All six men and all four women knew what they signed up for. The mysterious letter told them that there would be danger, that they would face the unknown, and that if they succeeded, they would be famous. What they weren't expecting was a trap.
As soon as the minecarts were all at their stops, they found themselves all facing a narrow passageway, lit only by redstone torches. They knew it was just bright enough to keep mobs out, but they'd grown up in a world where the forces of death were only ceased by light. If they were alone, they never would have gone. With a lot of talking and nervous laughter, the brave miners started walking down the halls.
"Where is the guy who sent our letters, anyways?" A man asked.
"I have no clue, but if it gets any less bright over here, I think I'll just leave," a blonde woman replied. Her hair was curly and her eyes were brown. She was stunningly beautiful. The man wished he could think of anything to say, but when he looked at her, his mind went fuzzy.
"Yeah, I-I...dark," he said meekly. A few of the guys behind him snorted through restrained laughter. The girl smiled at him.
The group advanced, their feet echoing loudly against the smooth stone floors. All of their weak attempts at conversation died down due to the fear that coursed through their bodies. They remained silent, even though this made everything seem darker and more eerie.
Then, they reached a wall.
"What's going on?" said a short Asian man in the back of the group. They let him push himself to the front. They all seemed to have the same thoughts.
"Well, I've had quite enough of this. I'm leaving now," said a brunette guy in the back, "I mean, this could be a trap. Notch knows there's a lot of sick people in our world that just enjoy mayhem and murder." There was silence as people considered these words. "What's wrong with you people? Even if you don't want to leave, we've obviously gone the wrong way," he continued.
Suddenly, there was a click from behind the wall to their right. All the miners identified it as a button being pushed. The brunette guy began walking away, just like he'd promised.
"Have fun dying by whatever redstone contraption that button just activated," he called out.
"What a douche," the blonde woman muttered. "He's probably right thou-"
"WAIT!" a black girl cried out. She pointed down the way that they'd come from. At first everybody wondered what she was going on about. Then, it became obvious. The redstone torches that lined both sides of the tunnel were all deactivating. Two by two, going all the way down to where they stood. A faint scream was heard from far away.
"The guy...he's in the dark!" The brown haired nervous guy cried out. "Come on guys, I know it's terrifying, but we need to run down there and help him out! Or at least get back to our minecarts. We can't stand down here forever." All of the others seemed to not hear him. They were paralyzed in fear, their eyes darting to all the torches that were deactivating, bringing the gloom closer to them.
"Guys? GUYS! LET'S. GO!" he yelled at them. Why didn't they understand that the sooner they started running back, the faster they would be out of the dark? It was too late though. The man didn't want to go over there alone, and the final torches that were near them clicked off. In the dark, they all huddled closer together. They raised their fists out of instinct. Little did they know that if a beast were to attack them, only half of them would have the courage to fight back. They stood there for what seemed like hours. None of them could move or speak out of fear of attracting a mob. A woman began to sob in the back, but judging by the muffled sound, she was trying to shut herself up.
Then, the lights turned back on. They were all trapped in a box though, and when they looked up, they saw that they'd gone down about fifty blocks from the tunnel they used to be in. The box was twenty-five by twenty-five, and there was no sign of a way out. The Asian man looked up and screamed at all of them to look. Looking down at them was the brunette man, his eyes wide in horror.
"Hey!" called out the black woman. In reply, the man's head came falling down the hole. His body was no where to be seen, and the head was going to land in between the blonde girl and a guy with a giant green Mohawk. The blonde girl's yells were only interrupted by a large amount of vomit that streamed out of her throat as the head splattered and the blood sprayed everywhere.
Written on the forehead of the poor man were the words 'Welcome to the Heromines. I hope you'll enjoy your stay.'
Chapter 2:
The blonde girl wiped the vomit from her mouth. "Oh, Notch," she moaned, looking away from the partially exploded head that lie on the floor in a puddle of gore. Everybody else just stared at it, just as they did in the mine above them. Frozen. Paralyzed. All of them.
"Guys, let's think this through, okay? This is important. You can NOT freeze up in these situations anymore. Chances are...judging by the name of this place...there are going to be many more moments where our hearts are put to the test. We can't panic. We need to survive and live to tell the tale," the brown haired man said.
Everybody knew the tale of Herobrine. Everybody. As a kid you were warned about him. As an adult he still haunted you in the reflection of waters, in the dark shadows of a deserted building. And as an old man, he was always watching you, waiting. Herobrine is darkness. He is evil. He is death. And the fact that these mines were named "Heromines" escaped nobody.
"Brave words," a skinny, tall man in a fine black suit spoke up, "coming from a guy who can't even talk to a girl correctly." The man with the spikey green hair walked up to him fiercely, a look on his face that was startling enough without the constant effect of his haircut and clothing.
"In case you didn't notice, he's the only one who was man enough to talk about rescuing the other guy. That one," he repeated, pointing at the bloody head on the floor in front of them. "So shut the hell up about him being brave. There's a difference between being brave and being awkward."
The man with brown hair coughed, not enjoying the conversation being held as if he weren't standing a mere five blocks away from them. "Yeah, thanks," he said to them. There was a long silence as the people stood around, beginning to realize just how little they could do down there. The brown haired man wondered if they wanted him to take control. He didn't want the responsibility, but at the same time he felt that a leader is ideal in any civilization, no matter how small.
"My name is James. James Maynard," he told them.
"Kal Larogue," the punk looking man replied, holding out his hand. James shook it, relieved that he wasn't being mocked for the introduction in the middle of this terrifying ordeal.
"Emma Holland," the blonde said.
"Ohras Bright," added the Asian man.
"My name-" started a young woman in the back, who was wearing a white lab coat and goggles that made her look rather like a giant chicken with enderman eyes. She was quickly interrupted by the suited man.
"What are we doing? We're down in a damn jail cell and instead of brainstorming or doing anything efficient, we're greeting each other? I don't give a damn about your names, I want to get out." He paced around the room full of five men and four women. He looked just as frustrated as he sounded.
"Well if we want to escape together, I want to at least know you guys a little bit. You know, first name basis. I don't expect us all to hug each other and start singing." The suited man made a fist but didn't look up at James. His face went a horrible shade of red, and he looked like he was trembling while he walked.
"We're all going to die in here. I don't want to make your deaths any harder on myself, so I don't want to exchange names. Is that so wrong?"
"Of course not," James said, glad that he was showing signs of any emotion besides anger.
"We'll just call you ****," said the black woman.
Chapter 3:
Before the man who was titled **** could reply to her, the room suddenly brightened. They all looked around, searching for the mysterious source of light.
"THERE!" shouted the woman in the lab coat. She was pointing upwards. Falling towards them, slowly promising their painful yet swift demise, was lava. It flowed down block by block, making the people warmer and warmer with its approach.
"WHAT DO WE DO!?" the African American cried out.
"I don't know!" Shouted James. "I feel like if the man who brought us here wanted us dead, he would have just killed us. He wants us to live somehow. Search for buttons, pressure plates, levers, anything! We need to find a way out." The people didn't go against his orders. They started scanning the walls.
The lava had begun making them sweat. Beads of sweat dripped off of their heads and hit the floor, mocking them by being lower and cooler than they were. Drip, splash. Drip, splash. The survivors pounded on the walls in case they were missing a button. They stomped on the floors for pressure plates that may not have been sensitive. The lava became but a few blocks above them.
The tallest of the group, a rather chubby man with brown hair, suddenly caught fire. The lava had almost touched his hair, and had ignited it due to the heat alone. The man screamed, trying to put it out but knowing it was futile.
"BEN!" he screamed. "BEN! NAME'S BEN!" he cried out, while rolling around in agony. Everybody merely stared at him in horror. The lava was right above them, the heat making their eyes burn and the top of their heads feel like they were going through what Ben was. A Hispanic woman who was silent the entire trip decided to end it quicker than Ben's death was. She jumped up and her head hit the lava. When her body came out of it, the head was missing. Her neck ended in a burning stump.
"NO!" James shouted. "ON YOUR KNEES. KEEP LOOKING!" He cried out. They all got on their knees, the lava inching closer and closer to them. "WE CAN'T GIVE UP!" he moaned, even though he knew that in a matter of seconds they would all be dead.
"I got it!" Ohras shouted. He slammed his fist into the button. They all began to fall down, the floor beneath them pulled out as if by magic. They landed in water. The only light in the entire room was from the lava above them still, even though it was many blocks away now. The roof that used to be their floor came back, concealing them from the lava but casting them into the darkness once again.
"Thank you so much, Ohras," James told him. The others followed up by thanking him and congratulating him. Only **** remained silent.
Suddenly, the blonde started talking. "I'm going to start recording what we're doing down here. Is that okay?" she asked. I told her it was fine. "There are seven of us, me, James, the African American lady named..."
"Imani," she told him.
"Right. Then there's the woman in the lab coat... "
"Renee."
"Thanks. Then there's Asian guy who just saved our lives, Ohras, and there's Kal the punk rock looking dude, and ****. Then there's the guy who died in the very beginning of all of this, the Hispanic lady, and the guy named Ben. There's only seven of us left. In the beginning there were ten," she sobbed the last word, then we heard the click as her recording device was stopped.
"Eleven," a rough, powerful voice shouted out from his hidden location.
Chapter 4:
"WHO ARE YOU!?" James shouted furiously from the dark. He pulled his own hair, frustrated at being left in the dark. He felt so exposed. He felt like he was going to die any second now.
"Fear," the voice called out.
"WHO ARE YOU REALL-" James was interrupted mid-sentence. By a scream. It came from what seemed like right on top of him! It was endless, pained, and terrified. With that scream came footsteps, frantic and quick, and more screams. The screams of other people. It took James a while to realize that the original scream was his own. His mouth was closed, and his mind calmed with that realization. So why was the screaming still going?
"JAMES! JAMES, WHERE ARE YOU!?" Emma cried out over the sound of yelling and running footsteps in the water.
"I'm here! I'm okay, Emma! Everybody shut up and calm down. I'm okay. I think the screaming is a recording," he told them quickly. It took them a while, but eventually they all went quiet and stopped moving.
"All of you come to the sound of my voice. We need to stick together," he shouted over the screams.
"Who died and made you leader?" **** finally called out from what sounded like James' right. It was a strange thing, he thought, that **** was the one who could talk out before any of the others. 'Then again,' he thought, 'rudeness doesn't mean cowardice.'
"You, if you don't shut the hell up," Kal growled. That shut **** up. They all eventually came to him. They stood around each other, comforted by the sounds of their breathing. It was proof that there were other people with them. That they were all safe from the darkness. For now.
"Now what?" Renee asked quietly.
"We should try to find a way out in the dark. Poke all along the walls until we find a way out." Imani says.
"Why would this sicko put us in the dark if he just wants us to escape?" Ohras asked.
"Why would he put us in the dark if he wants us to die? He could have killed us any time now if he wanted. We might as well play along for now. Better than sitting here until we go insane by the screaming, starve to death, or do both." Kal told him.
"Way to be optimistic, Kal. Seriously though, that's a decent point. All of us start searching the walls. Tell us if you find anything," James told them. With that, they all splashed around along the walls, jumping, ducking, feeling, and searching. All the while James screams went on. It seemed like hours, and James could feel what little was left of his sanity practically draining away. He kept glancing behind him out of paranoia only to realize that he wouldn't be able to see anything attacking him in the first place. His hands felt like they were burning because of all of the rubbing he'd done. Every time he felt a crack or a bump he would get excited, but it was always nothing more than an error in the wall. No tunnels, no crevices, just this boxed out room.
Finally, Renee yelled, "I found something! Come here, somebody, lift me up!"
"I'm close to you," Ohras told her. "I'll do it."
"Hurry," Renee called out. Ohras didn't reply, but his feet moved faster. James walked over to them as well, in case anything went wrong. A short distance in front of him he heard Ohras grunt.
"Are you okay?" Emma beat James to the question.
"Yeah...just...tiring," he said through a clearly strained voice. A few more minutes of soft grunting (or at least soft compared to the screaming. James could tell that his hearing was messed up), and finally Renee called out.
"It's a tiny little tunnel. I can barely fit in here. And it's all smelly and sticky. There's fur too. Lots of fur. And...red dots are coming towards me! Woah, what are those?" Renee commentated her exploration into the tunnel.
"Renee? RENEE, GET DOWN!" Kal screamed suddenly.
"Why?" she asked, scared. "What's- NO! AHH! HELP ME!" Her screams were quickly dragged further and further away. Then, they stopped.
"WHAT WAS THAT?" **** yelled. Before Kal could answer, the lights turned on. Blinded, James shielded his eyes. The light was too intense! He slowly lowered his arms from his face just in time to see the fangs of the spider reach for his cheeks.
Chapter 5:
Ohras punched the spider in the stomach, making it fly a few feet from James. James' eyes were still pained, but he kept them open for his own safety. Suddenly, somebody besides him shot into his mind. 'Emma!' He looked around frantically, seeing blurry shapes moving around and blood spilling. Noise was shooting into his head from every direction. His own recorded screaming was gone, but that didn't matter to him. The screams of all of his friends was just as loud, and even worse to hear.
James then saw Imani and Emma fighting back to back, swinging their fists wildly at the spiders, who seemed apprehensive, but were jumping up at them every once in a while anyways. There were dozens of them attacking all of the people. Even as James glanced at Emma and Imani valiantly defending their own lives, he had to punch his enemies himself.
"WE'RE GOING TO DIE!" Imani cried out.
"DON'T TALK LIKE THAT," Kal shouted as he ducked down, evading a leaping spider. The spiders giant fangs nearly bit straight into Kal's forehead, but instead chomped down on his mohawk. Kal reached up, grabbed it by two of its eight, hairy legs, and ripped them clean off of its body. He let it fall to the floor next to him, on its back.
James' mind worked like a computer, searching for memories that might help him, scanning for ways to escape. Then it hit him.
"GUYS, LET'S GO THROUGH THE TUBES!" even as James yelled it, he dashed towards the skinny passages through which the spiders had climbed. He could hear the people behind him follow him, not bothering to try to attack all of the spiders. Then, James heard the loudest scream of the day. He glanced back while running full speed, to witness **** hit the watery floor face-down. A spider had latched onto his leg.
Everybody kept running. Some slowed down, but once they realized that every spider in the room was suddenly running towards their fallen ally, they kept running. Except for Kal. Kal turned around and ran towards ****, faster than all of the spiders. James stopped when he reached the wall, then looked behind him at his friends. Ohras was closest to him.
"Ohras, give me your foot. I'll lift you all up, then one of you guys can pull me." James told them.
"You go first, James. I'll-" Ohras didn't finish, because behind them Dicks screams were increasing in volume and intensity. James glared at him as if to say 'You'd better just give me the damn foot.' And Ohras followed his silent command. He jumped up onto the wall and James pushed his foot upwards until he was fitting smugly into the hole of theirs.
"OHRAS, START CRAWLING AND DON'T STOP!" James shouted as he helped up Imani. After Imani dragged herself inside of the hole, James helped Emma. As soon as he finished, Emma held out her hands to him.
"I'll pull you up!" she told him.
"No! I'm going to wait for-" he glanced backwards at Kal. Kal was dragging **** by the arm through the water, while **** punched wildly at the spiders surrounding them. The spiders were relentless, jumping over and over as they screeched and bit.
"Hurry up, guys!" James shouted. He realized that they probably wouldn't make it. He glanced up and saw Emma still looking down and Kal and ****, biting her lip in anxiousness. "Alright, Emma, get me up," he told her sadly. She reached her arms down and James took them.
When James was safely in, Emma followed Ohras and Imani down into the unknown that the tunnel led them. James waited behind for Kal and ****, watching them slowly make their way towards James with undying hope. Kal finally made it, then pushed **** up to James, clearly struggling in the process. A spider bit into his leg as he pushed **** up, and Kal crumpled. James barely grabbed onto **** in time, and he pulled him up. Kal fell to the water and was quickly covered in furry, scurrying legs.
He pulled the crying, half-unconscious **** through the tunnel until he landed into a new room with the others. It was made of wood and had buttons all over the walls. Ohras, Imani, and Emma were all panting on the floor. James finally put Dicks arm down.
"Kal...?" I lowered my head. I'd failed them. I wanted to save Kal and ****, I promised to get them both out of there safely, and I failed. And then Imani put her hand to Dicks neck, checking for a pulse, and I'd failed them twice.
Chapter 6:
"He's gone," Imani announced. Kal had died for no reason. **** had died either way.
"Was it poison?" Emma gasped. They'd all been bitten numerous times.
"No, it wasn't. Just loss of blood." James felt like killing himself. Tears spilled from his eyes for the first time since he was a child. The blood coming out of a nasty gash in his arm from a spider bite felt like it was draining not only his life, but also his happiness. He looked around at his three remaining team mates and realized that they had not given up yet. They still wanted a way out. And that gave him strength.
"SO WHAT DO YOU WANT!?" James shouted up at the roof of their room. "WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH US?" he cried.
"Results," replied the same dark, powerful voice.
"USE YOUR WORDS, YOU STUPID *****! WHAT DO YOU MEAN!?" James yelled, his rage fueling his false fearlessness.
"Each button does something different. A fourth will let you go from this room one way or another." More games. This entire incident with the Heromines was all just a game for Him. Just another amusing show. Just another amazing performance.
"Why should we follow you?" Ohras spoke quietly. "Why continue? This room is at least safe for now." Somehow, He heard Ohras.
"Because after this room there are two more. And then you can leave."
"'And then you can leave'," Ohras quoted. "Yeah, right." No response.
"I think he's telling the truth..." Imani told him. "There's really no point in lying. What could he gain by lying to us?"
"Fun. Enjoyment. The sick *******," Emma said. James gloomily noted that Emma was still talking into her tape recorder. He wondered if it had caught everything that had happened so far.
"So which button do we press, James?" Ohras asked James.
"I don't know. I'm not the genius here," he said, looking at Imani. She glanced back at him in surprise, as if shocked to find out that he thought that she was a genius. She didn't comment on it though.
Instead, she said, "I think that this is just a guessing game. We press a button and hope for the best." James did. His hand reached for the button, praying to Notch, if he was still somehow up there and permitting this to happen, to let this be the right one. His fingers felt the cold surface of the stone rectangle jutting out of the wall. And he pushed it.
At first, nothing happened. They all waited in silence for their deaths or salvation. Then, Ben came out of the ceiling. He fell nearly face first, but evened out at the last second and landed straight onto his stomach. He seemed to only wake up when he hit the floor. He shouted out and felt around his head, where his hair was. Or, used to be.
Ben had a horrifying, scarred scalp with strange patches of hair in random places where the fire hadn't reached. It wasn't a burned black, but instead a delicate pink, which meant that he had somehow not only caught off fire and survived, but it happened quickly. He was panting, and his eyes were wide open.
"What happened to you, Ben? I thought you'd died," Emma asked him bluntly.
"Yeah, I thought so too. I guess we'll both have to live with it," he replied, "mind the pun. By the way, what are we doing now? Spleefing? Watching TV? Swimming in diamonds?"
"Actually we're pushing buttons that decide whether we live or die," James told him.
"Well then. I'm supposed to be dead anyways, doesn't quite matter to me," Ben announced to the room. He smashed the button to his direct left without looking at it. Then direction ceased to exist. Space ceased to exist. All that existed was them, and the never ending pushing and shoving of...something. They were tossed and tugged and finally, they all fell into a new room.
Chapter 7
"Are you-" James tried to speak, but his throat got raided by a gigantic cloud of dust that had unsettled when they'd hit the floor of this new room. He coughed until he was on his knees, gasping for breath, then coughed some more. He felt like he was about to die. Then he found it in him to stop. He breathed the bitter tasting air around him, gasping at it like a fish out of water.
"Where are we?" Ohras asked. The room had the Heromines usual dim lighting, and I could barely see five feet in front of me. It seemed like an empty, bland room. Like the one where Ben had "died".
"I don't know, but I landed on something funny. I think-" he stopped, and James could hear him rustling his coat. "Ah look, I found this thing." James, Emma, Ohras, and Imani all walked towards him, then Emma pulled out her recorder.
"It's a tan circular device with...two rectangles in the middle of it. It clicks when you push it down, and it has...notches all around it. I don't know what it is or means." Then she spoke more to Ben than the machine. "Do you know where it came from?"
"Not at all," Ben replied, "I guess it was planted on me when I passed out from the heat on my head." Imani held out her hand, not bothering to ask or look at Ben. Ben scoffed but handed it over anyways.
Suddenly, there was a horrifying whispering noise that seemed to radiate out of the walls, roof, and ceiling. It seemed to come out of the room itself. Imani's eyes widened a large amount and looked at the device.
"We have to get rid of this. He-He wants us to activate it. I...think I know how to. He just told me." Ben didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed the circular contraption and threw it onto the stone ground. He stomped on it repeatedly and when he picked it up again afterwards...it was the exact same.
"Not a scratch on it," Emma muttered into her machine. Imani snatched the machine out of Ben's hands and started tampering on it.
"If this is working like I think it does, I should be able to-" then her forehead exploded. Blood dripped down from her wound, and the arrow sticking out of her popped out as her body collapsed onto the ground. The machine hit the ground yet again, and Imani's blood swam around it, as if the mechanism had a forcefield. Emma was sobbing into her hand again, her face practically glowing, it was so pale.
"Well then," Ben said casually. "I believe that trying to destroy it is now out of the question."
Emma and Ohras both glared daggers, but James didn't care. He was somewhere far away, where none of this death and misery were so abundant. James had given up.
"James. Not yet, James." That snapped James out of his denial, and back into the harsh reality. He'd had about a minute in his blissful insanity, but apparently He didn't give breaks.
"So, what?" James called out to the roof of their prison. "What do we do now? If we can't mess with this, and we can't do anything, what do we do?"
"Notch forbids," the voice called out to them, sounding almost sad instead of it's usual all-powerful boom. James sighed and started searching the walls again. Seeing what he was doing, Emma and Ben helped him.
"Hey, I found something," Ohras told them. "This wall feels more like wood than stone. And...yep, it's a chest." James walked over, opened the chest, vomited, sobbed, and immediately wished he hadn't.
Chapter 8:
Inside of the chest were the heads of his less fortunate attempted escapees. There was the nameless man whose head was practically half gone, with the words "Welcome to the Heromines. I hope you enjoy your stay," written on it. There was a random gap that only a few hairs occupied in between the nameless man and Renee's head. Renee's head had bite marks and was discolored due to her encounter with the spiders. Then, Kal, who's head looked a bit like Renee's, except with more bite marks and less discoloration. Then there was ****'s, who (sadly) had the most peaceful looking death. His eyes were the only one who's were closed. And next to his, Imani. A hole as wide as the arrow that pierced her occupied the space between her eyes.
James glanced back and noticed that Imani's whole body was gone. She died in the same room that they were in now, and yet her head was inside the box. Somehow, this didn't surprise him. 'Just another strange thing in these mines,' he thought to himself.
He noticed that Ohras had looked into the chest as well, and he was staring at the heads as intensely as James was. Ohras glanced at him and said, "Don't let the others see." With those words, Ben quickly walked towards them, shoved past Ohras when he tried to stop him, and looked into the chest.
"Jeez. Don't tell me what happened to all those people who died after me. Looks brutal," he told them. Emma started walking towards the chest as well.
"Emma, you don't want to-" James started.
"Don't tell me what I can or can't do, James," she said. Emma had already guessed what lied within the chest, but she needed to be sure. She felt that she needed to see them all. "Oh, Notch," she cried out. She looked ready to vomit, but was all out of things to barf out. James suddenly noticed how hungry he was. If he didn't die in some other way, he would starve to death fairly soon. This made James smile.
"The skull key," the voice called out from all around them.
"I think the term was Skeleton Key," Ohras muttered. Emma's eyes widened. She wretched, but nothing but bile flew from her throat.
"No- he means... Skull key," she said, pointing at the chest. Ben looked around at all of them, shrugged as if to say 'I guess it's up to me,' and then threw the chest onto the ground in front of him. He warned them to look away, still aware that not all of them were quite as insane as him, and then stomped on them until all that was left was a few bits of bones, a whole lot of mush, and a shiny silver key. He grabbed the key and wiped it on his shirt.
"So where do we put this?" he asked. All of them looked back at Ben, and realized he was right: there was no keyhole. Ben threw the key to James. James couldn't deal with that cursed item. He passed it to Ohras, who reluctantly grasped it. Then, some stone popped out of the wall, then was quickly replaced by a piece of stone with a lock. "Ah," Ohras said, stepping towards the wall and insert the key. There was a quick hiss from in front of him.
Ohras started running back. "STAND BA-" then the wall behind him, where he placed the key, exploded. Ohras flew forward, scraped his face along the stone floor, then hit the wall where he was running to feet first with a sickening crunch. All of the others were knocked backwards and to the floor, but not as strongly as Ohras was.
"Ohras, are you okay?" James asked when the debris and dust cleared enough for him to trust the ability to breathe. Ohras coughed, then tried to stand up. He screamed out in pain and fell back on the floor, back-up.
"No. Both of my feet and-," he said, wincing, "-and my face. It burns, James. It burns." James walked up to him and lifted him onto his feet. He couldn't help but glance at Ohras' face as he assisted him. It was as if Ohras was sanded by a giant, sadistic piece of sandpaper. It was raw, bloody, and yet appeared to be smooth at the same time. Ben took Ohras' other side, and they both carried him into the next room.
"At least we're in the last one, according to the voice," Emma whispered into her tape recorder.
Chapter 9:
"The last room," James whispered to himself. They stood together, waiting for the dust to float away. The lighting in this room was much brighter, James observed from inside of the dust storm. Then, the dirty clouds parted, and they all fell under a spell. In this room was a statue of what seemed like a normal human being. Except within the sockets of the human, there was nothing. The statue was gigantic, built for the gods. It was an amazing piece of stone and cobblestone. It was a work of pure art. And it felt wrong.
Just looking at it gave James the creeps. It felt bad, evil almost. "Let's go check it out," he told the others, even though his heart screamed for him to run away and never come back. The three remaining miners walked towards the statue. Once they'd gotten closer, they saw that between the feet of the giant, there was a table. On the table was a brown, dusty, old book. It was written in what seemed like another language. They all crouched down next to it and tried to find out what it said.
"I can read it," Ben told them both.
"Wha- how?" Emma asked him in surprise.
"It's written in an old tundra biome dialect. I was raised in a tundra biome, so I can read it. It'll just take a while. I've forgotten a lot." Ben held out his hand, and James stared at it for a while before realizing that he wanted the circular device that they had received in the other room. James quickly handed it over and looked at Ben.
"I think that the book has something to do with this thing. Just trust me on this one." Then Ben went back to squinting his eyes and reading the book.
"NO!" a voice yelled out from every direction. Then, James noticed something that almost made him faint. The wall behind him, the wall that the entrance was in, was made entirely of dispensers. And it shot out mobs. Zombies, skeletons, spiders, creepers, slimes, and silverfish. One after another, the dispensers shot out what finally seemed like the end of their journey. It also shot out swords. Diamond swords.
"EMMA!" James yelled at her above the sounds of the mobs hitting the floor and charging at them. The diamond swords were right in the middle of the pair of survivors and the army of enemies. He began running, then Emma followed him. The spiders and the silverfish were slightly faster than the rest of the mobs, so they quickly took the lead over the others. James kept on running despite the stitch in his side that had formed. He kept on running despite the fact that this sword would still only provide so much protection against the murderous creatures. He kept on running despite the growing feeling that he wanted
to give up.
He slid down, grabbed both diamond sword, and instantly swung upwards with both. He cut off a spiders head, and panicked as three silverfish began climbing up his hands. Emma grabbed him, threw him backwards with surprising strength, and began running after him.
"What was that for?!" he screamed as he skidded along the stone. Then he noticed that the silverfish that were climbing around him were now on the floor. Emma continued running as she pulled James back onto his feet and took one of the swords from his hand. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"We're going to protect Ben while he deciphers whatever it is he's doing," she replied. Then James quit running. Emma looked back and stopped as well. "What are you doing?!" she cried out as James stabbed a creeper, kicked it back, and cut into a zombie.
"Protect Ben further along the lines when I'm down. We wouldn't be able to hold off all of them over there. I'll buy us a few minutes at most. Tell Ben to hurry," James said, continuing to swing his sword around at a variety of mobs.
Emma took a step towards him, stood there, then ran back to Ben. James was shot in the leg by a skeletons arrow, then was slammed back by a slime. He was knocked into a zombie, who bit him in the neck. James swung his sword back and cut off the zombies head, and stood up. Then he fell to his knees due to the arrow stuck in his leg. Tears clogged his vision as he blindly swung around in a circular motion against the wall of death surrounding him.
Chapter 10:
Ben was almost finished deciphering the first word of the last paragraph when Emma grabbed his shoulder, completely interrupting his entire train of thought. "What is it?" he nearly shouted. Then he saw her terrified expression. Then the gigantic army of enemies gliding towards him. And then he saw James fall over as a zombie bit into his thigh and ripped off a huge chunk of his leg. James' eyes closed and he fell onto the floor, where he was covered by all of the other mobs that were still interested in him.
"Keep going. Go faster though," Emma told him. She grabbed the diamond sword and ran towards the crowd of creatures. She seemed about as suicidal as Ben felt. He kept going though. For James, for Ohras, for Kal, for even ****. For all of his friends that had fallen down in this godforsaken place. He needed the tale to get out. He needed to survive. Or at least get Emma and her recording to. He continued deciphering.
Emma swung the sword upwards, cutting a skeletons body clean in half, then swung again sideways, cutting both a creeper and a spider. A slime knocked into her with the force of a truck, and she flew back towards Ben. The mobs continued advancing. She couldn't have that happen. She got up quickly and ran back into the battle, slicing and stabbing and surviving. The dispensers had quit firing out more mobs, but the army had already been called out. There seemed to be a hundred or so of them.
She fought her way deeper into the battle. Then she forgot entirely about protecting Ben as she saw James on the floor, his face ripped to shreds, yet his body still twitching in spasms. He was completely forgotten besides a few stray zombies who had decided that this meal was more important than Emma and Ben. She could have sworn that he was crying out of a socket that had nothing within it. Emma was tired of vomiting though. She was tired of crying. She was tired of complaining. It was time for her to act, and to act for the best of the remaining two survivors.
She ran away from James, feeling ashamed of herself for leaving him to suffer, yet aware that it would be what he wanted, and that she still needed to get Ben to decipher the code so she could leave. Emma wasn't sure why, but she thought that solving what the circular device was would be an end. Maybe a good end or maybe a bad end, but any end was better than surviving miserably in the darkness forever. She cut her way through the wall of flesh, bone, and fur, and found that Ben was tinkering with the device while running and kicking mobs desperately.
"Help me!" Ben shouted out to Emma as he kicked a creeper back into the horde. The creeper exploded, killing mobs all around him. Ben grinned at this. He was happy that he had managed to buy himself a few more seconds with one easy blow. Emma ran towards him and began killing all of the monsters that came within reach. Ben reached for the sword, obviously thinking he could do better, but Emma glared at him.
"Don't. Worry about your own little assignment, I'll work on mine," she growled as she cut a slime in half. The slime split into two separate pieces and continued to hop towards her to tackle her backwards. She kicked it back and cut it in two again. It split into more pieces and continued attacking. Now the smallest slimes were beginning to overwhelm her, and, remembering Ben's lucky idea, she grabbed a creeper by the back of its neck, let it hiss for a split second, then shoved it into the slimes. It exploded and wiped out all of them.
Then, the circular device hissed. The two rectangles on it began to glow white. Emma glanced up at the statue and saw that it's eyes were glowing white as well. There was a dark, booming laugh from all around them so loud that even the mobs quit attacking in awe. "I did it," Ben whispered as Herobrine began to form in front of them.
Chapter 11:
The mobs began their attack again. Emma had only noticed this when an arrow was shot into her thigh and a spider bit into her hand. She gasped in pain and swung her sword forward, cutting into things. She shouted for Ben's help, who quickly snapped out of his curious gaze and dashed to aid her. They fought together against the horde. Ben was kicking mostly, keeping the mobs away from them for as long as he could. Emma was slicing and stabbing. They were both being wounded every dozen seconds or so. Ben collapsed to one knee and began punching instead. Emma switched hands because the one with the sword in it was nearly hanging by a single tendon, in tatters. They were sobbing and bloody and the pain was unbearable, but they continued. Then, the mobs stopped.
The mobs just quit fighting. They stood completely still, exactly like they were before they froze. Emma noticed this quickly, but Ben continued to punch them and try to rip them apart with his hands. Emma coughed and put her in-tact hand on Ben's shoulder awkwardly, not wanting to put down the sword yet. "They're done," Emma whispered to him. This just seemed to fuel Ben's anger. He stood up, but he cried out in pain in the effort. He continued to attack, but now he was more ruthless. He didn't care how long it took, he was ripping apart heads, smashing them, beating them until they seemed to be a pile of mush. He was killing them now, putting out his anger on these frozen demons.
After ripping apart a skeleton bone from bone, he dropped to the floor again and cried out. He sobbed on the floor, screaming and cursing Notch for what he had done. "Ben is finally showing signs of emotion... I don't know what to do. The mobs are frozen, but we're still stuck in here," she told her tape recorder. "I suppose I'll just go back to our usual method of scanning the walls for-" then she stopped talking, because there was a man standing in front of her.
"I promised that you could go after this room." The man said in a chilly, dark voice. His sockets glowed where his eyes were supposed to be. He wore a devilish grin on his face, as if happy to see Emma in her wounded state. He radiated darkness, anger, sadness, and evil. "You may go," he said, pointing at a wall. The wall quickly opened up, showing trees and water and grass. The outside world. Emma began crying at this. "You can ask me anything before you leave," he finished.
"Why?" she whispered to him while Ben cried in the background.
"Enjoyment." Emma realized that this was an answer that she was going to have to accept. All that they've been through, it was for a single mans pleasure. It was to entertain this sadistic animal.
"So you just dragged us along and didn't kill us because you liked seeing us suffer?" she asked. She had tried to keep contempt out of her voice, fearing that it would anger him and take away the only merciful choice he had made.
"Yes. Also, I wanted to exist again in this world for a few more minutes," he said, glancing at the outside world as well.
"What do you mean," she asked in fear. Had she just brought the same torture to the entire rest of the world?
"Notch. Me and him were brothers, but I died when I was but a child. Notch had pushed me down a mineshaft. I would have survived, but two torches were at the bottom." Herobrine sounded angrier now. His voice was slowly increasing in hate and loudness. "They burned my eyes first. Then the rest of my face. I was still alive until it reached down to here," he shouted the last word and pointed at his stomach.
"After I died I began haunting humanity. I lit their forests and homes on fire. I convinced people to follow my ways, and they called themselves Griefers. I set off TNT and I let people notice me, so that they would tell their stories to the rest of the world and get shunned and made fun of. I wanted them to suffer as I did."
"You acted like a child!" Emma shouted at him. The light in his eyes darkened, and the corners of his mouth went up, his evil grin increasing in evil pleasure. Emma suddenly felt as if she were fighting the horde of monsters again. One more slip up and she would most likely die.
"That's what my brother told me when he found out. Of course, Notch had lived his entire life in perfect wellness. He'd never hurt a mob or a tree. He only bought and borrowed wooden tools. He built his house out of only non-living materials. He farmed. He was a goody two-shoes, full of himself, over-rated *******. And when I finally killed him slowly and painfully, his ghost became as powerful as mine. You see, when you die in minecraft you can either respawn, or you can give up. And when you give up, you disappear. Unless your life was different, and more powerful than the average miner. And so Notch was with me as a ghost. No, wait, he was with me as a god. A god among men, a powerful present that the idiots were too unintelligent to understand. Notch would repair my damage. He would restore the humans items. And eventually, when he found me, I began fighting."
Ben had quit crying out and had seemed to just now find Herobrine. He began crawling towards him. Emma didn't notice.
"I quickly realized that I couldn't win. Yet, when I was on my knees with his sword pointed at my neck, wondering what came after the afterlife, he found he couldn't kill me. He told me that he could if he wanted too, but he didn't. He made me a deal. He would banish me to a new dimension called the Nether. Every ten days I could come outside and back to the real world as a ghost for a few hours. That wasn't enough for me though," he told her. Ben was now a dozen feet behind Herobrine, who hadn't noticed him either.
"I had my pigman minions build me this device, which would make me human again. You see, as a human, Notch can't summon me back. I will live in hiding, tormenting humans and running before Notch can find me. I will get the upper hand at last." Emma didn't have to ask what the device was or if it worked. She had helped him after all. All of her friends were looking for any glimmer of hope so much that they instantly assumed that using the device was a good thing. The circular device with rectangles within it was Herobrines way back into life.
Ben stood up behind Herobrine and wrapped his bloody hands around his neck.
"DIE YOU EVIL PIECE OF ****!" he shouted while he choked at him. Herobrine looked concerned for a second, but then Ben went flying. He hit a wall with amazing force, then fell onto the floor. Then Herobrine moved him to his right, in front of his frozen warriors.
"And now I'll kill you," he told Emma, almost happily.
"You said you'd let us go!" she shouted.
"The exit is right there," he said. Ben stood up slowly. Emma didn't know what he was talking about. Then, Ben screamed. The mobs were back. Ben quickly was attacked by two spiders who jumped all over his body. A silverfish went into one of his widened, terrified eyes.
"GO, EMMA! GO!" he yelled at her. Another silverfish climbed into his mouth and down his throat, and a skeleton shot him in the forehead, ending him quickly. Emma ran as fast as she could.
"Any last wishes?" Herobrine asked smugly from behind her. A number of smart-assed replies came into Emma's mind, but there was an actual thing that she wanted when she died. "If I die, make this into a disk!" she yelled to him, holding our her tape recorder. "And make sure that somebody finds it," she told him as she ran from the army of monsters into the real world. The monsters followed her, all of them hellbent on murdering Emma.
Emma ran as quickly as she could. For a second, as she jumped up a mound of dirt and looked back behind her quickly, she thought that she was going to make it. Then Herobrine grabbed her foot and flung her into the horde. And her screams were heard by nobody. And her death would never be known. Herobrine, still standing inside of the castle with his insane smile opening into a wild laugh, opened his hand and made a device appear. He walked over to Emma's corpse, now long deserted by the mobs that were released into the real world. He picked up the tape recorder and put it inside of the device. Out came a music disk. He magically flung it out into the world, knowing that eventually, somebody would find it. Epilogue:
The explorers ran forward, wanting to find something exciting for extra pay from their king. "I bet that I'll find something cool first," one of the young men called out.
"Liar," one of them replied. "You suck at exploring. I'm the one who's good."
"You can both shut the-" then the man quit running and talking. He looked down. There was a black disk that was torn and ripped. "Have any of you seen this kind of disk before?" he asked the two.
"It looks like Stal," one of them replied. "Probably just left here by some failed explorer a few days ago," he continued. "Useless, really." The two explorers ran away, still taunting and laughing. The one who found it though, he picked up the disk and returned to the kingdom.
Back at the kingdom, he listened to the disk in his house. First, there was only static. The man was terribly disappointed. Then, running. He couldn't believe it! Had he actually found a music disk never discovered before? The recording then made a noise that made his spine tingle. It was somebody running and breathing very heavily. There were rustling and clicking noises in the background, as if somebody were trying to tamper with flint and steel or some other metallic device. Then, the running stopped and there was a cough. Then more rustling, as if somebody were quickly shifting through the pages of a book. Then there was a quick and quiet exhale, as if somebody were just waking up from a deep sleep. Then the record seemed to skip, and there was more running. The running now was quick and terrified. The people were being chased by something. The man didn't know that this was the final run of Emma, the last survivor of Herobrines Resurrection. He did not know that the last noise that was high pitched and terrifying was the sound of her flying through the air and back to her death.
The man had no clue what it was about. He had no clue what had happened. When he told the king, the king had no idea either. The most intelligent people in all the kingdoms of Minecraftia had no idea what had happened on the night of the tape recorder. And somewhere in the world, knowing that his secret was safe, Herobrine grinned.
Remember to leave a comment, as my story will get a new chapter for every positive comment that it gets! Without any comments, I'll just wrap it up early. A quick click on the green + at the bottom right wouldn't hurt me either. It was fun to write though
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Thanks guys! I'll continue writing this. Chapter 2 will be up in a few minutes.
I messed up that quote pretty badly. o_o
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So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Terribly sorry for the huge wait, although I'm sure that you commenters forgot about this story by now. Oh well, uploading chapter two anyways.
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So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Thank you! I will be uploading chapter three later today when I should be going to sleep but find myself trying to do anything but sleeping. Chapter three will include much more action than chapter two, and a lot less dialogue. Chapter two was mainly for extra character development.
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So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Will do! Turns out I have a test tomorrow, so yet another wait must be made. Tomorrow though, I will definitely finish chapter three.
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So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Alright, uploading chapter three right now. I'll only upload chapter four if I get one positive comment.
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So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Just finished chapter three. If you want more, just reply to this with a positive comment and I'll write four tomorrow! Thanks guys!
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So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
I already signed it up for the Story List, the app is in your forum page.
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So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
I already signed it up for the Story List, the app is in your forum page.
Now that you mention it, yes you have posted it and I've seen it but it doesn't have the proper stuff in it. I'll edit it then add it. Promise me that next time you follow the format the others use? Okay? Thanks.
I'll be working on the fourth chapter of this later, thank you for the positive feedback!
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So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Finally finished chapter four. I, once again, won't continue the story unless I get more positive comments (that doesn't mean I won't bump this thread along every once in a while) and thanks for reading it, everybody.
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So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
A pretty nice horror story, I liked the imagery and the characters, but it seemed like the characters without any clear personality are the ones who die, sort of dampening the suspense, but it's still pretty good.
I also noticed that you suddenly switched from third-person view (Narrator's view) to first-person view (Character's view) in chapter 4. It usually isn't a good idea to switch between the two in a story since it may confuse some readers.
I'll be looking forward to the fates of the people stuck in "The Heromines".
But from what I heard on the recording, they'll probably all survive, forget that it ever happened, and live happily ever after (I'm being sarcastic here :lol:)
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The story behind the infamous "music."
All six men and all four women knew what they signed up for. The mysterious letter told them that there would be danger, that they would face the unknown, and that if they succeeded, they would be famous. What they weren't expecting was a trap.
As soon as the minecarts were all at their stops, they found themselves all facing a narrow passageway, lit only by redstone torches. They knew it was just bright enough to keep mobs out, but they'd grown up in a world where the forces of death were only ceased by light. If they were alone, they never would have gone. With a lot of talking and nervous laughter, the brave miners started walking down the halls.
"Where is the guy who sent our letters, anyways?" A man asked.
"I have no clue, but if it gets any less bright over here, I think I'll just leave," a blonde woman replied. Her hair was curly and her eyes were brown. She was stunningly beautiful. The man wished he could think of anything to say, but when he looked at her, his mind went fuzzy.
"Yeah, I-I...dark," he said meekly. A few of the guys behind him snorted through restrained laughter. The girl smiled at him.
The group advanced, their feet echoing loudly against the smooth stone floors. All of their weak attempts at conversation died down due to the fear that coursed through their bodies. They remained silent, even though this made everything seem darker and more eerie.
Then, they reached a wall.
"What's going on?" said a short Asian man in the back of the group. They let him push himself to the front. They all seemed to have the same thoughts.
"Well, I've had quite enough of this. I'm leaving now," said a brunette guy in the back, "I mean, this could be a trap. Notch knows there's a lot of sick people in our world that just enjoy mayhem and murder." There was silence as people considered these words. "What's wrong with you people? Even if you don't want to leave, we've obviously gone the wrong way," he continued.
Suddenly, there was a click from behind the wall to their right. All the miners identified it as a button being pushed. The brunette guy began walking away, just like he'd promised.
"Have fun dying by whatever redstone contraption that button just activated," he called out.
"What a douche," the blonde woman muttered. "He's probably right thou-"
"WAIT!" a black girl cried out. She pointed down the way that they'd come from. At first everybody wondered what she was going on about. Then, it became obvious. The redstone torches that lined both sides of the tunnel were all deactivating. Two by two, going all the way down to where they stood. A faint scream was heard from far away.
"The guy...he's in the dark!" The brown haired nervous guy cried out. "Come on guys, I know it's terrifying, but we need to run down there and help him out! Or at least get back to our minecarts. We can't stand down here forever." All of the others seemed to not hear him. They were paralyzed in fear, their eyes darting to all the torches that were deactivating, bringing the gloom closer to them.
"Guys? GUYS! LET'S. GO!" he yelled at them. Why didn't they understand that the sooner they started running back, the faster they would be out of the dark? It was too late though. The man didn't want to go over there alone, and the final torches that were near them clicked off. In the dark, they all huddled closer together. They raised their fists out of instinct. Little did they know that if a beast were to attack them, only half of them would have the courage to fight back. They stood there for what seemed like hours. None of them could move or speak out of fear of attracting a mob. A woman began to sob in the back, but judging by the muffled sound, she was trying to shut herself up.
Then, the lights turned back on. They were all trapped in a box though, and when they looked up, they saw that they'd gone down about fifty blocks from the tunnel they used to be in. The box was twenty-five by twenty-five, and there was no sign of a way out. The Asian man looked up and screamed at all of them to look. Looking down at them was the brunette man, his eyes wide in horror.
"Hey!" called out the black woman. In reply, the man's head came falling down the hole. His body was no where to be seen, and the head was going to land in between the blonde girl and a guy with a giant green Mohawk. The blonde girl's yells were only interrupted by a large amount of vomit that streamed out of her throat as the head splattered and the blood sprayed everywhere.
Written on the forehead of the poor man were the words 'Welcome to the Heromines. I hope you'll enjoy your stay.'
Chapter 2:
The blonde girl wiped the vomit from her mouth. "Oh, Notch," she moaned, looking away from the partially exploded head that lie on the floor in a puddle of gore. Everybody else just stared at it, just as they did in the mine above them. Frozen. Paralyzed. All of them.
"Guys, let's think this through, okay? This is important. You can NOT freeze up in these situations anymore. Chances are...judging by the name of this place...there are going to be many more moments where our hearts are put to the test. We can't panic. We need to survive and live to tell the tale," the brown haired man said.
Everybody knew the tale of Herobrine. Everybody. As a kid you were warned about him. As an adult he still haunted you in the reflection of waters, in the dark shadows of a deserted building. And as an old man, he was always watching you, waiting. Herobrine is darkness. He is evil. He is death. And the fact that these mines were named "Heromines" escaped nobody.
"Brave words," a skinny, tall man in a fine black suit spoke up, "coming from a guy who can't even talk to a girl correctly." The man with the spikey green hair walked up to him fiercely, a look on his face that was startling enough without the constant effect of his haircut and clothing.
"In case you didn't notice, he's the only one who was man enough to talk about rescuing the other guy. That one," he repeated, pointing at the bloody head on the floor in front of them. "So shut the hell up about him being brave. There's a difference between being brave and being awkward."
The man with brown hair coughed, not enjoying the conversation being held as if he weren't standing a mere five blocks away from them. "Yeah, thanks," he said to them. There was a long silence as the people stood around, beginning to realize just how little they could do down there. The brown haired man wondered if they wanted him to take control. He didn't want the responsibility, but at the same time he felt that a leader is ideal in any civilization, no matter how small.
"My name is James. James Maynard," he told them.
"Kal Larogue," the punk looking man replied, holding out his hand. James shook it, relieved that he wasn't being mocked for the introduction in the middle of this terrifying ordeal.
"Emma Holland," the blonde said.
"Ohras Bright," added the Asian man.
"My name-" started a young woman in the back, who was wearing a white lab coat and goggles that made her look rather like a giant chicken with enderman eyes. She was quickly interrupted by the suited man.
"What are we doing? We're down in a damn jail cell and instead of brainstorming or doing anything efficient, we're greeting each other? I don't give a damn about your names, I want to get out." He paced around the room full of five men and four women. He looked just as frustrated as he sounded.
"Well if we want to escape together, I want to at least know you guys a little bit. You know, first name basis. I don't expect us all to hug each other and start singing." The suited man made a fist but didn't look up at James. His face went a horrible shade of red, and he looked like he was trembling while he walked.
"We're all going to die in here. I don't want to make your deaths any harder on myself, so I don't want to exchange names. Is that so wrong?"
"Of course not," James said, glad that he was showing signs of any emotion besides anger.
"We'll just call you ****," said the black woman.
Chapter 3:
Before the man who was titled **** could reply to her, the room suddenly brightened. They all looked around, searching for the mysterious source of light.
"THERE!" shouted the woman in the lab coat. She was pointing upwards. Falling towards them, slowly promising their painful yet swift demise, was lava. It flowed down block by block, making the people warmer and warmer with its approach.
"WHAT DO WE DO!?" the African American cried out.
"I don't know!" Shouted James. "I feel like if the man who brought us here wanted us dead, he would have just killed us. He wants us to live somehow. Search for buttons, pressure plates, levers, anything! We need to find a way out." The people didn't go against his orders. They started scanning the walls.
The lava had begun making them sweat. Beads of sweat dripped off of their heads and hit the floor, mocking them by being lower and cooler than they were. Drip, splash. Drip, splash. The survivors pounded on the walls in case they were missing a button. They stomped on the floors for pressure plates that may not have been sensitive. The lava became but a few blocks above them.
The tallest of the group, a rather chubby man with brown hair, suddenly caught fire. The lava had almost touched his hair, and had ignited it due to the heat alone. The man screamed, trying to put it out but knowing it was futile.
"BEN!" he screamed. "BEN! NAME'S BEN!" he cried out, while rolling around in agony. Everybody merely stared at him in horror. The lava was right above them, the heat making their eyes burn and the top of their heads feel like they were going through what Ben was. A Hispanic woman who was silent the entire trip decided to end it quicker than Ben's death was. She jumped up and her head hit the lava. When her body came out of it, the head was missing. Her neck ended in a burning stump.
"NO!" James shouted. "ON YOUR KNEES. KEEP LOOKING!" He cried out. They all got on their knees, the lava inching closer and closer to them. "WE CAN'T GIVE UP!" he moaned, even though he knew that in a matter of seconds they would all be dead.
"I got it!" Ohras shouted. He slammed his fist into the button. They all began to fall down, the floor beneath them pulled out as if by magic. They landed in water. The only light in the entire room was from the lava above them still, even though it was many blocks away now. The roof that used to be their floor came back, concealing them from the lava but casting them into the darkness once again.
"Thank you so much, Ohras," James told him. The others followed up by thanking him and congratulating him. Only **** remained silent.
Suddenly, the blonde started talking. "I'm going to start recording what we're doing down here. Is that okay?" she asked. I told her it was fine. "There are seven of us, me, James, the African American lady named..."
"Imani," she told him.
"Right. Then there's the woman in the lab coat... "
"Renee."
"Thanks. Then there's Asian guy who just saved our lives, Ohras, and there's Kal the punk rock looking dude, and ****. Then there's the guy who died in the very beginning of all of this, the Hispanic lady, and the guy named Ben. There's only seven of us left. In the beginning there were ten," she sobbed the last word, then we heard the click as her recording device was stopped.
"Eleven," a rough, powerful voice shouted out from his hidden location.
Chapter 4:
"WHO ARE YOU!?" James shouted furiously from the dark. He pulled his own hair, frustrated at being left in the dark. He felt so exposed. He felt like he was going to die any second now.
"Fear," the voice called out.
"WHO ARE YOU REALL-" James was interrupted mid-sentence. By a scream. It came from what seemed like right on top of him! It was endless, pained, and terrified. With that scream came footsteps, frantic and quick, and more screams. The screams of other people. It took James a while to realize that the original scream was his own. His mouth was closed, and his mind calmed with that realization. So why was the screaming still going?
"JAMES! JAMES, WHERE ARE YOU!?" Emma cried out over the sound of yelling and running footsteps in the water.
"I'm here! I'm okay, Emma! Everybody shut up and calm down. I'm okay. I think the screaming is a recording," he told them quickly. It took them a while, but eventually they all went quiet and stopped moving.
"All of you come to the sound of my voice. We need to stick together," he shouted over the screams.
"Who died and made you leader?" **** finally called out from what sounded like James' right. It was a strange thing, he thought, that **** was the one who could talk out before any of the others. 'Then again,' he thought, 'rudeness doesn't mean cowardice.'
"You, if you don't shut the hell up," Kal growled. That shut **** up. They all eventually came to him. They stood around each other, comforted by the sounds of their breathing. It was proof that there were other people with them. That they were all safe from the darkness. For now.
"Now what?" Renee asked quietly.
"We should try to find a way out in the dark. Poke all along the walls until we find a way out." Imani says.
"Why would this sicko put us in the dark if he just wants us to escape?" Ohras asked.
"Why would he put us in the dark if he wants us to die? He could have killed us any time now if he wanted. We might as well play along for now. Better than sitting here until we go insane by the screaming, starve to death, or do both." Kal told him.
"Way to be optimistic, Kal. Seriously though, that's a decent point. All of us start searching the walls. Tell us if you find anything," James told them. With that, they all splashed around along the walls, jumping, ducking, feeling, and searching. All the while James screams went on. It seemed like hours, and James could feel what little was left of his sanity practically draining away. He kept glancing behind him out of paranoia only to realize that he wouldn't be able to see anything attacking him in the first place. His hands felt like they were burning because of all of the rubbing he'd done. Every time he felt a crack or a bump he would get excited, but it was always nothing more than an error in the wall. No tunnels, no crevices, just this boxed out room.
Finally, Renee yelled, "I found something! Come here, somebody, lift me up!"
"I'm close to you," Ohras told her. "I'll do it."
"Hurry," Renee called out. Ohras didn't reply, but his feet moved faster. James walked over to them as well, in case anything went wrong. A short distance in front of him he heard Ohras grunt.
"Are you okay?" Emma beat James to the question.
"Yeah...just...tiring," he said through a clearly strained voice. A few more minutes of soft grunting (or at least soft compared to the screaming. James could tell that his hearing was messed up), and finally Renee called out.
"It's a tiny little tunnel. I can barely fit in here. And it's all smelly and sticky. There's fur too. Lots of fur. And...red dots are coming towards me! Woah, what are those?" Renee commentated her exploration into the tunnel.
"Renee? RENEE, GET DOWN!" Kal screamed suddenly.
"Why?" she asked, scared. "What's- NO! AHH! HELP ME!" Her screams were quickly dragged further and further away. Then, they stopped.
"WHAT WAS THAT?" **** yelled. Before Kal could answer, the lights turned on. Blinded, James shielded his eyes. The light was too intense! He slowly lowered his arms from his face just in time to see the fangs of the spider reach for his cheeks.
Chapter 5:
Ohras punched the spider in the stomach, making it fly a few feet from James. James' eyes were still pained, but he kept them open for his own safety. Suddenly, somebody besides him shot into his mind. 'Emma!' He looked around frantically, seeing blurry shapes moving around and blood spilling. Noise was shooting into his head from every direction. His own recorded screaming was gone, but that didn't matter to him. The screams of all of his friends was just as loud, and even worse to hear.
James then saw Imani and Emma fighting back to back, swinging their fists wildly at the spiders, who seemed apprehensive, but were jumping up at them every once in a while anyways. There were dozens of them attacking all of the people. Even as James glanced at Emma and Imani valiantly defending their own lives, he had to punch his enemies himself.
"WE'RE GOING TO DIE!" Imani cried out.
"DON'T TALK LIKE THAT," Kal shouted as he ducked down, evading a leaping spider. The spiders giant fangs nearly bit straight into Kal's forehead, but instead chomped down on his mohawk. Kal reached up, grabbed it by two of its eight, hairy legs, and ripped them clean off of its body. He let it fall to the floor next to him, on its back.
James' mind worked like a computer, searching for memories that might help him, scanning for ways to escape. Then it hit him.
"GUYS, LET'S GO THROUGH THE TUBES!" even as James yelled it, he dashed towards the skinny passages through which the spiders had climbed. He could hear the people behind him follow him, not bothering to try to attack all of the spiders. Then, James heard the loudest scream of the day. He glanced back while running full speed, to witness **** hit the watery floor face-down. A spider had latched onto his leg.
Everybody kept running. Some slowed down, but once they realized that every spider in the room was suddenly running towards their fallen ally, they kept running. Except for Kal. Kal turned around and ran towards ****, faster than all of the spiders. James stopped when he reached the wall, then looked behind him at his friends. Ohras was closest to him.
"Ohras, give me your foot. I'll lift you all up, then one of you guys can pull me." James told them.
"You go first, James. I'll-" Ohras didn't finish, because behind them Dicks screams were increasing in volume and intensity. James glared at him as if to say 'You'd better just give me the damn foot.' And Ohras followed his silent command. He jumped up onto the wall and James pushed his foot upwards until he was fitting smugly into the hole of theirs.
"OHRAS, START CRAWLING AND DON'T STOP!" James shouted as he helped up Imani. After Imani dragged herself inside of the hole, James helped Emma. As soon as he finished, Emma held out her hands to him.
"I'll pull you up!" she told him.
"No! I'm going to wait for-" he glanced backwards at Kal. Kal was dragging **** by the arm through the water, while **** punched wildly at the spiders surrounding them. The spiders were relentless, jumping over and over as they screeched and bit.
"Hurry up, guys!" James shouted. He realized that they probably wouldn't make it. He glanced up and saw Emma still looking down and Kal and ****, biting her lip in anxiousness. "Alright, Emma, get me up," he told her sadly. She reached her arms down and James took them.
When James was safely in, Emma followed Ohras and Imani down into the unknown that the tunnel led them. James waited behind for Kal and ****, watching them slowly make their way towards James with undying hope. Kal finally made it, then pushed **** up to James, clearly struggling in the process. A spider bit into his leg as he pushed **** up, and Kal crumpled. James barely grabbed onto **** in time, and he pulled him up. Kal fell to the water and was quickly covered in furry, scurrying legs.
He pulled the crying, half-unconscious **** through the tunnel until he landed into a new room with the others. It was made of wood and had buttons all over the walls. Ohras, Imani, and Emma were all panting on the floor. James finally put Dicks arm down.
"Kal...?" I lowered my head. I'd failed them. I wanted to save Kal and ****, I promised to get them both out of there safely, and I failed. And then Imani put her hand to Dicks neck, checking for a pulse, and I'd failed them twice.
Chapter 6:
"He's gone," Imani announced. Kal had died for no reason. **** had died either way.
"Was it poison?" Emma gasped. They'd all been bitten numerous times.
"No, it wasn't. Just loss of blood." James felt like killing himself. Tears spilled from his eyes for the first time since he was a child. The blood coming out of a nasty gash in his arm from a spider bite felt like it was draining not only his life, but also his happiness. He looked around at his three remaining team mates and realized that they had not given up yet. They still wanted a way out. And that gave him strength.
"SO WHAT DO YOU WANT!?" James shouted up at the roof of their room. "WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH US?" he cried.
"Results," replied the same dark, powerful voice.
"USE YOUR WORDS, YOU STUPID *****! WHAT DO YOU MEAN!?" James yelled, his rage fueling his false fearlessness.
"Each button does something different. A fourth will let you go from this room one way or another." More games. This entire incident with the Heromines was all just a game for Him. Just another amusing show. Just another amazing performance.
"Why should we follow you?" Ohras spoke quietly. "Why continue? This room is at least safe for now." Somehow, He heard Ohras.
"Because after this room there are two more. And then you can leave."
"'And then you can leave'," Ohras quoted. "Yeah, right." No response.
"I think he's telling the truth..." Imani told him. "There's really no point in lying. What could he gain by lying to us?"
"Fun. Enjoyment. The sick *******," Emma said. James gloomily noted that Emma was still talking into her tape recorder. He wondered if it had caught everything that had happened so far.
"So which button do we press, James?" Ohras asked James.
"I don't know. I'm not the genius here," he said, looking at Imani. She glanced back at him in surprise, as if shocked to find out that he thought that she was a genius. She didn't comment on it though.
Instead, she said, "I think that this is just a guessing game. We press a button and hope for the best." James did. His hand reached for the button, praying to Notch, if he was still somehow up there and permitting this to happen, to let this be the right one. His fingers felt the cold surface of the stone rectangle jutting out of the wall. And he pushed it.
At first, nothing happened. They all waited in silence for their deaths or salvation. Then, Ben came out of the ceiling. He fell nearly face first, but evened out at the last second and landed straight onto his stomach. He seemed to only wake up when he hit the floor. He shouted out and felt around his head, where his hair was. Or, used to be.
Ben had a horrifying, scarred scalp with strange patches of hair in random places where the fire hadn't reached. It wasn't a burned black, but instead a delicate pink, which meant that he had somehow not only caught off fire and survived, but it happened quickly. He was panting, and his eyes were wide open.
"What happened to you, Ben? I thought you'd died," Emma asked him bluntly.
"Yeah, I thought so too. I guess we'll both have to live with it," he replied, "mind the pun. By the way, what are we doing now? Spleefing? Watching TV? Swimming in diamonds?"
"Actually we're pushing buttons that decide whether we live or die," James told him.
"Well then. I'm supposed to be dead anyways, doesn't quite matter to me," Ben announced to the room. He smashed the button to his direct left without looking at it. Then direction ceased to exist. Space ceased to exist. All that existed was them, and the never ending pushing and shoving of...something. They were tossed and tugged and finally, they all fell into a new room.
Chapter 7
"Are you-" James tried to speak, but his throat got raided by a gigantic cloud of dust that had unsettled when they'd hit the floor of this new room. He coughed until he was on his knees, gasping for breath, then coughed some more. He felt like he was about to die. Then he found it in him to stop. He breathed the bitter tasting air around him, gasping at it like a fish out of water.
"Where are we?" Ohras asked. The room had the Heromines usual dim lighting, and I could barely see five feet in front of me. It seemed like an empty, bland room. Like the one where Ben had "died".
"I don't know, but I landed on something funny. I think-" he stopped, and James could hear him rustling his coat. "Ah look, I found this thing." James, Emma, Ohras, and Imani all walked towards him, then Emma pulled out her recorder.
"It's a tan circular device with...two rectangles in the middle of it. It clicks when you push it down, and it has...notches all around it. I don't know what it is or means." Then she spoke more to Ben than the machine. "Do you know where it came from?"
"Not at all," Ben replied, "I guess it was planted on me when I passed out from the heat on my head." Imani held out her hand, not bothering to ask or look at Ben. Ben scoffed but handed it over anyways.
Suddenly, there was a horrifying whispering noise that seemed to radiate out of the walls, roof, and ceiling. It seemed to come out of the room itself. Imani's eyes widened a large amount and looked at the device.
"We have to get rid of this. He-He wants us to activate it. I...think I know how to. He just told me." Ben didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed the circular contraption and threw it onto the stone ground. He stomped on it repeatedly and when he picked it up again afterwards...it was the exact same.
"Not a scratch on it," Emma muttered into her machine. Imani snatched the machine out of Ben's hands and started tampering on it.
"If this is working like I think it does, I should be able to-" then her forehead exploded. Blood dripped down from her wound, and the arrow sticking out of her popped out as her body collapsed onto the ground. The machine hit the ground yet again, and Imani's blood swam around it, as if the mechanism had a forcefield. Emma was sobbing into her hand again, her face practically glowing, it was so pale.
"Well then," Ben said casually. "I believe that trying to destroy it is now out of the question."
Emma and Ohras both glared daggers, but James didn't care. He was somewhere far away, where none of this death and misery were so abundant. James had given up.
"James. Not yet, James." That snapped James out of his denial, and back into the harsh reality. He'd had about a minute in his blissful insanity, but apparently He didn't give breaks.
"So, what?" James called out to the roof of their prison. "What do we do now? If we can't mess with this, and we can't do anything, what do we do?"
"Notch forbids," the voice called out to them, sounding almost sad instead of it's usual all-powerful boom. James sighed and started searching the walls again. Seeing what he was doing, Emma and Ben helped him.
"Hey, I found something," Ohras told them. "This wall feels more like wood than stone. And...yep, it's a chest." James walked over, opened the chest, vomited, sobbed, and immediately wished he hadn't.
Chapter 8:
Inside of the chest were the heads of his less fortunate attempted escapees. There was the nameless man whose head was practically half gone, with the words "Welcome to the Heromines. I hope you enjoy your stay," written on it. There was a random gap that only a few hairs occupied in between the nameless man and Renee's head. Renee's head had bite marks and was discolored due to her encounter with the spiders. Then, Kal, who's head looked a bit like Renee's, except with more bite marks and less discoloration. Then there was ****'s, who (sadly) had the most peaceful looking death. His eyes were the only one who's were closed. And next to his, Imani. A hole as wide as the arrow that pierced her occupied the space between her eyes.
James glanced back and noticed that Imani's whole body was gone. She died in the same room that they were in now, and yet her head was inside the box. Somehow, this didn't surprise him. 'Just another strange thing in these mines,' he thought to himself.
He noticed that Ohras had looked into the chest as well, and he was staring at the heads as intensely as James was. Ohras glanced at him and said, "Don't let the others see." With those words, Ben quickly walked towards them, shoved past Ohras when he tried to stop him, and looked into the chest.
"Jeez. Don't tell me what happened to all those people who died after me. Looks brutal," he told them. Emma started walking towards the chest as well.
"Emma, you don't want to-" James started.
"Don't tell me what I can or can't do, James," she said. Emma had already guessed what lied within the chest, but she needed to be sure. She felt that she needed to see them all. "Oh, Notch," she cried out. She looked ready to vomit, but was all out of things to barf out. James suddenly noticed how hungry he was. If he didn't die in some other way, he would starve to death fairly soon. This made James smile.
"The skull key," the voice called out from all around them.
"I think the term was Skeleton Key," Ohras muttered. Emma's eyes widened. She wretched, but nothing but bile flew from her throat.
"No- he means... Skull key," she said, pointing at the chest. Ben looked around at all of them, shrugged as if to say 'I guess it's up to me,' and then threw the chest onto the ground in front of him. He warned them to look away, still aware that not all of them were quite as insane as him, and then stomped on them until all that was left was a few bits of bones, a whole lot of mush, and a shiny silver key. He grabbed the key and wiped it on his shirt.
"So where do we put this?" he asked. All of them looked back at Ben, and realized he was right: there was no keyhole. Ben threw the key to James. James couldn't deal with that cursed item. He passed it to Ohras, who reluctantly grasped it. Then, some stone popped out of the wall, then was quickly replaced by a piece of stone with a lock. "Ah," Ohras said, stepping towards the wall and insert the key. There was a quick hiss from in front of him.
Ohras started running back. "STAND BA-" then the wall behind him, where he placed the key, exploded. Ohras flew forward, scraped his face along the stone floor, then hit the wall where he was running to feet first with a sickening crunch. All of the others were knocked backwards and to the floor, but not as strongly as Ohras was.
"Ohras, are you okay?" James asked when the debris and dust cleared enough for him to trust the ability to breathe. Ohras coughed, then tried to stand up. He screamed out in pain and fell back on the floor, back-up.
"No. Both of my feet and-," he said, wincing, "-and my face. It burns, James. It burns." James walked up to him and lifted him onto his feet. He couldn't help but glance at Ohras' face as he assisted him. It was as if Ohras was sanded by a giant, sadistic piece of sandpaper. It was raw, bloody, and yet appeared to be smooth at the same time. Ben took Ohras' other side, and they both carried him into the next room.
"At least we're in the last one, according to the voice," Emma whispered into her tape recorder.
Chapter 9:
"The last room," James whispered to himself. They stood together, waiting for the dust to float away. The lighting in this room was much brighter, James observed from inside of the dust storm. Then, the dirty clouds parted, and they all fell under a spell. In this room was a statue of what seemed like a normal human being. Except within the sockets of the human, there was nothing. The statue was gigantic, built for the gods. It was an amazing piece of stone and cobblestone. It was a work of pure art. And it felt wrong.
Just looking at it gave James the creeps. It felt bad, evil almost. "Let's go check it out," he told the others, even though his heart screamed for him to run away and never come back. The three remaining miners walked towards the statue. Once they'd gotten closer, they saw that between the feet of the giant, there was a table. On the table was a brown, dusty, old book. It was written in what seemed like another language. They all crouched down next to it and tried to find out what it said.
"I can read it," Ben told them both.
"Wha- how?" Emma asked him in surprise.
"It's written in an old tundra biome dialect. I was raised in a tundra biome, so I can read it. It'll just take a while. I've forgotten a lot." Ben held out his hand, and James stared at it for a while before realizing that he wanted the circular device that they had received in the other room. James quickly handed it over and looked at Ben.
"I think that the book has something to do with this thing. Just trust me on this one." Then Ben went back to squinting his eyes and reading the book.
"NO!" a voice yelled out from every direction. Then, James noticed something that almost made him faint. The wall behind him, the wall that the entrance was in, was made entirely of dispensers. And it shot out mobs. Zombies, skeletons, spiders, creepers, slimes, and silverfish. One after another, the dispensers shot out what finally seemed like the end of their journey. It also shot out swords. Diamond swords.
"EMMA!" James yelled at her above the sounds of the mobs hitting the floor and charging at them. The diamond swords were right in the middle of the pair of survivors and the army of enemies. He began running, then Emma followed him. The spiders and the silverfish were slightly faster than the rest of the mobs, so they quickly took the lead over the others. James kept on running despite the stitch in his side that had formed. He kept on running despite the fact that this sword would still only provide so much protection against the murderous creatures. He kept on running despite the growing feeling that he wanted
to give up.
He slid down, grabbed both diamond sword, and instantly swung upwards with both. He cut off a spiders head, and panicked as three silverfish began climbing up his hands. Emma grabbed him, threw him backwards with surprising strength, and began running after him.
"What was that for?!" he screamed as he skidded along the stone. Then he noticed that the silverfish that were climbing around him were now on the floor. Emma continued running as she pulled James back onto his feet and took one of the swords from his hand. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"We're going to protect Ben while he deciphers whatever it is he's doing," she replied. Then James quit running. Emma looked back and stopped as well. "What are you doing?!" she cried out as James stabbed a creeper, kicked it back, and cut into a zombie.
"Protect Ben further along the lines when I'm down. We wouldn't be able to hold off all of them over there. I'll buy us a few minutes at most. Tell Ben to hurry," James said, continuing to swing his sword around at a variety of mobs.
Emma took a step towards him, stood there, then ran back to Ben. James was shot in the leg by a skeletons arrow, then was slammed back by a slime. He was knocked into a zombie, who bit him in the neck. James swung his sword back and cut off the zombies head, and stood up. Then he fell to his knees due to the arrow stuck in his leg. Tears clogged his vision as he blindly swung around in a circular motion against the wall of death surrounding him.
Chapter 10:
Ben was almost finished deciphering the first word of the last paragraph when Emma grabbed his shoulder, completely interrupting his entire train of thought. "What is it?" he nearly shouted. Then he saw her terrified expression. Then the gigantic army of enemies gliding towards him. And then he saw James fall over as a zombie bit into his thigh and ripped off a huge chunk of his leg. James' eyes closed and he fell onto the floor, where he was covered by all of the other mobs that were still interested in him.
"Keep going. Go faster though," Emma told him. She grabbed the diamond sword and ran towards the crowd of creatures. She seemed about as suicidal as Ben felt. He kept going though. For James, for Ohras, for Kal, for even ****. For all of his friends that had fallen down in this godforsaken place. He needed the tale to get out. He needed to survive. Or at least get Emma and her recording to. He continued deciphering.
Emma swung the sword upwards, cutting a skeletons body clean in half, then swung again sideways, cutting both a creeper and a spider. A slime knocked into her with the force of a truck, and she flew back towards Ben. The mobs continued advancing. She couldn't have that happen. She got up quickly and ran back into the battle, slicing and stabbing and surviving. The dispensers had quit firing out more mobs, but the army had already been called out. There seemed to be a hundred or so of them.
She fought her way deeper into the battle. Then she forgot entirely about protecting Ben as she saw James on the floor, his face ripped to shreds, yet his body still twitching in spasms. He was completely forgotten besides a few stray zombies who had decided that this meal was more important than Emma and Ben. She could have sworn that he was crying out of a socket that had nothing within it. Emma was tired of vomiting though. She was tired of crying. She was tired of complaining. It was time for her to act, and to act for the best of the remaining two survivors.
She ran away from James, feeling ashamed of herself for leaving him to suffer, yet aware that it would be what he wanted, and that she still needed to get Ben to decipher the code so she could leave. Emma wasn't sure why, but she thought that solving what the circular device was would be an end. Maybe a good end or maybe a bad end, but any end was better than surviving miserably in the darkness forever. She cut her way through the wall of flesh, bone, and fur, and found that Ben was tinkering with the device while running and kicking mobs desperately.
"Help me!" Ben shouted out to Emma as he kicked a creeper back into the horde. The creeper exploded, killing mobs all around him. Ben grinned at this. He was happy that he had managed to buy himself a few more seconds with one easy blow. Emma ran towards him and began killing all of the monsters that came within reach. Ben reached for the sword, obviously thinking he could do better, but Emma glared at him.
"Don't. Worry about your own little assignment, I'll work on mine," she growled as she cut a slime in half. The slime split into two separate pieces and continued to hop towards her to tackle her backwards. She kicked it back and cut it in two again. It split into more pieces and continued attacking. Now the smallest slimes were beginning to overwhelm her, and, remembering Ben's lucky idea, she grabbed a creeper by the back of its neck, let it hiss for a split second, then shoved it into the slimes. It exploded and wiped out all of them.
Then, the circular device hissed. The two rectangles on it began to glow white. Emma glanced up at the statue and saw that it's eyes were glowing white as well. There was a dark, booming laugh from all around them so loud that even the mobs quit attacking in awe. "I did it," Ben whispered as Herobrine began to form in front of them.
Chapter 11:
The mobs began their attack again. Emma had only noticed this when an arrow was shot into her thigh and a spider bit into her hand. She gasped in pain and swung her sword forward, cutting into things. She shouted for Ben's help, who quickly snapped out of his curious gaze and dashed to aid her. They fought together against the horde. Ben was kicking mostly, keeping the mobs away from them for as long as he could. Emma was slicing and stabbing. They were both being wounded every dozen seconds or so. Ben collapsed to one knee and began punching instead. Emma switched hands because the one with the sword in it was nearly hanging by a single tendon, in tatters. They were sobbing and bloody and the pain was unbearable, but they continued. Then, the mobs stopped.
The mobs just quit fighting. They stood completely still, exactly like they were before they froze. Emma noticed this quickly, but Ben continued to punch them and try to rip them apart with his hands. Emma coughed and put her in-tact hand on Ben's shoulder awkwardly, not wanting to put down the sword yet. "They're done," Emma whispered to him. This just seemed to fuel Ben's anger. He stood up, but he cried out in pain in the effort. He continued to attack, but now he was more ruthless. He didn't care how long it took, he was ripping apart heads, smashing them, beating them until they seemed to be a pile of mush. He was killing them now, putting out his anger on these frozen demons.
After ripping apart a skeleton bone from bone, he dropped to the floor again and cried out. He sobbed on the floor, screaming and cursing Notch for what he had done. "Ben is finally showing signs of emotion... I don't know what to do. The mobs are frozen, but we're still stuck in here," she told her tape recorder. "I suppose I'll just go back to our usual method of scanning the walls for-" then she stopped talking, because there was a man standing in front of her.
"I promised that you could go after this room." The man said in a chilly, dark voice. His sockets glowed where his eyes were supposed to be. He wore a devilish grin on his face, as if happy to see Emma in her wounded state. He radiated darkness, anger, sadness, and evil. "You may go," he said, pointing at a wall. The wall quickly opened up, showing trees and water and grass. The outside world. Emma began crying at this. "You can ask me anything before you leave," he finished.
"Why?" she whispered to him while Ben cried in the background.
"Enjoyment." Emma realized that this was an answer that she was going to have to accept. All that they've been through, it was for a single mans pleasure. It was to entertain this sadistic animal.
"So you just dragged us along and didn't kill us because you liked seeing us suffer?" she asked. She had tried to keep contempt out of her voice, fearing that it would anger him and take away the only merciful choice he had made.
"Yes. Also, I wanted to exist again in this world for a few more minutes," he said, glancing at the outside world as well.
"What do you mean," she asked in fear. Had she just brought the same torture to the entire rest of the world?
"Notch. Me and him were brothers, but I died when I was but a child. Notch had pushed me down a mineshaft. I would have survived, but two torches were at the bottom." Herobrine sounded angrier now. His voice was slowly increasing in hate and loudness. "They burned my eyes first. Then the rest of my face. I was still alive until it reached down to here," he shouted the last word and pointed at his stomach.
"After I died I began haunting humanity. I lit their forests and homes on fire. I convinced people to follow my ways, and they called themselves Griefers. I set off TNT and I let people notice me, so that they would tell their stories to the rest of the world and get shunned and made fun of. I wanted them to suffer as I did."
"You acted like a child!" Emma shouted at him. The light in his eyes darkened, and the corners of his mouth went up, his evil grin increasing in evil pleasure. Emma suddenly felt as if she were fighting the horde of monsters again. One more slip up and she would most likely die.
"That's what my brother told me when he found out. Of course, Notch had lived his entire life in perfect wellness. He'd never hurt a mob or a tree. He only bought and borrowed wooden tools. He built his house out of only non-living materials. He farmed. He was a goody two-shoes, full of himself, over-rated *******. And when I finally killed him slowly and painfully, his ghost became as powerful as mine. You see, when you die in minecraft you can either respawn, or you can give up. And when you give up, you disappear. Unless your life was different, and more powerful than the average miner. And so Notch was with me as a ghost. No, wait, he was with me as a god. A god among men, a powerful present that the idiots were too unintelligent to understand. Notch would repair my damage. He would restore the humans items. And eventually, when he found me, I began fighting."
Ben had quit crying out and had seemed to just now find Herobrine. He began crawling towards him. Emma didn't notice.
"I quickly realized that I couldn't win. Yet, when I was on my knees with his sword pointed at my neck, wondering what came after the afterlife, he found he couldn't kill me. He told me that he could if he wanted too, but he didn't. He made me a deal. He would banish me to a new dimension called the Nether. Every ten days I could come outside and back to the real world as a ghost for a few hours. That wasn't enough for me though," he told her. Ben was now a dozen feet behind Herobrine, who hadn't noticed him either.
"I had my pigman minions build me this device, which would make me human again. You see, as a human, Notch can't summon me back. I will live in hiding, tormenting humans and running before Notch can find me. I will get the upper hand at last." Emma didn't have to ask what the device was or if it worked. She had helped him after all. All of her friends were looking for any glimmer of hope so much that they instantly assumed that using the device was a good thing. The circular device with rectangles within it was Herobrines way back into life.
Ben stood up behind Herobrine and wrapped his bloody hands around his neck.
"DIE YOU EVIL PIECE OF ****!" he shouted while he choked at him. Herobrine looked concerned for a second, but then Ben went flying. He hit a wall with amazing force, then fell onto the floor. Then Herobrine moved him to his right, in front of his frozen warriors.
"And now I'll kill you," he told Emma, almost happily.
"You said you'd let us go!" she shouted.
"The exit is right there," he said. Ben stood up slowly. Emma didn't know what he was talking about. Then, Ben screamed. The mobs were back. Ben quickly was attacked by two spiders who jumped all over his body. A silverfish went into one of his widened, terrified eyes.
"GO, EMMA! GO!" he yelled at her. Another silverfish climbed into his mouth and down his throat, and a skeleton shot him in the forehead, ending him quickly. Emma ran as fast as she could.
"Any last wishes?" Herobrine asked smugly from behind her. A number of smart-assed replies came into Emma's mind, but there was an actual thing that she wanted when she died. "If I die, make this into a disk!" she yelled to him, holding our her tape recorder. "And make sure that somebody finds it," she told him as she ran from the army of monsters into the real world. The monsters followed her, all of them hellbent on murdering Emma.
Emma ran as quickly as she could. For a second, as she jumped up a mound of dirt and looked back behind her quickly, she thought that she was going to make it. Then Herobrine grabbed her foot and flung her into the horde. And her screams were heard by nobody. And her death would never be known. Herobrine, still standing inside of the castle with his insane smile opening into a wild laugh, opened his hand and made a device appear. He walked over to Emma's corpse, now long deserted by the mobs that were released into the real world. He picked up the tape recorder and put it inside of the device. Out came a music disk. He magically flung it out into the world, knowing that eventually, somebody would find it.
Epilogue:
The explorers ran forward, wanting to find something exciting for extra pay from their king. "I bet that I'll find something cool first," one of the young men called out.
"Liar," one of them replied. "You suck at exploring. I'm the one who's good."
"You can both shut the-" then the man quit running and talking. He looked down. There was a black disk that was torn and ripped. "Have any of you seen this kind of disk before?" he asked the two.
"It looks like Stal," one of them replied. "Probably just left here by some failed explorer a few days ago," he continued. "Useless, really." The two explorers ran away, still taunting and laughing. The one who found it though, he picked up the disk and returned to the kingdom.
Back at the kingdom, he listened to the disk in his house. First, there was only static. The man was terribly disappointed. Then, running. He couldn't believe it! Had he actually found a music disk never discovered before? The recording then made a noise that made his spine tingle. It was somebody running and breathing very heavily. There were rustling and clicking noises in the background, as if somebody were trying to tamper with flint and steel or some other metallic device. Then, the running stopped and there was a cough. Then more rustling, as if somebody were quickly shifting through the pages of a book. Then there was a quick and quiet exhale, as if somebody were just waking up from a deep sleep. Then the record seemed to skip, and there was more running. The running now was quick and terrified. The people were being chased by something. The man didn't know that this was the final run of Emma, the last survivor of Herobrines Resurrection. He did not know that the last noise that was high pitched and terrifying was the sound of her flying through the air and back to her death.
The man had no clue what it was about. He had no clue what had happened. When he told the king, the king had no idea either. The most intelligent people in all the kingdoms of Minecraftia had no idea what had happened on the night of the tape recorder. And somewhere in the world, knowing that his secret was safe, Herobrine grinned.
Remember to leave a comment, as my story will get a new chapter for every positive comment that it gets! Without any comments, I'll just wrap it up early. A quick click on the green + at the bottom right wouldn't hurt me either. It was fun to write though
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Awesome.
Thanks guys! I'll continue writing this. Chapter 2 will be up in a few minutes.
I messed up that quote pretty badly. o_o
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Thank you! I will be uploading chapter three later today when I should be going to sleep but find myself trying to do anything but sleeping. Chapter three will include much more action than chapter two, and a lot less dialogue. Chapter two was mainly for extra character development.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Will do! Turns out I have a test tomorrow, so yet another wait must be made. Tomorrow though, I will definitely finish chapter three.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
Now that you mention it, yes you have posted it and I've seen it but it doesn't have the proper stuff in it. I'll edit it then add it. Promise me that next time you follow the format the others use? Okay? Thanks.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
So sing a lonely song/Of a deep blue dream/Seven horses seem to be on the mark/Yeah, don't you love her/Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door.
I also noticed that you suddenly switched from third-person view (Narrator's view) to first-person view (Character's view) in chapter 4. It usually isn't a good idea to switch between the two in a story since it may confuse some readers.
I'll be looking forward to the fates of the people stuck in "The Heromines".
But from what I heard on the recording, they'll probably all survive, forget that it ever happened, and live happily ever after (I'm being sarcastic here :lol:)