Carrying Viking back to the station was more easier for Avid than he thought. Other than the surprise he got by the guy’s cat ears (he’s had those under his bucket hat the whole time?), and the bit of blood from the unconscious man’s head from where he hit him, the operation was smooth sailing from there.
“Hi Trog! Hi Ruby!” Avid said as he descended by the bodies in their respectable tubes. “Now here we are!” The monkey announced in glee to the man he was carrying with him. “This is where you’ll be staying!”
After Avid put down an unconscious Viking, he went over to the empty tube to set it up. “Before I put you in here, I just got to make sure that everything is good…”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Avid stopped. He was sure that Viking would stay asleep, but it seemed that the guy woke up too soon. For some reason this startled the monkey, not only because he just got caught in the act, but something seemed off, mostly with Viking’s voice, yet he couldn’t seemed to put his finger on it.
“And why’s that?” Avid asked, trying not to show that he was a little scared.
Fool’s day was as normal as usual. Wake up, get dressed, then do some tasks for the day. Today’s task on his mind was rearranging some items in the beloved birch tree that was at the heart of the kingdom.
When Fool was about a third of the way done with organizing, he heard a set of familiar steps, followed by a familiar voice.
“Hello, hello!” said Sadmikman. “Ya need any help?”
“That would be lovely, thank you,” replied Fool.
Milkman moved to the other side of the room from where Fool was and started picking up loose boxes. After a few minutes of silence, Milkman spoke up from where he was.
“Uh… Fool?” asked Milkman. “Is this stuff yours?”
“Is what mine?” questioned Fool. Fool walked over to where Milkman was to see what he was talking about, only to find a peculiar set of objects.
On one of the shulker boxes, Fool and Milkman found a cape, a golden mask, and two sets of golden hands attached to two golden forearms which were attached to nothing else.
“None of this is mine,” Fool spoke. “I don’t know whose stuff any of this is.”
“Oh,” replied Milkman.
Suddenly, Fool sensed a small, slow turn from his partner from the side of his peripheral vision.
“You wanna mess with this stuff then?” Milkman said with a giant smile plastered onto his face.
“Absolutely,” replied Fool with no hesitation.
Fool grabbed the cape and the mask while Milkman grabbed the two arms. Fool had to hold the mask to his face since there seemed to be no strings or any sort of tie attached to the mask to hold it for him.
“Ooooooh, look at meeee,” Fool spoke in a funny voice. “I’m going to haunt yooooooou!”
“Not while I have my grabby hands!” Milkman proclaimed as he waved around the golden objects he had by their forearms.
“What are you doing with me?”
Fool and Milkman both jumped like spooked cats at the voice that seemingly came from nowhere.
Suddenly, the golden hands that Milkman was holding seemed to be whipped from him by an unseen force, so with them, the cape and the mask that Fool had. As the objects drew themselves away from the men that had them, they then rearranged themselves to come together, and placed themselves in the shape of a person, or at least something that looked vaguely like a person.
“You two are so ridiculous…” remarked the figure. “No wonder you both are so broke!”
“Hey! Who are you calling broke?” yelled Milkman.
“You, obviously,” replied the figure. “Your antics have been quite funny. However, it hurts me to see you two suffer economically compared to everyone else in this place… So, I decided to be charitable to you two.”
Then, seemingly out of thin air, the figure produced a gold colored shulker box from their hands, which then ungraciously plopped itself onto the ground in front of them.
“Welp, see ya!~” said the figure, and then they disappeared to a place where the two Birch citizens did not know, nor really did care. They just stood there in small shock, looking at both the area where the hooded figure just disappeared from, and to the box on the floor of their base that was just given to them.
“Did we just meet a god?” Milkman slightly whispered.
Fool stood for a few seconds in silence before replying. “We don’t tell anyone of this.”
“Agreed,” Milkman responded as Fool checked to see what was in the box.
Fool opened the shulker box only to find more shulker boxes. Fool then decided to open one of the other boxes and found not even more shulker boxes, but instead the bright shine of many diamonds.
Both Fool and Milkman looked at the many rocks, mouths slightly agape. Suddenly, both men were grabbing the shulker boxes to see what they held inside.
When Fool and Milkman finished opening the shulkers, they took inventory of what they were given. All the items they had included diamonds, emeralds, some gold, enchanted netherite armor and weapons, and even a bit of redstone. But the most important item in the collection, was an entire box full of birch wood logs.
“I can’t believe this…” Fool sighed.
“What’s the matter?” Milkman turned to Fool. “We’re rich now!”
“Well yeah,” replied Fool. “We’re only rich now because we were so broke that a god literally took pity on us. Like, that’s a bit sad isn’t it?”
“Well not anymore, because we’re rich now!” Milkman said with excitement. “You think that guy was like, a god of fortune or something?”
Milkman turned to Fool. His friend had a funny look on his face. It was a sort of look that made Milkman think that he might have said something that probably raised a bell in the half gloden-faced man’s head.
“God of fortune huh?” said Fool after a bit of thought.
Suddenly, Fool slowly walked away, and Milkman was left to wonder what all of that was about.
He can’t remember how long. He stopped counting the days, along with the footsteps that he left behind in the white powder from under him.
He had no food left, and barely any clothes that suited the condition he was in (but he didn’t really care about that as much as the food). All he had left were the few non-eatable things he was able to take with him and the memory of having to get to somewhere.
He just had to keep walking.
He doesn’t exactly know why he was told to go in this direction, only that he was in a hurry when he left. He has no idea what has happened now to the place where he first came from.
Perhaps it didn’t matter anymore…
Anathra felt tired. So tired that he could feel eye bags engraving themselves on the skin of his face. He had to keep walking though, he needed to get to where he was told to get to, wherever or whatever that place may be.
Despite this, the body gives out eventually, and with one small trip made on the path, Anathra felt his body fall and collapse onto the snow.
Anathra could give himself no energy to get up, much less even move at all, despite the desperate plea in his head that he had to keep moving.
He had to get up, he must.
But again, the body gives out eventually, and Anathra was pulled into a deep sleep.
—————
Anathra heard voices, small like whispering, yet still recognizable in the quiet place of… wherever he was.
“Good morning sir, how is everything?” He heard a feminine voice speak to someone.
“I’m doing alright,” this voice was more masculine. “Just came to check up on you, and the patient.”
Despite being able to hear conversation, Anathra felt too weak to open his eyes, and too weak to make any movement or get up. It was as if he was trapped in some sort of haze.
He was able to make out that he was somewhere warm and soft, and that something was covering him. From the sounds that the people’s speaking voices made, he was able to deduct that he may have been in a small room. As for what the room looked like, along with the people talking, he was unsure.
“Everything is fine,” said the woman. “I guess…”
“What do you mean ‘I guess’?” asked the man concerningly.
“Well…” the woman started. “The patient has obviously suffered from exhaustion, and perhaps some malnutrition. We were able to take the correct and precautionary measures to make sure that was taken care of. It’s just that…”
“Go on…” ushered the man.
There was a pause in the air. “He’s cold.” said the woman. “And I know it sounds weird but he’s just… unnaturally cold. We checked his temperature and it is much lower than that of an average human. We’ve tried everything to warm him up more, but nothing has worked. We’ve been worried that he could be at risk for something, but we checked him over multiple times and have found nothing.”
“hmm…” contemplated the masculine voice. “How low is his temperature, may I ask?”
“The temperature of an average human is 37 degrees Celsius.” Replied the feminine voice. “The patient’s temperature is 20 degrees below that.”
Anathra was able to hear a small sound of shock from the man.
“Does he show any signs of hypothermia? Frostbite?”
“No, as far as we can tell, he’s just… cold.”
There was another pause that punctured the air. “As long as he is breathing,” the man finally said, “and as long as he wakes up, that is all that matters. Now please get back to your work.”
“Yes sir,” said the woman.
The man walked away, and as his footsteps started to vanish, so too did Anathra’s thin consciousness, and he found himself being lured to sleep once again.
