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Bad’s never really liked gemstones.
They’re useful in trades, he supposes, but he doesn’t get the appeal of keeping them for himself. Bad’s seen villagers decked out in gold and emerald necklaces and intricately carved bracelets laced with amethyst, and while he admits it’s quite pretty, jewelry like that will be the first thing that attracts the attention of thieves and raiders.
Bad prefers to stick with his humble dark clothing; nothing elaborate. He gets far too much attention for his winged, horned appearance, anyway -- flaunting around his wealth was guaranteed to end badly.
“It’s not always for show,” Puffy reasons with him, glancing back from her perch beside her windowsill. Bad can see the evening light lancing across the ocean view of her backyard through the glass and knows how Puffy longs to be out at sea again.
He flicks one of his large ears at her curiously. “What do you mean?”
She gestures back at him with one of her own ears as she sits back down on the sofa, a vaguely irritated motion that Bad knew meant listen. She points at the small bookshelf behind Bad, and he whips around to see a tiny box nestled at the top, bearing two glimmering moonstone earrings, each about the size of a small egg, that Bad’s never seen her wear in his lifetime.
“Niki gave those to me,” Puffy explains warily. Bad turns back to her, surprised to see her ears drawn back in the indication of don’t touch; mine. He blinks, surprised -- she’s usually not that possessive.
Bad shuffles away from the gems and squints. “Why don’t you wear them?”
The sailor relaxes and shakes her head with a small smile. “Some jewels aren’t supposed to be paraded around. Some you just keep and cherish because they resemble someone special, someone close to you. Some you just love.” She tilts her head towards the sea again, water shining pink in the sunset. “You don’t need to wear them to do that.”
Bad considers that for a bit, fidgeting with a loose strand of fiber in his armchair. He still can’t wrap his head around the concept of treasuring oddly coloured rocks such a great amount, even as presents, although he reckons maybe he understands the sentiment a little more.
Still.
He thanks Puffy and leaves her to her thoughts, beginning the trek back to his mountaintop abode. He favours walking over flying; on the ground he can drink in the scents and scenery and not have to worry about missing a beat of his wings because he saw a particularly cute bird flit by him.
It’s nice. Maybe a little lonely. Puffy doesn’t like to go too far from the ocean, and George isn’t much fun nowadays since he prefers to nap instead of travel. And Dream… Dream isn’t around much anymore.
Bad’s good at pretending he doesn’t mind. After all, tonight he has the moon and the stars, not a single cloud in sight.
Grass yields to rock yields to coal ore under his talons, and Bad finds himself faced with a small cave he’s never encountered on this side of the mountain before. Which is odd. He’d been certain he’d scoped out every cavern in this area. Some bold villager must have dug out a new opening into the cliff.
He crouches to inspect the inside. Torches light the serpentine passageway that winds further down into the ground, vanishing behind a narrow corner, littered with rock and iron debris that is undoubtedly the handiwork of a mediocre miner.
Bad hesitates. He hasn’t gone mining in ages, and inexperienced challengers that dared to brave this mountain were always prone to missing valuable ore.
Carefully, he lowers himself into the tunnel and delicately plucks off one of the lit torches from the cave wall, padding forwards. His horns scrape against the roughened ceiling and he lowers his head, scouring his surroundings for anything tradeable -- but the previous miner seems to have stripped this space of its treasures. Bad does not relent, powering through on light feet towards the faint crackling of lava he can discern ahead of him, offering the possibility of diamonds.
The light from the lamps around him becomes more spaced out; scant, as if the creator of the tunnel had been running out of torch materials. Bad wards away an impending slime with his own flame and prudently leaps down several twisted stone ledges that lead him down into a large hole to reach the bubbling pool of fire that sits in the centre of a small cave. It spits at his talons as he approaches, cursing his arrival. Bad pays it no mind.
He looks around -- there. A wider cave, just beyond the lava pond, studded with dripstone and sparkling with lapis. Potentially diamonds, if he’s lucky.
The slime plummets from above and disappears into the lava in a hissing plume of smoke and embers.
Right.
Bad gingerly nears the flame. The opening is too small to allow him to spread his wings, so he works around it, finding stepstones half-submerged in lava or scaling the wall if necessary. The wider cave was untouched by whoever had been here earlier; Bad could see the ore glittering. He stalks inside and straightens up, narrowing his eyes against the dark, ears swivelling forward. He brings the torch in front of him, illuminating his surroundings.
A shimmer of blue, sequestered modestly in the corner. Bad leans down to unearth it, experienced claws scrabbling at the crumbling diorite and prying at the gemstone until the diamond tumbles out to sit between his fingers.
It’s huge.
The torchlight dances in the diamond’s shards as Bad studies it in awe. It’s about the size of a large ender pearl, bigger than both of Bad’s hands, raggedly sharp around the outside and stained orange by the fire’s glow. Its shape is a little odd, almost rectangular, but it’s very hard to care about appearance right now. It’s beautiful -- worth more than his entire house, probably.
A sudden, intense wave of possessiveness hits Bad with the force of a tsunami, a loud whisper of mine that makes him stand up abruptly spin around to almost collide headfirst with a nearby zombie. Bad careens out of the way at the last second, twisting out of reach, and in doing so almost drops the diamond into the ravenous lava.
His stomach twists painfully as the gem leaves his grip for a fraction of a second, teetering towards oblivion.
And then he snatches it back to his chest and gallops over the pool to the safety of the other side. The zombie lumbers towards him and promptly falls into the fire, a guttural, delighted hiss issuing from the lava as it devours the undead, its hunger sated for at last.
Bad studies the cave for a long moment, clutching the diamond to him so tightly it hurts, and then he whisks upwards and sideways on silent wings, hurtling through the passageway towards the outside. Towards safety for his little jewel.
Nothing is going to harm his diamond, not until he’s down to his last breath.
-
Bad barely makes it back to his home in the light of the rising sun when the crystal shivers against his arms.
He has to stop and hover for a bewildered heartbeat, studying the gemstone in midair with a frown because it’s actually moving, a thing Bad is fairly certain diamonds aren’t supposed to do. It’s trembling the way an egg might just before hatching, and it’s not long after Bad lands and opens the door to his house when the diamond starts to bubble.
He drops it immediately with a startled yelp and almost knocks his head on the ceiling. The gemstone stills on the ground, pauses, and then it bursts upwards in an explosion of blue, growing and expanding and blooming, shards of diamond melting and snapping into place until in the seemingly harmless stone’s spot is a crystalline sculpture, unmoving in the centre of Bad’s living room.
What.
The figure doesn’t show any signs of resuming movement, so Bad prowls cautiously around it, speechless. It’s about as tall as his shoulders, distinctly humanoid -- he can make out the broadness of arms, the length of a neck, the pointed tufts of hair. He reaches out timidly to prod at it, and that’s when dark brown eyes shoot open and a diamond fist collides painfully with Bad’s jaw.
“Wh-” Bad bites his tongue hard as he staggers backwards, and then he leaps on the stranger in a dazed, irritated blur, batting at his attacker’s face with his wings, blinding but not harmful. The diamond yells out and shoves at him, and the two tussle confusedly before Bad leaps away, tail lashing. The other stares after him with wide-blown eyes, tensed for battle. Under the diamond hide, Bad catches a glimpse of skin before crystal pieces stretch over the exposed parts once more.
“What the fuck,” is the first thing the stranger says, voice hollow with disuse, rough around the edges.
“Language,” Bad says meekly, very much in denial of the reality of this conversation.
The diamond frowns dubiously at him, then at his surroundings. “Where am I? Where’s-- who the fuck are you?”
“Language,” Bad repeats, this time with more grit to his voice. He raises his arms and spreads his hands passively, curling his wings in. “My name is Bad. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“You fucking jumped on me!”
“You punched me first!” The retort is on his tongue before he knows it.
The other shakes his head bewilderedly, and then suddenly he laughs, high and sour. “Jesus Christ, this is so stupid.” He reaches up to dig his palms into his eyes and then stops with a wince, evidently remembering that he’s coated in sharp gemstone. He opts instead to stare at his feet, blinking fast.
Bad steps forward hesitantly. “Are you… okay?”
“M’ fine. Just a little disoriented.”
“Okay. Well.” Bad feels slightly delirious. “Do you have a name?”
The stranger raises his head slowly. “No one’s--” his voice cracks. “No one’s asked me that before.”
Bad stares at him. “Well, frankly that sounds very rude.”
The other laughs again, this time less bitterly and more genuine. “Yeah, well. Most people that dig me up either leave me as soon as they realise I can talk or attempt to take the diamond off me.” He taps his bicep. “Which doesn’t come off, not unless I let it, so don’t get any ideas.”
“I would never,” Bad promises, and he surprises himself with the tone of fierceness in his voice.
The man born of diamond considers him with a mix of nonpluss and curiosity until he breathes out lightly and offers a small half bow. “Skeppy.”
“Sorry?”
“My name.” He smiles lopsidedly, as if he’s almost forgotten how to do it. “Thanks for rescuing me. And also, uh-- for not being a giant fucking jerk about it.”
Bad giggles. “I’m pretty much the opposite of a jerk, believe me. I have friends that will tell you the same thing; I’m ever so very magnanimous.”
Skeppy straightens up with a smirk. “And humble too, I see.”
“But, also -- language. Again.”
“What is up with that?” The diamond man breathes, eyes alight with a new playfulness that makes something in Bad’s heart leap.
“It’s a whole thing. I can tell you about it, if you’re willing to stay?”
Skeppy shifts to give him a look, and it’s sparkling and crystalline and breathtaking and Bad suddenly gets it , gets why people treasure their jewels, gets why they revere it so dearly and wholly.
He’s never really liked gemstones, but he thinks he can make an exception, just this once.