Not long afterwards, the formal declaration of the end of the Second Godmodding War occurred. The actual forum thread — Destroy the Godmodder 2: Operator! itself — was left to its own vices, Build’s message transcribed onto it, presumably by himself, as a final gesture. The core group of twelve Descendants all met together at the exact center of the Battlefield, signing their own treaty. TT2000, Minor107, OpelSpeedster, Crusher48, engie_ninja, ninjatwist321, The_Idea_Modpack_Mod_Man, Talist, Irecreeper, Fseftr, The_Serpent, and K4yne all notarized the document in their own colored signatures. Just hours before, they’d been fighting in the greatest war ever told, but what were they to do now?
The fight was over. Not because the Godmodder was decisively killed through an unbelievable turn of events, and the server was liberated. And not because the Descendants, even more unbelievably, had lost the invincibility that fate granted them, and had suffered the ultimate ragequit. But because of a technicality. A technicality that, the more the players thought about it, seemed perfectly reasonable for them. The war was exhausting, and droning, and formless. It was impossible to keep track of, changing directions too many times to count — and what could any of them do about it? Better for Build to end it himself. Better for them to not worry about that random bad god man anymore.
But immediately after the document was signed, the ground burst open, lava and smoke pouring from the open wound in the world, and the Godmodder jumped forth. “NO! You’re not doing this! You’re not just running off to some, some INFERIOR STORY now, are you?? Besides, you CAN’T! You’re STUCK HERE, STUCK BECAUSE OF MY OPERATION!” “Hold on, Godmodder,” TT2000 said quickly, gripping his trademark bows as the Godmodder sneered. “We never said anything about leaving. In fact, we’re all pretty eager to stay!” The Godmodder’s grimace deepened. “…What do you mean.” “The whole group of us have some pretty great plans for this place, Godmodder! Plans that won’t be possible without you! Just think about it. Think about it logically, reasonably. As you always do!” TT2000 chuckled at that last part, but he recovered, gripping the Godmodder’s shoulder with his hand. TT2000’s DTG pendant swayed around his neck.
“Look at all of those wretches down there,” The_Serpent growled, stepping forward and extending their hand to convey the scope of the Godmodder’s kingdom. “What do they have that we don’t? Absolutely nothing. You are a god in this universe, and as a collective, we share virtually all of your powers.” engie_ninja’s form, constrained in layers upon layers of armor, clunked across the field, shaking the ground. “The only bloody problem is that you keep us locked down with OP Scales and Curses and whatever else you have under that cape of yours. If you got rid of them…” The Godmodder blinked, staring at the ground. His grip on his Banhammer lessened slightly. “What are you proposing, exactly,” he murmured just loud enough to hear.
“Isn’t it obvious?” pionoplayer said with a smirk. He jumped through the air, landing softly in front of the Godmodder, Ircucvci in hand. “There’s not a war anymore, and there aren’t any sides anymore. But we all still have our powers. You’re still the Godmodder. And because of the Narrative, we’re still the Descendants. Think about what we could do if we all joined forces! If we all recreated this server, this universe, to what it always could have been! Who cares about those millions of players? Who cares about the Homestuck Invasion? They’re all meaningless distractions. We’re what really matters. We’re the people… that can Rebuild the Godmodder.“
And the Godmodder’s grip refocused, his hunchback form rising into his usual imposing stature. He turned to look at the crowd of Descendants, the people who, just hours ago, were fighting him. Modpack and HIM, still armed with their Microsoft-brand weaponry. Talist and his kitsune familiar, Wilson, at the ready. The_Nonexistent_T... Wait, what? Who was that? The Godmodder didn’t ever remember seeing… wait… Memories uncertainly filtered into the Godmodder’s head. Doors. Severed arms. The origins of things. He remembered, now. The crowd of Descendants only continue to grow — but now, they were his allies. His companions. He smiled as wide as he could. “I like the sound of that,” the Godmodder boomed. “I like the sound of that WAY TOO MUCH.“
He raised his hammer, and the crowd cheered, their peals bouncing off the clouds.
In the month following the conclusion of the Second Godmodding War, GodCraft transformed from a collective of anarchy, destruction, and limitless attempts at starting the fires of civilization to an oligarchic cult of personality that fanned the already-present flames of rebellion into a raging wildfire of absolute chaos. Gone were the Descendants, their Sacred Ground, and their factions. Present were was the Crafted Gods, the rulers of an entire universe, now and forever.
Understanding that the Narrative had granted them an infinite array of powers, the Crafted Gods began abusing this to its greatest potential, imposing their will on Minecraft like never before. Their motivations were fairly simple — to access the very heart of Minecraft’s raw creativity and to rule the entire universe. To subjugate the 99.9% that was beneath them, the floods of microbial life known as “the rest of Minecraft’s players and entities.” To, potentially, overthrow the gods themselves and establish a new life as the emperors of Fiction — a new line of deities that could rule far better than anyone else ever could. And they got to work immediately.
Summoning as many creatures as he could, the Godmodder tore fissures through the ground, conjuring mutated combinations of Terrors, gleaming hyperionic Mechs forged from other worlds, and Turrets tall enough to stretch past the block limit. They would steamroll entire continents, flattening the meager works of hundreds of thousands of players, creating clouds of smoke and ash and detritus visible from space. Mass cooling raged around the planet, rendering what little life and ecosystems that had begun to form throughout the server’s lifetime unfeasible. The massive cobblestone pyramids, walls, and ramps that had formed through the constant clash of fire and water, the legions of Enderdragons and Withers and raids of mobs spawning themselves over and over through whatever players knew how to hack into GodCraft to enter Creative Mode, were all pulverized into ashes. And following behind the Godmodder were the former Descendants themselves, who looked upon these swarms of players and saw not the people they had been fighting to free, but the prisoners in the goddamn cave, stuck looking at a screen. What else could be done? It was the Descendants’ job to show them the light. To show them the truth. That there would always be someone better.
TT2000, master of the Players’ Quest, shunted thousands of people into pocket dimensions, forcing them to die over and over and over attempting to complete Minecraft’s Survival Mode, and forcing those who somehow won to gather enough materials to make an entire fleet of 100-Post Cannons, seething with unlimited energy, the raw forces at the Dawn of Time, a fusion of gilded creation and scarlet oblivion. He barraged the field with soldiers made of arrows, with prominences and coronae of the Green Sun, and with promises of cake that were left undelivered. Irecreeper called upon the unstoppable might of the Land of Chairs and Anarchy, of Tabletop, and of the infinite elemental planes of Chaos that lurked behind the curtains of fate. An undulating pattern formed in the fractured, kaleidoscopic sky, seething and hissing and crackling waves of butterflies converging on the server all at once, ravaging it, picking it down to its foundations, pouring hundreds upon thousands of bullets at every conceivable point in the server, tearing apart the collective works of millions. Dozens of factions rose up to combat the threats, but enemy stands sabotaged their efforts, building themselves into nuclear thrones, irradiating entire biomes, filling the air with the stench of death. The butterflies warped and fluctuated and shifted into the symbol of an empty set, a horrible cracking sound keening from out of their visage as the true meaning of Chaos made itself known.
PitTheAngel and ManiacMastR, guardians of heaven and hell, worked in tandem, pulling the heavens, the waters, and the earth together in an impossible display. Holy sunbeams of destruction rained down onto hundreds of players, as stars were plucked from the cosmos and hurtled down to earth. From every crack, every fissure, every hole in the earth, there came a torrent of red water, spiraling up into the clouds, earthquakes ripping apart even the bedrock foundations of the universe and tsunamis cascading down onto anything the light touched. But the water’s force and its pressure weren’t even the issues — it was the soul of whatever the water flowed through instantly rotted, their conceptual essence decaying. Chasms hundreds of kilometers wide opened up in the ground as bedrock loosened up, as mountains crumbled and fell into sickly dirt, as players’ skins fell apart around their bones and they shattered into bits and pieces.
Fseftr faded into the background, revealing its existence as a hollow artificial intelligence, a projection kept intact by an ever-farther-reaching, insidious force, one universe away. Blinking out of warpspeed was Blue, at the forefront of legions of HMAS carriers, dropships, and troops. Missiles and bombs far beyond any yield Earth could produce stampeded the server, demolishing even its outer reaches, railguns and superlasers crackling to life and pinpointed with frightening accuracy at GodCraft’s most sacred, hallowed spots — places marked by the gods as teeming with lore. The temple of the Ancestral Bone, demolished in a fireball that split the heavens in half. The monuments at the crater of Monolithium, a site of pilgrimage for millions, ruined. The leftover roots of Yggdrasil at the very center of the world, ripped into ashes. Crusher48 and engie_ninja, OP Scale be damned, combined forces to create the ultimate weaponry. The chains and locks in engie’s armor began loosening in tune with the dying, decaying heartbeat of the universe, the outlines of hallowed geometric forms inscribing his true form. Crusher48, drawing upon his own wellspring of power, used these specifications to produce an even stronger suit of armor — not one for engie, but for one to house the greatest armada of guns ever conceived. The Perfect Metatron’s Cube, a paradoxical assortment of Platonic solids and thirteen flowing spheres, hummed to horrible, malformed life, blocking out the twinkling, surging stars and the reddening sun. Encircling it, engie’s True Form, an incomprehensible, arcane conduit of destruction that stretched across universes. Instantaneously, the two sped off, the Perfect Metatron’s Cube activating its own Weath Rays to fire unblockable light speed beams that cracked through the server, turning the air into plasma and firing off assaults worse than nuclear at every conceivable point in space. The True Form of engie carved through the universe as though it was a meal, stretching the chaos even higher, attacking abandoned single player worlds, servers left to rot, and feasting on their potential, the crumbs falling onto GodCraft and crushing it on all sides.
The_Idea_Modpack_Mod_Man aimed his entire arsenal of weaponry — a stockpile of auburn rifles, of machine guns, of miniguns, of railguns — at the heavens, that whirlwind of stars and water and light and fire, and a torrent of doom rained upon GodCraft’s moon from its far side, bending across the cosmos and crashing clean through as the bullets, and the moon, arched back down onto the server. The entire server was awash in a red glow, Modpack’s body wracked with horror and pain as their skin peeled and flaked off into a red fire, their eyes gleaming white with the inviolable truth of the Secret of the Void, that the protagonism and antagonism of the world were linked at the very root. Continents folded in on itself, the server rollbacking through a million points in time simultaneously, events that had never occurred and had played out long before broadcasting themselves into every dimension. A battle at the arctic under the backdrop of galactic phenomena; an inviolate gateway at the ends of the earth; a green figure locked in strife with his own shadow; a meteor falling through a universe and onto a sacred temple; a man opening a door and casting light onto existence — all the horrors subjected themselves onto the players, and they were so afraid. For behold, it comes, riding on the clouds: the apocalypse itself, now in fast-forward and HD.
insert_generic_username, his green skull flickering with the lights that heralded the demon who is always already here, heralded his coming by rings upon rings upon rings of sets of eight eight-sided dice, spinning and gleaming in a fractalline kaleidoscope. He held out his right hand and beckoned some unseen force, a pillar of multicolored light shining onto his position and bestowing upon him an artifact of unfathomable power: the Infinity Gauntlet, keeper of the eleven thousand Elemental Planes. Rolling all his sets of dice at once, probability found itself at a complete loss — there was no path to chart, as there was no plot — and every conceivable dice rolled an empty set, unlocking a cesspool of negative energy that flowed into the Gauntlet itself, supercharging it with an absence of light, of heat, of energy of any kind. His robotic form straining under the pressure, generic lifted his Gauntlet above his head and… used it to equip, aim, and fire Daybreak, his most trusted weapon. However, the negative energy funneled into the gun, corrupting its holy conflagration into the end times itself — a weapon not of the morning star, but of the midnight hour — Nightfall. GodCraft was eclipsed by the Eclipse, as it collided with the server in a maelstrom of molten metal, of columns of fire and plasma and electricity, of the celestial machinery that still existed shattering itself. And it was consumed by a vortex of absolute nothingness, a fate with a price worse than oblivion, an absolute absence that corroded all known information.
The dozens of other Crafted Gods engaged in their own miniature wars, exactly like this, repeated ad infinitum. In just a few impossibly short hours, the entirety of GodCraft had fallen, razed beyond every conceivable foundation, with only bedrock being exposed — and even then, the bedrock was cracked in more places than ever thought. The raw power of the Void and the Nether leaked through, corrupting what was left with the processes of voidstone and the Red Sea. Millions of players, cursed to endlessly respawn, were left with absolutely nothing. No way out. No options. No hope.
The Godmodder lifted up his Banhammer triumphantly, his grin splitting his face as though it was a tear in the world. Lightning bounced off of every point on his hammerheads, superheating the air to an unbearable degree. Every player in Minecraft — every inhabitant of the once-great universe — was piled in a corner at the very edge of the world, forced to watch as the skies crashed down upon them. The Godmodder’s hammer swung… and the entire server rollbacked itself to before the chaos of the Crafted Gods started. Millions of Minecraft players around the world held their breath, concerned and confused. Everything was back to the way it was before… but the pain they’d felt was still there. So what was going on…
…Then they saw the Crafted Gods running from beyond the edge of the world for another assault. And it all happened again. Every strike, every blow, every projectile, every explosion, every crater, every piece of the puzzle that rounded up to an unfortunately inevitable end. It all happened again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. There was no reason to fight. But still, it was their daily lives.
And so the Third Godmodding War waged itself.
In the aftermath of the war, the server had become completely unrecognizable.
The Crafted Gods were worshipped by millions of people as exactly that — gods, that had taken the universe of Minecraft and resculpted it according to their own desires. Their previous war with the Godmodder didn’t matter. It was barely relevant in the grand scheme of things — how could it ever have been? It was clear now that that war was barely even a war at all, compared to this. They had been on the same side all along, with the Godmodder a misunderstood antihero fighting against the true villains.
The Homestuck Invasion, a fleet that took months to scratch out of existence. The Arrival, led by Project Binary, a campaign so insidiously tied to the roots of Fiction that no one even knew. The Conflict itself, the true powers that were, steering the motivations and actions of every possible villain for their own purposes. But they were all gone now. That narrative didn’t matter. It never did. What mattered was that the Godmodder and his Descendants were the true gods — and so it fell on them to rebuild the ashes of the universe in whatever way they saw fit. This was the natural order of things.
And so, the Crafted Gods had entered the pantheon of the divine. The untamed wilderness of the server, millions upon millions upon millions of blocks, was deemed a wasteland too impure for any gods to touch. The Battlefield, the Sacred Ground of the Descendants, was cordoned off from the rest of the world in an impenetrable dome and launched high into the air, serving as the third celestial body of the heavens, ranking above even the sun and the moon. It was an omniscient panopticon, a temple lined with immaculately carved statues of the Crafted Gods that every single Minecraft player could see at any given time and revere. The actual players of GodCraft had been united under the rightful law of the Crafted Gods for days upon days, working only to serve their rulers, stripping the world of its infinitude of resources and offering them up as sacrifices, splitting into factions to govern the new world order via mortal subdivisions, and interpreting, over and over again, the sacred texts the Crafted Gods left behind: an ancient tome called Homestuck, which was treated as simultaneously the greatest and worst thing ever written.
Charting a course through the skies, the dome of the Crafted Gods became an idyllic utopia, untouched in every respect by the horrible clawing chaos on the world below. Its inhabitants became the rulers of their kingdom, a kingdom stretching across countless worlds and stars, issuing edicts and proclamations designed seemingly only to further the hell that millions of people were trapped in. Every Descendant had progressed beyond their characters, and beyond their screens, becoming living, breathing myths rendered in their full glory — the vision that they deserved.
TT2000 was given the sovereign title of Crafted Godhead, rumored to be a result of his charisma manipulating the electorate. He was responsible for interpreting Homestuck and the many other lesser sacred texts that comprised the sum total of all knowledge, for governing the Legislate, a group of clones of the Fourteenth Player, Steve Cubit, and for serving as the judge, jury, and executioner of GodCraft. Minor107 directed the constant mission to clear the world of all its resources, stocking stones and metals to fuel ancient, cryptic refineries of technicolor power. Blue, now the proper CEO of HMASBC, was the primary imposer of martial law on the universe, deploying troops and ships wherever necessary to “keep the peace,” and using her experience on Earth as a stockbroker to maximize profits further. ninjatwist321 led the standing armies, foremost on the front lines as a red-blooded soldier of war. Piono and Eric, in an absolute miracle, joined forces, combining the fleets of Project Nexus and the newly-christened IUPC into a task force with the might of dozens of universes, created not to ensure peace over all of existence, but the Crafted God’s peace. The two of them were elected joint Chieftains over this union, the Inter-Fictional Piono Corps, with Aegis-A095 as their third-in-command. Their first order of business: successfully establishing a permanent gateway to Paradox Space, orchestrating the ascensions to God Tier of all four Kids and all twelve Trolls, resurrected and controlled by a line of elemental alchemies to serve the Crafted Gods. Crusher48 was elected as the Left Hand of TT2000, representing the entire O4.8 Council of his own Foundation, an organization of unprecedented power that catalogued, controlled, and used any and all anomalous objects found in the universe of Minecraft.
Serpent, still the most loyal to the Godmodder out of all of them, donned his burned cape, taking the powers of the Ancestral Artifacts to become not a proper Psi-Godmodder, but a terrifying facsimile of one — a mythical monster, rumored to strike without warning or pattern, waging a horrible orchid war on the universe. PitTheAngel rose to become the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the incarnate iconography of all religion possible in Minecraft. He shed his mortal form, becoming a column of living, ten-colored flame, encircled by waves of feathered wings, inscribed by a halo of thorns and circlets of light, cloaked in the armor of the many true gods. OpelSpeedster commanded the space program, working with the established governments to spearhead a set of rockets, controlled by hyper light, sacred geometry, and the reaches of higher dimensions. Irecreeper became the figurehead of the masses, ascending to the rank of TT2000’s Mouth. He was a messianic everyman wrapped in the cloak of the World Tree who spread propaganda of chaos and anarchy across the entire world. He whipped mobs of players, tens of thousands strong, into a frenzy, playing their lives as if through a sophisticated grid, and incepting their actions. Nimbleguy was the arbiter of the reverse panopticon, ascending to the rank of TT2000’s Eyes, his vast, intricate network of subpersonalities and artificial intelligences creating a surveillance system that could span the entire universe if need be, leaving no stone unordered. Talist, the Veteran, worked his Narrative powers to the point of exhaustion, summoning stockpiles upon stockpiles of helper entities in the catacombs below the Battlefield, and building his own personal AXIS to augment his frail body. He rose to become the CEO of Wilson & Sons Co., a conglomerate megacorp dedicated to mass-producing any conceivable potion. Massive amounts of resources were funneled into the project, spreading brewing wars across the universe and fueling a gargantuan underground trade, with Talist’s entities finding ways to bring the profits straight back to him. Similarly, engie_ninja and Amperz4nd’s Demimech joined together and established their own dominion over the wartime sector, refitting the ashes of Engietech into Remarkable Inc. If Talist provided the incentives for war through his mind-altering potions, Remarkable Inc. gave the ingredients, flooding continents with caches of weapons banned for universes around. Voidstone rifles, antimatter autobows, grenades mixed with alloys of monochronium and magetear, miniguns supercharged with the Green Sun, and much, much more.
Kayne established a renowned hospital throughout the universe, taking in the sick and infirm that were displaced by the Third Godmodding War and nursing them back by stitching them into terrifying homunculi of flesh and weaponry. His credentials were so high that he began a part-time job in The Hospital, graduating to conceptual status. Kalare Erelye retired from the Battlefield, accepting the rank of Crafted God but confining himself to his inner sanctum of Grayhold. Rumors told of his exploits in trying to summon materials and entities not normally present in any possible cosmology of Fiction. NinjaV2403 was the Ender Diplomat, pooling together a contingent of Endermen from across the universe who still remembered the legends of the Chosen Few and their descendants. From these foundations, he linked together thousands of End Cities and refuel their Ships, creating a naval fleet stretching through the static skies of the End and patrolling the Void beyond. ManiacMastR was the Nether Diplomat, resuming his rightful status as Lord of Hell, successor of Herobrine, and the Fourth-Wall Guardian of Minecraft. By channeling the life force of every creature in the infinite array of Nethers, Maniac managed to do the unthinkable and tame the Red Dragon onto his own side. Just as Pit became an incarnation of divinity, Maniac descended into a column of smoke, fire, and lightning, a demonic maelstrom of bats and curses and quartz that, when displayed against the Red Sea, formed a hurricane of impossible proportions. Netpatham oversaw the construction of the Battlefield’s higher education, UniversitEvE, and pursued a degree in metafictional cosmology. From there, his army of hexagonal robots mass-produced enough Tumors to generate an entire gradient of Colored Suns — 16,777,216 of them, enough for every possible RGB value. They created an impenetrable cluster of light at the very heart of existence. insert_generic_username pursued a darker path as a feared kingpin, lurking at the heart of the Perfectly Generic Casino, the chief source of entertainment in the universe. Thousands would come, blow all their savings to play games with those loaded sets of eight eight-sided dice, and lose it all — plus their heads, when the dice summoned guillotines, weasel kings, or whatever else they fancied.
The_Nonexistent_Tazz was elected as the Right Hand of TT2000, representing the Court of Unity. Though TT2000 claimed to be sovereign judge, jury, and executioner, Tazz’s right hand, a tear in space, held the hands, souls, and willpower of every entity to ever exist in Fiction, giving him the official, holy world on all judgements enacted by the Crafted Gods, stretching from the origins of the world to the last tick of the clock. 5l1n65h07 shed his physical avatar entirely, layering himself into the very foundation of the universe. He functioned as a better line of defense than the Hexahedron itself, constantly writing and rewriting the Source Code of Reality to either stop glitches before they occurred, or to forcefully induce corruption as an attack. Lothrya Silentread spearheaded an intergalactic delivery service, inspired by her forays into the inner workings of Futurama. As Commander of the company, this gave her insider knowledge on who was doing what, what was going where, and where important things were happening, allowing her to adjust her own army of elf clones accordingly to force favorable outcomes. Modpack and CobaltShade, as chief alchemists, expanded the lowly Forge into a sprawling Obsidian Citadel, replete with every conceivable alchemiter and alchemy. Ten-level limit be damned, the castle was equipped with enough resources to produce The Operator, the entity that created the Destroy the Godmodder series, in a week — and rumors told of a plot to crack the code that would let alchemies of level -1 be created as well. Alex, Modpack’s escaped split personality, started a business designing thrones. It really seemed to be his calling. That, and the technological megacorporation of Applsoftendo, which dominated the framework of the new universe of Minecraft. That was also his calling. Crystal, ascending to the rank of TT2000’s Ears, was metafictionally aware, as always. Which meant that he knew full well that
Which left just the Godmodder. The Godmodder, simultaneously the highest and lowest of all the Crafted Gods. He was given sovereignty over the universe — over GodCraft — as it was his at the start, even though now, it had metastasized into something much more than anyone could have ever planned. He had command over the terrors of the deep, the curses of ancient times, and the veil separating man from myth. Yet he was constantly, ALWAYS followed by the other Crafted Gods engaging in musical numbers with him, singing and dancing with music playing from no discernible source, as they attempted to “redeem” him. To give him a “character arc.” To peel back his stony hard and his previously cartoonishly villainous ways and to prove that he was never really all bad — he was just misunderstood! He was an antihero fighting against the real villains all along, as was said earlier! The Godmodder was intolerant of these antics, but over time, he put up less and less of a fuss. As though it was making sense to him. As though he really was softening.
But it didn’t change the fact that
Weeks upon weeks of the Crafted Gods’ rule passed.
The universe of Minecraft was bent upwards into an unstoppable arc, reaching out of its boundaries and into the Void that flanked it. The rules of the Operation were modified. Controlled. Shifted. Players could access their own worlds, even create new ones — but they could never leave their computers. Players never had to eat, drink, or sleep — but they could never age. Millions of people across the world were stuck, slaving away at their computers, until the end of time. None of them knew what they were doing, of course — none of them had the complete picture, or even knew how to decode the full power of the Gods’ sacred texts.
But the commands they’d been given were simple enough on the surface. Millions of players were trained to operate the code of Minecraft, stripping through its interface as a game and cracking through into the limitless, teeming, shimmering code of the universe itself. They were trained to mine every resource, loot every temple, kill every entity — to suck the whole thing dry. It mattered not what destruction they wrought, for it was in service of the citadel in the sky, capped with the inviolate statues of the old gods and the new. They had cleansed the world of its impurities in the scalding judgement of the refiner’s fire, and they could do it again if they desired.
“Godsdamn!” TT2000 exclaimed in the realm above the clouds, the Chalice of Oryx in his left hand. He took a hearty swig from the sacred glass. “Here I was, thinking that world peace was a pipe dream. But we made it, folks!” TT’s toothy grin revealed itself; he set down the Chalice and clutched at the DTG medallion chained to his neck. “We made it. This whole world. Wasn’t nothing but a bunch of rocks and dust before we got here.” TT2000’s throne was carved from solid emerald. Save for the way that any light which shone on it was reflected and intensified until it scattered across the impossibly vast throne room in rainbows, it was disconcertingly plain. Flanked on his sides were Tazz and Crusher; next to them were Nimbleguy and Irecreeper. Granted honorary seats at the council for their service were Pit, Maniac, NinjaV, Piono, and Eric.
TT2000 hopped off his throne, floating through the air, even though the sounds of his steps echoed across the halls. He insisted on no carpets — the tiled floor was polished to a shine. “Business is booming! Profits are high, and so are our resources. Our plan is in motion, the Legislate and the Court are in joint agreement, and the Prophets’ Song is perfectly in tune!” TT2000’s grin slid off his face, his brow furrowed in concern. “So tell me what in the hells are going on, now.” Goanna67 faltered, sweat beading down his robotic head. Pieces of his human form lay in tatters around his body. “It’s the proletariat, Moniker.” TT2000’s eyebrow arched. “Moniker?” “I... That’s what they call you, sir. They believe your name, and your titles, are too holy to speak aloud, so they refer to you in code.” TT2000 laughed coldly, holding out his hand; the Chalice sped to it. “Of course they would,” he muttered, taking another sip and motioning for Goanna to continue. “They... they’re getting restless. The propaganda, the cults, the camps… They’ve been working, but they’re only working up to a point. Riots are starting, sir. Terrible riots. Things we haven’t seen since…” TT2000 held up a hand, downing the whole glass.
“Crusher,” TT2000 said sharply, turning back to his throne. “What do you make of this?” Crusher, cloaked in purple silhouette as always, betrayed no expression. “Reports of anomalies among the general populace are undeniable. Entire groups of people are ontologically corrupting themselves, as if through some phantom illness.” “Illness?” Tazz spoke, resting his omnipresent hand on his chin. “Should we call in Kayne?” Crusher shook his head. “I doubt the phenomenon is literally a virus,” he continued. “But it’s a succinct analogy. It has a vector, there are outbreak sites, and… it is spreading.” TT2000 glowered. “How’d you get so banged up, Goanna? Last I heard you were, oh, I don’t know…” His hand cupped Goanna’s chin, holding it up. “…A god. Like US.” Goanna took several steps backwards, almost falling off balance.
“I, uh, well… They were… more powerful than I anticipated.” Piono slammed his clenched fists onto his own throne, standing bolt upright. The crown of flames over his head flickered angrily. “More powerful than US?! You and I and EVERY OTHER PUNK HERE knows that THEY are NOT US.” The runes etched into Piono’s body shuddered through different forms. Goanna’s eyes widened. “You think I don’t know that?! I know what I’m supposed to be! What we’re ALL supposed to be! And I’m telling you that they… were a match for me. My shotguns. My hope. I almost tried my ultimate move, but… it would have been too risky.” It was Tazz’s turn to leer. “Mph. Fair. Using the Three Syllables is only a short-term solution, regardless.” TT2000 turned again. “Nimble! My guy. Care to chime in? Are your eyes capable of seeing? And what of you, Irecreeper? Can your mouth actually talk?” The two of them grimaced.
“Yes, they can,” Nimbleguy said. “I see everything. I know what’s going on.” “Then why didn’t you do anything?!” TT2000 barked. He drew his hand into his sweeping leather coat, pulling out Starry Night — still his weapon of choice, after all this time. “Do I have to do everything myself?” Nimbleguy held up a hand this time. “I couldn’t do anything. Goanna67 is right. It’s too much for any one of us alone. If the Crafted Gods band together, we may stand a chance.” “Stand a chance??? Are you kidding me? We’re THIS close to escaping the Trifecta, and now an army of infinitely lesser lifeforms is our number one priority?!” Green electricity crackled around TT2000’s body, which, of course, periodically gave way to prophetic images. “TT, he’s… right,” Irecreeper said with a sigh. “I’ve heard it all. I know their thoughts.” TT2000 hounded on Ire, enraged. “What.” “Some of them are starting to say that we’re… wrong. That we’re not supposed to be the god-kings of Fiction, and that the Godmodder is… beyond redeeming.” TT2000’s maelstrom subsided, and visible fear swept throughout the throne room.
“What?!” TT2000 said in hushed tones. “I know,” Irecreeper said gravely. “They think that… this isn’t the way things should be going. That we should be fighting against the Godmodder. That the rightful end to all of this is his death, and us leaving Minecraft forever. Put simply… they want democracy.” There was an uncomfortable silence. “And also riots.” “This must not be,” Pit boomed. He’d chosen to manifest in a humanoid form, his heavy white robes obscuring the divine light pouring from his souls. “To modify the gods, and to break the yoke of narrative, is blasphemy.Richard is our protagonist — nothing more, and nothing less.” Eric’s gilded eyes narrowed from his throne. “I know where this is going,” he spat, rising from his seat. “You do?” Goanna asked quietly. Eric nodded. “These people are being controlled by something. Someone. They think they’re in a different story, and they want to make their end a reality. They think they have our powers. And they might. There’s a chance… It’s small, but it’s there… that we could be infected, too. Any one of us.”
In the deathly silence that followed, the doors to the throne room of the Crafted Gods were kicked open. Speeding through the gap was Crystal, panting heavily. He eyed his seat on the council, which was empty, seeing as he had just arrived. “Sorry... for the delay, TT.” TT2000 nodded. “At ease, Crystal.” Crystal floated through the throne room, eyes darting to every Crafted God present, sweat dripping down his face. He prepared to take a seat— “Actually! Before you sit. Can I ask you something?” TT2000 called out. Crystal tensed, but slowly returned TT’s gaze. “Goanna has a reason for his appearance. He was attacked a peculiar band of insurgents. I’d assume you know something about them, what with your skillset. With that said — what’s your reason?” There was no warmth in TT’s eyes. “Where were you.”
The whole throne room seemed to converge on Crystal at once, all eyes turning to him. He wanted desperately to say nothing, to believe nothing, to think that everything was fine and normal. That he was a Crafted God now and forever, and all was well. But he couldn’t. And he wouldn’t. Because— “
Everyone present swore, drawing their weapons. Pit and Maniac turned into howling cyclones of iconography, with Tazz surrounded by a manifold selection of severed arms, Ire surround himself with rings upon rings of chaotic bullets, Piono drawing Ircucvci from his flaming crown, and Eric casting runes rapid-fire, encircling the room with wards and traps. “Nimble, Goanna,” TT said quickly. “Alert everyone on the field that there’s been a breach in the throne room. Seal off this room when you’re done.” The two nodded, speeding away. “Crystal can’t hide forever,” Crusher said, gripping a pillar of stone that seemed like it had survived many injuries. “His metatextual attacks can only go on for so long.” Eric finished his incantations, sighing in relief. “I’ve set up for anything he could do next.” The Crafted Gods assembled a ring, weapons pointed around the room, waiting for the exact moment to strike. But in the middle of waiting, a robotic assistant’s voice rang out through the throne room. “Your next visitor — Bomber57 — has arrived.” TT2000 froze. Bomber... 57? He didn’t know anyone with that name, he never had. He looked around, and noticed every other Crafted God had similarly concerned faces. But, as though a switch had been clicked, the confusion passed. TT remembered now. Bomber was the CEO of Hellco., another one of the megacorps that rose in the wake of the Third Godmodding War. He was valuable politically, financially, and diplomatically — whatever his complaints were, they couldn’t be ignored. But there was still a more pressing matter. And with that—
Crystal re-entered this paragraph, instantly pinned to the ground by the force of dozens of counterspells and wards. His purple coat began to rip at the seams, and very real pain crossed his face as magical electricity coursed through him. “Y-you, you don’t...” Crystal tried to speak through clenched teeth. “Oh! Are you confessing?” TT asked, glaring at Crystal, weapon still drawn. “Go ahead. Speak up.” Crystal howled, his eyes burning. “You don’t know what you’re doing. This ISN’T OUR TIMELINE AND YOU KNOW IT.” A crackling fire pulsed around his body, knocking the Crafted Gods back. They all fired their weapons at once, but their aim went haywire. The absolute zero of Ircucvci, a maelstrom of stained glass, one million shotgun shells, an arrow forged from the space between worlds, and the flames of Hell that lick at your feet all went wide, bouncing across the room. The outburst seemed to sap Crystal of the last of his energy, and he crumpled to the ground, his eyes barely staying open.
“Alright, that’s it. You’ll pay for this,” TT2000 growled, regaining his balance and stampeding towards Crystal’s defenseless body. “Wait!” Tazz shouted, holding out his fluctuating right arm in between the two of them. TT2000, visibly shaken by Tazz’s interference, paled, as Tazz doubled over in pain, his left hand clutching his bushy orange hair. “I... I don’t know how it’s possible, but...” Tazz turned to stare at TT2000. “I think he’s telling the truth.” TT2000 was now incredibly pissed off. He raised Arcum Odysseus, an upgraded version of Notch’s own bow, and skewered Tazz through the heart with a ray of light stripped from the first star. TT then ran over to Crystal, separating his bow into two razor-sharp needles, and levied them over Crystal. He brought them down, the blades acting as a whistling jackhammer, cleaving through the air—
And it was then that Tazz and TT2000 realized that
The blades carved into the tiled floor less than an inch away from Crystal’s head. TT20000, murmuring with the divine power invested in him, began to heal Crystal and Tazz’s wounds. The other Gods readied their weapons, aiming at the three of them. “TT!” Crusher snapped, aiming a sleek black railgun. “Don’t tell me you’ve been infected, too.” TT grimaced. What was he supposed to say? What could he even tell them? How else was he supposed to tell them that— “
Immediately, a second deluge of wards that Eric had prepared earlier activated, constricting Maniac, Pit, Ire, NinjaV, Crusher, Nimbleguy, and Piono. They were forcefully dragged up to the limitless ceiling, disappearing from sight. Eric turned to TT2000, Tazz, Crystal, and Goanna with a forlorn expression. “
The rest of them followed suit, and the front door shut just as the throne room’s doors were knocked clean off of their hinges. “Piono! I came as fast as I could!” Pope Bill zoomed into the room, clutching his staff and his mitre. Bomber casually strolled into the room as well, admit the flood of other Crafted Gods. He whistled. “Business,” Bomber said, “Is not booming.”
< 2.1: FACADE OF GOD | 2.2: ONE UNIVERSE AWAY | 2.3: THE DISASTERPIECE >