Finch's face turned pale as he stared at the arm. On top of all the emotions and memories that had risen in him, seeing this was too much. With a reeling motion, he quickly stood and angled his head away from James before he was violently sick.
Though Puck wasn't proud of the reaction later on, he let out a sound that was a mix of a scream and a startled cry, and promptly flung the arm as far away from him as he possibly could when the sight of the arm registered. Of course, they were sitting in a circle, so it was bound to end up in someone's lap. That someone turned out to be James.
"It's okay!" Blake hurriedly said.
"It's not okay!" Puck shot back. "You're a human and I just pulled your arm off! That's not even normal for demons!"
"I'm stuck as my Minecraft skin!"
"That doesn't explain your arm!"
"Did you even look inside of it!?"
"No!" Then he paused, took a hesitant step towards Blake and asked a bit more quietly, "Why?"
Blake sighed. He placed his hands on his helmet and carefully removed it, putting it underneath one arm as he showed why his arm had come off like that.
He found himself looking at a skull.
"Oh," Puck whispered. "That explains the eyes, then."
James didn't dodge the arm in time. The hand slapped him in the face and it plopped into his lap. He was about to yell something else when Blake took off his helmet only to reveal a skull. He stared with wide eyes, and heart stopped. He slowly looked down at the metal arm in his lap and reached down to it, flipping it up to the open hole, where it should've connected to the shoulder.
When he only saw bone inside, everything around him stopped. He didn't hear anything afterwards. He was just staring at the bone.
Blake was a living skeleton.
If nothing made sense before, nothing made sense now. James finally felt words come to him, but didn't know what was about to come out of his uncontrollable mouth.
"I don't understand any of this and frankly, I just want to go home now. Especially now. I'm so tired of everything and I just want to sleep and never wake up again. And I don't know what the hell to do with this arm. I don't want it."
Finch caught his breath and stared openly at Blake. Okay, so he was a living skeleton. That wasn't unheard of- he must have been under some nasty spell or something of the sort. As long as he wasn't hostile, it didn't matter much to him.
"I'm going to try to be accepting and not offend you." He said carefully, coming over to sit back down.
"Verdammt," Kratzer's says in surprise, though he doesn't appear perturbed. "I've seen everything from ghosts to demons but skeletons are new."
Cornyx's eyes widen with shock and he involuntarily jumps back, signing a cross over his chest. "I find this wholly disturbing and fail to understand how this is possible," he says, his stutter momentarily gone.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"I thought Artie had it bad," Puck said. He didn't mean for the words to slip out, but at least they weren't as revealing as the other things he had said. "But you...you have it worse. Far worse."
Blake sighed and went over to James. Grabbing his arm back, he carefully returned it to its rightful place. Then he sat down where he had been sitting minutes before and let out another sigh.
"I don't normally look like this," Blake admitted. "Well, I do, but I've only recently started to look like this. I was playing Minecraft and got stuck in the game as my skin-"
"Avatar," Puck helpfully corrected. Though the term was right, he doubted everyone here was familiar with how the game worked.
"-avatar. It was the Grim Reaper, so the suit of armor is an improvement."
"What the hell is-" James stopped himself with a frustrated huff. He couldn't stop himself from speaking his mind but the least he could do was try not to be rude. "I - what is Minecraft and what is an avatar? What's the Grim Reaper? I'm so confused. I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. How can you play a game in someone else's skin?"
Puck and Blake looked at each other, and, for once, the two agreed on a decision - both let out loud groans when they realized what they would have to explain. Neither one had been forced to explain what it was like in the past in this particular way. While Bartimaeus might have needed an explanation, it was relatively easy because he knew what digital screens were. James, on the other hand? It seemed like he didn't even know what a computer was.
Fun.
"This is not going to be enjoyable in the slightest," Puck found himself saying. "Look, Minecraft is a game. A video game, to be exact. Think like a story, only on a flat surface instead. You can control it with little devices. They're called controllers, or, in some cases, keyboards and mouses, depending on what you're using to play it."
"You're not actually in the game," Blake added. He readjusted his helmet. "You play it through an avatar. The best comparison I can think of is a little figure you might use in some board games. It's not you, but, for the game's purposes it is. Minecraft specifically calls its avatars skins. It comes with a default set, but you can customize them if you want to. And pretty much everyone wants to. You can literally be whatever you want to be. I chose this."
He gestured down at himself.
Puck decided it was time for him to join in again. "We're not sure what the reason was, but the players of Minecraft have become stuck as their avatars. Blake's stuck like that. My summoner's stuck like this. And I think Blake's chasing after some kid who's in the same situation - Mist, right?"
Blake nodded.
"And the Grim Reaper is what many on Earth view as the personification of death," Puck concluded. "He looks like a giant skeleton, and his usual accessories are a cloak, scythe and sometimes an hourglass."
James had some trouble trying to envision what exactly they were describing, but conceptually, he understood. It was like... a board game, but flat. You were able to customize your piece, or your player. But if they had become their players did that mean they were shrunk down into a small game or was the game very big? He wasn't sure if that was relevant.
He nodded slowly, not wishing to aggravate them further, since Puck seemed to dread explaining the concept on the front end. There was enough tension between Puck and Blake, and he did not wish to be the source of any further frustration.
"I think I understand," he said with a nod. "It's unfortunate that your fictional game and story has become your reality. I don't know how you would even begin to find your way out of that... though I would presume it has something to do with magic... since you said you were a magician?" He asked, addressing the last question to Blake.
"-spirits to do tasks for us," Blake finished, looking over in Puck's direction as he spoke.
Puck, in turn, got to his feet and wandered over to the tree. He needed to ask Blake so many questions about his life and who exactly he was, but he would have to wait for that. It wasn't exactly a secret he wanted to hide; now just wasn't the right time. It was something that really only needed to be discussed between the two of them.
"They don't have any abilities of their own," Puck said, "besides, you know, enslaving people. Unless we're talking about people like the ones in the math club-"
His hand automatically went up to cover his mouth.
James blinked a few times as he took in more information. Spirits. Demons. Magicians who enslaved spirits. Puck and Blake sounded like they were very much enemies, and at the very least, it was starting to make sense as to why. And why Puck was so afraid to share certain things -namely about the math club, which he'd been suspecting had nothing to do with math - in front of him.
"I see. It's no wonder you don't like each other," he said with a small nod. "Though... whatever it is that your math club is, you'll end up saying it sooner or later. I'm sure if you'd prefer confidentiality apart from Blake... Blake could just-" He looked over to the metal man. Blake didn't have ears to cover.
"-Respectfully keep his distance while you whisper. And you, likewise for anything Blake feels provoked to share that he wouldn't want you to hear. Or perhaps, if that's the case, it would be more productive to split into groups. So that we can avoid the fear of - if and when we leave this place - something you shared being used against you."
Mist doesn't show up until the end of this post, but I thought I'd put a description up here! Mist is small. Like really small. Everyone there is probably taller, except for the racoon. If you look up pictures of what Sans from Undertale is wearing, he's wearing that - although he's got on a pair of boots instead of slippers. He has short white hair and blue eyes.
"I'm not-" Blake started, then paused. He stared down at the ground. "I was going to talk to Bartimaeus, you know. About, er, things. Mist said something to me when we first met, and it made me question-"
Puck snorted. "Oh, that's rich, coming from a magician like you. Let me remember how you treated Bartimaeus - oh yeah, you treated him like trash. You summoned him to do your dirty work, just like any other stupid magician would. And you say that you wanted to talk to him like you'd talk to another human?"
"It's your fault!" Blake shot back, taking a step towards Puck.
"Me? How was it my fault!?"
"You were pretending to be a magician!" Blake shouted. "I was terrified. Bartimaeus is the first spirit I've ever summoned, and I was starting to question everything I knew. And then you show up, pretending to be the type of magician I've grown up surrounded by, and I didn't want you to harm me if you found out I was being nice to him!"
Puck crossed his arms. "You still made him do your dirty work."
"I needed help," Blake said. "That's the only reason. Puck, I was stuck in Minecraft. I was scared and alone, and then I realized that finding Herobrine was probably the only way that I was going to get back home. And you know what stories say about him. You really think I could have caught him? So I thought back to the names of spirits I had seen in my books, and I picked Bartimaeus."
Puck fell silent. He didn't know how to respond to that answer, especially when the way that he spoke sounded so much like Artie. He could imagine Pres saying something in the same tone, and how Pres would always get really angry for a moment before growing incredibly quiet.
And it was at that moment that the boy fell from the tree and landed right on top of him with a loud thud.
James had rolled his eyes when they chose to ignore his proposal and keep arguing, but when he heard the thud - he turned around, looking at the new arrival on top of Puck. He found himself groaning, and he looked up at the sky, at whatever intangible being or will was bringing more people to the trap.
"Seriously?" he found himself muttering. "Gods, we don't need another broken soul to add to the chaos."
"Gods?" the boy said, hopping to his feet. "Did you say gods? Are you a demigod?"
Puck uttered a groan as he tried to push himself off of the ground. He gave up and promptly rolled over onto his side instead. At the very least, he could see what was going on, though everything was a bit off focus because of the angle he was laying at.
The boy turned and looked back at him, and then back at the group assembled.
His eyes landed on Blake.
For being as small as he was, he looked surprisingly intimidating as he marched over to where the magician was standing and leveled a glare at him. "Raptor."
Finch was leaning against the tree, still slightly queasy. His head only swam more at the argument between Blake and Puck, and then at the appearance of the small white-haired boy. He shaded his eyes from the sun and tried not to let out a pitiful moan at the turning of his stomach.
"Hey. I'm Finch- just saying that to be polite." He glanced in the general direction of the boy, "I really, really need to take a nap. Wake me up if we're attacked or- something."
He walked over to the other side of the great tree, stripping of one of his layers for a blanket. As exhausted as he was, he made one last attempt to protect himself before dozing off, moving his coin purse from a hidden pocket and stuffing it down the front of his pants.
