Battle Scars - A Watcher-Grian AU story

Epilogue

TW: Slight Derealization IG?

Grian yawned, waking up in his starter base...

What a odd dream. Him being Solar, the hero of the Hub? The one who ended the war? The one who exposed the Rebels? The one who saved Pearl and Taurtis from their fate of being brainwashed and tortured? The type of hero who had stories written about them? Sure, it'd be amazing, but it was impossible.

But there were darker parts to that dream... Him destroying Hermitcraft... He shivered at the thought... First Evo... Then Hermitcraft? Would he do that? No, it was just a nightmare. And besides, he'd joined in season 6, not season 8- Just... something about it stuck with him. It felt... too outlandish to be real, yet too realistic to be a dream.

Well good job to his mind, that was certainly a impressive dream. Smiling, he grabbed a couple of golden carrots gobbling them down.

He stood up, stretching his wings. The dream had prompted a question... Should he tell the server? Watchers were accepted in servers now, but many still remained hidden, as many players still feared and despised them. It'd be better to stay hidden for now. And if they knew what happened to Evo... They'd never forgive him.

"Gri?" Pearl spoke from the door, causing him to jump from surprise, still on edge from the dream.
"Oh hey Pearl! I'll be out in a minute!" He smiled.
"Mind if I come in instead?" She responded
"Oh okay!" Grian smiled. Pearl probably wanted training. He'd become a full watcher around 10 years ago in watcher's end time, after the successful watching over of Hermitcraft, and the watcher council had need for more mentors.

In his closet NPG smiled. "Grian, it wasn't just a dream... But prehaps it's better you believe that. The timelines have shifted, you should live how you wish to."
He sighed, touching the patch on his face, the only give away at his race. He shouldn't have possessed that Helsian. His name was Grain, wasn't it? Either way, he could have done so much, but once the NPG had possessed Grain, there was no turning back. Voidling magic flowed through the Helsian's veins, to take it away by leaving would kill him.

But the summoning ruined everything. The summoning used for a creature of Code had corrupted the player part of him, as he had to much magic for it to function correctly. The summoning wasn't meant to bring a voidling along with the Helsian, after all.

"Seven, thank you for giving him another chance." He whispered.
"No problem Six." The voice of Seven spoke in his mind. "Anything for my kin. Are you still going to pretend you can't snap away the glitch?"
"No. Not after last time. I'm going to get rid of it the clean way this time. Code issues can be so hard to fix with voidling magic, even while connected to the code-"
"Maybe because we aren't meant to be attached to the code in anyway?" NPG swore he could hear the eye roll in Seven's voice
"If I wanted to be scolded I would have talked to Eight." NPG rolled his eyes, flopping down on the sofa of the closet, opening up the supposedly admin panels. The one good thing about this timeline, the repairs he'd made in his system had kept him aware of his true form. On the other timeline, it'd been messy, and allowed more of Grain to slip through.

This time, he'd remain aware, and keep Grian safe. The tether still attached the two after all. And Grian was still going to be effected by the trip. They could tell the dream had implanted some of the paranoia and habits the other timeline Grian had.
After all, all adventures would leave battle scars.

A/N:
It's done! I wanted to say some things.
Thank you all so much, for everything. For reading this story. It's amazing to know people read this whole thing!
Also, if you were here for the writing process, leaving comments and stuff, thank you so much for interacting! It means a lot to talk with you!

ALSO quick shameless plug: I might be starting a new story called entwined lives soon thats a HC x Life series crossover-

WC for this chapter: 796

Statistics:
Started: June 22 2022 (I wrote the whole thing in a google doc, before publishing it, then changing like half the story midway through)
First chapter published on Wattpad: August 13, 2022
Last chapter (this chapter) published August 29, 2022
Total WC (Excluding A/Ns): 44,316

Goodbye, and thank you all! This was fun, and I'll miss it, but my motivation died. Maybe some day I'll write a sequel, but not right now. o/
- Xera