staggered through the mist permeating the reality he had just landed in, barely able to make out the shape of trees through the refracting sunlight. That last jump had been rough…

Where was he now?

His grip on the Staff of Mythland went slack and then he felt himself begin to fall forward. Well, wouldn’t be the first time in recent memory that he collapsed after reaching another world. The use of power and magic and emotions was getting to be a little taxing…

Some type of dark blur materialized in front of him and he heard a voice call out in alarm. Oh… Someone’s voice that wasn’t Pearl announcing her impending doom, how nice…

“L-Lord Sausage?!” Bony hands caught him before he hit the ground. Well, at least he was still recognizable even with the grey streaks at his temples and in his beard. And… he knew that raspy sound…

He returned to consciousness elsewhere in the forest – or maybe the mist had burned off in the growing light of day. The ground felt soft, which in itself was refreshing. He hadn’t been taking much time to sleep unless his body simply gave out on him, and then it was sleep wherever he happened to be at the time, never mind in a bed. His hand grasped at the substance beneath it – moss. Okay, that was why the ground felt cushioned.

Then he realized the hand was empty, and he sat up to look around in a panic – the Staff. Where was the Staff—

His head spun and he had to close his eyes to try to get it to stop. He couldn’t use the Staff if he couldn’t at least focus on where he was. He then heard another familiar, although sullen, voice. “He is awake. Tend to him, my love, before he tries to wander off.”

Sausage forced himself to take a deep breath. The Staff couldn’t be gone. He knew these two. One of them would have it for certain. They of all people – spirits? Beings? – knew how important it was.

“Lord Sausage— here, water.” One of the bony hands from earlier held a cup toward his mouth to help him drink. Water was dripping out of the sides of it but he was able to swallow a fair amount of it before too much leaked out.

“Th-Thank you,” he muttered, then carefully took the cup to finish the rest on his own. Not carefully enough, however; it was soft and he almost accidentally crushed it. A more attentive look at it revealed that it was made of leaves layered together and around each other.

The Wither of Mythland made an apologetic shrug with its hands. “We do not have many mortal conveniences – we have no need of them. But I attempted to gather some food for you. The animals can safely eat these, so I assume they are safe for you.”

It gestured to a nearby tree stump, which provided a flat surface to hold a small pile of what looked like sweet berries, and what was definitely a half dozen apples. He could guess that the food would be the same here as in his world; well, of course it would be, he created this one.

He didn’t know how he could have gotten here without purposely thinking of it. All he had been focused on was his reality, over and over again, jumping from one parallel world to the next. But come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten… He lurched upright to crawl over to the tree stump. Maybe that was the problem. He had become weakened simply because he needed to just stop for five minutes and eat something.

He quickly devoured half of the berries then reached for an apple, but paused when he caught movement from the corner of his eye. His hand picked up the apple of its own accord while he turned his head to look. Then he dropped it out of shock.

The Angel’s form was still indistinct but the bright golden glow was gone, replaced by a sickly greenish-gray. The regal bearing was gone as well, as he slumped forward; the movement Sausage had caught was the wing-shapes sagging while The Angel sat on a large rock. He appeared to be looking off into the forest but then his head lowered. Something was obviously wrong with him.

Sausage retrieved the apple then went back to where The Wither sat reconstructing the leaf-cup, asking softly, “What happened to him?”

The Wither looked up, then tilted its head toward The Angel. Its expression remained hidden in shadow but its eyes glittered rapidly. It replied in a quiet tone, “I will tell you after you have rested more.”

Sausage sat down to help facilitate reaching that point. “Then… can you tell me how things have been here? Is this reality holding together?”

“Things have been going well – aside from… that.” The Wither nodded once toward The Angel, to again acknowledge Sausage’s concern. “We have felt content and at peace here for… quite some time.” It wanted to refrain from saying years, having noticed that Sausage had aged – and looked the worse for it. “There have been no disruptions to this reality’s stability after we repaired the barriers.”

“So, you… haven’t had any contact with another reality, at all, at any point??”

“No,” The Wither answered, then added in a cautious tone, “You are the only mortal we have seen since we left yours.”

Sausage looked to the ground, muttering, “Of course. Why did I think she might end up here. She wasn’t there for the first spell. It was only the dream realm she entered…” He brought the apple up to his mouth to take an angry bite out of it.

“Is there something you wish to speak of, Lord Sausage?”

At the question, he paused in the midst of chewing, then slowly finished and swallowed. He contemplated a second bite, then abruptly funneled his anger into raising his arm and slamming the apple to the ground. “I – I lost Pearl! There – There was this explosion, it affected everything, everywhere, and her kingdom was on fire, and then she was on fire, and – and she was linked to her lands through some type of magic – I don’t know how that even happened, but she - she burned, and then she began to wither away – and I’ve been doing everything I can to keep going back and try to save her, but nothing has worked so far!!”

He thought he heard a choked noise from The Angel, but was too lost in the sorrow now threatening to overwhelm him. ��I’ve tried stopping the explosion, I’ve tried to make sure she doesn’t handle any magical items, I’ve tried being prepared every single way possible for that moment she starts burning, I’ve tried to counteract the withering – but none of it works!”

The Wither’s head darted back and forth, glancing from him to where The Angel sat. “L-Lord Sausage, I am sorry, but please calm yourself. Lady Pearlescent was a brave warrior. I am certain she—”

“DON’T SAY ‘WAS’!! There has to still be a chance I can save her!! There has to be a way! Some spell or magic I haven’t figured out! I just have to think…”

The Wither drew back but went quiet. It knew quite well what the depths of grief could do to someone when they lost a loved one. It cast another glance toward The Angel, but the other had resumed slumping forward on the rock.

Meanwhile, Sausage began muttering again. “I just need… I just need to figure it out. Counteract the entire magical fire next time. But… the withering… I still need… She… She withered away…” His head snapped up and he lunged to grab The Wither by the front of its cloak. “You – You were able to pull out my evil self’s soul and hang onto it! C-Could you pull out hers, and keep it safe, and – and somehow we find a way to put it inside a relic, like you two were, and – and then I’ll have more time to figure out how to fix everything!”

His eyes were wild, and The Wither was startled but still silently understanding. However, within the next blink The Angel was beside them, prying Sausage’s fingers from the dark specter’s cloak. “Watch yourself, mortal. Do not lay hands on my love. I failed in my duty, but I will not suffer any harm to those left to me!”

The bright glow might have been gone, but The Angel’s touch was still warm – hot, even, and Sausage yanked his hands away, in no mood to be reminded of hot fire. “What did you fail at?! You’ve just been here, living safe from everything—”

The Angel’s wings flared wide. The Wither dove between them, grasping Sausage by the shoulders to try to convince him to back up. “I see now I should have told you right away. He – He was unable to save Lord Scott. The Champion of Exor walked freely once again, and Lord Scott saw there was only one way to stop him.”

Sausage took one step in retreat before going stock still. “But— Xornoth was sealed away. How could – But – No. Don’t tell me the explosion released him, too! But – So – What did Scott do? I – I haven’t… I haven’t…” A new wave of grief and guilt swept through him, and he mumbled, “I haven’t thought about what might have happened to the others…”

The Angel wasn’t feeling as sympathetic as The Wither and said coldly, “He used the Rune Blade on himself. His life was tied to that of the Champion of Exor, and he made a noble sacrifice to stop the evil from overtaking your entire world. I do not know where his soul is now. I could do nothing to protect him, to stop that outcome. The Champion of Exor could have been stopped another way.”

Sausage’s mind worked to fit these new pieces into his desperate puzzle. “Then… I need to find a way to save him and Pearl. But how do I find out which happened first…”

The Angel swept his wings outward with a loud rustle of feathers, then folded them in. “If I, with the power of Aeor within me, could not do anything, what makes you think you can succeed? You are already on a fruitless path. What can you do that a god cannot?”

“W-What if… What if it just takes all of our powers, together? All three of us,” Sausage rushed to explain with growing excitement. “If we can hold onto Pearl’s soul, maybe we can capture Scott’s, too!”

The Angel snorted. “And the Champion of Exor? How do you propose we stop him? The two are bound together.”

“Grab his soul, too,” Sausage chirped.

“NO.” The Angel’s voice reverberated with power. “I will not have my love touch such an accursed thing!”

The Wither gently took hold of The Angel’s arm. “I have handled souls far more evil than that before. Remember, my love, I have harvested battlefields from millennia ago. Minions of Exor fell then, too.”

The Angel turned his head aside. His wings drooped. “I do not want false hope. I have accepted my failure. Do not continue to torment me with it.”

“But,” Sausage protested, “Why not try one more time? We could even save everyone – if they’re all up against a calamity, then maybe nowhere in the world is safe, and – and I could make a whole new one for everyone, like I made this one! It – It would be easy, really! We just go from empire to empire, you use your holy power to hold back the danger, we find them wherever they’ve fallen, and just collect their souls in one trip!”

“It might not be that simple,” The Wither put in. “They will have to still be alive for me to take their soul. I am not capable of reaping a dead soul in another world with my own spirit anchored to this one.”

The Angel cut in quickly, “And we are not going to risk untethering ourselves from here for a fool’s errand.”

Sausage shot back with viciousness, “Not even to save Scott?!”

The Angel’s aura flared up. “We have no guarantee this will work, so, NO.”

It was the heat rather than the vehemence that made Sausage finally back down, but he glared resentfully at The Angel for a moment, then turned away and began muttering under his breath, constructing a plan to himself as he walked to the tree stump.

The Wither once more touched The Angel’s arm. “Please calm down. We are forever indebted to him, to Lord Scott, and to Wizard Gem. She will undoubtably be in danger, too. We should do anything we can to repay them. What greater repayment could there be than to help them to a new reality where they can also live happily?”

The Angel made a noise of annoyance. “Do not use that to ply me. They are all still only mortal, and would eventually die again anyway. Would you return to collect their souls every time they reached the end, and continue to ferry them to yet another new world?”

The Wither tilted its head up and the Angel could see the ghost of a smile. “I do like that idea. It would be far better than how I used to condemn mortals to the Plane of Souls.”

The Angel’s wings drooped. “I… could not deny you that happiness, then, my love. You deserve to make peace with what was once a curse. I will agree to this idea, but if it fails, you and I must weigh the cost of continuing his quest. It might be for the better to grant him a mercy.”

The Wither’s smile faded back into shadow. “As I have said since the day Aeor’s Champion fell, I am sorry you had to endure that failure. But I have not been able to let go of tracking Lord Sausage’s travels. His soul burns bright, second only to Lady Pearlescent’s. They are meant for something more. I cannot tell if it is meant to happen on its own, or if we are also destined to contribute. But we should aid him whether or not that is the case.”

“Very well. I trust your intuition. Yet because you will have charge of the souls, ensure this is done on your terms.”

The Wither nodded, then drifted over to Sausage. “We have agreed to assist you, but I do implore that you rest. You will need the strength and power to transport all three of us to your reality, after all.”

Sausage started patting himself down, then looked at The Wither. “That, um, reminds me – one of you has the Staff of Mythland, right?”

The Wither nodded once, then drew the Staff from its cloak. “Yes. I will return it after you have rested.”

“Giving me no choice, I see.” Sausage gave a faint smile. The expression felt foreign and he let it fade. He sat beside the tree stump and ate more of the berries. He then returned to the mossy area to lay down, although it took a while to fall asleep, his mind too active planning out a path around the empires for the most efficient way of visiting each of the rulers before their final fate. The one thought that kept coming back to him was whether to rescue Scott second, or last, in order to placate The Angel.

Obviously, Pearl would be number one, and would always be first if they needed to take another run at it.

~*~

The first jump back was a test. In that regard Sausage agreed, especially when he was left feeling slightly disoriented when they arrived not at the edge of Gilded Helianthia, but in his bedroom. It made sense, as that was the last place the two spirits had been in that world. He had been in a thankfully dreamless sleep at the time; it was Scott who sent them back to their reality from there.

The Angel leapt through the window in a blur, circling around once before flapping his wings to hover just outside of it. “I will locate the others. I can do so more quickly alone. I will return the moment I know all of them. Prepare any other magicks you might need. Do not begin until I have returned. We might have need to do this more strategically despite your considerations.” He was indicating Sausage’s thoughts on which direction to start in, a plan he had shared right after his restless nap.

Sausage nodded, but The Angel was already gone, so he hurried off on his own search with The Wither in tow. Into the treasury Sausage went, looking for any artifacts he had that might contain a gemstone of some sort, tossing them into a shulker box as he went. By his logic, that would serve best for temporarily containing the souls until he found a better solution. Then it was a matter of acquiring a spell to get the souls into them. The library was his next stop. If not there, then it was off to Gem’s for the spell she used on Xornoth.

The Wither attempted to help him. “That one will do. That one. Not that, the gemstone is fake. That one. Oh, absolutely not – there is something in there already. Yes, that other one, too. This one is fine. That—” It gave pause. Sausage was reaching for the Nether star pendant. “That… will still work, yes, but perhaps leave it as an extra if something else fails.”

Sausage nodded in understanding. “Kind of running out of options, here. We need at least eleven.”

“You… are counting Xornoth, then?”

“Just in case. If The Angel is against it that much, we could at least trap him and bury him where no one can ever find him ever again.”

“That seems painful in equal measure. If you recall, Lord Scott claimed he found my love’s medallion in a forgotten place.”

“Oh. Um, right. Then… just as a backup plan. We can figure it out once everyone is safe.” Sausage counted up the artifacts again. “Three short if we leave out the star. We could raid someone else’s treasury. Maybe… Maybe we put Gem in her staff. Joel always has his crown on, those have to be real gemstones, knowing him. And Joey has one too – no, no that one won’t work. That was – that was tainted by Xornoth.” He gave one last look around, finding a dagger with a jeweled hilt that the Wither nodded at, then it was off to the library.

Soon books were littering the floor, but the mess was the least of Sausage’s worries. This reality would be reset, anyway, when they jumped to an earlier time to kick off their soul collecting spree. The thing that did concern him was the number of whispers from the growing amount of Blood Sheep outside, but he shut it out as best he could. Surely The Angel would return any minute.

Having exhausted the spellbooks he knew the immediate location of, he turned to the dusty, hidden bookcase where he had first found mention of The Wither. There might have been more about the spell used to trap it, but he also began to worry that what they needed would instead be in some elven spellbook somewhere, and Rivendell was literally the last place he wanted to go right now.

The Wither was having no luck, either. “We may have to consult Wizard Gem. I am certain she will understand if we explain everything.”

“Will we have time for that? fWhip was with her. I don’t want to have to waste time explaining it all from the beginning to him.”

“Are you not planning to explain to anyone?”

Sausage paused, then began flipping through the ancient tomes with less care. “No. That will take too long. We can’t waste a single second. This has taken me long enough already.” His motions verged on frantic, and then the book he was holding came apart in his hands. The cover hit the ground in a cloud of dust. Sausage coughed as it puffed up close to his face when he knelt to try to recover some of the pages. What if that had been the one?

Just then he heard the rustle of feathers and looked out from the alcove to see The Angel enter through a window. He looked… brighter, with some of his golden color returned. “I found all but one. This… Pixandria. The desert is vast. The villagers were scattered but I saw nothing of their ruler.”

Sausage frowned. Pixandria was already out of the way, furthest from all the other empires, but he had been thinking they could start there after Pearl. “We’ll need to jump back in time anyway at this point, so we could all go look for him, then search Gem’s place for the spell.”

“I might be able to locate him if he is already dead,” The Wither offered. “I cannot claim these dead, but I can still sense them.”

Sausage left the remains of the book on the floor then stepped out to see The Wither standing with a hand against an approximation of The Angel’s cheek, then he heard it say quietly, “You look better. You… tarried, didn’t you?”

“I could not resist, I confess. There was still no chance of stopping it, but I was able to reassure him with my presence.”

Sausage now scowled as he approached them. He’d had a feeling The Angel going out alone would end up with him trying to intervene with Scott. “Why did you waste the time when you know we’re going to save him anyway?”

“You still assume this will work. I granted him a measure of solace and hope, and needed to soothe my own soul. Perhaps you will learn the importance of that before you burn your own out.”

The Wither stepped between them again. “No arguments. What is done, is done. We will go to Pixandria now. You may both walk the shadows with me. It will make up the time and avoid overuse of the jumps.” It clasped The Angel’s hand tightly, then held out its other toward Sausage. “Close your eyes. Mortals are not meant to see between this veil.”

Sausage shut his eyes and held his own hand out. The Wither took it, and then incomprehensible darkness and silence engulfed the Mythlandian’s senses. He didn’t relax until he felt the warmth of Pixandria’s dry climate, and even then he waited for The Wither to release his hand. Where he expected to see the city – perhaps even symbolically, The Vigil – he saw instead the mound of the great Ant Hill, a structure he had never quite felt the need to ask Pix about.

But The Wither drifted toward one of the ground-level tunnel openings. “Here. He is… somewhere within. Not very far. Allow me another minute.”

Sausage jogged past it to begin his own search. Ducking inside, he immediately saw that parts of the interconnected tunnels had collapsed; the city was not so far away to go unaffected by events, after all. “Piii—” he began to shout, but then remembered The Wither had confirmed that the Copper King was already dead. It was, indeed, Pix’s crown that Sausage ran his foot into as he came to an intersection with rubble spilling out of two adjacent tunnels. And there was Pix’s arm sticking out from the bottom, a half-buried trident not far from his hand.

Now face-to-face with the actuality of the other ruler’s fates, Sausage could only stare for a moment, then shakily called out, “I – I found him!” He went back to staring. Had… Had anyone survived? He was reluctant to ask The Angel what condition he had found the others in. Was he himself the only one to escape alive?

It was The Wither touching his shoulder that brought him out of his mournful daze. “We have located them all. Now to Wizard Gem, to obtain the spell. Hope is closer at hand.”

Sausage nodded but glanced backward one more time as they headed outside. “Sorry, Pix. I’ll be back. I promise.”

~*~

There was no sign of Gem or fWhip – or Violet, or the other dragons for that matter, anywhere around the slightly smoking Crystal Cliffs. Sausage took that as a sign to just tear through as many of her belongings as possible for any spellbooks that might have been left behind. However, he was stopped from entering the top room of her tower by a gray cat who meowed at him scoldingly. He couldn’t remember the cat’s name.

“What do you mean, I shall not pass? I don’t have time to explain! I need the spell Gem used to seal Xornoth! You have to believe me when I say it is extremely important and I have no time left to waste!”

The cat meowed once, then turned and pranced over to a bookcase. It began to paw at one of the books. Sausage hurried over and pulled it out by the spine, then quickly flipped through it. His eyes widened as he skimmed Gem’s handwriting and found mention of Xornoth, then flipped a few more pages and found the magic circle layout she had come up with. “This is it! Thank you! I promise you, I will take good care of Gem, and everyone else!”

The cat flicked its tail in response but gave neither a purr nor a meow. Yet Sausage was already off, running down the stairs and excitedly yelling, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it! Back we go!!”

[Chapter Two]

#empires smp #empires smp fanfic #empires smp s1 #MythicalSausage #pearlescentmoon #well the whole cast of S1 really #but they're the central focus #scosage adjacent #witherangel #the past unmasked saga #lunar yarns #empiressmp #evil!mythicalsausage

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