Hermit Souls || A HermitCraft AU

Chapter Three

Our heroes were on their way to victory. Izuna and Hypno took the lead and sliced through the hollows in front, with Tango and Iskall on either side, hacking and chopping, and Etho around back making sure none had followed, and all were slain.

They eventually arrived at a small corridor with a ladder going down. Izuna went first and gave the all clear, then the rest of the group followed her into a tiny room with bodies that looked long dead. They had soul pouches, crushable to gain more souls for themselves. Souls were the new currency in this strange world, and their diamonds were useless, they had no value here.

So the group ditched their tools entirely, as it was only weighing them down. They were never really hungry or thirsty, and their elytra wouldn't work with the insanely uncontrollable weather, so they'd have to walk. Their armour wasn't enchanted here either, just plain old heavy diamond armour. They didn't ever remember diamond armour being this heavy, so they ditched that too, left with only their clothes and a few bits of armour they had picked up from the hollows. Izuna pulled her sleeves up, wiping the blood from her face and trudged on.

The next bridge was thin and had many hollows with crossbows, and a sleeping dragon up stairs that didn't seem to go anywhere. The group agreed that it was a good idea to avoid the dragon. It would only cause them more problems.

They kept walking, slaying the hollows and dodging their bullets until Etho was just too slow to dodge and got hit in his upper left arm. He yelped in pain, and Iskall quickly rushed towards the hollows with the crossbows, decapitating them all with one swing of his battleaxe. Iskall held Etho up whilst the others were fighting the massive hoard of hollows coming their way, and when there was finally a brief moment where they could relax, Iskall wrapped Etho's arm in a tight bandage, and helped him up, and they continued when they heard the roar of the dragon.

Tango cursed under his breath and they rushed towards the tiny building to their right. A knight was guarding it, but the face was strangely familiar. It took a moment since he looked so strange, but eventually they recognized him as Wels.

"Wels??" Etho asked. "Wh- How-"

Iskall ignored Etho's questioning and cut him off. "Wels, let us through dude!"

Wels' eyes lit up with a small glimmer of recognition, but he swung his sword at them, and they all jumped back except Izuna, who, even though her throat was sliced open, shoved her sword right through Wels' armour and into his heart, leaving him to instantly drop dead on the floor.

With blood literally spewing out everywhere, Izuna held her neck, gasping for air as her eyes began rolling. Hemophilia be damned. Hypno gasped, ripping his bandana off and tying it on her wound, putting pressure and holding her up.

Etho hastily got out his Estus Flask and forced the whole thing down her throat, and slowly the blood began to scab over, her artery closing and skin healing quite a bit. She was still injured and had still lost a lot of blood but she would be okay. They turned immediately to their right where a long spiral staircase was, and they dashed up it, Hypno carrying Izuna who was drifting in and out of consciousness. At the top of the tower the stairs curled around was a bonfire, which Etho lit and refilled his Estus Flask. They rested and felt much more refreshed and ready for their trek towards the icy screeches they heard not too far from them.

Izuna took the lead once more, and they started down, down, down and down some more to a rooftop where they climbed down to find some hollows and a man, sitting huddled between the hollows. When Tango went up to touch him, the man's flesh turned into a strange tarlike substance, and it dripped pus from its pores, red glowing eyes as it slashed Tango, who jumped back and looked for an escape route. He found a ladder going down to another platform on the side of the building. Etho drew his bow and shot it right through its eyes, and it collapsed, the pus beast disappearing, and the man returning.

"I want to name it." Tango said.

"Name it what then?" Etho asked,

"Pus of man. Doesn't that sound malicious and fitting?" He chirped.

"Sounds good to me, everyone else okay with it?" Izuna asked.

They all nodded in unison. So they climbed down the ladder and sat on the platform, discussing what to do next. There was a large male figure in thick metal armour at the town square below them, and it was surrounded by oversized hollows. They didn't know if they could take this on, so they talked about it. Then Tango jumped down into the mob with no warning to his friends, and he immediately regretted it. With no way back up, he ran trying to distract them while Etho sniped them one by one. The others jumped down after him and stole armour from the bodies, then kept walking to a royal looking garden with a few knights, who Etho shot with his bow. It appeared they could take a moment to breathe, and so they did.