Work Text:
ianite hands him a trident.
“just for a few days,” she says. “we’ll find a new warden, somebody better, to replace you. you just have to stay here for a few days.” her eyes are sad. jordan is silent. “the darkness has to be guarded, just in case. you understand.”
he understands. just for a few days . for some reason, it feels like a goodbye.
the city was destroyed in the fight. they’d risked everything trying to seal the darkness away. they’d triumphed, but the city had been lost nonetheless. jordan walks through its ruins, holding a torch aloft, but he can barely see the walls on either side of him. mobs don’t come near, at least, so he doesn’t have to worry about being ambushed by them constantly. he wonders if they can sense the darkness. he wonders if they’re scared of it.
he stands on top of the seal, wondering what the time is. it’s impossible to tell, from down here. just a few days. he laughs aloud, startling himself. he has no idea how long a few days would be. how it would feel like down here. she could’ve at least left him a clock.
the darkness whispers through the ground, tells him that she’s abandoned him. he dismisses it as a liar. for now.
it’s not long before he can wander around without a torch. the spots of glowing mushrooms and lichen are enough to orient himself with, and otherwise, the halls are mostly predictable. or perhaps he knows them well. there’s not much to do other than walk.
food and water aren’t a problem. he doesn’t like eating mushrooms and insects, but they’re not harming him. and the water that drips from the stalactites seems clean enough.
his only company, besides the darkness’ muffled whispers, comes in the form of bats. they don’t seem scared--maybe they’re not intelligent enough to be scared. in any case, he welcomes them. they seem to get used to him quickly, and they start following him around on his walks. he considers eating them, but decides against it. he doesn’t want to scare off his only friends.
i could be your friend, the darkness says.
“i don’t want your friendship,” jordan replies. he has a job to do. befriending the prisoner would be foolish.
days have passed, he’s sure. how many, he can’t tell. ianite should be coming back soon. if she’s coming back at all. but he has to keep up hope. she wouldn’t desert her only champion like this. he has to believe that he’s worth it.
the mushrooms are blue. have they always been blue?
it’s harder to see than ever. even after being underground for- however long he’s been here, it’s a struggle to pierce the crushing darkness. he’d assumed he’d get used to it--and he can navigate well enough, but his eyes are no help. it’s the same regardless of whether he has them open or closed. he’s envious of the bats.
the air is cold and damp. he hates it. hates this stupid underground city and the stupid darkness. but he can’t leave. somebody has to guard it. they sacrificed so much to get rid of it, to trap it underground-
if the darkness never escapes, it’ll be worth it.
a skeleton falls in. he can hear its rattles and heavy footsteps clear as day. jordan hefts his trident and climbs on top of a nearby wall. he nearly falls, but regains his balance. he doesn’t spend much time up there, but it’s the fastest way to travel.
the monster’s dead before it even knows what’s happening. it falls, vanishes, and in its place appears a strange growth of black fungus with small blue dots. jordan reaches down and touches it tentatively--it seems just the same as the rest, though it glows a bit brighter at the contact. weird.
the new fungus continues to spread. within ‘days’, there are patches of it everywhere. sculk, the darkness tells him. i created it in the mirror realm. it appears to have made its way here in my absence.
“what does it do?” jordan asks, because he doubts the darkness would create anything without a purpose. but he doesn’t need the answer--the sculk feelers nearest him light up brightly at the sound of his voice, the same when he takes a deliberately loud step towards it. it can hear me, jordan realizes. and everything else, too. perhaps this is a good thing. he could patrol less, if there’s something else keeping an ear out for intruders.
shortly after that, he encounters his first shrieker. it looks strange, but doesn’t react to his movements, so he’s not sure what it does. as an experiment, he goes to the very edge of the city and waits until he can hear the telltale groan of a zombie coming towards him. he leads it back into the city, ignoring the loud, bright protests of the sculk. danger, danger, danger, they seem to flash at him. bad, bad, bad. by the time they reach the shrieker, his head almost hurts from the brightness. almost like he can hear them yelling in his head. but that’s silly.
the zombie takes one step towards the shrieker and this time, jordan knows he can hear it. the shriek is so loud, so insistent-
jordan kills the zombie and the sculk stops screaming. the feelers wave slowly, now docile. he breathes a tiny sigh of relief.
he starts having longer, less disturbed naps. he doesn’t have to worry as much. if something’s wrong, the sculk will wake him. they’re not connected to the darkness, he can tell that much. they’re on his side.
his head feels heavier the next time he wakes. his arms, too. when he looks down in the dim light of some glowing mushrooms, he can see sculk dotted across them. he brushes it all off as best he can. it must have grown on him while he slept.
the sculk keeps growing back, and he keeps removing it. his patrols are shorter, slower. the darkness stops talking to him. he wakes, he walks, he sleeps. he forgets to eat. it doesn’t make a difference.
nothing makes a difference. she’s not coming back. he just has to keep guarding.
…
one day, jordan doesn’t wake up.
the sculk doesn’t need him. things are calm. it lets him sleep.
…
a man walks into the abandoned city. the shrieker shrieks, but he isn’t bothered. the warden wakes, angry. he holds out a hand and calm settles again.
“oh, jordan,” says dianite. “what has it done to you?”
he can’t answer. his voice doesn’t seem to work. but he recognizes.
i didn’t want this, he wants to say. i didn’t ask for this.
“i can’t make everything perfect again,” dianite continues, “but i can make it better. i can turn you back. send you away from here.” he puts his hand on jordan’s chest. a heartbeat pounds, loud. “i’ll guard the darkness myself. and i’ll see you again, i promise. in your past, and my future.”
jordan can’t ask what he means, but it sounds like goodbye. he doesn’t want it to be goodbye. not again.
and the god of chaos says, “i’m sorry.”
…
far away, the captain washes up on a beach.