Chapter Text
This isn’t the first time Dream, realizes how much larger the world he is in currently. The new watcher has seen the gaps on the mount where the hobbit hole is supposed to be in, now he sees the other side of the hill. A ginormous mansion, roofed with warped wooden blocks, and ten times larger than Eret’s castle, thrice of Pandora itself.
“You live here?” Dream asks Grian,
“Yep,” the man answered, visibly proud of himself, “Just don’t go at the backside, We have a plan to finish that part, maybe this week or so,”,
“Not like I can go around to the backside,” Dream mutters to himself,
Grian guides him to the underside of the mansion, revealing an even more massive array of redstone and chests, some shulker boxes, and more chests stray from it. And at the center of it is a group of villagers humming to each other, surrounding a single bed.
“Sorry for the clutter,” Grian laughed, “I’m not really known for organization, but you should see Scar’s chest monster, last time, I heard that Mumbo is having quite the life fixing that one,”,
“But yes, this is my attempt on trying to fix my own chest monster,” he continued his rambling,
Dream turns to Grian, “Don’t say that you’re making me fix this…?” he hesitates,
Grian just nods, “You gotta build back some that muscle,” he flexes his biceps which is noticeable even under the thick red wool, “I gotta help Zed, in his cave for a bit, and anything to avoid this chore is a win for me,” the red watcher fishes out his rockets from his inventory, taking a step back from Dream before he takes off, zooming out of the mansion. Dream cringes at the sudden task that is given to him.
“G-!” he was to call, but said G is long gone, “…..you forgot to say how does this work…” fades. Dream sulks on the bed, frowning at the villagers, still humming to themselves.
“Grian!” a call from the entrance of the redstone array, it moves the new watcher to get up from his sulking, reaching for a weapon out of instinct. Dream hides behind the gap by the stairs to the villagers.
“Grian!” the stranger calls again, “He’s not here, oh well, I’ll just talk to him later,” then comes the noise of shulker boxes being opened. Dream finds a bow and arrow in one of the boxes by the bed, and readies it, climbing to the top to shoot the intruder.
THWACK! The bolt hits its target. A cry from the man, as his armor blazes in a puff and reveals without a dent, much to Dream’s disappointment.
“Ow!” a cry, the intruder turns to Dream, “Oh! Hi! I thought no one’s here,” he pulls the flaming arrow off the netherite helmet, and also takes off the piece of armor, leaving a neat black hair paired with a majestic mustache that doesn’t seem to fit for his age. Dream thinks that many men will be envious of facial hair. “Oh! A green Grian!” he awes, “Would you mind if I snag some redstone? I gotta complete the storage system for Scar’s base. Well technically it’s mine at the moment, but it’s still Scar’s base you know,”.
“I-,” Dream stutters, “I’m not Grian,”,
“Oh! So you’re the one he adopted here, I see,” the mustached man ducks into one of the larger chests, scrambling for the material, “My name’s Mumbo, Mumbo Jumbo, resident redstoner, but most often I lag the server with my pieces of machinery,” his voice becomes muffled, Dream was only able to catch his name perfectly. Mumbo resurges from the chest, with a handful of redstone, “I’ll go tell Grian later, don’t worry,”. Dream watches the mustached man walk to the atrium, Mumbo is about to ignite his rocket when the new watcher stops him.
“Wait a minute!” Dream calls, a harsh scratch on his voice, fortunately, that got the redstoner’s attention, and Mumbo looked back. The speedrunner jogged on the hallway, wings fluttering and he let out a heavy breath when he caught up. “Do you- do you know how this works? Grian left me here and he said to clean the clutter,”.
Mumbo chuckles.
“That silly man!” Mumbo exclaims, then sighs, “He’ll do anything to avoid this chore,” he shakes his head, “Don’t worry it’s easy enough, let’s go I’ll help you out a bit,” he smiles, and the two went back inside the storage array.
The winged watcher watches the other man haul a shulker box and dump it on the chest in the corner by the entrance. “Storage arrays are mostly just filters,” he points at the chests that are properly placed, some of them having item frames on them, Dream tries to carry one of the shulker boxes, only for Mumbo to stop him.
“It’s full,” Mumbo frowned. A rocket whistles into the cavern, and a blonde man that is tanner than Grian lands on the other side of the cavern.
“Oh! Hey Mumbo! And who’s this young gentleman?” the blonde asks, “You’re here to help me fix Grian’s mess too?”.
“Zed!” Mumbo calls to the man on the platform, “What did you do?”, Zedaphs climbed down to their location,
“I saw that Grain here had a bigger monster chest outside, so I made a snakey-snakey way to the filter chest over there,” Zed points to the line of hoppers and chests that beelines to the main filter chest, “You see?”,
“I-…” Mumbo’s cry fades, “- need to get back to Scar’s chest monster, but I’ll help for a bit,”, Zedaph turns to Dream, “I mean Grian already wanted to fix this place…. I think…”,
“Wonderful!” Zed bleats, he takes the shulker box from Dream and heads to the very front of the mansion, Dream tails him with another shulker box that he lifted off from the hallway,
“Just dump it in one of these chests, and I’ll message Mumby to unload the shulker chest,” Zedaph snaps the chest close and heads to the other scattered chests by the vicinity. Dream observes the man, before doing the same himself.
“Thanks,” Dream said,
“No problem, my chum, Impulse is a fan of yours, tried to make some of your plays with another friend of his in another world,”,
“Oh!…uh thank you,” there's a visible flush emerging from Dream’s cheeks, he places the shulker box in the chest, and goes to another chest to haul up as many items as he could.
The sun was about to set, when Zedaph calls them to a stop, Mumbo has long left the mansion by then.
“Let’s continue this tomorrow, we’ll probably finish this week, Grain’s got a lot of stuff,” Zed shuffles his inventory to fish out his rockets, “See ya!”, and with a whistle, the blonde is gone to the dark the skies.
Dream is left blinking, the soul lamps of the mansion now emitting a soft blue glow. Behind the chopped hill he can see the Hobbit Hole glowing yellow, and the gem on the lake glowing green, shadowed by the ominous purple of the hill and portal behind it. He sighs and heads for the hobbit hole.
When he opens the door, Professor Beak chirps a welcome.