Chapter Text
The first time Mumbo dreams of it, it’s the night before he leaves Season Five. He’d taken the day previous to tour around, saying goodbye to fellow hermits and old builds alike.
The end of the season is always nostalgic, and a little painful- but this isn’t the first time they’ve moved worlds, and it won’t be the last either.
It’s healthier, this way, for World and Hermit alike. Sure, there are plenty of worlds that last years upon years but they’re mostly single-player, or if they allow for multiple players- well. Those who try to stay never tend to stick around for too long, if you catch his drift.
Multiplayer worlds begin to eat at a player if they stay past their time. Something has to change; and if it’s not the players themselves, it’s the world, as it becomes more unstable like a bucking horse.
If Players aren’t contributing things, building and creating, then they’re not useful to it. When the same people do stick around too long, it can get… tiring, for the world. (Boring, perhaps.)
Xisuma explained it as so to a much younger Mumbo when he’d first joined Hermitcraft-
They, the players, are the cogs in motion allowing the world to be changed to its wishes, giving it life. They are visitors, ultimately. Visitors, in the same way an erupting volcano or shifting iceberg is- they come, and they change things, and then they leave before their welcome becomes overstayed.
If Players don’t contribute to the world… Well. There are enough horror stories about it to keep someone up for weeks.
Mumbo’s thinking about this as he readies himself for bed- a sort of… goodbye, if you will. Preparing himself for yet another move of worlds. It’s a funeral, of sorts. His builds will be overtaken by nature too, one day. He can’t help but wonder what will go first; the redstone, eroded by sea spray and rain, or the flood walls that keep his base dry?
Mumbo stretches as he pulls his undershirt off, feeling how the muscles in his shoulders reach out. He flexes his fingers individually above his head, easing each tendon out into something more relaxed.
At least he’s going back to his redstone world soon, he thinks with renewed excitement, slipping on pajama bottoms, cinching the waist. It’s been a long while since he’d been!
What would he build first? Maybe he’ll experiment with the new blocks discovered, play with how magma columns interact with the world- or maybe he could try a hidden base! That’d be fun.
It’s a lighter topic to fall asleep to, and one he chases down idly, breathing out a sigh as he practically melts into his bed.
He doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep at first. Not that he usually does, mind- but the transition feels fluid, something mindless.
Mumbo’s sitting at the desk in his bedroom, scrawling out notes over new ideas- and sure, he doesn’t remember how he’d got here, but he’s much more interested in the TNT bomber he’s just sketched out. It seems so sensical on the page. He can’t make out the notes, no, but there are sketches littering the paper; a slime block here, a piston there, three observers on top of each other that make the perfect length of pulse needed.
It is so ordinary, so perfectly benign. Mumbo reaches for a pen from his cup, ready to mark out a flaw he’s seen- there’s a piston that’s connected to nothing, missing a slimeblock to carry it- and stalls when he finds nothing.
Mumbo frowns, glancing up, and freezes.
There’s no inkwell, no cup of pens and quills. There’s no desk, anymore, his notes suddenly missing. He’d been sitting, but now he stands in the middle of his bedroom, empty of all except its chest walls.
He stands alone, and the room is empty, and Mumbo has the sudden impression of what it feels to be like a pebble in a stream, as all melts around him.
Or- melts isn’t a good word for it.
He stands in his room, and cracks spiderweb slowly along the walls around him, water dribbling down the sides like tears down a face. Algae creeps over all that the water touches, and the iron accents rust.
The water crashes against Mumbo’s thighs, and he thinks it should be concerning, but it isn’t.
He stands and he watches. Sealife teases its way in- starting with a little codfish, nibbling curiously at his suits pants before swimming away. The sea rises up to his waist, and with it, dolphins begin to swim in the shallows, grabbing at the debris that has tumbled to the floor. They play around him as more fish come in, reclaiming what he’d built with his own two hands.
The redstone in the walls floods away, surrounds him in red as the water reaches his chest. It’s cold. It’s warm. It changes before he can decide.
A gap in the wall, no larger than his fist, crumbles. He watches as the trickle turns into a stream, into a faucet; as the effort he’d gone to keep the ocean away buckles.
It reaches his throat, and Mumbo’s breath hitches, readying to be held-
It tickles along the underside of his chin-
Mumbo holds his breath as it slips over his mouth, not unlike a hand clasping over his lips, silencing him. The furthermost wall crashes, and water rushes over him, and he stays cemented to the floor- unchanged, still.
And, with a breath held tight in his throat, eyes wide against the murky blue water, he sees it.
At first, he thinks it’s a squid’s ink, a panicked self defense mechanism warding away something.
But-
It gets closer, and its visage is warped by the water between them-
But it, he finds, is a large black thing. It is a fog that stretches over all, that consumes, and for the first time he is afraid- it is so many things, and he is just one, and-
The darkness sweeps close to him, and his breath is straining, and-
Mumbo can’t hold it any longer.
He sucks in a great, gasping breath. The black thing is pulled into him like ink into a current and the second the edge of it touches his lips-
Mumbo wakes.
He heaves up, skin clammy as he kicks his blankets off, shivering as he brings a hand to his mouth, feeling his breath. Mumbo’s limbs still feel a little unreal, like they hadn’t quite gotten the message that he’s awake, now, that he’s alive- but he can feel his exhale on his skin, and he closes his eyes in relief.
As soon as he can balance on his legs, Mumbo makes for the light switch against the wall- and it throws his bedroom, his storeroom, into relief.
The walls are whole. The floor is dry, and the concrete walls are sturdy and smooth.
“Pants,” Mumbo exhales shakily, sagging against the cold wall.
What a sucky way to end the final night.
He can’t bring himself to fall back asleep, and so Mumbo brings out a loaf of bread- all he can really stomach eating- and sets about packing.
They can only bring so much across worlds- Xisuma, as their admin, does his best to allow the Hermits to carry along any personal effects they can’t replace, whether that be out of inability to craft or sheer emotional attachment. It’s not a precise thing, though- in the end, each hermit only has a single shulker to carry through worlds.
Mumbo doesn’t have many possessions, but it’s still a tight squeeze. His clothing is crammed at the bottom, and wrapped around anything particularly fragile- like his first compact machine, the one he’d made when Doc and Iskall were doing their best to teach him the basics of the art form.
There are a few photographs, as well- his first day in Hermitcraft, baby-faced and in an untailored suit that was a hint too big on him. His first flying machine, the image taken from far too high in the air. A photo of Iskall, stood proud in front of Bumbo Cactoni.
Those are tucked gently against the inflexible side of the box, away from anything that could bend or crease the images.
Mumbo’s searching through his ender chest, upturning its contents for anything else that he’d be upset to lose- when he comes across it.
Well. It is perhaps a bit too much credit, to the thing- but it does make him swear, slapping a palm on his forehead as he groans. “Oh, pants! I completely forgot about you!”
The item in question is, at its surface, a slightly intricate jukebox.
He hefts it up, blowing a thin layer of dust off of the thing and grimacing. Etho had found it a month or two ago, in some abandoned mineshaft or another. He’d originally taken it just because the item was fairly rare, but…
Well. As Etho had put it, the jukebox had started playing out at random throughout the night, and by the next day Bdubs was very crossly telling him that he wouldn’t be coming over again until it was gone.
It’s a curious item- relatively standard, as far as jukeboxes go, but whoever must have made it had taken care to carve out little spiraling patterns across the wooden sides. The real attraction, though, is the carving of an egg, smoothed out along the middle of each side.
Mumbo frowns at it, weighing the thing in his hands. On one hand, it would take up precious space in his shulker, space that he could use to - well - pack something more sentimental away.
On the other, he’d promised Etho that he’d look into it, and it would be just his luck that the man would approach him at some point in the distant future, asking after it.
Mumbo sighs out of his nose, and plops it into the shulker thoughtlessly. Disappointing Etho wasn’t exactly something he’d set out to do on the daily, and all. Besides, if he figures out what’s wrong with it- likely a faulty wiring, or perhaps a cracked diamond- that would mean he could pack something from his redstone world in its place! That’d be nice.
Leaving a world is never an easy goodbye. It’s particularly hard when you’re one of the last players to go; Xisuma spaces out their departures throughout around two days to conserve energy. Mumbo doesn’t mind, particularly- this is the third season he’s leaving behind, and all. He’s mostly used to it by now.
But still, seeing a usually occupied and bustling world so still is hard to get used to. Soon, it will be reclaimed by animals and mobs, treading along once-loved halls, and-
Well. It’s never a very easy thing to accept.
Mumbo meets Xisuma at the nether portal stretching over the community shopping district, its eerie nether theme glowing a harsh red against the overcast skies. “Well, hello Mumbo!” Xisuma greets. Most of his face is hidden beneath his helmet, but his warm tone gives away a small smile.
“Hiya, X,” Mumbo greets, trying to match the Admin’s cheer. He feels exhausted already - having not been able to fall back asleep even after packing his things away. There was a chasm too great in his stomach, something roiling and sour, and he had instead spent the last few hours of his stay at his tropical island instead of the main base, because at least he couldn’t picture that so vividly decaying away in his absence.
(He’s starting to regret that, now- that the last glimpse of his base was not filled with pride, but instead, with the anxiety of a future that may never come- and at the very least, likely won’t in his lifetime.)
“Do your rounds?” the admin asks, holding out a hand- and Mumbo passes his shulker to him.
“As much as I could manage,” Mumbo answers truthfully.
Xisuma hums, hefting the shulker in his hands. His visor illuminates with a glow, its contents hidden to the outside world. “I understand what you mean,” he says thoughtfully. “It’s never easy, saying goodbye- but I look forward to seeing what the next world brings!”
“Right,” Mumbo says faintly. He doesn’t disagree, really, there are things he looks forward to doing, of course, ideas that can only really be done justice in a new world with a fresh start. Xisuma’s optimism doesn’t mesh well with his own attitude, though. “It’s just- odd, you know?”
Empty. Empty is the word.
For over a year, they had made this world their home and now, they have to leave before they overstay their welcome.
He doesn’t know how to say this, though- how to say how weird it is, to leave the things they’d poured sweat and blood and tears into. It’d never been such a big deal, with the seasons before- but now, but now-
“Well,” Xisuma says, and his light tone is too contrasting to the turmoil Mumbo feels. “You can always visit, of course, with the right permits.”
Except he can’t. Except that this is the last time the things they’ve built will be as they remember. Already, it is different- lifeless, without the majority of the Hermits. He can visit the world, sure - but it will never be as lively, as flawless, as well maintained as it was in his memories.
Mumbo thinks back to the image of his base crumbling around him, and- it aches. It aches to think about.
“Right,” he says again, and that’s the end of that.
The admin nods to himself and the glow from his visor fades. “Packing heavy?” he asks, and Mumbo frowns slightly, a touch confused. In the end, he hadn’t actually managed to fill the shulker all the way. “Well, everything’s in order. If you’re ready?”
And, well- “Yeah,” Mumbo confirms, bracing his shoulders. It won’t do him well to linger, in the end.
“Good, good.” Xisuma pats him on the shoulder, and Mumbo can just make out his eyes past the visor- they’re crinkled kindly, and despite the gloom in his chest he can’t help but smile back. “I’ll see you in about two months, alright? Message me if you need something sooner.”
“Course, mate,” Mumbo says, and his voice is a bit warmer than it had been. “See you in the next season, yeah?”
Xisuma nods again, and his visor brightens with a prompt. The admin offers a hand, and Mumbo barely grasps it-
Before he’s falling.
Going between worlds is a lot like the feeling where you’re just drifting to sleep, when your brain is just starting to dream; but you cling to consciousness with a single finger. It’s like when your eyes are drifting asleep and you hear a voice, far off in the distance, almost through a tunnel- and you snap awake, only to find that it’d never been there to begin with.
Mumbo feels like he’s floating in a pool of water, the drag down nothing more than a suggestion; the universe glides past him, and it’s all he can do to stay in the flow, to let it happen.
And then, with a sensation not unlike peeling a thin, damp shirt off of yourself, Mumbo falls into his redstone world with a thunk. He falls on his ass and stays there, grimacing.
“There has got to be a better way about that,” Mumbo grumbles, not for the first time. His voice is swallowed by the flat, heated plane of sandstone that surrounds him on all sides.
His redstoning world is flat nothingness, except for a small forest of machines not too far to his right, all made by his own two hands.
Mumbo doesn’t get up at first. He stretches his hands out in front of him, wiggling his fingers, and then does the same with his legs and toes. There are leftover pins and needles lingering in the limbs like his whole body had fallen asleep. Most of the tingles had resolved themselves soon after landing, but there’s just enough leftover to make him feel unsteady.
He clears his throat and stretches as much as he can sitting dow, before finally shoving himself up with a groan. His legs are a smidgeon unsteady beneath him, but Mumbo grimaces and pushes through the discomfort. He slips the shulker box that had landed beside him into his inventory, and makes his way toward the large pile of machines that lie before him.
Mumbo had adopted his redstoning world as a teenager, not too long before Xisuma had discovered his work and invited him into Hermitcraft. It wasn’t very special, really - flat worlds like it were a dime a dozen. It was his, though - made of solid sandstone and hot days, and freckled with his ever-evolving knowledge of redstone.
He trails his hands over old machines as he walks into the heart of his testing area; refamiliarizing himself with tanks and first attempts at water elevators, and a combination lock connected to nothing that has been lit up for however-many months.
Most everything is in exactly the same condition as he’d left it. The only things that could really damage anything would be slimes and the sun. Mumbo relaxes, little by little, letting the familiarity of the world wash over him.
Like a snapshot, it’s exactly as he remembered.