Chapter Text
Venti gently held Oliver against his chest as he slowly drifted along the currents of his own wind power through the void. Oliver tried his best to keep his breathing steady, but being suspended in an endless area of nothingness was terrifying, to say the least.
"You're very strong, actually," Oliver spoke, trying to suppress his mounting fear by focusing on his boyfriend's voice. "Carrying me like this. I don't even think you're using the wind to physically pick me up, are you?"
"Yeah," Venti smiled softly, pulling Oliver just a little closer. "Just keep your head buried in my chest, okay? Don't look around. I can tell this... dark abyss is making you scared."
It felt as if they had been floating for an eternity. Venti was just trying to find something. Anything. He was at a complete loss. The darkness stretched on forever, but it had a strange body to it—shape, depth, and texture. It looked like massive dark clouds in the distance, swirling with a heavy greyness. The Archon had never seen something like this before. He had dealt with various beings of immense power in his long lifetime, but nothing quite like Nerraw. He didn't know how to combat the being of darkness with how it presented itself. As Venti had said many times... Nerraw was unpredictable.
Venti could feel Oliver gently vibrating in his grasp as they drifted through the heavy, dark air. "You wanna talk about anything?" Venti asked, hoping to distract him. "Since I've met the real you, you haven't really told me anything about what you actually do in your dimension."
Oliver didn't answer right away. He rubbed his cheek against Venti's chest, the fabric of the bard's bow brushing against his face. He kept his eyes snapped tightly shut to block out the void. "Well, I... I already told you that I went to college," he finally murmured, letting out a small sigh. "Though that's... worthless now, since I've been basically missing for four whole years."
"Well, besides the college. What else did you do?"
"Hmm." There was something else the human had done. Something fun he used to do in his free time. "Well, I did do something cool. Though thinking about it makes me sad, because... I doubt I can ever grow on it anymore."
"Hmm?" Venti hummed encouragingly.
Oliver cleared his throat. "You won't know what this is, but... I had a YouTube channel."
"You... tube?" Venti scrunched up his face. "What's that, babe?"
"Uhh... well..." Oliver blinked, struggling to figure out how to explain the concept of digital video. "Well, we have cameras. And you... can make a video with it. Uh... one way to call it is moving pictu—"
Venti cut him off, his face lighting up. "Ohhh! I know those! Yeah, Kameras! We have them! I know in Fontaine they use them to make films!"
Oliver, keeping his eyes firmly closed as he snuggled against Venti, shot one eyebrow upward. "Films? Like a movie?"
"What's a movie?" Venti blinked.
Oliver gave a small, genuine chuckle. "Once again... Teyvat never fails to amuse me. Movies before the microwave."
Venti snorted and started to giggle. "What is it with you and this 'microwave' thing?" He laughed softly, his chest rumbling against Oliver's cheek. "And hey! Don't make me laugh while I'm holding you."
"Well, that'll be all your fault, you giggly boy."
"Giggly boy?" Venti scoffed playfully. "Oh, you're gonna pay for that one when we get out of here."
Oliver giggled softly, cracking one eye open to peek at the darkness around them. Still the void, he thought to himself, quickly squeezing his eye shut again.
"So tell me more about this you tube thing," Venti prompted. "You... made films? Didn't know you were into showbiz."
"Well, no, not showbiz," Oliver corrected. "YouTube is a platform for anyone to make anything. Literally anything. I recorded myself playing video games."
"Oh..." Venti blinked, processing the concept. "That's... people watch that?"
"Yeah. It might sound silly, haha. Watching someone do something 'mundane,' I guess," Oliver smiled warmly at the memory. "I... had about five thousand people following me."
"Uh..." Venti's eyes widened. "Five... wait... Ollie... are you famous in your world?"
Oliver let out a loud, sudden laugh. "Oh! No! Not at all. Besides, all those five thousand people who were subbed didn't even watch me. I only had about twenty to thirty people on my streams."
"Streams?" Venti squinted into the darkness. "Why are we talking about rivers now?"
Oliver let out a snort. "No—not... streaming is when you record a video live to people as it happens."
"Oh! I see. I think the Kameras back home can do that. But you need a special system for it," Venti noted.
"Oh? Cool." Oliver smiled. "Yeah. So I streamed games."
"What... games did they watch you... uh, 'play'?" Venti asked.
"The game that you're from," Oliver said softly.
"I see. What was it called again? Genshin...?"
"Impact." Oliver slowly opened his eyes, trying to be brave about the heavy darkness enveloping them. He knew his boyfriend would never drop him. "Genshin Impact. People joined my streams to watch me complete different quests and other stuff." He turned his head, hiding it into Venti's chest again. "None of us have any phones back in the lab, so... I haven't been able to check where my account stands now. I wonder if any of my followers wonder where I've been. I didn't have a big following, so probably not."
"I'm sure someone was worried," Venti reassured him softly. "They're probably wondering if you're okay this very moment."
"I doubt that."
"You said five thousand. That's a lot of people."
Suddenly, something sparked in the darkness. A faint, distant light caught Venti's eye, causing him to slowly drift to a halt.
Out of nowhere, walls and floors began to bleed out of the dark void, forming around them with a strange, shimmering hum. Then, in a sudden, blinding flash of light, an entire room was fully constructed.
An unknown, synthesized voice echoed from everywhere at once:
"SOMA: Sub-92"
Venti looked down. He was still hovering with Oliver securely in his grasp, his shoes hovering just inches above a solid metal floor. He looked forward and saw a strange, heavy door to his left—it looked like a massive vault door, the kind equipped with a heavy locking wheel. To the right stood large, metallic cabinets that looked like they housed heavy-duty equipment, though Venti couldn't place what.
Dead in the center of the room was another door. A standard one, but it featured a reinforced glass window. Venti peered through it. Sitting perfectly still in a chair was that same man—Simon Jarrett.
Venti's mind raced: Wasn't he killed by the dark creature?
Then he remembered the Sub-Dimension name. When they had first arrived, the voice had announced Sub-10. But just a moment ago, it had declared Sub-92.
Venti slowly turned in the air to check behind him. There was another large door, elevated by a small set of stairs on the right side.
By now, Oliver had reopened his eyes, squinting against the harsh, fluorescent lights. "Huh? Woah, uh... where did the void go?" Oliver pulled his head back from Venti's chest, looking around in awe.
Sensing Oliver was calm and awake, Venti slowly lowered his wind currents, letting his feet touch the solid floor. "Okay, solid ground," Venti said smoothly. "I'm going to set you down, baby." He gently placed his boyfriend onto the metal floor, staying close by his side.
Oliver spun in a slow circle. "Wait a minute, I know this... This is still SOMA!" He blinked rapidly, his gamer knowledge flooding back. "Yes! It is!" Oliver pointed to the staircase leading up to the heavy door with the red hand-scanner. "There! One of the WAU creatures chased Simon through there, and he ran in yelling at Catherine to shut the door..."
He pivoted, rushing over to the massive circular vault door. "Oh! And look! That leads outside to the ocean floor! You use it to take the lift down to the deepest part of the place, the Abyss!"
"The Abyss?" Venti arched an eyebrow, not liking the sound of that.
Oliver was already standing over the control panel near the vault door. "And... yeah!" He smiled, pointing to an empty slot on the console. "The Omnitool goes right there! It allows Catherine to talk to Simon!" He spun around again, pointing to the open, empty lockers. "And over there is where Simon gets his new Power Suit to survive the descent into the Abyss, because his old suit would implode from the pressure. So he had to..."
Oliver froze mid-sentence. His eyes widened. "Wait a minute... this means we're in Omicron..." He slowly looked back at the empty lockers, then over to the closed door with the glass window. "And they're empty, which means..."
Oliver jogged over to the central door and peered through the window. He let out a sharp gasp, seeing Simon slouched in the chair. "Oh no..." Oliver muttered. "Well... his glowing red eyes tell me that Simon didn't kill Simon."
Venti had been hanging back, watching Oliver dart enthusiastically around the strange, mechanical facility. But at that last sentence, utter confusion plastered itself across his face. "Uhhh?" Venti walked over to his boyfriend, leaning over by tiptoeing to see through the glass. "What do you mean... by that, Ollie?"
"Uhh... Okay... So when Simon was transferred into the scuba suit back in Upsilon, he later realized the suit was partly organic and contained the body parts of a woman named Imogen Reed right in this room," Oliver explained rapidly. "He found that out after coming here. Well, anyway, to get down to the deeper parts of the ocean, he had to change suits. So he did that over there—" He pointed to the empty lockers. "Changed suits so he was ready to go."
Venti was having a massive amount of difficulty following. Who the hell was Imogen Reed? And changing suits?
"Ollie... What do you mean he changed suits? I see him right in there. And I think he's looking at us," Venti said, gesturing to the glowing red dots inside the dark room.
"He's not looking at us," Oliver corrected. "He's in a standby mode. He's basically sleeping." He turned to Venti, his face serious. "And about what I said... he wasn't physically moved. His consciousness was copied to this suit, and then copied again to the new suit."
Venti's eyebrows shot up. "Why does this kinda sound like... you... and the avatar you controlled?"
Oliver let out a soft, heavy sigh. "Yeah, there was a reason August made that reference to this game. Though, it's a little different. At least there aren't multiple copies of me running around. I was simply just dormant in the chair. There are currently two Simons right now. This one in the room here, and the other one down in the Abyss..." He looked down at his feet. "And... there's going to be a third one eventually, if... it hasn't happened already."
Venti folded his arms, not knowing what to add to the terrifying existential dread of this universe.
Oliver looked back up, his brow furrowed. "What I don't understand... is that Nerraw killed him," he said, looking off to the side. "Nerraw broke the timeline or something. The universe self-imploded or something."
"It definitely did," Venti confirmed.
"So... what happened? Why are we here?"
"I think something shifted. The world changed. Like the universe fixed itself," Venti said.
"Yeah... the Sub-Dimension," Oliver realized. He folded his arms, a pit forming in his stomach as his mind raced back to the terrifying papers he had read in the lab. The talk of the transfer chairs making him remember. "Doctor Barclay... he used children without consent, man..." Oliver shook his head in disgust. "And not even just teenagers. Literal children... ten years old, man!"
Venti leaned gently onto Oliver's shoulder, offering silent comfort. "He's a terrible man." Venti paused, then asked, "Do you still have that memory chip? You didn't drop it?"
"I didn't." Oliver shook his head, patting his pants. "It's still in my pocket."
Then, a chilling voice echoed from behind them.
"So, you figured out what finally happens."
Venti spun around instantly, his bow materializing in his grip.
"A dimension loses its Holder, the dimension goes sayonara."
"Haven't you caused enough damage? You're weak, you being of darkness! Surrender now!" Without hesitation, Venti stepped in front of Oliver, placing himself between his boyfriend and the threat.
"Weak or not, I'm stronger than you. I just love to play around with my enemies. You don't have the key to kill me," Nerraw smirked, his shadowy form flickering under the harsh facility lights. "You cannot put a dent in me, Archon. You never will. Yes, you may make me stumble. But you will never stop me." Nerraw shifted his empty, glowing gaze past Venti. "And your little human boyfriend there is even more worthless—"
Venti narrowed his eyes, a glowing Anemo arrow snapping onto the string as he drew it back taut. "Call my boyfriend that one more time."
Nerraw let out a single, dark chuckle. "Not even your bond with each other can stop me, because you're not even in your home world for the barrier to even work." Nerraw lifted his arms, his hands sharpening into jagged, dark shards. "I'm done playing games. I will kill both of you now."
Nerraw slowly advanced on Venti. The Archon didn't budge an inch, standing firm and pulling back harder on the bowstring, ready to unleash a powerful gale.
"You're not in your world anymore. You're not connected to anything." Nerraw lunged, rearing back to slash Venti into ribbons.
But before the strike could land, an invisible, overwhelming force erupted. Nerraw was blasted backward, slamming violently into the heavy control panel behind him, bouncing off the metal, and crashing into the vault door leading out to the ocean.
Venti and Oliver both froze, glancing at each other in shock.
What just happened?
Venti hadn't done anything. He was still holding the drawstring back; he hadn't released his arrow.
Oliver glanced down and saw something emitting a blinding light from Venti's pocket. Without thinking, Oliver reached into the bard's pockets and pulled out the necklace Venti had found back in the FNAF world. The white orb, swirling with ethereal clouds, was glowing with a fierce, blinding intensity.
"Woah..." Oliver breathed, mesmerized.
Nerraw groaned, slowly pushing himself up from the metal floor. "No..." it grumbled, its voice distorted with sudden fear. "No... No..."
Oliver quickly looked back at the dark creature, glancing down at the necklace in his hands, then back up at the creature of darkness.
"Where did you get that..." Nerraw clenched its fists. The glowing white eyes flared, and the dark flames licking across its body burned fiercely with rage. "WHERE DID YOU GET IT?!?!!?" The dark being bellowed, its voice raw, demonic, and shaking the very walls of the facility.
Oliver gasped, instinctively clinging to Venti's arm.
Venti didn't flinch. He adjusted his aim, ready to let the arrow fly.
But in a panic, Nerraw violently punched the heavy vault door leading out to the ocean floor. The metal groaned and snapped outward. The massive door blew completely off its hinges, smashing into the other door.
Instantly, the crushing pressure of the deep ocean rushed in.
The water hit the far wall at the lockers full force, instantly flooding the room. Venti had to instantly redirect his energy. He dropped the bow, shoving both hands forward, and manifested a powerful, swirling sphere of Anemo energy around himself and Oliver. The millions of gallons of seawater violently crashed against his barrier.
"Oh fuck, Venti! What do we do!?" Oliver screamed over the roaring water.
Venti gritted his teeth, straining with every fiber of his being to keep the wind currents spinning fast enough to hold the crushing ocean at bay so they wouldn't drown.
Suddenly... the floor beneath them cracked.
At first, they thought the water pressure was destroying the facility, but an blue, glowing light began shining through the metal plates.
"Oh no! It's happening again, Venti!"
The cracks spiderwebbed outward, the floor completely giving way into the massive blue vortex. The human, the Archon, and thousands of gallons of deep-sea water plunged straight through it.
The water violently pushed them through the rift. Tumbling in the chaotic current, Venti lost his balance and his connection to the Anemo barrier. He tried to fight the rushing tide to grab Oliver, but he couldn't reach him in time.
An automated voice glitched out around them:
"Entering Min—[Glitch]—Aft—[Glitch]—Sub-24,345"
Venti could hold his breath just fine, but absolute panic set in for Oliver.
The ground came rushing up to meet them. They slammed into solid earth, tumbling wildly as the ocean water crashed down from the rift above them, drenching the entire landscape.
A moment later, the rift snapped shut. The rushing water abruptly ceased.
Oliver and Venti lay completely soaked on the ground of yet another new world.
Oliver coughed violently, rolling onto his side to spit out a mouthful of water. "Bleh!" He clamped a hand over his mouth, grimacing. "Ugh, that is salty as fuck..."
He opened his eyes, wiping the moisture from his face, and suddenly shot upright.
Blocks.
Blocks everywhere. Blocky trees with square leaves. Blocky, vibrant green grass. Blocky, pixelated clouds floating in the sky. Blocky mountains in the distance.
Oliver knew exactly what this was. Anyone from his world—even a grandma—would recognize this immediately.
"We're in fucking Minecraft! Venti! We're in Minecraft!" Oliver scrambled around and saw Venti already pushing himself up to his feet. "Venti—"
The bard hurried over to him. "Are you okay? Geez, that dark monster threw me off guard with that move... that was totally unexpected."
"Yeah, I'm okay," Oliver panted, wringing out his shirt. "I mean, I'm totally drenched, but I'm good."
Then, the dark creature's voice echoed across the blocky plains. It sounded darker now. More evil. But beneath the malice, it sounded genuinely weak. It was fighting with everything it had left because it now knew exactly what Venti possessed.
"You two will DIE here and now! Minecraft will be your end. And if it isn't, I will play this game as long as I need to, until I find a world where I can finally KILL you."
A block of brown Soul Sand materialized in thin air, dropping heavily onto the grass block in front of them. Then, another block appeared directly above it, slamming down. Then a third, forming a short pillar.
Another brown block materialized to the right, attaching to the top block. Then one to the left. It formed A T-shape.
Oliver gasped. The blood drained from his face as his gamer instincts screamed at him.
"Venti! Oh... Oh shit! Get your bow ready!"
The bard didn't hesitate. The bow materialized in his hands. "What even is that? And what is this world, anyway? Why is everything made of blo—"
The structure was finishing as Venti spoke. It just needed the final pieces.
A blackened skull dropped onto the right side of the T-shape. Then another on the middle. Then the final one on the left.
Instantly, the blocks of Soul Sand and skulls evaporated into a blinding light, manifesting into a massive, floating, skeletal three-headed monstrosity.
Oliver trembled, backing away. "That's a Wither, Venti! It shoots—"
Before Oliver could finish his warning, the Minecraft boss launched a glowing blue skull projectile. It narrowly missed them, exploding into the grass nearby and sending dirt blocks flying into the air.
"Ah!" Oliver yelped, covering his head. "It shoots explosives!" he screamed to Venti.
Suddenly, Nerraw's dark, shadowy form appeared right behind the Wither. With a violent thrust, the dark creature surged into the boss, possessing it completely. The Wither violently glitched, its blocky form shimmering with corrupted, jagged dark patterns as Nerraw hijacked its body.
Venti stood his ground, drawing his bowstring back, fully prepared to take on whatever the hell this blocky monstrosity was.