Chapter Text
The end was far too cold for the hot panic that rushed through Egg's veins.
The dark void looked upon him with an oppressive gaze as he stumbled away from the entrance box, arms aching at a weight they were not used to carrying.
He felt far too exposed, never mind that he was the only conscious person here. Yet that fear wasn't reserved for himself, but for the person in his arms right now: Wemmbu, out like a light, with gashes flashing through shattered armor and purple blood leaving a horrifying trail over cold black stone. It looked like crying obsidian, in a terrifying way. As if the End too was weeping for a life condemned.
Not if he had anything to say about it.
Egg soldiered on, hefting his best friend higher, trying to gain more leverage from where he was dragging Wemmbu by hugging his chest from behind. It was certainly not the most gentle position, especially not with the wings in the way, but it was also the only way Egg could hope to get his friend anywhere anytime soon. He was never the physically strong part of their duo. That was Wemmbu's role. Egg was the support, the booksmart one.
All that knowledge seemed to have fled him in the face of this, however.
He didn't know how long ago Wemmbu even got these wounds. He'd only responded to a message from Wemmbu telling him he'd arrived, yet when Egg had approached the entrance platform, he'd just been lying there, out cold, invisibility gone. No totem in hand either, and Egg cursed the fact that he had used up his own some time ago.
The body in his arms moved slightly, and for a second, Egg hoped that it meant Wemmbu was waking up. Then he registered the motion as faint shivering. His stomach dropped. Unwilling to stop to use one of his hands, he instead tucked his head against Wemmbu's neck, exposed by the way his head lolled forward without a helmet to support it.
His friend had a naturally cold body temperature, but this was freezing. And beneath that, his heart was racing, thumping against Egg's cheek in a frantic rhythm. Egg flinched backwards, then gritted his teeth and redoubled his efforts. Right. Blood loss, probably hypervolimic shock.
He had to get to their potion stock now.
Yet progress was achingly slow, and blood was leaking ever faster.
Egg nearly fell backwards when one heel slipped over the first stair downwards into Minute's lair.
The no doubt painful jolt didn't even draw a whimper from Wemmbu.
The panic had long since frozen into ice, spreading into Egg's chest. The logical, objective part of him knew that the odds weren't in his favor. The emotional part was in denial, frantically scrabbling for any scrap of information that could even them.
Down the stairs he went, all the while time was slipping away.
By the time Egg had located the potions area, Wemmbu's heartbeat had nearly stopped two times. Hastily settling him on the ground, Egg turned to rummage through the storage.
There were no regen or health pots.
Why were there no healing potions!?
Egg frantically checked all the chests and barrels, and yet they yielded nothing but scattered low-level night vision, slow falling, and miscellaneous potion ingredients.
Realization dawned. Right, people had been looting the base while Minute had been driven out.
Despair began sinking its claws into him.
There was no way Wemmbu would last long enough for Egg to brew those potions he needed. You couldn't accelerate brewing, nor could you skip any of the delicate steps, lest you make it impotent. Or worse: actively harmful instead.
His hand clenched around the lid of the barrel he was looking through last. He couldn't have failed. Not when Wemmbu was relying on him. Not when this was the one thing Egg was best at.
Not when he was faced with the death of the one person he really cared about.
Out of the corner of his vision, a glint amongst the blaze powder and empty bottles caught his eye. He drew up short as he recognized it.
Shimmering hardened drops, the calcified tears of a creature bound to suffer in the nether dimension.
Ghast tears were a main ingredient of regeneration brews. It would have been such a good find, were it not for the time restriction.
But Egg's brain quickly leapt to another, more obscure use: Ghast tears, together with ender eyes, could be used to craft end crystals.
And end crystals, in this scenario, could represent the one chance he had of saving Wemmbu.
With a burst of energy, Egg grabbed the tears, blaze powder, and the glass that had not yet been crafted into bottles.
Scrambling through his inventory, he located some ender pearls, the one thing in ample supply in the End.
Blaze powder was sprinkled over the pearls, the catalyst sparking against their glossy green surface and allowing them to attune to the energy of the End. Glass was arranged on the outside of a crafting grid, ghast tears at the bottom, and ender eyes in the middle. The solid tear liquefied, dissolving the eye and combining two potent energy stores. Volatile magic was compressed, glyphs appearing mid-air and fading inwards as magic evolved further, brightening into a glowing pink cube, just about contained by a thin glass shell.
Beautiful but fragile.
Deadly to most players as well, should they stand too close when that containment was breached.
In this case, however...
Egg carefully stashed the end crystals he'd crafted in his inventory, then dragged Wemmbu to a nearby patch of obsidian floor.
Most people on the server assumed Wemmbu was a demon. The horns and wings certainly lent themselves to that theory, and Wemmbu himself didn't care to confirm or deny either way. He certainly acted enough like one.
But what only a select few were ever told, Egg, of course, the first, was that Wemmbu was an ender dragon hybrid. Maybe he did have some demon heritage, at least enough to bring out the purple coloring, but his primary blood was that of void and draconic origin.
And ender dragons could be healed with end crystals.
It was a stretch. Egg knew this. An End dimension could usually support only one dragon per server. The native one was dead, but it would only take a bit of effort to revive her, since she was still there in the code. Any crystals placed would synchronize with her signature.
But if Egg could work around that attunement, connect the end crystals he'd crafted to Wemmbu instead...
It might just work.
It had to work.
He carefully placed the first crystal to Wemmbu's left. It's magenta light washed over his best friend's face, highlighting the unnatural paleness.
With a shudder, Egg reached out for the purple blood smeared all over Wemmbu's armor.
Carefully, extremely aware of the literal bomb he was working with, he let the blood drip from his fingers onto the rotating magic nexus.
A breath.
Nothing happened.
Holding back white-hot frustration, Egg tried again, this time with more than a few drops. Had he made a mistake by crafting these beforehand? Should he have tried to add the blood to the crafting recipe somehow?
But no, this time something shifted.
The end crystal flashed, rotating faster. A faint humming started up, and wisps of magic threaded towards Wemmbu.
It was working!
Excitedly, Egg checked on his friend.
Only to have his stomach drop through his feet.
Wemmbu wasn't breathing. He wasn't breathing!
No, no, no! It had been working; he could fix this!
Egg placed another crystal. Then another and another, shaking fingers dripping blood until they too flashed and hummed, a thrumming he felt in his bones. Beams converged onto Wemmbu, and yet...
His chest didn't rise.
Amidst the ever-louder humming, Egg hunched over his best friend. He clung tightly, uncaring of the purple that smeared over white feathers.
One hand brushed over tangled strands, as if to comfort.
Everything was cold.
His keening cry was cut off as the end crystals exploded.
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