Chapter Text
For a moment, or maybe a thousand, it's blank.
A colorless, or infinitely colorful place, or non-place, filled, yet empty, with the absence of sound.
Yet every sound in every world seems to ring out in Herobrine's head.
Ah.
Herobrine.
A name. His name, if his fading-in-fading-out memory serves him right.
Herobrine. A man.
No.
A god.
A higher being.
He is dead.
Or he is alive.
But one thing is for certain.
He is coming back.
And when he does, he will be angry.
Herobrine wakes, fully and completely, no longer a stranger in his own skin.
His skin. Herobrine pats at his arms, making sure they're attached to him. He runs a hand through his hair, feeling the messy tufts between his fingers.
He's back.
...
Eyes still closed, he senses his surroundings.
...
He is back, but he is not where he is supposed to be.
His eyes slip open. He examines the skin on his palms, a faint glow cast upon him by the glowing white of his eyes.
He looks up, examining his surroundings with sight.
A simple forest biome, plunged into nighttime, littered with trees of birch and oak and acacia wood.
...
He must be at the crossways between three different forests. Much the same as when he was in the crossways between life and death, or the crossways between his own body and-
...
And...
...
He shakes away his growing fury. Now is the time to gather his bearings. He will make his way back to that wretched stick figure so soon as his magic repletes. He will take the icon, exact his revenge on its computer's inhabitants, and take his rightful place as the one true god of this realm.
And all the others.
Herobrine clenches his fists and rises to his knees, tearing two handfuls of grass from the ground to satiate his growing appetite for violence.
He lets it fall, quietly chuckling at the poetry of it all. Today, two tufts of grass in an unknown forest. Tomorrow, the universe as Minecraft knows it.
It will all unfold. He simply needs patie-
A noise. Herobrine strains his ears. The whistle of an arrow flying right at him. His shoulders tense, ready to fight-
...
The arrow whizzes past the god, landing a good two meters diagonal of him. He stares at it blankly.
The hiss of a spider from behind him. Herobrine lets his magic translate the foreign language.
"You missed." His mind fills in.
The clatter of the jockey that must have fired the shot, a harsh sarcasm behind the click of its teeth. "Thanks, genius, I couldn't tell."
Herobrine stills.
...
A response?
A direct response too, one which leaves the god no room to question. A spider spoke to what must have been its jockey, and the jockey spoke back.
Two completely different dialects, forming one dialogue.
Herobrine stands, turning to face the combined mob. The top half ceases its arguing to meet his featureless gaze.
Its jaw drops and ticks once more. "Ah, bonemeal."
The spider blinks its many eyes, tilting its head in a way that could almost be mistook for human. "What happened?"
It looks up at Herobrine, and those same eyes widen in sync as the creature squeals defensively, skittering back and forth so fast it almost knocks its passenger to the ground.
...
Its passenger, who only clings on tighter to its counterpart in response (response,) lowers its head to clatter something to its lower half, so soft that Herobrine cannot quite make it out.
Then, in one swift motion, the pair separates, and the jockey drops to its knees in a reverential bow, pushing the other mob's head into the grass in a makeshift bow of its own. (The spider, to its credit, doesn't seem too fazed by this action, simply going along with the other's antics.)
They speak in their seperate tongues, (or lack thereof, he supposes, in the jockey's case,) spouting apologies and prayers for mercy.
Herobrine simply sighs. He may be a destructive being, but he does not hurt his own.
"...Rise." He commands, after a short period of questioning whether he should speak.
The monster, (monsters?) scrambles upright, not meeting their deity's eyes.
Herobrine sticks his hand out, dragging the jockey's arrow (and subsequently fallen bow) into his hand like a hammer of gods. He holds the items out to the taller mob, who takes it hesitantly, but seemingly gratefully. It kicks its lower half, with a gentleness that seems almost practiced, like something of a tap on the shoulder that's convenient for their difference in height.
And, further proving this theory, the spider responds, looking up at its jockey without a pause in between, as if this is a ritual they've performed an infinite number of times.
"He gave it back?" The transport hisses back, tone akin to a whisper.
It says another word- maybe two- and Herobrine's magic has to mull over the foreign tongue to find a suitable translation.
"Skellington, tha-"
The rest of the words escape from his mind, fizzling away like feedback on an old television, stripes of color invading his vision and bringing him to a near-migraine. He keeps his composure.
...
Skellington.
An alias. A name. An expression of familiarity that Herobrine has never once seen between two of a different species before tonight.
The two continue, conversing in two different languages, yet easily seeming to pick each other's slack.
...
Herobrine coughs, letting his magic fade back into his mind, allowing him to understand these strangers once more.
"I still can't believe you shot an arrow at The Legendary Herobrine-"
"I didn't shoot it at him, I shot it near him!"
A beat of silence, where the two mobs seem to simply stare at each other.
...
Now that he stops to consider the behavior of these two mobs, Herobrine wouldn't place them above fifteen years old.
...
He momentarily wonders where they were spawned. It is not uncommon for spider children to wander the night on their own, but to his knowledge, skeleton hauntings are very overprotective of their young.
"Where is your family?" Herobrine asks the skeleton, rather bluntly.
The aforementioned flinches, as if a single peep could be used against it. However, it's bones still rattle defensively, and its lower half seems equally unimpressed.
It's many eyes do seem to soften, however, when its skeleton points down to it, and it responds by pushing its head onto the other's fingers, and the anxious rattling seems to cease right then and there.
Herobrine pauses in his tracks, as this... unique compound continues to interact. It is beyond anything he has yet to experience, in his many, many years as a higher being.
A compound mob, interacting. Separating. It's something he has long since accepted as beyond comprehension.
Herobrine catches himself midthought, not allowing himself to remain in his pensive state.
He must gather his bearings, and then do his job. That is all.
But the moment he turns to leave, the joc-
...
Skellington clacks. A desperate, pleading noise. "Wait, Lord Herobrine!"
...
And for a reason unbeknownst to the god, he stays put.
A pause. Herobrine turns back to Skellington, one brow raised.
And when it doesn't respond, its spider friend headbutts its leg, hissing a quiet, "Dude! He's listening!"
Skellington ceases its standstill, rattling to itself in order to calm its nerves.
Then, it speaks, and the words it blurts out carelessly nearly send Herobrine into another dimension.
"Can you teach me how to shoot a bow?"