Chapter Text
He was alone.
He had been alone for far too long. Parrot hadn’t seen or spoken to another person since the day the Director locked him away in this obsidian prison. The black stone walls swallowed every sound. Time blurred within the endless dark, each day bleeding into the next.
Parrot lay on the hard obsidian platform, his wings spread beneath him, dirty from not being able to preen them himself. He looked up at the black ceiling, listening to the soft sound of the lava beneath him.
There had to be a way out, right? All these days, he had tried to come up with an escape plan, but nothing came to him. It seemed that the Director had truly designed this prison specifically for him, specifically to trap him.
As he stared into nothingness, he finally heard something new. Someone was coming.
It was the Director, Parrot’s old friend, the one he had thought was dead. The man used some kind of machine to travel closer from a distance before stopping somewhere beneath Parrot’s platform, where he couldn’t be seen, only heard. A second machine whirred to life, some kind of dispenser that finally gave him food. Just bread.
“That’s it?” the avian asked, his voice rough from not speaking for days.
Then he gave him a piece of cake as well.
“Hope this makes your day a little nicer.”
Before Parrot could say anything else, the Director was already gone.
As the days passed, Parrot slowly began to lose hope of ever escaping. His captor came daily to bring him food, mostly bread, though with each passing day, the portions grew smaller and smaller. The avian was starving. The only way to avoid dying from hunger was to remain still on the platform, no walking, no unnecessary movement.
Nothing he managed to sneak in proved useful. Nothing helped him escape. There was one item he used often, not because it could help him get out of there, but because it was his most precious possession, the spyglass Wifies had given him a year ago. He took great care of it, always making sure he didn’t scratch it by accident.
He knew the only way he could ever leave this place was through the Director, but he had no idea how.
Well, he actually did know how, but it was risky.
He had noticed that his captor followed the same routine every day when coming to feed him. That meant he could use it to his advantage. The best plan he could come up with was to somehow get into the same flying machine the Director used.
When the man returned to bring him food, Parrot walked to the edge of the platform to get a better look at him. A faint orange glow rose from the lava beneath them, though shadows still covered much of the Director’s silhouette. As always, he was dressed in his netherite armor with its wither trims, giving him an almost intimidating sense of authority.
“You know you can’t keep me here forever, right?” Parrot finally said as the other made his way beneath the platform, disappearing from view to place the bread into the dispenser.
“I don’t want to, but I’m doing what I have to.” There was a hint of regret in his voice, but Parrot didn’t believe it. This wasn’t his friend anymore. What he was doing was wrong, too extreme to be justified as protection.
Once the Director was back on the flying machine, the avian finally put his plan into action. His heart pounded in his chest as fear crept through him. If this failed, the other man could throw him into a place even worse than this prison, or worse, he could fall into the lava and die.
He waited a few seconds before using a fishing rod to hook the Director. At the same time, he jumped onto the machine, managing to pull the man off balance and send him falling into the lava below. Parrot nearly fell with him, but he managed to catch himself at the last second.
The machine came to a stop once it reached a black stone staircase, and Parrot slowly began to climb it. His body was weak, his legs trembling beneath him. After all, he had spent days trapped in a place where he could barely move.
Normally, he would have used his wings to fly away, but his captor had clipped them when he brought him here. To Parrot, that betrayal had hurt more than the imprisonment itself. It meant he could never fly again. During the first nights of his capture, he had cried himself to sleep because of it.
After what felt like hours, he finally saw light spilling in from outside. He was free, finally free.
But the moment he stepped onto the top of the prison, he froze. He slowly looked around.
“What the...” He couldn’t even finish the sentence.
The outside was another prison. Massive obsidian walls surrounded a huge stretch of land around the original structure, trapping everything inside. The area had been divided into sections that looked like different biomes.
He was outside, but he still wasn’t free.