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aquaquadrant · 8 days

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I’m having thoughts again (the horror). You may have answered this before and I just can’t remember or find it buuuuuut

Is/was there ever a dragon in Hels? If there was could they spawn it in again or is she just dead?

“a dragon?” the player huffs a laugh, giving you an odd look. “you know dragons aren’t real, right? it’s just fantasy shit, like the sun and moon.” they shrug. “anyway, uh, if- if you’re not gonna buy somethin’ then stop wasting my fucking time and get the hell out.”

~*~

“ah, i see you’re a fellow intellectual.” the player nods sagely. “data analysis has found plenty of evidence supporting the existence of an ‘end dragon’, through communicator codes such as ID tags for items called ‘dragon’s breath,’ ‘dragon head’, and ‘dragon egg’, not to mention the achievement ‘free the end’, which is supposedly earned after slaying this dragon. so while we can only extrapolate so much from nonfunctional comm commands, i’d say the idea of a dragon existing in other worlds is quite substantiated.”

they pause.

“did hels ever have one? well, that’s the question, isn’t it. while the existence of glitched end chunks throughout hels has been proven on multiple occasions, no one’s ever found an end island with the obsidian pillars required to spawn and sustain a dragon. of course, it’s possible someone found it long ago and destroyed it, or perhaps no one’s found it yet, or perhaps it exists in a different form entirely. if you look at how biomes spawn in hels…”

~*~

“what, hels ain’t bad enough for you as it is?” the player wheezes, shaking their head. “kid, if there’s a dragon in hels, you’re better off if you never meet it. we got enough problems without throwin’ a damned dragon into the mix, ya hear?”

~*~

“never heard of such a thing. seems like nonsense.” the player hefts their axe onto their shoulder. “now, move along before i kill you.”

~*~

“there was a dragon in hels, yeah,” the player says nonchalantly. “this old player took me in when i was a kid, used to tell me stories. i mean, he never saw it. it was more of a ‘i know this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy who heard that someone saw it’ kinda deal… well? do you wanna hear it or not?”

they smirk.

“… that’s what i thought. so yeah, it was this massive red dragon- or uh, maybe it was like orange with red flames on its scales, fucking sick, right- with huge teeth and insane fire breath and… actually, it might’ve been acid? or poison? fuck, whatever, the point is that the thing was nasty, alright, it used to swoop down on the early settlements and mow those motherfuckers down, eating players- or, wait, i think maybe it would just throw them? uh, i dunno how but- wait, where you goin’? hey, this is valuable information, you know! … fine, whatever, asshole.”

~*~

“how the hel should i know?” the player demands, folding their arms. “this world’s infinite and old as balls, and we don’t exactly have a consistent method of widespread information distribution. someone could’ve killed it yesterday and i’d have no fucking clue.”

~*~

“yeah, there was.” the player nods. “it was before my time, but i heard our admin killed it. whoever the fuck they were… makes no difference to me, but it’s a cool thought, right?”

~*~

“hm. been a long time since someone asked me that.” the player leans forward, eyes flickering in the firelight. their gaze is haunted. “are you sure you wanna know?”

they pause.

“… alright, then.”

“now, this was back in the early days of hels, long enough ago that some of the oldest players still remembered havin’ an admin. we didn’t even know ‘bout the end chunks. then one day, there was this sound. every player in the world heard it, no matter where they were. it was louder than any thunderstorm, louder than any explosion- the kinda sound that goes clean through you, splits your ears and rattles your bones.”

“it was a scream, only not like any i’d ever heard before. there was a raw, guttural quality to it- like a wounded animal- yet the power was undeniable. but there was some distortion to it as well; an underpinning of static like the whole thing was bein’ broadcast through a beat-up jukebox. just thinkin’ of it sends chills down my spine.”

“then a peculiar thing popped up in chat. someone had made an achievement, only we couldn’t tell who or what. all the text was scrambled, like those funny words you see on an enchantment table. never met anyone who could read it. but needless to say, this sparked an entire movement bent on discoverin’ what the hell had happened.”

“some of the more adventurous players went explorin’ and found the end chunks. players who knew a thing or two about data analysis started huntin’ through their comms, usin’ the data of an endstone block someone brought back. didn’t take long after that to figure it out.”

“they found there was a dragon that belonged to a separate realm from overworld and nether. the end, they surmised. y’know, where endermen came from. the dragon lived there, sustained by end crystals that were said to float atop obsidian pillars on the end island it called home- its nest, as it were. so, unsurprisingly, it was called the ender dragon.”

“and if you killed it, you opened a portal. where it’d lead was anyone’s guess, but it was a way out of hels.”

“i was young, then. young and hungry. i banded up with some other players and we consulted an expert- the founder of data analysis, actually- to extrapolate the coordinates for the main end island. only he didn’t find just one; he found ten sets of coords, spread out over hundreds of thousands of blocks, nearly a million blocks. he predicted that each obsidian pillar had spawned on a separate end chunk, and that each one would have to be tracked down to kill the dragon. we had to destroy the crystals first, you see. he thought it was a waste of time, a fool’s errand, but we didn’t listen. so we split up, takin’ one set of coords each, and set off.”

“they were all ‘bout the same distance from each other, so no one had an easier go of it. i took one northeast of spawn, seven hundred and twenty-nine thousand blocks out. the journey took years. not sure exactly how many, i stopped keepin’ count sometime after the fifth. the other players on the mission gradually stopped replyin’ to my whispers- i think some of ‘em gave up and turned back. wasn’t sure if i was the only one still goin’, ‘til i eventually saw their death messages in chat, one by one. mobs, lava, fall damage, the usual. some might’ve died on the way; traversin’ hels alone on foot is no cake walk, even without the concern of PVP. never heard from any of ‘em again.”

“but i’d gone so far that givin’ up wasn’t an option. even if no one else had made it to their pillar and destroyed the crystal, even if killin’ the dragon would be impossible, i had to see it through. so i kept goin’. it was a lonesome existence, bein’ that far from spawn; i went months without sayin’ a single word, at times, damn near lost my mind. but it weren’t all bad. i reached the unloaded chunks, saw naturally-spawned passive mobs for the first time in my life. i saw rare biomes i’d never heard of, even came across one of those glitched end ships with an elytra. journey went quicker, after that, but it was still several years before i finally reached the coords.”

“the pillar was exactly what you’d expect. a tall, round obelisk made of solid obsidian, rooted on a floatin’ chunk of an endstone island. there were some endermen millin’ about the place, far more than in any other biome i’d seen- ‘cept maybe the warped jungles- but no sign of the dragon. the crystal was at the very top of the pillar in an iron cage, so i flew on up there, thinking at least i’d do what i came to do.”

“soon as i set foot on the top of the pillar, i heard a strange sound. it was that little zippin’ sound you hear when an enderman teleports- only it was a louder, deeper, slower sound that seemed to shake the world. like i could actually hear the distortion of space and time itself. the air suddenly filled with a haze of purple particles, so thick i could hardly see, move, or breathe.”

“and then she appeared.”

“the dragon was all black, black as the void ‘neath bedrock, with spines down her back and huge, bat-like wings, deadly sharp teeth and claws. she was big enough to swallow me whole and we both knew it. but what really put me off was that she was glitched.”

“it’s the best way i can describe it. her body was flickerin’ around all crazy-like as if i’d gone cross-eyed, so she appeared in multiples at times, countless wings unfurlin’ from the distorted mass. anywhere i looked directly at her would suddenly seem… pixelated, almost, like her form was fracturin’ into pieces, like i couldn’t fully ‘preciate the whole. but i remember her eyes. they were pure white, so bright it hurt to look at ‘em, and as she moved they seemed to blink in and out of existence around her, like they couldn’t quite settle in her skull. like twinklin’ stars against the night sky, beyond the bedrock ceiling.”

“she was beautiful.”

“the dragon perched against the tower, claws grippin’ the obsidian on either side of me, curled her slender neck down ‘til we were face-to-face, and roared. it had that same quality as that sound i’d heard all those years ago, and i knew at once it’d been her death rattle. in my daze, i remember wonderin’ who could’ve possibly managed to kill such a creature? what kinda player would even want to?”

“i’d been well-prepared for the fight. full enchanted gear, potions, gapples. but starin’ up at her, i couldn’t bring myself to use any of it. i just stared at her, caught in a moment that felt like an eternity as she stared back, before i realized her breath was poison.”

“i ended up back at the world spawn. didn’t matter i’d set a respawn anchor nearby the end island- this seemed to overwrite it. lost everythin’, of course, but i didn’t care. my death message in the chat was glitched, too, in that same strange language. now, i didn’t share my experience with the rest of the world; only to those who asked, and only in the hopes of dissuadin’ them from makin’ an attempt of their own.”

“which brings us to the end.” the player finally sits back, studying you with a shrewd gaze. “now, you listen to me. that dragon ain’t somethin’ to be killed, understand?”

you nod.

“good.” the player’s expression changes. “so, i’m afraid you’re not gonna like the next part of the story. but nothin’s free in this world, least of all knowledge.”

the player moves, there’s a flash of metal, and suddenly there’s a sword in your gut. engrossed in the story, you hadn’t even noticed them equip it.

“sorry,” the player tells you with a grin, “but that dragon ain’t the only monster here. send my regards to spawn.”

as darkness consumes you, your last thought is that the white spots dancing across your vision suddenly look like dragon eyes, blinking from the void.

~*~

#hermitcraft #hels to pay au #HTP fic #my writing #using they/them bc none of these players are supposed to be existing characters #they are ALL random unnamed npcs and not intended to be any known helsmit #(except for a little mention of one in there- that’s exactly who u think it is)#anyway THANK U FOR THE ASK i wasn’t planning on writing a drabble for it but when the inspo strikes…

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silverskye13 · 1 year

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So, the thing about being damseled, Welsknight is rapidly realizing, is you don't really have to be a damsel to do it. Or have it done to you, that is. Being damseled isn't really a gender thing, like all the old knights tales would have him believe. He doesn't have to have long blonde hair, or a princess dress. He doesn't have to make deals with obscure fae gods or spirits, doesn't have to know how to weave golden thread. Heck, he doesn't even have to be locked in a tower. Damseling -- that is, the state of being a damsel in distress -- is a much broader scoped state of being. It's not so much a trope or a role, and more of... An essence. A vibe. If one can be trapped and helpless and in need of a knight in shining armor to save the day, one can in fact be damseled just fine without any of the key fairytale hallmarks.

How does Welsknight know all this? Well, because he's managed to damsel himself, of course.

Welsknight is trapped. He should have known better. Well? Should he have known better? Eh. Even if he should have, he definitely shouldn't have expected to. He's new to Vault Hunting.

Iskall and Stress made it sound so easy. Yeah! Just go find a vault, gear up, don't be afraid to run for your life. Nothing can go wrong if you're careful. Beware the curses and traps and tripwires. Don't eat anything growing on the walls. Fight. Survive. Win! They do it all the time, with their adventuring teams and alone. Whatever suits their fancy. Just don't anger the gods and do run screaming if something way beyond your skill level wanders into the room. Cowardice? Nonsense! Vaults aren't duels, they're thrills. Thrills that sometimes glean cool treasure, and treasure, while awesome, can't challenge your honor and isn't worth your life. So go, kill some monsters, have fun, run when you need to. It's low-high stakes, choose your own adventuring at its finest!

And Wels is a knight errant, alright? He's slain dragons. And withers. And, yes, rescued a few damsels. He's good at what he does. So when he and Iskall went for some drinks at a local tavern, and Welsknight whined that he was getting bored of escorting mining parties and killing oversized lizards for neglectful nobles, well, Iskall had smiled and pointed him to the Vaultlands. And Welsknight, bored and stupid in his boredom, had decided raiding vaults was a great idea.

"If I get out of this," Welsknight vows in his most solemn, oath-binding knight's voice, "I am going to punch Iskall right in his grinning, stupid face."

He is barricading a door with anything he can find, all while the screams and shrieks of some persistent undead challenge his fervor from the other side. The undead here are different than they are outside the Vaults. The slow, lumbering, hollow things that amble blindly around deep caves and unstable mines don't hold a candle to these creatures. These are malevolent undead, things that seem to hate Welsknight personally, inhabited by the dreams of sleeping gods that were, probably, sealed in these Vaults for a freaking reason. He's pretty sure one of them is jibbering with the voice of his dead brother, which is, honestly, demonic scales of unfairness. And he would know demonic unfairness. Welsknight has fought exactly one demon, and while he certainly isn't an expert, he knows more about how much they cheat and torment than he had ever wanted to know. And anyway, how is he supposed to kill that kind of malevolence in the undead? He's not! For heaven's sake, he's faced fae with less personal malevolence, and the fae court is the most petty place on earth!

Welsknight kicks his barricade with an armored boot, making sure it'll hold. The stack of pilfered detritus shakes but stands firm. Somewhere in that lot is his broken sword, barring the door shut. The blade shattered in four pieces when he was tackled by some wight-creature, not because the creature was that strong, but because he'd just used it to fight some sort of corrosive slime, and really, the fact that living acid slime exists in the Vaults is unfair, and something Iskall really should've warned him about. At least it hadn't gotten on his armor.

Welsknight backs away from the barred door, listening to the angry screams of what lay beyond it. There's a lot of name-calling going on. "Come to your death, coward!" And "Brother please! Help me! Don't let it take me!" And "Sleep with us forever knight! Aren't you tired?" Screech and groan through the air as though the door and barricade aren't there to muffle it. There's hysterical cackling as well, which is kind of typical. He can't tell if the loudness of the noise is supernatural, or if it means there's another entrance to the room he hasn't noticed yet. As unsettling as the supernatural option is, he kind of prefers that right now. Weaponless and exhausted, he's not sure how well he'll manage if the undead just start pouring in from a side door somewhere.

Welsknight blinks, and belatedly realizes he's blinking back tears. His hands shake as he wipes them away. Yeah, okay, maybe the screaming-with-the-voice-of-his-dead-brother thing was getting to him more than he thought it would. He's a knight, not an iron golem. He still has feelings. He tries to be detached and gentle about it. He knows what fear is. The first time he fought a dragon, he cried. He cried a lot, actually. After it was dead he lay on the ground sobbing for a good hour, which had been terribly inconvenient at the time, since it had broken one of his ribs. Terror kind of just, does that to him -- makes him cry. He learned a long time ago not to be ashamed of it, no matter how badly timed it could be.

"Right," Welsknight croaks into the room around him. "Cry about it later. Escape now."

It's not a big room that he's trapped himself in. It has the trappings of an ancient hall, with some newness to it, indicating he isn't the first adventurer to stumble in here. Rotting boxes and chests are tumbled against a collapsed wall, the smell of damp rot wafting off them. One has candles and two plates on it, someone's makeshift dining set up, and there's the scorched remains of a campfire. It looks pathetic compared to the massive columns and reliefs it sits beneath. Maybe this place was a temple? It sure seems kind of temple-y, but Welsknight has yet to encounter an altar to any Vault Gods -- which is probably good. Iskall had mentioned those were guarded by scary creatures, and if "malevolent undead who steal the voices of your loved ones from your memories to torment you while they devour your flesh" hadn't registered on Iskall's "scary creatures to warn Wels about" index, he really, really doesn't want to know what insane creatures might guard the altar chambers of the Vault Gods.

"Probably like, undulating tentacle demons with acid breath," Welsknight mutters out loud as he meanders the chamber, searching for something useful. "Or maybe the Gods themselves just come down and use you as a hackey sack until you prove your worth or die. That sounds about right."

The cold stone walls make no comment, which is probably for the best, since given current trends, they would probably talk back with the voice of his disapproving parents, or maybe the old knight he'd been squired to, which would really start straining his already stressed out psyche right about now.

He can still hear his brother's voice calling to him through the door.

For as impressive as the room is, there really isn't much in here of use. The boxes from the old expedition have let the moisture in the room in. There's old, indecipherable food inside that is now mostly black sludge. The candles might be useful if he had anything resembling a tinderbox to light them with. Everything else in here is far older, and mostly carved stone too heavy to pilfer. This place has obviously been picked over before. No relics are on the walls. The one chest he finds that is (probably) older than the boxes contains only a single glorious cobweb as a prize. Welsknight has just about submitted to his fate to die in obscurity in a random Vault somewhere, when he encounters a corpse. It is not reanimated dead, though he does give it a few good kicks to make sure it doesn't feel like crawling to life and talking with ominous voices.

"Well, at least the ambient necromancy going on in here has limits," Welsknight sighs, squatting down on the balls of his feet to pick the corpse over. "Well, friend, I don't suppose you've got anything helpful on you?"

Their chainmail is rusted, their features, save for a few whisps of black-brown hair, are decayed away. He manages to find a coin purse with some woefully old looking coins -- so the chances of some other adventuring party stumbling to his rescue are quite small then. He picks up a shield from them that, though dry rotted, looks like it could block one or two more hits before giving up the ghost. On their back is a scabbard so rusted, it looks like the sword might be fused inside. Welsknight grimaces, then shrugs and concedes that even a brittle sword is better than none. Still, it doesn't make prying the sword belt off the old bones any more pleasant. There's a lot of brittle cracking, and a lot of wincing on Welsknight's part, before he finally manages to get it free.

"Sorry friend, but I think I need this a little more than you do."

The skull rocks a bit on the floor as it settles, but otherwise doesn't seem to care. The sockets aren't even facing his direction. Welsknight takes that as his sign that he isn't horribly cursed... Or at least no more so than when he first got trapped in here. Welsknight rubs at the blade, trying to see how much of the rust is superficial. A bit chips off beneath his fingernail, revealing bright silver beneath.

"A silver scabbard?" Welsknight raised his eyebrows at the corpse, "Well, weren't you a glamorous fellow?"

Welsknight grimaces and, taking ahold of the hilt, draws the sword. It pulls a lot easier than he thought it would. The rust holds it for a moment, and then smoothly releases, revealing bright steel underneath. The sword unsheathes with a ringing hiss.

"--ON'T SHEATH THE SWORD YOU IDIOT!"

The scream is right by his ear. Welsknight lets out a startled yelp and turns to face the voice, tripping over his feet and landing in an inglorious heap on the floor.

Standing in front of him is a knight garbed in black armor, a fiery plume rippling from his helm. His back is facing Welsknight, and he stands with his shoulders hunched, one arm reaching forward like he's trying to stop someone. The knight takes a step back, surprised, then rocks on his heels.

"Oh." He says, then looks down at the skeleton by his feet. "Oh."

He stares at the skeleton for a long moment, shrugs, and then gives the skull a hard kick, sending it clattering off across the room. "Serves you right, you asshole!"

Welsknight is crying again. He can't help it. He's scared and overwhelmed, and this knight is so, so terribly familiar. From the armor to the way he stands, to his voice. And when the knight turns to face him finally, the face is familiar too.

"Hels?" Welsknight whispers.

Helsknight, his definitely-dead brother, looks down at him with uncomprehending eyes. Then he scowls, "Nope. Sorry."

"I-- but--"

"I am the Spirit of the Sword," Helsknight cuts him off, rolling his eyes petulantly. "I serve the wielder of my blade, loyal in death, as I wasn't in -- blablabla. I take the form of the protector, the guardian, the comforting, and yes, I'm used to the whole "oh you look just like my dead loved one" thing. So let's skip the unnecessary angst, okay?"

A particularly loud shriek from the ghouls outside echoes shrilly through the room before Welsknight can even attempt to gather his response. Helsknight spins to face the barred door and takes a threatening step towards it.

"Oh would you SHUT UP? We're in the middle of something!"

The sounds behind the door fall abruptly silent. Welsknight stares in bafflement, feeling just confused enough to stop crying. The Spirit Of The Sword That Looks Just Like His Dead Brother offers a hand to him.

"Come on, get up." He says as he pulls Welsknight to his feet roughly, and then gives him a long, appraising look. "Well, you look like you might know how to swing my sword, so there's something at least."

"I'm-- I'm a knight errant," Welsknight tells him, trying to recover some of his senses. "What-- are you another trick of this terrible place?" Anger starts to bubble underneath everything else he's feeling, and his fists clench. "I'm tired of the stupid mind games and the trickery, and everything screaming like Hels and---!"

Helsknight holds up his hands, looking something between annoyed and appeasing. "Aye, yes, I understand. My last wielder did die in this Vault. No I'm not a demon, or an evil spirit -- unless you intend to use my sword for evil, in which case, I'm evil by proxy." Helsknight ushered to himself. "The enchantment in the blade turns me into something you're familiar with. Whoever I am, I don't have his memories or his mannerisms--" his lip curls in something like disgust as he adjusts his breastplate, "--or his taste in armor. Really, what's wrong with some nice high mobility chainmail? Or leather? Leather is amazing! It's quiet and doesn't feel like I'm carrying a whole damn armory around."

Welsknight screwed his eyes shut and breathed. Alright. Alright. He's okay. He can deal with this. He can-- well at least he can ignore the specter of his brother following him around for as long as it takes to get out of this Vault. But when he gets out ohhh, oh Iskall owes him six pints at the nearest tavern and a damn good explanation.

"Sword Spirit," Welsknight asks after another set of calming breaths, "can you fight?"

Helsknight looks down at his hip where a sword is sheathed. He draws it, tests its weight and shrugs. "I'd be a poor sword spirit if I couldn't."

"Alright then," Welsknight picks up the magical sword from where he'd dropped it and walks towards the barred door. "Let's get out of here, then."

Well, there is one good thing about being damseled at least, Welsknight thinks bitterly as Helsknight begins moving the debris. Someone always sends you a knight in shining armor.

#the barking writer #welsknight #helsknight #swordheart au #sorry i couldnt resist this has been rotating in the back of my head ever since i read swordheart #hermitcraft fic #vault hunters fic #i know nothing about vault hunters except for like 10 eps of Iskalls singleplayer season 1 lets play please forgive me vh fans #helsmits

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