Chapter Text
“Hey! Psst! Tanguish! Over here!”
“My name’s not Tanguish.”
“Well I can’t just go calling you Tango, now can I? That’s my name.”
Tango – or rather, Tanguish – rolls his eyes and walks a little faster down the cracked hels street. He dips his head as he passes Hel’s Kitchen. The bar is buzzing with activity, literally. Evil Beezuma is in there picking a fight with someone he doesn’t recognize. They’re probably from a world that isn’t Hermitcraft. Tanguish only knows things about Hermitcraft. And a couple hazy memories of Third Life, stolen from Tango.
“Why Tanguish? It sounds like I’m in pain.”
“It needed to be edgy!” Tango yells. Or Tanguish thinks he yells. It’s hard to tell. His voice always sounds loud. It sort of scares him. “That’s your guys’ thing, right? You know, spooky hels dimension, dark mirrors, shadow beings, blegh?”
Tanguish stuffs his hands in his pockets and steels a glance down a nearby alleyway. Someone is cornering someone else down there, but they’re busy. Good. He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself.
“Listen, can we talk some other time?” Tanguish hisses under his breath, and the air around him plumes with frost on the exhale. He ducks down a side street and lighting-fast lifts something from a cart as he passes. He can smell it’s food, but he’s moving too quick to tell what it is. It frosts a bit at his touch, whatever it is. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
Tanguish glances down at a puddle of oily liquid pooling in between some cracked cobblestones. Tango, his hermit, glances back at him, grinning. “You’re stealing again, aren’t you buddy?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re the only one that can hear me, dude.”
Tanguish glances around. People are staring, but its the kind of staring they shoot crazy people who are muttering and hissing to themselves. Tango is probably right. Of course he’s right. He’s a hermit. The hermits always know what they’re doing. (The hermits never know what they’re doing, but this isn’t something Tanguish knows. Sometimes he wonders about it, but he hasn’t quite figured it out yet.)
Tanguish stumbles into someone, purposefully. He apologizes. He takes their wallet. He walks faster.
Tango whistles, “Wow that was smooth.”
“Shut up.”
“So anyway, what do you know about Wardens?”
“You really don’t know when you’re not wanted, do you?”
“Oh no! I know,” Tango laughs, and Tanguish rolls his eyes again. “But I’ve got no one else to bounce ideas off of, and making you look like a crazy person is kind of fun for me.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Neither am I.”
Tanguish opens his mouth. He closes it again. He thinks this probably makes him look crazier.
“So, Wardens,” Tango prompts him, his image appearing as a vague shadow in a window. “We’re getting them soon. Do you know about them? They seem hels-y.”
“They are hels-y,” Tanguish finds himself saying. “They live in the ceiling, up by the bedrock.”
“Really? They’re super deep underground here.”
That makes sense. Which means it probably doesn’t. That’s how hels work, right? The opposite thing? So if Tanguish thinks that makes sense, it probably shouldn’t work like that. He thinks. He’s not sure. He’s… not sure about most things. That’s Tango’s job. Tango is looking up at him from another puddle of questionable liquid in the road. Tanguish steps through it, uses it as an excuse to slip into the side of another stall and pocket something. His hands are shaking. He can’t believe he hasn’t been caught yet. Someone down the street is yelling. Maybe he has. He doesn’t get away with stealing wallets very often. He walks faster.
“I’m making Decked Out again,” Tango informs him from the glint off someone’s watch. Tanguish thinks wearing metal in hels is a terrible idea, given it’s so hot here. But then again, he is made of ice and skulk. He would think it’s hot here. Maybe this is normal for other people? That makes sense (it doesn’t). “You helped me with Decked Out the first time! Remember all the level designs? You liked that.”
Tanguish can’t remember if he liked that. Mostly working with Tango makes him feel nervous and vaguely uncomfortable, like his skin itches. He thinks, maybe, it’s because Tango is made of fire and redstone. It makes sense that he’d find those things irritating, right? (This does, actually, make sense).
“What’s the plans for Decked Out II?” Tanguish asks him, dipping down a side street. The yelling is getting closer - he’s definitely been caught. He starts running.
“Well I really liked the Clank stuff. And of course, there’s going to be Ravagers. But I want to add Wardens. Wardens will be super cool as a final boss level. And all the sneaking and quiet stuff?”
Tanguish is good at sneaking, and being quiet, and he’d suggested the Clank. It has nothing to do with how successful (or not successful) he is at stealing things, or his ability to measure everyone else’s tolerance to him stealing things. Nothing to do with it. Definitely. He vaults over a wall, scrambles onto a roof, and keeps running. There are no reflections nearby, except for the little patches of ice that spread out where Tanguish steps, and they go by too fast for him to make eye-contact with his double. This, he thinks, is a very impolite way to hold a conversation.
“But what I really think you’d be interested in, is I want it to be ice themed!”
“Ice themed?”
“Yeah, everything’s scarier when it’s cold.”
Tanguish would argue everything is scarier when it’s surrounded by lava. He leaps from one rooftop to another, and watches a river of the stuff glow ominously beneath him. Who the heck lives in a house so close to a lava flow? The rent must be cheap on this side of town.
“You’ve got an ice house, right? Ice… cell? Wels says you all live in cells.”
“I don’t have a cell. No one I know has a cell.” This is a lie. Helsknight has a cell, and while he and Helsknight aren’t exactly friends, he’s at least not on Helsknight’s kill-on-sight list. He hears its a long list. He doesn’t want to be on that list.
“But you’ve got a house?”
Tango – Tanguish, that’s what he’s been named, apparently – slides to a stop on some deepslate shingles. Ice simmers and melts around his feet. He should invest in a new pair of shoes sometime. Sure they’re uncomfortable around his claws, but it’d be harder to track him when he’s running.
“I don’t think I have a house? And if it did, I don’t think it’d be ice themed.”
“Would you like to build an ice-themed something-majigger?”
It takes Tanguish a long time to register what he’s just been asked, “You mean like, with you?”
He looks down at the deepslate tiles, which offer a dim reflection, more shadow than anything, for him to stare at. He can still make out Tango’s eyes, glinting like sparks. “Unless there’s some other crazy dungeon-building mirror-self you know of who needs help building an ice cave for his death game.”
None of that sounds reassuring.
“You can steal stuff,” Tango offers, trying to sweeten the deal.
“What stuff?”
“Like, all the stuff? From everyone? We can use them as prizes for hidden chests and things in Decked Out. You could even test some of the levels. See how far you get.”
Tanguish feels weirdly like he’s making a deal with the devil. Isn’t he supposed to be the devil? That feels like a thing he’s supposed to be. He thinks he’s not that great at being a hels. He could be a competent builder, maybe. He could be a more than competent play-tester, probably.
“Yeah, okay,” Tanguish says. He takes the food out of his pocket - it’s a muffin, thoroughly frosted over. It’s melting again in the heat. He takes a bite anyway. “Yeah, I’ll help you build your ice-ama-bob.”
“Awesome! This is great!” A pair of hands leap out of the deepslate reflection and grab him. “Lets get started!”
Tanguish lets out a screech and disappears. His muffin bounces off the deepslate tiles and drops like a stone into the street below.