Fanfic / Everything Turns to Gold

Everything Turns To Gold is an Empires SMP Season 1 fanfiction co-authored by darkleweather and RedWinterRoses on Archive of Our Own. It is a retelling of the Demon-arc, canon divergent from the dragon fight onward.

The dragon is dead, and darkness is spreading across the land. When Xornoth attacks Gem's kingdom in search of the egg, Gem and fWhip beg Scott to hide it in Rivendell. But in the gloom of the rising winter, Scott too is attacked…and disappears.

The other rulers are left to battle the elements, the demon, and even their own friends as they search for Scott, delving deep into the past for answers. And Scott learns that being a god's chosen is a fate only slightly better than death.

Everything Turns to Gold takes the demon-arc in a wildly different direction, crafting an epic fantasy story with heaps of extra worldbuilding, character studies, and incredibly high stakes. The fic has a prequel, Aeor's Blessing, that has to be read first to understand where the main story starts off from.

Note: By the nature of the fic and the source material, spoilers are partially unmarked.

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Tropes pertaining to Everything Turns To Gold include:

• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Jimmy's Minecraft skin has brown eyes, but the fic inconsistently describes him as having "bright green" or blue eyes in Chapters 27 and 28, respectively.
  • Joel has brown eyes in the source material, if going by his Minecraft skins, but has green eyes in this fic.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: The Seablings' canonical backstory of being amnesiac demigods of the seas is disregarded in the fic's continuity due to the fanfic's release pre-dating the Empires episodes when this was revealed.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: In Everything Turns to Gold, Aeor's magic is primarily associated with heat, while Exor's is associated with cold. This is the exact inverse of canon, where Scott develops cryokinesis and Xornoth's corruption turns water into lava. According to the authors, this is because these details had not fully been fleshed out in canon yet by the time they started writing. invoked
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Scott initially refuses to scream or beg as he's being tortured, and manages to stay silent through most of the first round where Xornoth rips his feathers out — that is, until Xornoth starts breaking bones.
  Scott wanted to beg him to stop, to free him, I’ll do anything, please, please —but he bit back the words, clenching his jaw in stubborn refusal. I will not beg, I won’t do it, not to him—
  
  snap.
  
  Scott arched his back and screamed, writhing as he tried to break Xornoth’s grip on his hair and wing. Agony sliced like hot blades centered on his wing, and it was impossible to tell where the pain ended and he began. The entire world was—
  
  Xornoth shifted his grip closer to Scott’s shoulder.
  
  No.
  
  “No, no, no,” Scott’s voice rose, pitching higher, cracking. “Please. No! Don’t— don’t —”
  
  snap.
• all lowercase letters: The chapter titles are stylistically presented this way.
• And I Must Scream: Because of the Vigil's destruction at the hands of Exor, fWhip can't properly respawn after being stabbed through the chest by Exor. Instead, he ends up in what appears to be the Void Between the Worlds, falling endlessly while his soul is slowly ripped to shreds.
• And Show It to You: Exor tries to do this to Scott, by physically digging his claws into his chest and trying to tear out his heart. Fortunately, Pix and the others intervene before he can.
• Babies Ever After: The story ends with the dragon egg hatching in the final chapter as symbolism for a new beginning.
  "Hello, little one.” Pix crouched down, holding his hand out to cup the dragon’s chin. “You've chosen a great moment to enter the world, haven't you?"
• Better to Die than Be Killed: In Chapter 18, rather than letting Xornoth drag him to Exor to be sacrificed, Scott tries to throw himself into a lava lake in one final desperate attempt to escape. Xornoth manages to catch him.
• Breather Episode: After the Wham Episode that was Chapter 20, Chapters 21 through 23 have basically no action in them. After traveling to Mezalea, the group finally has time to rest, bring Joel up to speed, treat Scott's injuries, and mourn the loss of fWhip.
• Broken Bird: Gem becomes one after fWhip's death in Chapter 20, as a result of Adaptational Angst Upgrade. She flies into a screaming rage when Lizzie has to drag her away from the top of the pyramid, spends most of the trip to Mezalea completely despondent, and when they arrive, she immediately throws herself fully into taking care of Scott. When Pix attempts to get her to take a break, she quietly admits that she can't stop, afraid that she'll start seeing her brother's death again if she does. She finally breaks down the next day after Scott accidentally slaps her during a traumatic flashback, and cries into his chest while continuing to insist fWhip is going to come back.
• Cain and Abel: Scott and Xornoth loathe one another. Xornoth has absolutely zero qualms about torturing the living hell out of Scott, and Scott takes whatever opportunity he can to bite back, physically or verbally. This eventually culminates in their fight in the Nether in Chapter 18, where, after a few failed escape attempts on Scott's part, Xornoth drags him to the edge of a cliff and dangles him over a lava lake by his hair, while absolutely salivating over how easy it would be to kill him now.
  "You have no idea how tempted I am to just let you fall," Xornoth hissed in his ear. "How many centuries I’ve fantasized about doing just that. How no one would know you didn’t jump yourself—I could tell Exor whatever I wanted."
  
  He shoved Scott’s head forward, forcing him to stare down into the boiling depths, the heat stinging his face.
  
  Xornoth was breathing hard. "Exor doesn’t need Aeor’s power to defeat this pathetic land. With that stupid desert king gone, you won’t come back and oh—" he sucked a long breath through his teeth, his fingers curling tighter in Scott’s hair. "Oh, how satisfying it would be to watch Aeor’s void-cursed champion turn to cinders in front of my eyes. All it takes..." he pressed his knee harder into Scott’s back. "All it takes is one... little... shove."
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Jimmy is given an invisibility potion in Chapter 11 to spy on Mythland with Lizzie and scout out Scott's location. While he doesn't use the potion during the mission, it is finally put to use in Chapter 20 for him to sneak close enough to the altar to put Aeor's antlers on Scott's head, putting him into Golden Super Mode.
  • In Chapter 21, Pix lights a candle in remembrance of fWhip. This tiny vigil only barely helps him respawn from what was initially assumed to be a final death.
• Clip Its Wings: A lot of the violence inflicted on Scott involve targeting his wings, with one of the reasons being how delicate wing bones are. Ouch.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Scott is subjected to this in an attempt to get him to give up the location of the dragon egg. Aside from being beaten, he has large chunks of his feathers ripped out, all of the bones in his left wing broken, and tortured using some kind of magic that seems to drain his lifeforce.
  He tried to pull away, but Xornoth’s grip was unmoving, curls of reddish fog rolling from his chanting lips. The mist curled around them both, forming dark fingers that grasped at Scott, wrapping around his throat, covering his mouth and nose, prying into his ears and clutching at his limbs like clinging seaweed. Everywhere the mist touched him, a thousand barbed hooks pierced his skin, latching on his larynx and his eyes and his lungs and his heart. His breath caught as the pain dove deeper, every fiber of his body caught up and tangled in hooks and needles.
  
  Scott tried to scream.
  
  He couldn’t. Couldn’t even breathe. The hooks had snarled into his voice and his breath, tangling them in smoldering coils. His knees went weak, his body held up by Xornoth’s grip on his collar, a horrible wet, gasping, sucking sound filled his ears—and it was only when he lifted one hand to clutch at his gaping mouth that he realized it was him, his throat spasming as he gagged on nothing. The room spun around in a dizzying blur of color, the fog swallowing up the light—even the golden glow that came from his own skin. Scott’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he reached for Xornoth with one last flailing, panicked grasp—
  
  Xornoth released him.
  
  Scott collapsed to the ground, clammy air flooding his raw throat, unable to stop the tiny pained gasps that escaped him, sounding like a wounded animal. He pried his watering eyes open and found his hand splayed on the cobble in front of his face.
  
  The light was gone—completely gone. His pale skin had gone ashy, greyed out where it wasn’t gold.
  
  And the gold… the gold now crept down the back of his hand.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Jimmy. He's consistently treated as if he's slow or incompetent for asking seemingly dumb questions and being more than a little clumsy, and he's not nearly as skilled in combat as some of the others are. However, he's a lot smarter than he's given credit for, and his split-second decision making has saved the day multiple times. The fact that people see him as not worth paying attention to works in his favor during the confrontation with Exor in the Lost Empire in Chapter 20, as it allows him to slip into the background, drink an invisibility potion, and sneak close enough to the altar to put Aeor's antlers on Scott's head.
• Deadpan Snarker: Scott tends to use sarcasm and snippy comments to hide his emotions. Given the sheer amount of anguish he's put through, he gets to do plenty of that.
• Death Is Cheap: At first played straight, then horribly subverted. The Vigil, and the candles lit within them, are meant to anchor people's souls to the world, ensuring that even if they die, they can come back to life no worse for wear. However, the Vigil is destroyed by Xornoth in Chapter 8, taking away people's ability to respawn, as fWhip finds out the hard way. He only barely makes it out of the Void by the light of Pix's candle, and when he does respawn, he's still very badly injured.
• Demonic Possession: Sausage serves as a host body for Exor, a prospect he seems less than thrilled about. At first, Exor only possesses him for as long as he needs to to give instructions to his minions, but after Sausage decides to pull a Heel–Face Turn and help Scott escape, he fully takes over Sausage's body, fully manifesting himself in the living world.
• Determinator: Scott. He manages to resist two full days of torture, holds his own against Xornoth despite barely being able to walk, and continues to sass him the entire time.
  "If my lord didn’t need you, I’d kill you for that, elfling," [Xornoth] growled.
  
  "So kill me then," Scott said, squaring his stance. His legs felt shaky, and the healing potion Sausage had given him was definitely worn off by now. He shook his head to clear it, the fever-heat of his skin lost in the greater heat of the nether. He wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball on the ground and sleep.
  
  But he was nothing if not stubborn. You want to kill Scott Smajor, King of Rivendell and Champion of Aeor?
  
  You have to cut off his fuel supply of spite first.
• Doorstopper: The main book clocks in at 121,275 words.
• The Dragon: Joey and Sausage are this to Xornoth, who is himself a Dragon for Greater-Scope Villain Exor.
• Endless Winter: The start of which sets in soon after the beginning of the fic. After the death of the Ender Dragon, Xornoth has become powerful enough to summon a massive snowstorm, blotting out the sun and causing heavy snowfall even in the desert kingdoms of Mezalea and Pixandria.
• Eye Colour Change:
  • Before his Heel–Face Door-Slam, Sausage's eyes turn from blue to "lightless, a dull, flat black that didn't even reflect the flickering torchlight" when he's possessed by Exor.
  • After becoming Aeor's Champion, Jimmy's eyes turn from bright green to "the cold blue-white of Aeor's power".
• Foreshadowing: In Chapter 8, when the Vigil is destroyed, Pix is still able to respawn due to his people having lit candles for him in their own household vigils. Much later in Chapter 21, Pix lights a candle in remembrance of fWhip, and this singular candle, alongside Gem's belief in him, only barely help fWhip make it out of the Void from what was initially assumed to be a final death.
• Golden Super Mode: When wearing Aeor's antlers, Scott starts to glow golden, and becomes significantly stronger. This comes with the caveat that he starts to become more and more dependent on the antlers to function, to the point that he nearly gives up the dragon egg in exchange. When he finally gets them back on his head, however, the antlers themselves take over the fighting for him.
  Golden light burst from Scott’s eyes, and Jimmy tumbled back—directly into Joey, who snatched blindly at him, fumbling to tackle him. [...]
  
  Scott was the center of a blinding supernova, his wings flaring out and shining with a light that nearly obscured the blood and broken feathers. Somehow he was still upright, kneeling with his bound hands resting on his lap, his eyes squeezed shut and cyan hair whipping around his face, tangling with the prongs of the white-hot antlers. Heat emanated outward, melting the snow at Jimmy’s feet, and he felt like he was looking into one of fWhip’s forges.[...]
  
  Scott opened his eyes and looked directly at Exor, and where his pupils should have been was nothing but white fire, blank and burning. There was a second of utter silence, as if every breath of air had been sucked into Scott’s nebula—
  
  And then it exploded. The light burst outward in a ring of energy, slamming into Exor and Xornoth. Xornoth flew backward, smashing into the pillar beside Jimmy with a sharp crack of bone and stone. The stone split upward from where he’d impacted, and chunks of deepslate crumbled down, peppering the demon’s prone form.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: Scott and Xornoth are both Winged Humanoids, but while Scott's are feathered and largely white, Xornoth's are black and bat-like. Xornoth explains in Chapter 9 that his wings used to look like Scott's, but that Exor's power resulted in his feathers falling out.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Exor, Aeor's evil counterpart. Once he enters the playing field by taking over Sausage's body, things start to get infinitely worse for everyone involved.
• The Heart: Jimmy is a lot less skilled in combat than his fellow rulers, but what he lacks in combat prowess, he makes up for in emotional intelligence. Pix lampshades this in Chapter 22, telling Jimmy outright that they need his "heart and intuition" in the war against Xornoth.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Sausage was already not too thrilled about the plans he was getting roped into, so he eventually decides to help Scott escape the Mythland dungeon in Chapter 17. Exor figures out what he's doing, however, and responds by fully taking over Sausage's body, transforming him into a new vessel for himself and knocking Scott out cold before he can get away.
• Heroic RRoD:
  • After two days of torture and numerous failed escape attempts, Scott's body finally gives out when he's on the altar about to be sacrificed to Exor. His friends save him, but he has to be carried out of the Lost Empire by Jimmy, and spends the majority of the next two chapters either unconscious, mumbling incoherently to himself while wildly hallucinating, or begging for death.
  • While Scott recovers enough to be able to fight in the war for Mezalea, the torture and liberal use of his Champion-abilities burns him up completely. After he defeats Xornoth, the gold consumes his entire body, and Pix and Jimmy find him collapsed in the snow, barely conscious and actively dying as the gold starts to consume his organs. He only survives after Jimmy decides to become Aeor's new Champion, taking the power out of his body, stopping (or at least slowing) the gold's spread to Scott's heart.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: A few of them are in use in the fic, including one case of "Go to ^{the Void}Hell" in Chapter 9, another case of "Hold your ^seahorseshorses" courtesy of Lizzie in Chapter 14, and a mention of "[not] a ^raindrop'ssnowball's chance in ^{the Nether}Hell" in Chapter 25.
• Human Sacrifice: Well, Elven Sacrifice. Xornoth and Joey's goal is to sacrifice Scott to Exor, so he can absorb Aeor's power and take over the world. Scott is eventually taken to the Lost Empire, chained to an altar, has runes painted on him with his own blood, and would've had his heart ripped out of his chest by Exor if Pix and the other rulers hadn't intervened.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: In Chapter 21:
  He looked up at Pix, but there was no recognition in his face. Pix wasn’t sure Scott could even see him. "Please... make it stop," Scott begged, his voice breaking and dissolving into a trailing murmur of broken phrases. "Just... kill me. Stop tormenting me... please... just let me die—"
• Identical Grandson: According to Pix's flashback in Chapter 8, the only major physical difference between Alinar and Scott is their hair color, and considering Scott's hair is cyan, it's safe to assume his is dyed.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In Chapter 20:
  fWhip yelped, dropping his sword, both hands going to his throat as Exor jerked him back, winding the scarf around his claws. fWhip's feet kicked and slipped on the slick ground, wide-eyed with sheer panic.
  
  "Go!" he shouted, clawing at the fabric around his neck. "Go, n—"
  
  With the sick schuk of a blade hitting meat, Exor drove the staff through fWhip's back, the point of the crystal bursting through his chest.
• Midas Touch: Scott occasionally turns random things to gold just by touching them, including a blanket, his sword, and the rope used to tie up his hands. Unfortunately, this ability also carries over to his own body, and those of his friends, but turns out to be incredibly effective against those under Exor's control, like Xornoth.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • While Scott's internal monologue betrays plenty of fears and insecurities, he always tries to put on a brave face, and manages to keep his wits about him so long as he's not actively being tortured. However, when Exor starts taking over Sausage's body, even Scott's internal monologue devolves into raw panic as he tries to make a run for it, showing just how terrifying Exor is.
  • After being rescued, Scott spends hours alternating between unconsciousness, mumbling to himself while hallucinating, and begging for the pain to stop. Jimmy especially is incredibly disturbed by this, to the point where he drops the fireplace poker once Scott starts pleading for Pix to kill him, and flees the room as soon as he can. Even when Scott is lucid enough to hold a conversation again, Jimmy is disturbed by how subdued and exhausted he sounds. His internal monologue constantly remarks how this is not what Scott is supposed to sound like, and he's very noticeably relieved when Scott recovers enough to start joke-flirting with him again.
• Painful Transformation: In Chapter 17, as Exor takes over Sausage's body, it starts to shift, growing scales and horns and extending his limbs. This process is so painful that Sausage spends most of it screaming in absolute agony, and while he tells Scott to run while it's just starting, he winds up incoherently begging for help before Exor fully takes over.
• Past-Life Memories: They're mostly passing mentions, but Jimmy has had brief memory flashes to the 3rd Life SMP, mainly the Battle of the Red Desert.
  Harsh light leaked between Exor's fangs. "Of course you refuse to lay down and die. I see other worlds in your eyes, mortal — you didn't know when to give up then, either."
  The image of a crown dripping with blood flickered in Jimmy's mind. A burning red banner. A desert rigged to blow. He jerked free of Exor's grip.
  "I'd do it again."
• Power Gives You Wings: At the end of Chapter 26, after taking up the mantle of Aeor's Champion, Jimmy gains a pair of fiery golden wings "of pure energy".
• Precision F-Strike: Gold adheres mostly to the rules of its PG source material, meaning characters either don't swear or use words like "void" where one would normally use "fuck". During his final fight with Xornoth in Chapter 25, however, Scott decides to forego this rule.
  Scott: What are you waiting for, bitch? Need Exor's permission to bite?
• Saying Too Much: In Chapter 9, after multiple rounds of torture, Scott continues to refuse to give up the dragon egg's location. Exor tries to offer him the antlers in return, but Scott spits in his face, and shouts that the egg is in the one place they can never reach. Xornoth immediately figures out that the only place he cannot physically get to is Scott's ender chest, where the egg is indeed being kept.
• Shock and Awe: Pix's preferred weapon is a trident, and the Channeling enchantment on it allows him to summon lightning to strike his target, indirectly giving him this power.^note While Channeling technically only works while it's raining or in water in the game, the Endless Winter and resultant snow probably counts for the precipitation requirement in-universe.
• Shout-Out: The chapter titles are derived from the lyrics of several songs, including "Paradise Is Burning" and "Monster In The Mirror" by Outline In Color, and "Warriors" and "Gold" by Imagine Dragons. The latter also provides the title of the fanfic.
• Switching P.O.V.: Gold primarily alternates between Scott, Jimmy, and Pix's perspectives of the events, though Chapter 24 is told from fWhip's perspective on what being Killed Off for Real feels like, and The Reveal that he's come Back from the Dead.
• Taken for Granite: Taking the full power of a god into yourself turns out to be quite a bit more than a mortal body can handle. Throughout the fic, Scott's body slowly starts to turn to gold, starting with his fingers and slowly creeping up his arms to the rest of his body. In flashbacks, it's revealed that the same thing happened to Alinar, who died by turning into a golden statue of himself, and during their final battle in Chapter 25, Scott turns Xornoth into a golden statue simply by touching his skin. Jimmy also ends up turning to gold in Chapter 27 after using up Aeor's power to burn Exor away, but is brought Back from the Dead as Aeor himself fades.
• Take Me Instead:
  • In Chapter 20, Pix tries to offer himself up in exchange for Scott, by allowing Aeor's power to enter his body and becoming the new Champion. This fails, however, as he's already the Keeper of the Vigil, meaning his body has no more room left for Aeor's powers.
  • In Chapter 26, after Scott's body is entirely consumed by gold and he lays dying in Pix's arms, Jimmy offers himself up as Aeor's new Champion, since Pix can't do it himself, despite both Pix and Scott begging him to stop. Jimmy is taken over by Aeor, which not only stops (or at least slows) the spreading of the gold inside Scott's body, it also gives the Empires a fighting chance against Exor again.
• To the Pain: In Chapter 15:
  Xornoth tilted his head, regarding Scott for a moment. "You’ve experienced barely half an hour of torment and it made you scream like a child. Look at you—you can barely stand. Do you think I don’t have other ways of torturing you?" He smiled slowly, his abnormally-wide mouth curling back toward his ears. "How long do you think you could hold out, little king of Rivendell, if I took my time plucking each and every feather from your wings? Snapped every bone in them?" He took another step forward. "Or perhaps… removed them altogether?"
• Trauma Button: Anything that brings up memories of the torture and attempted sacrifice sends Scott spiraling into a panic. Triggers include the sight of the puncture wounds in his chest, his wings or hands being restrained, the taste of a healing potion (since he'd been given one by Sausage right before Exor took over his body), and especially people pulling on his feathers or hair. When Gem accidentally pulls on some of the feathers while preening his wing in Chapter 23, he has a flashback so intense that he momentarily sees her as Exor, and winds up smacking her in the face.
• Trauma Conga Line: While absolutely nobody is having a good time, Scott is really put through the wringer. He's injured in multiple fights, kidnapped, tortured for information, watched Sausage's body get slowly and painfully taken over by Exor during their escape attempt, is dangled over lava by Xornoth, and nearly has his heart ripped out of his chest by Exor, all the while he can only watch as his own body slowly turns to gold. By the time his friends manage to save him, he's barely clinging to life, can't hang onto consciousness for more than a few minutes at a time, and whenever he's lucid enough to string a sentence together, he's begging them to just let him die.
• Two Girls to a Team: For most of Gold thus far, Gem and Lizzie are the main two female rulers involved in the dragon egg and rescue mission. Subverted in Chapter 27 when a resurrected fWhip brings along Pearl, Katherine, and Shrub, the other female (or adjacent) rulers from canon, as The Cavalry.
• Villains Want Mercy: In Chapter 25:
  "Champion?" Xornoth looked up at him, eyes wide and panicked, and for the first time, Scott caught a glimpse of the elven boy underneath the corruption. Terror dimmed his fire, and his eyes went wide, pleading. "Champion—Alinar? Stop this, please!" He stumbled forward, tripping to his knees, and reached a hand out towards Scott, movements slow and jerky. Scott flinched away, sickened.
  
  "Please," Xornoth begged, the gold creeping up his jaw and over the blackened horns that protruded from his skull. "Please, stop! Ali—"
  
  The gold overtook his face, freezing the name on his lips.
• We Can Rule Together: Joey and Sausage make this offer to Jimmy in Chapter 3, giving him a place at Xornoth's side alongside them, ensuring he won't be laughed at or bullied anymore. They show him a vision of Jimmy standing over all of the other rulers as they kneel at his feet, and he's almost on board... until he sees Lizzie kneeling too, looking terrified of him.
• Wrecked Weapon: During their battle in Chapter 25, Xornoth shatters Scott's sword when the latter tries to block a strike with it. Scott, out of desperation, attacks Xornoth with his bare hands, resulting in him touching Xornoth's skin, triggering his Midas Touch and slowly transforming Xornoth into a golden statue.

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