Under The Helmet || Hermitcraft AU

Chapter 3

POV: Grian
Word Count: 866
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Flying through the heavy downpour, Grian took a detour towards his Mansion, to check if it was being snowed in. To his surprise, only sleet was now falling onto the mountain, even though the dark prismarine roof was carpeted in a thin snow layer.  Confused, exhausted and weary, he headed back to his little hobbit hole for a good night's rest.

The thunderstorm had subsided the previous night, but Grian still woke up feeling like he got no sleep at all. Realising the amount of restocking for his shop he had to get done by today, he sighed heavily, and sat upon his bed, yawning widely. He pulled on his elytra and made to fly out of his window, before doubling back to check for any mail sent from Mumbo.

To his surprise, he heard his mail bell ringing like a church bell in a hurricane, alerting him that he had received some mail. It was nothing interesting though, just the Noughts and Crosses game that Grian and Mumbo were playing. He sighed, filling out another square and sent the minecart off, down the track. They both knew it would end in a tie! What was the point?

Grian opened a chest, pulled out his ender chest, fished out his rocket box, took out a few stacks of rockets, mined up his rocket box, placed his rocket box back into the ender chest, and mined the ender chest. 

Where his ender chest was a few seconds ago, now was splintered with fragments of obsidian. Frustrated, he swiped up the fragments of obsidian, searched for an eye of ender, and created another one. Professor Beak squawked gleefully in the background.

"Pesky Bird!" he called out in response, tossing some melon seeds at the parrot. 

Professor Beak caught the seeds in his talons and started pecking at them like a dim chicken. Soon, the small, black seed split into fragments, flying everywhere, including into Grian's eye.

Rubbing his eye with his knuckle, he yawned again, pulled out a rocket and flew out of the window. He looked at the lush green jungle below him, not looking at where he was going, and smashed headfirst into a very large tree.

Getting so little sleep really affects someone, Grian thought, massaging his head.

Propelling himself up with a rocket, he landed on the portal, leaning on the obsidian frame for support until he was swept away into the nether. 

A few minutes of flying later, he landed on top the rough gravelly mountains, although he wouldn't have called them mountains himself. The gravel layers were almost all dugout, with big, unnatural chunks taken out of the edges. He placed down a couple of empty shulker boxes, took out his Efficiency V shovel, and started digging. And digging. And digging. 

The wind was cold and harsh, and the diamond blade of his shovel was splintering from the impact of small, hard rocks bashing against it every few seconds. The dense fog was making this an even harder job, as the vapour in the air made it hard to breathe. Ignoring the harsh winds, Grian pulled off his sweater and tied it around his waist, hoping to make the job easier by taking off some of the weight from his arms.

Finally, he closed the shell of the final shulker box in the pile and mined them up, opening up his inventory. Grian did a quick double-take, scouting for any leftover chunks he hadn't picked up, then heaved his heavy, almost overflowing shulker boxes into his inventory, and prepared to leave. 

"WATCH OUT!" roared a voice from behind him, making him jump aside.

Grian heard a crunch and a moan. He turned and looked at the ground before him, where a certain moustached man was lying, looking dazed. Mumbo stood up and leaned on his shovel for balance. Grian noticed his chin was grazed and bleeding slightly from scraping against the gravel.

"Mumbo, are you alright?" Grian asked running towards him, offering his sweater to wipe the blood off his chin.

"I'm fine, I'm fine" Mumbo responded dismissively, but still taking Grian's bright red sweater and pressing it against his chin, wincing. "I came to ask you if you wanted to have another round of Hermit Challenges! I asked Iskall if he knew where you were and you happened to be at the place I was heading for anyways."

Grian frowned. Last time he attended a Hermit Challenges! meeting, he was tasked to steal all of the hermit's doors for the whole season.

"I'm no- fine... Who's coming?" He asked tentatively. 

But Mumbo already had his communicator out. He wrote something and waited a while. Grian felt his communicator buzz and fished it out. The chat read:

>MumboJumbo: Hermit Challenges everyone!

>Iskall85: Oh no... 

>iJevin: What? 

>Stressmonster101: Coming! :P

>Stressmonster101: Are we meeting at the same place?

>MumboJumbo: Yeah, meet in 20mins!

"See you there!" Said Mumbo smiling. He threw down a rocket and blasted himself into the distance. Then he did a kind of pirouette in mid-air and flew into the portal. "Coming or not mate?"

Grian sighed and feeling apprehensive, walked as slowly as possible into the purple, swirling portal.