Jay's Book of Hermitcraft Oneshots

Heart of the Jungle Pt. 4

Zed was not okay. He stumbled through the portal to his base, breathing heavily. How could he have not even noticed that Impulse wasn't with him?

Stupid... 

He fumbled through his door, pushing some spare redstone parts over to barricade it once he was through. He then slumped to the floor, back against the wall. Impulse could have been taken, or killed, or hurt, or who knows what else. 

Impulse was gone and Zed could have stopped it.

Suddenly, there was a knock on his door. Zed froze and stood up as quietly as he could, so as not to let whoever was at the door know he was there.

The person knocked again, and Zed heard muffled voices conferring with each other. 

"Hello?" Came the muffled -but thankfully very normal- voice of Cubfan. "Is anybody there?"

"Cub?" Zed called back, wincing at how squeaky his voice came out. 

"Zed!" Joe cried in relief from the other side of the door. "They didn't get you, did they?"

"No," Zed hurriedly started moving things away from the door to let Cub in. "They got Tango though. Probably Impulse too..." His voice trailed off at the end until it was barely a whisper.

"There's 5 of us who made it," X started, before hurriedly correcting himself, "Well, 6 of us now, counting you. That we know of..."

With a grunt, Zed finally managed to move the last hopper out of the way before opening the door to see Cub, Joe, X, Stress, and xB standing outside. He noted with relief that all of their eyes were their normal colors.

Zed let out a choked sob, and Stress rushed forwards and embraced him. Zed hugged her back, trying not to break out into full-on ugly crying. "I'm just so g-glad other peop-ple are okay" he managed between sobs.

"Hey, shhh, it's ok..." Stress quietly led him inside, the rest following suit. Zed faintly heard Cub and xB barricading the door again, and Joe limping over to the couch with a hand pressed against his side.

Zed shook his head to clear it and stepped away from Stress, wiping his eyes and moving towards his storage system to get some medical supplies for Joe.

Joe nodded his thanks when Zed passed him a first aid kit, and Stress came over to help with the large gash in his side. 

"Are there any other entrances or exits?" X asked.

"There's the Sky Hole, but that's really hard to get in, and we could block it off pretty easily..." Zed replied, getting some oak planks and scaffolding to start the job. Cub came over and grabbed some materials for himself before silently helping. xB went over to the storage system to take inventory of what all they had while they were stuck in the Cave of Contraptions.

~POV switch to Cleo~

Cleo's legs burned in pain, but she did her best to ignore it, instead focusing on keeping her breaths as even as she could as she ran through the nether. Iskall chased after her, but she was steadily putting more and more distance between the two of them.

Iskall started to slow down to catch their breath, and Cleo took the time to push herself even further to get as far away from them as she could before taking a break at the top of a tree. 

She looked around, trying to catch her bearings. She spotted a little light coming from a hole in the wall, and with Iskall having caught their breath and running after her again, she decided to take a chance with whoever or whatever lived in the hole.