Manifesto
From The Birdhouse
The Warden responds to sound and smell. It has no eyes and cannot see, navigating through echolocation. It is very large, though I obviously could not get close enough to compare our heights directly.
Its body looks similar to the sculk colonies, with the same bony protrusions found on the catalysts and shriekers, and the tendrils of the sensors. Its "heart" beats as it moves, producing a loud rumbling vibration.
The heartbeat will be the loudest sound in the deep dark. It is the only thing I can hear when the Warden is present. I can hear it even now. Its heartbeat is ever present in my head.
It speaks to me. I don't know what it says. I don't know why it does. But it speaks to me. I hear the Warden's voice even when not in the darkness. I can only pray to understand it one day.
The man I see in my dreams - his people fled from the Warden's protection. Maybe that is why it now attacks those who come near it? Retribution for fleeing from its grace?
I don't know.
I'm scared.
I don't know what to do. What to think.
I just don't want to be alone in this world.
The Warden stares at me, unseeing but seeing through me. I don't understand. I can't understand. I understood once and never will again.
The Warden's heart beats in my head even now. Above ground, below ground, in the air, in the sea, I still hear the Warden's heartbeat.
It won't leave. It won't stop. It never ends. I don't know what it wants. It speaks to me in my dreams and says things I can never understand.
It's in my head. Pounding, nonstop, its heart beats in my head. No one else hears it. Do they? Do you? Do you hear it?
Is this what the otherworlders rejected? Ran from? Treated as their devil?
I need to know. I need to understand it. I hear its heart pounding in my ears, replacing my own heartbeat when I run.
It sees me when I teleport. When I respawn. It holds me there. Unseeing. Unfeeling. I don't know what it wants from me.
Teleporting takes longer than you think.
Eternity. An eternity of eternities. Alone. Just me. Me and the Warden and its heartbeat in my ears. They ring and I hear nothing else. It's longer than you think. It's longer than you can think. It's eternity in there. Alone.
And then it's nothing. There's no Warden. I'm at my destination. The Warden's heart beats.
Help.
It wants something from me. It wants me to help it. It promised me knowledge about this world if I helped it.