#hmmm i wonder what Pearl might've been thinking of...>:D

[carminite-wyrm]

On Rituals and What Come Of Them

So when I said that my take on the Hermit Archives AU originally by @chrisrin was more 'slice of life comedy', that doesn't mean I can't uh, casually slap some more conventional angst and horror into that lovely little community of spookified hermits.

The Hermits, at the end of the day, are a community. They are a community that have grown and learned together, managed to attain that balance point in which their needs and wants can be met (as well as those of their patrons), and yet can still remain friends and allies despite some of their contrasting natures. Theirs is a community of avatars unlike any other. Well, a community of avatars and one man, but at this point, he fits in with their motley number well enough that some of them are actually considering whether he might also be a fellow avatar, if an incredibly lowkey one.

That isn’t to say they don’t have their competitions, of course.

Every now and again, the Hermits leave the land that they had called home for a time, and travel elsewhere, to newer, fresher shores. To new worlds, untouched by the ways in which their very presence warps and shapes that which they call their territory.

It is a major undertaking, this seasonal arrival and departure, leaving behind worlds forever marked, and does not happen lightly.

What heralds their departure from a world, of course, is the successful completion of a Ritual. Or a Ritual that fails so remarkably that it would be better to start anew. Usually, these Rituals (and their many, many attempts), begin to occur once the allure of a new, unexplored, and untainted land has worn off, and the myriad natures of each Hermit start to bay for more, more, more.

(No one mentions the lengths some of them go to, to ensure that their favourite human doesn’t die in the ensuing cataclysms, or gets lost in a way that none of them would be able to recover him from.)

Right here, however. Right now, in the middle of the Boatem region of the eighth world that the Hermits have decided to claim as their own, Mumbo K Jumbo would like it known that none of this is his fault. He thinks.

That one time he shoved Grian into a grinder for his soul (do Avatars of the Eye, touched by the End, even have conventional souls?) didn’t count as a Ritual, right? Mumbo really doesn’t want to be the first Hermit to accidentally complete a Ritual successfully, that’d be really, really awkward.

In fact, he’s fairly certain that it isn’t his fault, because he’s been trying to hold off on the Slaughter-energy this time around in a bit of an experiment, even though that’s had some…minor side effects…in that apparently this is the point in time when his old dabbling with the Flesh and the Corruption may or may not have come back to haunt him. But then again, he didn’t wind up a mostly-Slaughter avatar by virtue of not doing possibly mildly unethical experimentation for the sake of his ever-growing industrial designs, and well, when one’s main industry is farming, of the merciless exploitation and reshaping of the natural world variety…

Yeah, this probably isn’t his fault. He’s got no jurisdiction over gravity or space. That’s more a Vast thing, except that the only Vast-aligned Hermit he’s aware of being Vast-aligned is Scar, and Scar’s domain is strictly of the ‘falling-to-your-death-repeatedly’ flavour. Scar might ignore the demands of gravity, but gravity also has a habit of ignoring Scar’s demands too.

That still doesn’t explain the oversized moon hanging in the sky above them though. Or the lingering sense of doom, despair, and general ominous vibes.

“So…moon big?” Pearl comments, as she saunters over, eyes twinkling as she joins him to stare up at the oversized moon.

“Yeah, moon’s big.” Mumbo agrees, nodding slowly. “Kinda looks like it’s, y’know, staring back at you, when it’s hanging that large.”

“Really?” Pearl gives him a look, before turning her Gaze back to the night sky. There’s a distant shriek, and both Hermits shudder in wary anticipation, glancing around for the source of the phantom noise. “Huh.”

“I might just be imagining it, though. Haven’t really been sleeping, lately. Honestly been feeling a bit too uncomfortable to do so, what with the moon and all.”

Pearl gives him another Look, this one piercing enough that Mumbo finds himself awkwardly shuffling where he stands, hoping that Pearl won’t notice how dishevelled he is, how his form warps and morphs without the influence of the Slaughter that normally cloaks his every step with electric red dust. Honestly, maybe he should just go back to the standard methods of feeding his patron, even if the fear he causes with every brandished violet crystal is actually quite nice, it surely doesn’t matter when everyone is judging him for the vastly roundabout methods he’s also had to use-

“Yeah…maybe you might consider taking a nap then.” Pearl says, instead, snapping the weight of her attention off of his unkempt shoulders.

Mumbo blinks, before nodding slowly. “I…You might be right, yeah. I think I’ll uh, go and uh, do that.”

“Good.” Pearl smiles, and everything, for just a moment, seems a little less worrisome.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So, Grian.”

“Yes, Pearl?”

“We uh…we may have a…minor problem.”

“Besides the moon?”

“Well, that is the problem. But not the whole of it, anyways.”

“It’s obviously a Ritual that’s either in progress, getting closer to completion, or gone completely off the rails. I’ve been trying to track down the source, because quite frankly none of us are wholly ready to jump across worlds this soon, but it hasn’t- my Observatory hasn’t found anything yet.”

“We’re not the only Watchers here, are we?”

“No…? Why’d you ask?”

“Can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“Know what I See, Chronicler.”

“Pearl- oh. Oh.”

“Yeah.”