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This isn't my first Minecraft story, but it's the only one I'm vaguely proud of.
My thinking behind this was to do a gritty realistic version of Minecraft where the basics of minecraft are there, but it's more versatile in some areas and less in others. Hopefully this means that it's different to some of the other stories.
I was actually sort of inspired by Chris Ryan's books (as any fans of his will be able to tell... hopefully)

Any ideas are welcome but bear in mind that I do have my own ideas for what's going to happen and I haven't done things so far without a reason, so please don't shout at me for things which may seem crazy, I (usually) have a plan for them, and trust me, it is a Minecraft story, the opening is just rather long.

Spelling and grammar are rather important to me, so if you do see any mistake, please point them out and I will correct them as soon as possible. Sometimes I end up writing this late at night where I have a lot of ideas, but I don't tend to take a lot of care.

Some of the words used may only be used in Britain (I'm not entirely sure as I use them every day, being British and all), so to any foreign readers, I apologise, please feel free to ask any questions about words used or anything like that.

I SHOULD (I can't stress that word enough. Bold, italics and capitals doesn't stress it enough) release a new chapter every Monday and every Friday if all goes to plan. But then again... SHOULD

And the title does make sense if you read until the end (which may never be there). I struggled with thinking up a snappy title and that's the best I could do. Pretty poor result!

And here is a brief description of the story to get you hooked, or not. I'm quite lazy so it's the one I used for Minefic



With all of that out of the way, please enjoy my story! Spoilered for your pleasure!

My name is Mark Harding; I was a Lieutenant in the SAS and am 45 years old. But not anymore. Not after a mission two years ago.
It was 3:30pm on the 12^th June 2014; we were arriving on the British owned, Ascension Island, just west of the African country of Angola. Hereford had just heard the news that a new military junta was in power. Their campaign wasn’t very specific about their plans, but they did say that they wanted to regain what was theirs. We had to assume that it was a threat, and that they had plans against us.

1530 Hours, June 12^th 2014

I was in a C-130 Hercules, on my way to the ‘Wideawake’ airfield on Ascension Island. With me were about a dozen regular soldiers from the Territorial Army, and the rest of my squad.
All together there were six of us:
Dave, A big bloke who was a good friend of mine. We had been on several missions together, the latest one being in Afghanistan;

We were tasked with finding out what was in a suspicious looking building. We had holed up just outside the building when a local boy walked past us. We thought that we were very well hidden, but not to a boy with nothing to do. He must have seen something odd and so wanted to investigate. We lay there, perfectly still, until he stopped in front of us. He noticed that we were there and ran off to tell his parents. There was nothing we could do; we knew that the parents would tell the soldiers, and when the soldiers knew that there were two British soldiers lying in wait outside their facility they would pull out all of the stops to find us. We decided that we had to bug out. We gathered our equipment and headed for the emergency rendezvous, just outside of town.

We had nearly reached the rendezvous when Dave spotted the glint of a sniper rifle scope in a distant building.
He pushed my head down behind cover as I heard the explosion of his rifle and a huge .50 cal bullet flew just above my head. We had walked straight into an ambush. About 10 soldiers rushed out from behind the building, firing their guns wildly. I pushed my C8 above the wall and fired a couple a shots. We eventually managed to hit a few of them, but we had to move, we noted a small building just behind us, I said to Dave that I would cover him as he made a break for it. I poked my head up and fired a few shots; I even killed some of them.

Dave eventually made it into the building and started to cover me, I turned around and charged towards the building, I had nearly made it when a bullet hit the side of my right leg, it was nothing major but it hurt. I stumbled and fell just outside the doorway. Bullets were flying overhead; I thought I was in a worse state than I actually was. Dave had noticed what had happened and was rushing over to help me. He grabbed my Jacket and pulled me inside. I could only just hear him over the gunfire, he shouted,
“Don’t worry! It’s only a flesh wound mate!”He grinned and patted my shoulder. Dave always kept his cool, no matter what the situation, even when in an ambush he was quoting Monty Python. Dave ran over to a window and started shooting; I stood up slowly and limped after him. We knew that we could never hold them off, so I called our emergency extraction pilot on the emergency radio, it had a huge splash out, so we could be tracked, but at this point we didn’t care. We told them of the heavy resistance, so they said that they would ‘cook up something nice for them.’
We fought for a few more minutes when we heard helicopter blades, but it didn’t sound like our Sea King, we cautiously looked up, just the mere sight of the helicopter made the soldiers run away, Hereford had sent in an Apache to help us. Shortly after we saw the emergency Sea King come our way and land just outside the building, we rushed out and got in it, with the Apache covering us we made it back to Camp Bastion in no time.

Then there was Matt, he was a real ladies man. If he wanted a woman, you could pretty much guarantee that he got her. I tried his tricks once, but it landed me a kick in the crotch.
We also had Brian with us, he was half Irish, and was always nervous about every mission that he went on, he would always point out the faults and dangers in every plan.
There was also Jim, he was the most annoying person that I had ever met, he would always try to get on peoples nerves in the hope of a reaction, unfortunately Hereford decided that he should have been on the mission, usually Hereford didn’t make decisions like that, but this time was different, he was a specialist of some sort, I didn’t really care.
Our last guy was Sam; he had just passed selection when he joined our squad and was eager to prove himself, luckily Jim couldn’t annoy him because of the sound of the Hercules, but we all knew that he would get stuck in later.

The Hercules touched down and the ramp opened, the Territorial soldiers marched out and were greeted by their C/O. We slowly wandered out and hopped into a Land Rover that was parked just outside. The Land Rover took us to the Generals office; I don’t know why they took us all there, because (as the squad leader) only Matt could enter.

When he came out of the office 10 minutes later he gave us the gist of the mission. We were to keep watch over a military base near the coast and near the city of Luanda. We had to keep watch over the base and report anything suspicious back to Hereford. To carry out this mission, we were given access to the equipment store in the base. We were also given a week to acclimatise and generally get ready for the problems that we would face. So as any SAS squadron does before an important mission, we went to get drunk in the mess hall.

2100 Hours, June 12^th 2014

Later on, me and Dave found ourselves carrying six beers over to the rest of our squad at a pub designed for us British guys, odd, but we didn't complain.

A few of the other guys had known each other for a long time, so they were reminiscing, and Jim was up to his usual ways, especially on Sam, he would lean over and say things like,
“Just to let you know... I could deck you in a second.” Sam just looked at him for a bit, didn’t say a word, and moved away. He was a good guy, never shrunk to Jim’s level or generally never annoyed anyone.
Eventually Matt had found a group of women and gone off with one of them, Brian and Sam were trying to chat up the other two, and Jim had gone off to play an especially brutal game of rugby. At one point one of the guys had broken his collar bone, but was so drunk that he didn’t notice and just kept playing.

This left just me and Dave at the table, drinking and reminiscing some more. We were talking about when at one base in Ireland; we were told never to walk the alleyways alone, because they were full of low lives trying to mug people. Being the SAS we weren’t worried.

Once we were walking back to the base from a night on the town when two people jumped out at us. They obviously hadn’t realised that we were SAS and how big Dave was. I’ll skip the details but in the end they were rushed to a nearby hospital, one with a fractured skull and the other with a broken leg and two cracked ribs.
Eventually we all went our separate ways (Brian and Sam did not get lucky) and went to our allocated rooms. They were nothing special, just a metal cube with a bunk in the corner and a small light overhead.

0800 Hours, June 18^th 2014

The previous night we had gotten really smashed, mostly because we weren’t allowed to on this night, because it was the night before the mission. Because of this I had a massive hangover with a splitting headache. Despite this, Jim came knocking at my door, seemingly louder than usual, shouting “Hey wake up ya idiot! We’re getting our equipment!” I slowly got out of bed and got dressed. I went outside to see all but Matt standing at my door. I asked where he was but all I got was several shrugs and Dave saying,
“He’s probably in that woman’s room that he went off with a few days ago,”
“Where’s that?” I responded lazily, still blinking heavily
“God knows, he’s probably ‘with’ her right now, he’ll be out soon with no strings attached,” Jim said with a smirk. To that we saw Matt coming up the corridor behind Jim

“Alright, since we’ve got everyone here and the operation is tomorrow, let’s go get our equipment; we’re going to need anti-armour, anti-air, support, demolitions, medical and communications equipment at the very least.” We agreed and got moving.

We hopped into a land rover which drove us to the equipment store (it was on the other side of the airfield).
Matt slid open the door to the specialist designated weapons (regular soldiers didn’t have access to these) and we stood there, gazing at the sheer amount of weapons on racks. There were rows upon rows of C8s (A Canadian made assault rifle, essentially a cut down version of the M16.) We all decided to take one (except for Brian, for reasons explained later) with an underslung grenade launcher, just in case. We took a few magazines and a few grenades each and moved on.

Dave, with his love for explosions, took a LASM (which is, simply put, a disposable rocket launcher) and a stinger (a surface to air missile).
Jim also liked explosions, but he liked C-4 more than anything, so he took a hefty heap of that, thinking it may possibly come in handy... maybe.
Brian was the support gunner of our squad, so he took a GPMG (General Purpose Machine Gun) or the ‘Gimpy’ as we called it.
Sam wanted to actually help when choosing equipment (probably because he wanted to make a good impression), therefore he took a lot of helpful things, like night sights, detonators (Jim had forgotten them) and GPS’s, for the rest of the squad.
Matt was also a medic as well as the squad leader, so he got his equipment needed for that.
Then I took a L115A3. A British made sniper rifle (I was staying patriotic) with all day weather sights, night sights, and a bipod, a highly advanced piece of kit. As you may have guessed, I was the squad’s sniper.
Once we were all geared up, selected body armour, packed our equipment and so on, we headed back towards the land rover which took us back to the General, who would tell Matt the specifics of the mission.

Again, Matt came out ten minutes later and gave us a summary. There’s a group of uninhabited islands on the way to Angola, we would take a covert RRC (Rigid Raiding Craft), borrowed from the SBS (Special Boat Service), and go through the middle of them, so as to not be noticed on open waters, then we would attempt to make it to a beach about a mile away from the base (which is also a port). From there we would take the coast up to the base and find a LUP (Lying up Position), watch the base, and report anything to Hereford via Satcom. All of this at night.
“I just know something’s going to go wrong,” said Brian nervously
“You say that about everything you idiot!” said Dave angrily
We should have believed Brian...

2200 Hours, June 19^th 2014

We put our survival Jackets on (these would stop the cold from getting to us in the water, for a while anyway) and hopped into the boat; it was extremely uncomfortable with its metal girders for seats. We had taken one with an outboard petrol engine, which had its exhaust pointing into the water to reduce the noise created. Sam had done a lot of boating before he joined up so he sailed happily.

We set off towards the islands, we didn’t have to worry about creating a wake or too much noise because we were too far away from any dangers, we did have to reduce speed as we got closer to the islands though.
Suddenly Sam stopped, everybody looked at him with a confused face, we didn’t notice the huge storm just ahead of us in between the islands. We decided to contact Hereford to advise.

“We’re not reading any storm, proceed with the mission,” said the contact for this mission.
“Well we’re damn well seeing one!” Shouted Matt into the Satcom, trying to make himself heard over the wind and the waves
Hereford told us that they had sent out a boat through the islands to test the water not long ago, and that it was fine, there was no other way anyway.

“Why not just go around the Islands?” Shouted Sam
“We can’t risk it, we will definitely be spotted!” I shouted back
While we were talking (or shouting) amongst ourselves we didn’t notice the storm getting larger until it started raining, heavily. We heard the crack of thunder ahead of us. All of us looked up as we saw that we were in the middle of the storm now.
“Get us out of here!” Jim shouted
Sam wrestled with the boat to try to get us away from the storm, but it was no good, the huge waves rocked the boat back and forth until It finally capsized, I swam up to the surface, tried to look around but couldn’t see anything, it was far too dark, the rain was obscuring my vision and the waves were too high. Then the capsized boat rammed into the back of my head. I tried to fight against the waves and the pain, but eventually the pain became so intense so I slowly drifted into unconsciousness.

1230 Hours, June 20^th 2014

I awoke to the sound of waves crashing on the beach behind me. I started to cough up the huge amounts of sea water that I must have swallowed in the storm, I tried to look around, but I didn’t even have the energy to lift my head up, I just lay on the ground for a few minutes, coughing up sea water and vomit onto the beige sand. After a minute of coughing and vomiting I tried to stand up, but found I had a huge gash on my right leg, it must have hit the boat or a rock, and fell over again. I swallowed the pain, planted my hands on the floor, and used my (relatively) good leg to stand myself up. I looked up for the first time to try to gauge the severity of this very dire situation.

I saw a large hill far away with what looked like a small cave near the top, I was amazed at the change in scenery, everywhere else in that area was a desert (being Africa), but this island seemed to be tropical, it had lush green grass, towering trees and huge green mountains all around, I even saw a waterfall. I didn’t have the time or the energy to enjoy the scenery though, the sun was beating down on me for now, but I knew that in this area it would get very cold at night (if the weather was the same as African weather) so I would need a shelter and a fire to keep me warm and safe during the night and decided that the cave in the side of the mountain would have been perfect... had my leg been uninjured.

I limped forwards for a small amount of time until I saw an arrow. An arrow?! I had no idea where it could have come from but I picked it up, you never know what you’re going to need. My thinking was that I could use it as a weapon if need be.

After about half an hour of limping I managed to find a small alcove which I could stay in for the night. I went inside and found a small black part on the stone wall. For about two minutes I was sat down, racking my brain over what it could be when I finally realised that it was coal. I thought that it could be helpful for starting a fire, but first I needed some wood.

I limped to the nearest tree and got out the only sharp object I had, the arrow I picked up earlier. I hacked away at this tree for a good hour; seriously, I might as well have been using a herring. I do salute whoever made the arrow though, it was extremely strong!

Once I had collected some wood I took it back to the alcove and started to extract some of the coal... with the arrow. I managed to chip away a small piece and tie it to the end of a stick with a shoelace I had in my pocket (always be prepared). By this time it started to get dark, so I rubbed a couple of sticks together to light my makeshift torch, and then boarded up the small entrance with the rest of my wood to keep the inside warm. It helped a lot more than I realised at the time.

0800 Hours, June 21^st 2014

That night I had made a crude bandage out of a piece of my clothing for my leg, then decided that I should go more inland and discover more about this island, if anyone else has inhabited it and I’ve just ruined everything they have by making my small home, or if I was the only one here. I also wanted to meet up with the rest of my squad for obvious reasons.

I used a large stick from the tree I cut down the day before as a walking stick and headed in the direction that looked rather mainlandish.
As I was in slightly less pain that morning than the day before I managed to look at the truly amazing landscape of this island. It seemed untouched by man; the colours were like nothing I had ever seen before. The grass was lush, bright green, similar to the leaves of the trees, the sky was pure blue, not a cloud in sight and the water was a clear turquoise colour. It was beautiful.

Unfortunately I didn’t have too much time to bask in this glory as it was very hot and I wanted to find proper shelter.
After a couple of hours I came across a hill, which with a good leg would have been easy to climb over, but as I was it seemed rather difficult. Nevertheless I went for it, my ‘walking stick’ helped a great deal actually; it helped to take pressure off my bad leg.

After an hour I reached to the top, my leg in much more pain than I had hoped, I stopped watching the floor and started to look at the horizon. I saw a brown structure in the distance, however my vision was obscured by trees so I moved a bit to get a better view, and accidentally stepped on a rock with my bad leg, which caused me to slip and fall half way down the hill. I would have fallen all of the way if I didn’t grab on to a root that was sticking out of the ground. However, my stick was stuck at the top of the hill, and my leg was even more damaged than previously.
After recuperating a bit I spent another hour crawling up to my stick, which was really quite painful.

When I got back up to the top I started to make my way down to this structure. I’d like to say that I walked down there with no trouble, but that would be an outrageous lie. In reality I stumbled and tripped down the hill, narrowly avoiding large drops and waterfalls until, in a lot of pain, I reached the bottom.

It took about quarter of an hour to reach the structure. On the way I saw a few more arrows and some craters. I didn’t know what to think about them but I was just trying to reach the structure.
It turned out that it was cuboid of wooden planks on the side of a mountain... that was it. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit disappointed, but I was just glad to find shelter.

1215 Hours, June 21^st 2014

There were a few windows in the structure, however they were too high for me to see through and I didn’t really fancy jumping with my torn up leg, so I went straight for the door.
At first I knocked on the door, when I say knocked I mean slammed my fist on the door several times shouting at any inhabitants. When that didn’t work I cautiously opened the door, stick at the ready. It wouldn’t do much, it just gave me comfort.
Inside it was rather bare. Just a bed, a chair, a chest, a table and a massive freaking tunnel in the mountain. It looked like it went down to the centre of the earth.
At this point I gave up on my search and fell onto the bed. It was so soft compared to the night that I’d just had. My worries just drifted away, and so did my consciousness.

I awoke in a rather different position. I was kneeling on a cold stone floor, in an unholy amount of pain, couldn’t move and had a large silhouette towering over me.

2000 Hours, June 21^st 2014

My senses were completely shot, I couldn’t move, I was on my knees with rope around my arms and legs. All I could hear was a very distorted voice saying something, but I had absolutely no idea what, which earned me a strong kick to the stomach, which caused me to fall over onto my side. That woke me up slightly and I managed to work out what the distorted voice was saying:

“Who the hell are you?!”
I started to mumble something to my captor, I couldn’t even tell what I was saying, but I hoped that they would... They didn’t.
“I said, WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!” They shouted again.
We’d all been given a cover story for an interrogation situation; I though now was as good a time as any to use it. However, I couldn’t quite remember all of it.
“We’re a... medical... thing, um... medical unit!” I started off saying, “Tasked to... kill people?”
I didn’t get the reply that I’d hoped for,
“What the hell are you talking about? You’re a medical unit, by yourself, tasked to kill people? A medical unit tasked to kill people?”
“Maybe?”
They felt that I deserved another kick to the stomach for that, fair enough really,
“Now tell me the truth!” They shouted at me. That kick woke me up a bit more and I realised that it was a woman’s voice with a slight received pronunciation, “Look, we’re the only two people on this island as far as I know, so you might as well tell me the truth.” She said rather more calmly.

After what felt like hours I was still tied up being interrogated and had finally decided to give up.
“Alright, I-,” I started to say,
“Thank Christ!” She seemed rather happy about this
“I’m a member of the army, tasked to keep an eye on an African Military base...”
I went on telling the story of my mission and what had happened for about 5 minutes.
She then decided that since I was a soldier I could be of some use to here.
“Ok then, you can have my bed for tonight since I was quite horrible to you but you’re making your own bed tomorrow.” She didn’t sound very happy about this.
“Thanks. Do you have any food? I haven’t eaten since... um... two days ago? Maybe.”
She sounded even unhappier after this request, “Yeah sure, there’s food in the chest over there,”
“Can... can you untie me please?”
“If I have to.”

0800 Hours, June 23^rd 2014

I spent a couple of days recuperating without a lot of hassle. This woman (I still didn’t know her name by this point) was nice enough to let me sleep in her bed until I was well enough to go outside and collect materials to make my own bed.
Once my pain had decreased enough to see things clearly I got a look at her.
She had long brown hair, it wasn’t particularly straight, which is to be expected when you live in a world like that for however long she had. Her eyes were the same colour as the beautiful ocean; she had a rather slim face and body, but was strong (surviving by herself like that).
She was just going over some ground rules before I went outside, I had no idea ground rules were needed.
“So, awful island 101,” She started, “The first thing you need to know is-,”
“Wait! I don’t even know your name yet!” This was a risky move, as she had a tendency to get annoyed at the slightest thing.
“That’s because it’s not important.”
“Well, you know my name...”
“Jesus Christ, fine! My name is Katherine.”
“Go by any other names... With less syllables?”
“I’m not going to tell you my life story. Just call me Kate or something if you really have to.”
“Can I call you Bob?” I said with a smirk
“What? Why?” She shot me a stern look
“...Never mind.”
I thought that I’d best end this discussion there, just in case she got a little bit too angry.
“So... what’s the first rule?” I said to break the seemingly endless silence
She went through all of the things that I should be careful of around here, steep drops, caves etc. Things that I should generally be careful of when exploring a new area in the world that seems to have been previously unexplored. But then she dropped a bombshell,

“Oh and be careful of the monsters. Ready to go?”
“Wait. What?! You’re pulling my leg surely.”
“Nah, there’s one outside looking at us.” She said with a slightly mischievous smile.
I slowly turned around to see the green twisted face of what I could only assume was the most foul and disgusting thing ever to exist in the entire world and must therefore come from the areas of Hell where even the Devil doesn’t dare to tread.
It kept the same expression constantly, a look that someone might have if they were clinically insane and wanted to murder everything in their sight. It’s mouth (or what I think was a mouth) was constantly open, looking like it was screaming, either in pain or in anger. It never blinked; it just stood there, just outside the door, staring at us. It tracked our movements, never looking away.
I stared at it for a few minutes, I was transfixed on it. I didn’t want to let it out of my sight. This was a bit futile really because it had probably been there for a while before I’d seen it, but I really didn’t trust it, quite rightly really.
“So... what do we do?” I asked cautiously
“You aren’t doing anything. I’m going out to kill it. I don’t want you blowing a hole in my house!”
“How would I do tha... Do those things explode?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I told you that.”
“I think I would have remembered if you told me that there are green monsters that explode!”
“Alright then. Let me tell you about the monsters again.”
“For the first time.”
She shot me a glare that said, ‘If you interrupt me again, I will slit your throat while you sleep.’
“There are two types. Those that burn in sunlight and those that don’t. The former are skeletons with bows, and zombies. The latter are spiders and those,” She indicated at the green monstrosity outside “I call those Creepers, mostly because they are silent and can therefore creep up to you.”
“Any more?”
“Not that I’ve encountered. See you in a bit!”
After that she walked down her tunnel (which I wasn’t allowed in) for a bit and vanished.
A couple of minutes later I heard her shouting,
“Over here you ugly fool!”
I climbed up onto the bed so that I could see out of one of the windows. I saw her standing still, holding a sword she apparently had at the ready, as the ‘Creeper’ charged towards her. As it drew closer she started to swing her sword. When the sword landed on the Creeper’s face it flew back a few meters. Despite this it didn’t fall over, it just resumed its charge towards her.
She swung her sword at the Creeper a second time, she hit it again, it did a similar thing as last time, flew backwards a few meters. However this time it started to flash and grow. She moved back a few paces and kept her distance. At this point I thought that I should probably be making notes on how to fight these things.
After a few seconds it returned to its normal size and started running towards Kate again. It seemed completely unharmed by her attempts.
Once more she raised her sword up and swung it at the Creeper with all of her might. The sword struck with an amazing force, as the creeper flew even further back. This time it fell over and stopped moving. It still seemed unharmed (Apart from the not moving thing). There were no cuts or anything. Maybe it was never dead.
Kate walked around the corpse, still keeping her distance, presumably just in case it exploded, and walked through the door rather calmly.
“Ok, shall we go?” She enquired, equally as calmly, while I stood there with a massively surprised look on my face.
“What... What do we do the body?”
“We move it and blow it up.”
“How?”
With that she searched around in her chest and found some rope (Probably the rope she used to tie me up with a few days beforehand).
“Take one end of this and we can drag the body with this.”
She seemed to be prepared for every single explanation.

We dragged the corpse a fair distance away from the house. Kate indicated to me that I should drop the rope. She then pulled the rope in and handed it to me, sort of as a mother would do if she wasn’t sure if their child could do what she wanted them to.
She was about to start the process of blowing it up, so I stepped back a few metres, just to be safe. She wasn’t particularly ceremonial about it. She literally ran up to it, kicked it in the face and ran away. After a few seconds there was a huge explosion that knocked me onto the floor, luckily I stood quite far away from it so I wasn’t badly hurt.
I opened my eyes a few seconds later to see Kate towering over me with a disapproving look. She held her arm out above me, which I grabbed onto, she then hauled me up.
She didn’t say a word, but the silence spoke a thousand words. Two of which were probably ‘Absolute idiot.’

0900 hours, June 23^rd 2014

After that ordeal we walked back to the house. I would like to add ‘for a cup of tea’ to that sentence, but sadly, there was none available. In fact we went back to the house to go into Kate’s mine, which I wasn’t aware of until this point.
We went down into the tunnel at the back of the house and down the stairs which (as I said earlier) looked like they went down to the center of the earth. The ceiling was only just big enough to fit us; if either of us were any taller we would scrape our heads along it.
After about 5 minutes of walking down the stairwell we reached the bottom where the hallway opened up into a massive hub, with chests dotted around it, pushed up against walls. In this room the ceiling was high enough to be comfortable; however there were more hallways dotted with equally as uncomfortable ceilings.
The floor was mostly made up of normal stone, but had other black rock dotted around it. I could only presume that this was bedrock as Kate didn’t mine any deeper than that.
Turns out it took Kate about 10 years to dig all of it, which is pretty amazing considering she’s just one person.

“Alright,” Kate began, “Grab a pickaxe from the chest over there and start mining.”
I walked toward a chest which I thought was the one that she meant.
“NO! NOT THAT CHEST!” There was a slight tremble in her voice. She cleared her throat and carried on, “That chest, to the left,”
I slowly moved over opened the chest and picked up an iron pickaxe.
“So, what’s in the chest?” I said cautiously
“Nothing! Just stone!” She gave a response far too quick to be trustworthy, but I thought that I should leave it; she might have killed me if I pursued it any further. About half a minute later she said, “Ok... uh... Just go into that tunnel and mine.” I wasn’t entirely sure how to mine, but I just wanted to leave her alone.
I walked by the forbidden chest and towards the tunnel.
As I walked past that chest I felt a strange energy coming from it. It caused me to stop and stand there for a moment. My peripheral vision faded and what was left appeared to have a blue filter across it. I heard the crashes of thunder, over and over again. I closed my eyes, trying to rid myself of this. I opened my eyes to find an army standing before me, facing the opposite direction. I couldn’t make out what the army consisted of, or even where we were. Still with the blue vision, I looked at what looked like lava, there were falls of it, coming from the ceiling, it was everywhere. The army turned to look at me, and with one final crash of thunder, a bolt of lightning struck me in the chest, I lost my vision completely and was thrown backwards with a tremendous force.

About 2 hours later I slowly opened my eyes. My vision was blurred and still blue. I blinked heavily a few times, trying to return my vision to normal. I managed to see Kate looking through the chest on the other side of the room. I blinked again and she appeared in front of me, holding something. She raised it up; the object seemed to have a handle, and a long sharp end. A sword!
She knelt down just in front of me, and with one quick movement, she forced it into my stomach.

1130 Hours, June 23^rd 2014

I let out a scream of pain. With that everything seemed to return to normal, my vision was back and there was no sword in my stomach.
I was still lying on the other side of the room; I looked down to see I was in a pool of my own blood. I had a massive gash on my stomach, where the sword had hit in the vision, and cuts and bruises all over me. My back felt like it had been hit with a lump hammer. Despite all of this, I felt strangely energised. I couldn’t get up or anything because though of the state of my body.
“What did you do?!” Kate shouted at me, with a hint of worry
“Nothing! Absolutely nothing! There’s something in that chest, something unnatural.”
“Jesus Christ. Ok. What just happened?”
I talked her through what I had just seen, I didn’t even think about the massive wounds that I had sustained during this, I left out the bit about her though, I figured that if that was the future then I wanted to be ready for it, she might have stabbed me then and there if I told her.

“Well, I’m not sure what to say about that.” She trembled a little bit when she spoke
“What is in that chest? Something from that chest caused it, I’m sure of it.”
“Just... Just stone. Let’s get you out of here... this may take a while.”
Kate helped me up the massive amount of stairs. This took about half an hour, even though I felt as though I could run up the stairs (if the ceiling was a bit higher anyway). Once we got to the top she dumped me on my bed and collapsed on a chair.
“Damn you’re heavy.” She panted

I spent the next day recovering and trying to work out what on earth the ‘visions’ meant. By the end of that day I was none the wiser. Sadly no epiphanies had come to me. So I decided to do what I always do when I don’t know something and don’t have access the internet, I ignored it and hoped that it would go away. If I was back in England I probably would have just Googled it.

The day after that was the first day I’d spent on the island with a routine, despite the events that had taken place two days beforehand. It was a day which Kate would probably call normal. In the morning Kate gave me an axe to collect some wood, so I was doing that for just over half of the day. For the other half I was collecting food.
Back home I wasn’t a farmer, therefore I had never have been expected to kill an innocent animal, like a pig or a cow. In the line of duty I’d definitely killed before. I’d killed terrorists, soldiers and... More terrorists, but I had never had to kill something which I would call innocent. I’m not sure why this was such a big deal at the time, but it just seemed inhumane. Nevertheless, Kate sent me on my way.
While I was doing all of this, Kate was searching the nearby region for resources, and generally doing things helpful for our survival.
By the time the sun was about to set I was trudging through the forest, depressed but with food and logs. All I wanted to do was get to the house, eat and sleep. I had no such luck.

1930 Hours, June 25^th 2014

I stood there, staring at the smouldering mess. The damage done was absolutely massive. The roof had collapsed, every pane of glass was broken, every plank of wood was either on fire or smouldering, there was enough smoke to form a beacon. I tried to find Kate, but to no success. After a few minutes she found me.
“What have you done?!” She had to shout to make herself heard over the sound of burning wood.
“Nothing, it was like this when I got here!” I don’t think she even heard my reply, she just pushed me out of the way and headed towards it. She managed to find a path of sorts to her flight of stairs to her mine. I thought that she had a good idea, it being made of stone, it wouldn’t burn and we’d be sheltered from the night, so I followed her as best I could. The heat was so intense, it was hard to keep focused. By the time I reached the entrance to the mine I was sweating like a pig... which was in a house on fire. Kate was already half way down the stairs when I started descending. I called out for her but she either didn’t hear or ignored me. I chose the former and continued on.
When I got to the bottom I found Kate unlocking the forbidden chest. She had evidently wanted to secure her ‘stone’ after the last time I walked close to it. When she finally got it open she took a good look at inside and muttered, “Thank Christ.”
“Does it matter what’s in the chest right now?”
“It’s just stone!”
I stared at her for a few seconds before saying,
“It doesn’t matter; we should check around here before resting, there may be people responsible in here.”

She reluctantly agreed and we decided to split up and check different tunnels individually, that way it would be faster, we didn’t actually expect anyone to be in there unless they wanted us specifically. We thought that it was probably caused by a forest fire or something like that, but it was best to be safe.
The first tunnel I checked was empty, as expected so I walked back to the hub to see if Kate had finished her search. She didn’t come back. I waited for about five minutes before starting to search the tunnel that she started to search earlier.
I feared the worst. I thought that I was just being paranoid but I picked up a pickaxe and held it high, ready to bludgeon anyone that might appear from one of the alcoves where ore once was.
I didn’t see or hear anything for some time. I called out for Kate, I received no answer as I expected.
I started to hear footsteps, but when I turned around there was nothing there, I thought that I may be going insane. As I turned around once more to check again, but then felt a sudden and sharp pain in my stomach. I slowly turned my head around to see a man about my height standing before me; I didn't take the time to make out any of his features. I looked down to see him holding a dagger in my stomach. In a quick movement he pulled it out and left me to fall, onto the cold, hard stone floor.

0600 Hours, June 26^th 2014

“You! I need to speak to you! Look at me!”
This wasn’t a great way to wake up after being stabbed in the stomach, a region which was tired of being damaged by now.
My eyes were closed as I was hearing this voice; I could feel metal around my wrists and legs, most likely chains. I was lying flat on the floor, with my hands behind my back. I opened my eyes to see a stone floor, somewhat better maintained than the one I’d fallen on the night before though. I managed to look up. With blurry vision I saw a man; he looked rather similar to the man who had stabbed me, although that could have been anyone of that height. He was holding a small box. What it contained, I had no idea.
As I focused my vision I saw some grey metal bars with an equally grey door in between me and the man. What a situation to be in.
“We found something in your miserable little hovel. Apparently your friend hasn’t seen it before, so naturally we assumed that you must have.” This man had a suspicious tone about his voice.
He held the box in front of him, and slowly opened it. Before I could look at what was in it, it happened again. My vision turned blue, thunder clapped in the background. When I blinked I was teleported to the same land as before.
I was still a captive there however. I was tied to a stake with rope, and propped upright. There was a figure, looking away from me, looking at the army below. I still couldn’t make out what the army was made up of. Whatever they were, they certainly weren’t human. The figure had long hair and was holding a sword upwards to the sky, or roof in this case.
I blinked again foolishly. The figure appeared right in front of me, looking straight into my eyes, and holding their sword to my throat. I managed to see their face from this. It was a blood soaked Kate. I tried to talk to her but I couldn’t, no words materialised. She gave an evil grin and raised her sword. She swung with all of her might, but just before it hit me, I was quite literally thrown out of the vision onto the back wall in my room in real life, vision back to normal and feeling more energised than ever.
I stared at the floor for a second, panting, and slowly raised myself up, gripping any cracks in the wall to support myself. I looked down at my stomach and noticed that the wound had gone, as if nothing had ever happened to it. As I looked up I saw the disintegrated chains where I once was.
The man just past the bars looked astonished. He stared at me for a while before running off.
I stood in one place panting for about five minutes before he came back with someone who looked quite important. By this time I could see properly and could tell what they looked like.
The first man was wearing what looked like iron armour. I wasn’t aware that people still made iron armour nowadays but that island was different to everywhere else. He had short brown hair which was mostly covered by an iron helmet, looked to be in his mid thirties and had an impressive iron sword, which had detailed patterns on the handle and looked as though it could cut through his own armour with ease. He looked as if he was probably a guard.
The second man looked very regal. He was wearing a mostly purple gown sort of thing, with a fur V shape down the center, which then had red filling in the rest. It was adorned with jewels of various colours, and bits of gold.
He had long white hair, a rather long beard, equally as white and quite a wise look about him. He looked like he was fairly old.
The old man examined the room from behind the bars, presumably for safety.
“Can someone tell me what’s happening?” I said cautiously
“Be quiet!” The guard snapped “Speak when you are spoken to!”
“You just spoke to me; does that mean I can speak?” I gave a slight grin, a look of outsmarting someone.
He shot me an angry look, “Speak when you are given permission to.”
I thought that I should stay silent. I didn’t really want to annoy them too much.
The old man stood there for quite some time, looking around the room, looking at me and at whatever was in the box curiously.
Eventually he looked at me in a more stern way.
“What do you know about diamonds?”
“What? Why diam-”
“Just answer the question.” The guard interrupted
“Well, they are pretty rare, found deep underground and are basically superheated coal.” This was me trying to recall everything from my GCSE’s
“Yes, correct.” He paused for a while, and then said, “Have you ever heard of the Diamonds of Pandemonium?”
I looked at him confused for a second, the name sounded ridiculous but I could tell from his expression that he was deadly serious.
“I assume that you haven’t then...” The old man told me about these diamonds. He told me that they are made in much the same way as normal diamonds; however they are made in the depths of hell, where there’s apparently a lot of lava, which would allow the superheating to happen. They are dark blue in colour, rather than the typical clear diamonds. He doesn’t know where the information about the diamonds comes from because it has been passed down generations.
“I don’t see why you’re telling me this.” I said, probably quite rudely.
He glanced at me, but carried on regardless,
“It has been said that some of these diamonds have mysteriously appeared over time on this very island. It has also been said that there are humans on this earth which can draw great power from these diamonds. Do you understand?”
I thought about it for a while before saying, “No.”
“Not a bright one,” He muttered to the guard, who gave a small grin, “Don’t you see? I believe that you are one of those people. Have you not seen what’s in the box?”
“Yes he has sir,” The guard said before I could answer, “I showed it to him not moments ago, when he broke free.”
“Wait that was one of these diamonds?” I inquired
“Not just one, but three of them.” The old man said
I sat down, thinking about this information for a while. Wondering where on earth Kate found those diamonds, and why she wanted to keep them so secret. The guard then explained to me what had actually happened when he showed me the diamonds. Apparently my eyes turned completely blue and I became fixated on the diamonds, staring at them for a good 10 seconds. After that I stood up without any trouble, eyes still blue, still staring at the diamonds as lightning seemed to surge across my body, disintegrating the chains, and closing the stomach wound that I had sustained earlier, and then I was thrown back onto the wall and awoke. Sounded like rubbish to me, but still a possibility judging by the visions.
The old man then revealed himself as the king of the kingdom that apparently wasn’t too far from Kate’s house.
“It’s too dangerous to show you the diamonds again,” The king began, “But I know of a way to prove you are who I think you are.” He then took a key from the guard and unlocked the iron door. “Follow me.”
"No." I replied immediately
"What do you mean, no?" he sounded aggravated
"Where's Kate?" I thought that I should at least know where she was before going out on some strange adventure.
"Kate? Ah the woman who was with you-"
"She's in a safe place," The guard interrupted
"Where is she? I'm not going with you unless you take me to her."
After saying this, the guard drew his sword, pointed it at my neck and said, "Follow us..."

0700 Hours, June 26^th 2014

They, and two other soldiers, tied my hands up with rope and blindfolded me as they walked me through what I could only assume was the city. I’m not sure why the blindfolded me, I didn’t really want to argue though. As I walked I heard the distant muttering of people, I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but it didn’t sound pleasant.
On several occasions I tripped and almost fell over on a loose bit of pathway, or a bit that was slightly uneven, luckily the soldiers were there to reluctantly prop me up.
We suddenly stopped and I heard the sound of metal grinding. After some time we carried on and I heard the same sound again, but slightly faster.
They removed the blindfold and untied my hands, it was then that I realised we were outside the city walls, and the metal sound was the gate opening and closing.
Without saying a word we walked for another half an hour, not running into anyone, or anything. We walked through a forest, which served to shelter us from the blistering sun. In the distance, I saw bolts of lightning with the crash of thunder soon to follow. These carried on for the entire journey, all in exactly the same place. I couldn’t help but be reminded of War of the Worlds.

Still in silence, we approached a lake, in the middle of which was an island with some sort of an object stuck upright on it. Sadly I couldn’t make out what it was. The lighting turned out to be hitting the object.
Once we were within about 5 meters of the water, my vision slowly and calmly turned blue. No thunder (apart from the thunder in reality), no drama, it just faded to blue as I got closer to the object.
“Do you feel the energy rushing through you?” The king wisely said
I thought about my response for a moment, “No... Not really.”
The king looked pretty disappointed, “You will.”
Lightning was still striking the object.
“Now go. Go to the island and retrieve the sword.”
I looked at the guards; they were saying nothing and actually looked worried.
“What? Over there? That looks incredibly dangerous. Can’t you see the lightning?” There was a slight tremble in my voice.
“Yes, if we were to go over there we would die instantly. You however are special, you will be able to swim across, be unharmed, and retrieve the sword.”
“... For god’s sake,” I muttered as I very reluctantly walked towards the water, I had trouble seeing where the water actually began because my vision was the same colour as it.
Luckily for me, the water was fairly warm which meant I could focus on other things, like the lightning.
Once the water hit my waist I leaped forwards and started to do the breaststroke towards the island. I did this for about half a minute.
My main worry during this was that the lightning would hit the water and electrocute me, that wouldn’t be a good end to the day.
I reached the island soaked and miserable, but still cautious. The lightning was still striking the sword, it just didn’t let up. My plan was to wait for a lull in the lightning, then grab it and run, but I had no such luck.
I looked back at the king and the soldiers, they looked rather hopeful so I thought that I probably shouldn’t let them down.
I got ready to grab the sword, which was stuck in the island in an Excalibur kind of way. I really didn’t want to go any further with this.
After much deliberation I shouted “Screw it!” and lunged forwards, grabbing the sword by the handle (as most people grab swords). I felt the energy surge through me as lightning still hit the handle.
I heard the distant scream of a man but couldn’t tell whether it was real or not, and didn’t really care to be honest.
I could feel the sword becoming loose with every bolt of lightning until finally I was able to pull the sword out; it was then that the lightning stopped hitting it... Typical.
The sword was amazing; the blade looked very sharp and widened at the end. The base of the blade was very thick and had a scaled effect on it. The cross-guard was pointing forward, for some reason, and the handle seemed to be flared at the end. Somehow it was still very light though. It looked spectacular, whether it was any good was yet to be seen.
I looked around the lake and eventually at the king and the soldiers. One of the soldiers was lying flat on his back with another hunched over him, I couldn't work out why. The other soldier was staring in amazement and the king was looking quite happy. This was the first time I’d seen him smile.

0800 Hours, June 26^th 2014

I swam back to the shore, holding the sword above the water because I was scared that if I let it touch the water it would electrocute me. This resulted in quite a spectacularly weird swim which took twice as long as it needed to.
Once I got to the shore, panting, I said,
“Alright... Now damn well take me to Kate.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that just yet. We’re not sure how safe she is, or if she is from the depths of Hell even.” The King said
“You’re joking.”
“No. How do you think she ‘found’ those diamonds?”
“I couldn’t care less! Take me to Kate or I’ll... I’ll, smite you? With the sword?” I nervously held the sword up with two hands. I had no idea how to use the sword well though. They just laughed and beckoned me to follow them.
On the way back to the city they supplied me with a metal ring to attach to my clothes which could act as a scabbard for my sword; it was pretty uncomfortable because the sword kept bouncing off my leg whenever I moved it.
We reached the castle gates after another half an hour of walking. They were magnificent. They were made of extremely thick iron and weren't just the boring standard cross-hatch shape, they had sweeping curves going from the center to the edges of the gate. Each bar had intricate patterns on them, I didn’t take the time to make out what the patterns were, but they had obviously taken a long time to make them.
A few seconds after we reached the gates they slowly opened, with the familiar sound of metal grinding. We walked in, this was the first time I’d seen the city. We were in the medieval equivalent of the suburbs of the city. It was full of houses and people going about their business. Each house was a standard cobblestone cottage. They were basically cuboids of cobblestone with holes for windows. They seemed just about big enough to house a family of four, but most had about six people living in them. As I walked through this area people stopped and stared at me, as if I was some kind of monster. They also looked terrified as soon as they saw the sword, even when it wasn’t drawn. Some people actually hid inside their houses when they saw it.
A short time after we saw a blacksmith, hard at work on a brand new iron sword. I was feeling a bit cocky, so I made eye contact with him and looked at his sword, of which he looked very proud, then looked down at my own sword and smiled. When I looked back at him he looked rather depressed that I had a better sword than he could ever hope to craft. It wasn’t very nice of me I know.
We also passed through the market district which was full of people in shoddily build wooden stalls trying to sell us food and weapons mostly.
Later we walked by a pub which I really wanted to go into, unfortunately I had more important things to do. I did vow that I would go in there at some point in the not too distant future.
We didn’t get to explore any more of the city because there were very important matters to attend to in the castle apparently. This was the first time I’d seen the castle from the outside. It was absolutely huge. It completely dwarfed any buildings that were below it. It had four watch towers on each corner which were the classic cylindrical shape with crenulations on top. The castle looked like another city completely; it had massive walls (also with crenulations) and a huge wooden gate which was reinforced with iron bars.
Behind the wooden gates was a small courtyard, full with more types of flowers and bushes than I even knew existed. I’m not even going to attempt to name some of the type, I’d only embarrass myself. The castle itself seem seemed a bit over compensatory if I’m honest. It was bigger than the king would ever need and an incredible amount of hard work had gone into it. There were very detailed stained glass windows depicting people doing too many things to describe. Every door and normal window was different in some way; they each had a different pattern on them or were a different shape. Much more amazing than the castles back home I can assure you. It was the kind of structure which you would expect to be in a movie with dramatic orchestral music in the background.
The magnificent wooden doors were opened before us, not humans were there to do it though, to reveal what was known as the great hall. It was absolutely huge. It had a sort of curved roof with one wooden beam down the middle and several joining it along the curve from the sides. There were 3 or 4 wooden chandeliers with torches attached to them (which seemed like a bad idea to me but I wasn’t about to question the logic of this land at this point). To the right and left there were archways created by massive stone pillars coming down from the edge of the curve to the floor. The walls a bit further on were lined with jewels and other memorabilia you would expect a king to have, such as weapons and armour. On the floor there was a magnificent red carpet leading up to a red and throne with gold edges, arms and legs. This was one hell of a front room.
The king sauntered up to his throne and lazily sat down. I followed him until I was a few feet away when a guard stretched his arm out in front of me to stop me from going any further.
“So I’ve got this sword thing. Now where’s Kate?” I inquired
“We haven’t determined if she is safe to let go yet, it was a risk letting you go.” One of the guards said sternly
“She’s no risk, I know for a fact that she isn’t one of me and she’s not about to try and have fisticuffs with the entire army here!”
“... Right, well whatever that means I’m afraid we can’t let her go just yet.”
“Can I at least see her?”
The guard looked at the king for approval, “Of course.”

0930 Hours, June 26^th 2014

The guards took me to the prison cell where they were keeping Kate. She’d definitely seen better days. She was chained to the floor as I was earlier and had cuts and bruises all over her. It looked like torture.
“What have you people done to her?” I snapped
“Nothing when she got in here. She struggled A LOT on the way though. We couldn’t avoid it.” The guard seemed rather defensive but he was probably telling the truth knowing Kate.
I couldn’t tell if she was conscious or not, she just lay there motionless.
“Can I go in?” I didn’t think that I’d get a positive response to this but weirdly the guard said yes. I guess he thought that because I had no idea how to use the sword properly I wasn’t really a threat. He unlocked and opened the gate. I walked in and knelt down beside her to see if she actually had a pulse, I wasn’t sure if she was even alive or not. As I put two fingers on her neck (to check her pulse) I heard the muffled sound of her talking
“Get off my neck.” I immediately retracted my fingers.
“I guess you have a pulse then,” I said with a smirk. She raised her head a little bit and said
“You know, I hate you. Now are you breaking me out or what?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. You see that man standing over there wearing massive armour and wielding an extremely sharp sword? He doesn’t want you out, and I’m going to go with what he wants rather than someone who is chained to the floor.”
“Right answer,” hissed the guard
“What are you doing here then?”
“I’m checking to see if you’re alright.”
“I’m absolutely brilliant,” she said sarcastically, “now get out of here.”
I did as I was told and walked out of the cell; the guard locked the gate behind me and proceeded to follow me. They were probably right not to trust her; she was in one of those moods where she probably would have tried to take on the entire army. Despite this I decided that the best course of action would be to confront the king and force him to release her. So I did just that.
I walked with purpose towards the king to make myself seem imposing. When the guards stretched their arms in front of me I made a bold move and simply pushed them aside to show the king that I meant business. Oddly nothing came of that move; the guards simply went back to their posts, humiliated by the foreigner who knew nothing about this world.
“And what do you want?” Spoke the king in a very calm but condescending way
“I want Kate out of that cell right now!” I tried to sound as angry and as threatening as possible. I’m not sure that it came across though.
“No. But I will give you the chance to get her out.”
“I... don’t follow.”
“It’s quite simple, if you can master your powers, then you will find a way to break her out. Of course if you don’t master your powers and you try too early, things could go very, very wrong.”
“Alright, you’re on. Can I have the diamonds? I’m pretty sure that this will only work with the diamonds.”
“You may have one. But don’t open the box around people until you’re sure you can control your powers. There’s a room at the end of the prison corridor that is large and empty where you can practice.” He clapped twice (in that really clichéd way) and a guard brought over a box and handed it to me. “Now get out of here before you hurt someone.”

2300 Hours, June 28^th 2014

I had spent the last couple of days trying to hone my skills as whatever you’d call me. Lightning Caster? Mage? God knows frankly. I definitely wasn’t anything like Gandalf. It doesn’t matter, I was improving nonetheless. I had worked out how to look at the diamond without it throwing me into a nearby wall (after much back pain) and the visions were becoming less violent.
The problem was that I hadn’t worked out how to use the sword or harness the power in any way. Basically what I’d achieved was not nearly killing myself every time I looked at the thing. That all changed on this night however. I’d worked on this solidly for two days, without sleep and with very little food that was brought in by one of the kings very timid servants.
This time, I was about to open the box which housed the diamond when I heard footsteps outside; since this was at night I assumed it was a creeper or something like that. A feeling of dread washed over me. I decided to continue with the test nevertheless. When I opened the box my vision did go blue as normal, but there was no dream/nightmare/crazy stuff and I wasn’t being thrown against a wall. I looked down to see the sword being engulfed in electricity/lightning. I pointed the sword at a metal bar I had been practicing on. After a few seconds the lighting began to become more energised and seemed to get more aggressive and with one quick movement a bolt of lightning shot out of the sword and disintegrated the bar instantly. That’s right, for my power to work I had to be terrified, what a hero. The only problem was, I didn’t know how to stop this, or when it would stop. Because of this I pretty much ran to Kate’s cell, where she was still chained up and lying on the floor, and pointed the sword at the gate. Again, a bolt of lightning shot out of the sword and disintegrated the entire gate. Not only that though, it also hit Kate – Which I was worried about, for obvious reasons, at the time – which healed all of her cuts and bruises and got rid of her chains. I was so chuffed.
“What the hell was that?!” She sounded angry but I was pretty sure she wasn’t, “Why are your eyes blue?”
I put the sword away, as I had no further use for it and felt that I might hurt someone if I kept it out, which knocked me back a few feet down the corridor and returned my vision to normal. I steadied myself and said rather loudly,
“Did you see that? I am a god in human form! Jesus, I’m absolutely incredible.” I could have been a bit more modest I suppose
“What did you do?!”
“Ok ok get this. I’m some sort of super human who can harness the power of those diamonds you found with this sword. Pretty sweet right?” I was really happy
“How long was I in there?”
“Not long surprisingly. Anyway, the king said that if I managed to break you out using my powers then you’d be free to go. So I’ve been up for two nights solid trying to figure it out.”
“How do you do it then?” She was never the most grateful person.
“I... uh... I get... Scared.”
“You what? You get scared? That’s ridiculous!” She burst out laughing “Well you’ll be electrified the entire time right?” She continued to laugh at her own joke for quite some time. It was probably about a minute before she eventually stopped laughing and wiped the (happy) tears from her eyes.
“You could at least be grateful!”
“I suppose I could, but this is just too damn funny.” To that we heard someone shouting in the distance, I recognised the voice. We ran towards the great hall to see what was happening and saw guards attempting to escort someone to the king.
“Get off me you fools!” The man pushed the guards aside and started to walk by himself. I got slightly closer to him and recognised him. I was hoping it would be Dave or at least Sam, but no, it was Jim. Just typical.

2330 Hours, June 28^th 2014

Four guards ran at Jim. Two of them restrained him whilst the other two threatened him and pointed their swords towards his neck. They tackled his huge body to the ground and pinned him to the floor. One of them ran to the king (who never seemed to leave his throne) and presented something to him. Both looked very confused, it was quite large, but something that they had never seen before or was something that made them confused as to how Jim got hold of it. It looked like Jim might have found another one of those diamonds, a large one maybe. God knows how, he’d only been there for as long as I had and probably had less knowledge of the island than me.
“What’s that?” I called out to the king
“Mark you lazy fool!” Jim shouted, in between being pressured onto the floor, “What’re you doing in this hell hole?”
“Never mind that. What did the guard just give the king?”
“Huh? Oh! They took my freaking C8!”
“Is that it?” I thought for a moment, “Does it still work?”
“Yeah, I shot one of them when they found me. Works damn well against these medieval types!”
Jim had never been one for talking, always resorted to violence before negotiation.
“Did you find anyone else?”
“I’ll speak to you later. Not the best place really is it? Idiot.” He was still the same old Jim.
Kate tapped me on the shoulder to quietly say,
“You know this Brute?”
“Sadly yes. He was supposed to be part of the mission that I was on when I arrived here.”
She thought about this for a bit, “He’s an idiot.” It didn’t take much introduction for her to realise this. I nodded and walked, with purpose, towards the king.
“Can I see what you have there?”
“We don’t know what it is, it’s far too dangerous to give to just anybody.” The king sounded worried for once
“I’m not just anybody though. I can actually use my powers now. I could use them on you if I wanted too...”
The king and the guard next to him looked at each other and laughed.
“What do you think would make us believe that? Last time we spoke you had only just broken your back by using your powers!”
I made that face that people make when they’re pretending to think about something, the clichéd thinking face, and the shouted for Kate to come. She obliged (surprisingly). The king looked at her, simply said, “Ok,” and handed me the gun. “Don’t use that... thing anywhere around here though, that flash killed one of my men!” I nodded, slung the gun over my shoulder using its strap and walked towards Kate who said,
“So now you have a gun AND the epic power bestowed upon you by inheritance or some unknown force or something?” She sounded quite agitated
“I guess so.”
“Can I have the gun?”
“Do you know how to use a gun?”
“Sure, it’s not rocket science. Pull the trigger and people in front of it die.”
I gave a small, condescending chuckle “Not quite.” I checked the clip, it was nearly full. About three rounds had been fired. “Come on, I’ll teach you.”
“It’s the middle of the night...”
“Maybe later.”
“Aw, might you get a bit scared and shoot lightning everywhere?” She was loving this.
At this point I realised that we’d been in this place for about 3 days but had not slept in a proper room, rather than a prison cell. After speaking to the king (and blackmailing him with my newfound power) I was able to secure us two rooms in the pub/inn that I had vowed to visit a couple of days ago. Result! I didn’t really care about Jim too much. As long as I was assured by the king that he wasn’t killed or tortured then I was fine. Once we got to our adjacent rooms and stowed important things (such as the diamond, the sword and the gun) away in safe places we went downstairs to the pub. I’m not sure why, but I expected them to serve lager, like a pub back home, but alas all they served was the sort of soupy ale of the middle ages.
Me and Kate found a table in the loud and busy pub. We still tried the ale, and it was rather nice. So we had another, and another. And we just kept drinking them. My memory of that night from then on is quite hazy so I can’t say how many pints of this ale we had, but it was one of the most fun nights we had had in a while. We forgot about the big picture completely and joined in the drinking with the locals, who I think we actually ended up leading astray.

The next morning – when I say morning I mean about half eleven – me and Kate headed to the woods so that I could teach her to use the gun effectively. I’d ‘obtained’ a canvas, a paint brush and some paint from the king’s personal artist so that we could make a target and put it somewhere to practice on, the target being a solid circle in the centre and a larger hollow circle near the edge of the canvas.
After about quarter of an hour of walking we found a fairly large clearing in the forest with a large rock on one of the edges of it. I put the target in front of the rock and went back a few feet. On the way I made sure to tell Kate about the safety catch and made it very, very clear that it should be used when we weren’t about to fire it. I didn’t want her shooting me because she forgot to put the safety on.
First I demonstrated how I fire guns. I got down on one knee, pushed the butt of the gun into my shoulder, made sure to move my hand to the middle of the under barrel grenade launcher (which, sadly, didn’t have a grenade in it) and aimed through the iron sights at the target. I took a deep breath and fired two rounds, both of which hit the centre. I really had to try my best not to make a complete **** of myself whilst demonstrating my own profession.
“Now you try, I want to see what understanding you have before I properly teach you anything.” I stood up and held the gun in front of her,
“Alright...” She sounded uneasy (there’s a first time for everything), she’d obviously never fired a gun before.
She started to do what I did, she knelt down, put her hand on the grenade launcher, although she did move her hand a bit too far forwards, and looked down the iron sights at the target. I noticed she didn’t have the butt of the gun touching her at all, because of this her aim was rather sloppy and when she fired the bullet hit the side of the canvas, off the target. She looked disappointed so I went to help her.
“Alright, that was good for a first try. Just move your left hand a bit further back,” I put my left hand on her left hand and moved it to the centre of the grenade launcher, “Like this, and push the gun into your shoulder,” I then stretched my right hand around her body and put it on her right hand, then pulled the gun back so the butt was pressed into her shoulder, “Like that. Now, take a deep breath, look down the sights, and try again.”
She did what I said and aimed for a good few seconds before firing two rounds at the target, both of which hit just off the centre.
“That was good, very good in fact.” I said, turning my head towards hers
“I can’t really take full credit when you’re holding onto the gun I’m firing.”
“I’m not doing a thing, just making sure you know where to put your hands.” I gave a small smile.
Kate turned to look at me; we started to stare into each other’s eyes. We became lost in the other’s gaze. I felt compelled to move my head closer to hers, as hers started to move closer to mine. There were a few millimetres between our heads.
“Drop the gun, put your hands by your sides and step away!”

1200 Hours, June 29^th 2014

We did as we were told and immediately let go of each other and the gun. I had no idea where this person was but I’d been in this situation before, too many times. We kept our hands to our sides and stepped back. The cold metal of the barrel of our captor’s gun pressed on the back of my head presented an opportunity for me. They had made the mistake of getting too close, nevertheless the normal fear of dread came over me (normal for most people anyway) with the gun pointed at me. I had an idea, even better that the techniques we learnt in training. I slowly found the small box with the diamond in it in my pocket. I managed to open it and look down at it without our captor noticing, they were probably looking at Kate or something. Because of the fear that I felt the normal thing happened, my vision faded to blue, and the sword, which I had put on the ground previously, became engulfed in electricity.
“Wha- What the hell is that?!” His voice trembled as he leant to look past me at the sword. This was the opportunity; I had to make my move now.
In one quick movement I ducked and kicked my leg into his leg. In a flash of pain he started to fall over and fired two rounds from his rifle; thank Christ I ducked because those screamed just past my head. I quickly turned around, grabbed his gun hand and kept him standing with my left hand and pulled my right hand back, ready to land a punch to his head. I swung with all of my might, shouting as I did, but stopped a split-second away from making contact. I stared in amazement at who it was.

“Sam! Bloody hell mate, I nearly punched your head off!”
Sam slowly looked up at me, “Jesus Christ! What is that?!”
I was thoroughly confused, “What’s what?”
“You’re eyes, they’re blue!” He broke free of my grip, dropped his gun and scrambled away, wincing every time he used his bad leg, “Get away from me you monster!”
“Oh yeah, hold on.” I made sure the diamond was away in my pocket, retrieved my electrified sword and put it into the ring that was attached to my trousers. “Better?”
“Uh... yeah. I guess.” He still sounded terrified. I stretched my arm out to help him up, he pushed it aside, continued to retreat and shouted “No, I don’t trust you. You’re not Mark, you’re a bloody monster.”
“I’m not a monster. It’s a bloody long story, I’ll tell you about it later. The short version is, I’m some kind of special being who can command the powers of magical diamonds. Make sense?”
“No! Bugger off!”
“I know your name Sam! I know that you’re a soldier in the SAS sent to Africa to keep watch over an airfield. What more do you want from me?”
“What’s my last name?”
“Oh come on that’s not fair, I never cared about that enough to learn it.”
“Yeah it’s you, Sir.” He smirked, “But what on earth was that?!”
“I’ll explain later, come on I’ll give you a hand.” I stretched my arm out again, this time he grabbed it and hauled himself up. I looked back at the target, “Hey look, you got pretty close to the centre.”
“Brilliant.” He said in a sarcastic tone. “Who’s this then?”
“Tha-”
“I’m Kate.” She interrupted, “You don’t need to speak for me you know.” She shook Sam’s hand
“Pleasure to meet you ma’am.”
“Oh so polite. I like him.” She looked very happy for a change and looked at me, “So not every SAS soldier is a brute like you and the other one then?”
“You found someone else?” Sam sounded excited
“Well kind of. He found the guards of the city not too far away; they took him to where we were, by force.” I said
“It was Jim wasn’t it Sir?”
“Course it was mate.” I hit his back a couple of times, “Come on, let’s get back.”
“I’ll grab the gun!” Kate eagerly shouted
Sam picked up his gun and used the strap to sling it over his shoulder as well and we set off towards the City three abreast, with Sam on the left, Kate in the middle and me on the right.
I realised that I didn’t know a whole lot about the city when Sam asked me questions about it, like what it was called, what the king was called, what our inn was called and so on
It took us about 20 minutes to get back, Sam did have a bruised leg, but he was a soldier so he could manage. It was good having Sam back, despite being a new addition to the team he was a good laugh and a good guy to have around. Kate seemed to like him an awful lot. I was explaining the story of what had happened to us during this walk.

“So, you’re like a superhero or something?”
“Well, I guess you could say that...”
“I wouldn’t,” Kate said, “You know how he gets the powers?”
“From the diamonds right?” Sam said
“That’s part of it. But he has to-”
“Think really hard!” I interrupted, trying to preserve my dignity and respect. This is something that is important when dealing with the new guys. Unfortunately Kate didn’t see it this way. She shot me a glare, the same one she had shot me the last time I interrupted her.
“Don’t you interrupt me!” She managed to catch me unaware whilst I was looking at her and pushed me aside into a passing tree. It hurt a hell of a lot. I tripped over a root and smashed my face into the base of the trunk. They carried on walking, and although I didn’t hear what they were saying, Kate was almost definitely saying that I had to be scared to get my powers. I confirmed this when I looked up and saw that Sam was laughing his head off. I clung onto the trunk and branches of the tree to pull myself up and ran to catch up with them.
“Sorry about that, I’m back.” I said panting a little bit. I looked over to see them both smiling at me, it was quite freaky really, “What?” They continued to stare and smile, “You told him didn’t you?”
“Maybe...” Kate said, trying to withhold a laugh. Sam couldn’t hold it any longer though, he burst out laughing and said,
“I’m sorry Sir, but it’s absolutely hilarious!” Kate followed with her laughter. They actually stopped to laugh, one of the reasons why it took five minutes longer to get back than before. I just stood by the side of them, looking quite awkward,
“Are we quite ready?” I said after a few minutes
“Ok, ok I guess we have to move at some point.” Kate barely managed to say anything through the laughter.

We continued walking until we could see the city. I’d never actually seen it from this angle before, or at least had never focused on it. It was incredible.
“Oh my god, that’s huge!” Sam stared in amazement “That castle... Jesus. And that wall looks bloody strong!”
We were about half a mile away from the city, standing on a grass verge and I was going over what to expect in the city. I looked up and saw a glimmer of light in the sky. Bearing in mind it was still day, this was odd to be able to see it. I pointed to it and said, “What on earth is that?”
The other two looked up and both shrugged their shoulders.
“Do you think it’s a plane, or a helicopter? Coming to rescue us?!” Sam sounded very excited.
“I don’t think so sadly. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have a light when it’s day, and it would be flashing at night. Sorry Sam.”
We stared at it for a while. It was moving at a fair pace and looked like it was going to pass over the city. After a while I noticed it getting bigger, and faster. I looked as if it was getting lower, and it was going straight for the city.
“Oh no. That’s not doing what I think it’s doing is it?” Before the others could answer it crashed down onto the left side of the wall, exploding in a hailstorm of shards of rock and fire. A huge shockwave was sent across the land in all directions. We all immediately stood up, but were knocked down by the force of the wave.
“Jesus Christ! What the hell just happened?!” I shouted, trying to make myself heard over the sound that the collapsing wall was making
“No idea Sir!” Sam shouted back
“How the hell should I know?!” Kate shouted
“Let’s get over there, see what’s happened!”
Both Kate and Sam agreed and we started running towards the city
“How many spare clips you got Sam?” I shouted
Sam patted his pockets, “Five!”
“Give a couple to Kate, she has none!”
“Yes Sir!” He passed two ammo clips to Kate and swung his gun round so that he was holding it (rather than the strap being over his shoulder).
I made sure that I had the sword and the diamond and we all continued to run to the burning city.

1230 Hours, June 30^th 2014

In no time we made it to the gates which, despite being as strong as they were, had developed a small hole for us to fit through. In the distance we heard the screams and shouts of men and women alike. There was a smoke billowing up from the scene of the disaster and fires were raging in the buildings that weren’t immediately demolished.

I went through the gate first, slowly crouching underneath the jagged iron bars that were bent outwards. I was very cautious, looking both ways several times as I went through. Not much seemed to have happened on this end of town. There was no massive devastation, but there were no people either.
Kate came through next, whilst Sam kept watch behind us to make sure nothing happened. Once Kate came through I beckoned for Sam to come through which he did quickly and silently, checking all directions.
“What’s the plan sir?” He whispered
“Let’s just move up towards the area and check out the situation.” Sam nodded and I turned to Kate who looked worried “Do you want to come with us, or hold back for a bit?”
“I’ve got a gun Mark, I’ll be fine.” I didn’t think that she’d be fine, but I didn’t want to argue with her.
We quickly but cautiously walked up the left side of the main street that I had once walked up to get to the castle when it was full of life, now it was desolate. I hoped that the Inn with the fantastic ale was ok above all things. As we neared the disaster site the smoke blocked out the sun, it felt like night at this end of the city. In the distance we saw citizens running away from their homes and livelihoods and guards reluctantly running in the opposite direction. We decided to take a few back alleys so that we wouldn’t get caught in all of the confusion and get stuck in a mass of people and fire.

I decided to lead us through these narrow and winding alleys. Keeping my eye on the path ahead we turned a corner and noticed a figure standing bolt upright a few feet away from us. They were looking the same way as we were so they hadn’t noticed us. I thought that they wouldn’t be a threat at all since we were in the city.
“Hey mate!” I shouted over the loud noises in the background. The figure slowly turned around
“Oh no!” Kate shouted. The figure was similar size to most of the other inhabitants of the city, but their face was motionless and had no expression whatsoever, it was hard to tell in the dark, but they also had a slight green colour to their skin and their arms remain stretched in front of them without moving. “Kill it! It’s a damn zombie!” Kate sounded panicked. The zombie started to move closer to us.
“Oh bugger.” I muttered as I drew my sword, “Conserve your ammo! I’ll deal with this.” I sounded far too confident, especially as I’d never used a sword before.
I didn’t have time to fumble about getting the diamond out, so I’d just have to use the sword as a sword for a change. I raised the sword above and behind my head and waited for the zombie to get close enough before swinging down with all of my might. It collided with the zombie, but it didn’t seem to do much, it pushed the zombie back a couple of feet, but it kept moving towards me. ‘Uh oh’ I thought as I lifted my sword up and hit him again from below. This time the zombie flew back the same distance but fell over as it did. I stood over the corpse of the zombie for about 10 seconds, panting, before Kate said
“You’re awful at using a sword! Do you want to swap weapons?”
“I can learn...”
“Seriously, I can use a sword, give it to me!”
“And give up my powers? Hell no! We’d best get going, if that’s what’s going on the guards are going to need help.”

We moved through the alleyways quicker than before but equally as cautious and since we knew that there were things to kill, Sam kept watch behind us as we moved while Kate was in the middle. We knew that we were close to the site when the buildings either side of us were replaced with the smouldering remains of small cottages which were once inhabited by happy, care-free people. I was distracted by this depressing thought and took my eyes off the path ahead. I kept walking forwards and didn’t notice that Kate and Sam had stopped behind me.
“Mark! Eyes up!” Kate shouted. I looked behind me to see what the fuss was about. “Not behind you idiot! Forwards! There’s a zombie!”
I turned back around to see what she was talking about, and sure enough, there was a zombie towering over me.
“Oh bugger!” I shouted as I tried to jump away from the zombie. The zombie started to move forwards as I was fumbling around trying to get my sword and diamond out. I completely lost my sense of spatial awareness so I had no idea what was going on around me, I just focused on me and the zombie. It kept slowly chasing me as I scrambled to get away. After about 5 seconds of this I noticed it stopped moving. I looked up to see what had happened and noticed a large hole had appeared in its head. I stared at the zombie as it fell over backwards onto the cold, hard cobblestone pathway. Looking behind me I noticed Sam leaning past Kate holding his gun pointed straight ahead.
“Damn good job Sam! Thanks a lot.” I said excitedly. He didn’t say a word and got moved back to where he was earlier. “So apparently bullets still work normally...”
“Apparently so,” Kate nervously said.

I picked myself up and indicated to move on. We walked to the end of the alleyway to see the devastation. The wall which had once stood so proud was completely demolished, leaving a crater full of stone and smouldering wood in its place. The sky was black with smoke and the cottages on all sides were either on fire or had burnt down. There was no reason for this as far as I could see, it looked like an asteroid or something had hit, but something felt wrong and evil about this event. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something wasn’t right, this didn’t feel like a freak accident.
Amidst all of the sounds I heard someone shouting for help. I quickly looked around, but couldn’t see anyone who wasn’t a guard nearby. I walked past a burning cottage in the direction of the crater, the pleas became louder.
“There’s someone in here!” I shouted at the other two, indicating towards the cottage I was next to.
Sam came out of the alley and said, “Jesus! It’s on fire Sir! What can we do?”
“Hang on!” I bravely said as I walked through the archway which once held a door, most of the floorboards hadn’t caught fire. “Damn it’s hot in here.” I muttered. I turned left into what had once been the kitchen. I heard the screams again but couldn’t tell where they were from. I stepped forwards a couple of paces.
I heard a loud creak from above, but couldn’t tell if it was people upstairs or something bad happening. I soon got my answer. The floorboards collapsed in front of me, nearly crushing me under the smouldering mess.
“There’s someone down there!” I heard someone shout, with a hint of both excitement and terror in their voice. I looked up through the hole in the ceiling to see an entire family there, a man, a woman and two small boys, begging me to come and save them. I couldn’t make out any of their features through the smoke but they looked fairly well off. They had the posture and the look of people who had never experienced anything other than writing, sitting, eating and sleeping.
“Stay there! I’ll help you!” I shouted up to them, hoping that they would hear me. I lifted my shirt above my nose to stop myself from choking of the smoke and walked with haste around to the stair case, which to my dismay, had collapsed, so I moved back to the kitchen and proceeded to try and kick away the collapsed floorboards in front of me, some of which were still on fire. A few of them crumbled and split and were generally very weak so I managed to get rid of them with ease. The ones on fire proved more of a hassle though. I noticed that the bottom of the planks weren’t on fire, only the tops, so slowly and carefully I held the bottom of the planks and carried them outside one by one, all six of them.
“Send the children down first!” I shouted as I stretched my arms in their direction in order to catch them. The father picked up the youngest boy, said something to him and handed him down to me. I placed the boy on the ground and returned to pick up the next one. Again the father picked the child up, said a few words and passed him down to me; I then placed the boy on the ground and said
“Come on! I’ll catch you!” I wasn’t talking to anyone in particular; I just thought that they need encouragement.
The mother nervously and cautiously grabbed onto the wood on the side of the hole to lower herself down. As she put her weight on it the wood snapped off, and had I not been there to catch her she would have fallen to the floor (which was quite a long way from the upper floor). I lowered her to the floor and let her be reunited with her children.
The father was next. He did a similarly nervous walk up to the hole, he was probably more nervous after seeing what had happened to his wife, but before he could even start to lower himself down, the sides of the floor snapped which caused the wood bend and the father was left hurtling down to the bottom floor. I ran and stood underneath him hoping to catch him, but misjudged it and he fell on top of me, he wasn’t exactly light either. The floorboards below me snapped as we hit the ground leaving my back exposed to the hard stone floor underneath the house. I shouted in pain as I tried to manoeuvre the man off me. His wife ran to us and helped him up.
I looked up through the gap where the second floor once was at the stone roof which was held up by burning wooden beams. ‘Oh bugger,’ I thought as I heard the familiar creaking of something collapsing. I quickly picked myself up, trying to ignore the huge amounts of pain I was in, then ran towards the family shouting “Run! Get the hell out of here!” They looked confused at my language but ran through the doorway regardless. The family made it before I did, leaving me to make it out. An already burnt beam fell down just after the family got out, I wasn’t in a mood to stop though, I ran straight through the beam, returning my shirt above my nose and using my shoulder to protect me. I hit the wood with force and collapsed on the floor outside in doing so. I lay on the floor for a bit, heavily panting. I heard the enormous crash of the roof collapsing in the cottage and looked over to see the place where I was not moments ago buried under a mass of stone.
Kate and Sam ran over and stood above me looking somewhat pleased with me.
In between large breaths I said, “I never... Want to do... Anything like that... Again.”

1330 Hours, June 30^th 2014

“Damn good job Sir! You saved the entire family!” Sam said excitedly. I wasn’t really listening; I was just lying on the ground, thinking about what had just happened and why all of this was happening. I didn’t think that it could be a coincidence that the ‘object’ hit the wall on the side which led to the most open area around the city. No, something seemed very odd about this.
My thoughts were interrupted by a sharp kick to my side,
“Come on you lazy idiot!” Kate shouted, “Get up; we’re not done here yet!” In response I stretched out an arm in Kate’s direction.
“You’ll have to give me a lift up then,” I said grinning
“God damn it. Fine...” She didn’t sound all too pleased as she forcefully grabbed my hand, planted her feet on the floor and tried to pull me up, but to no avail. She then grabbed my hand with her other hand and hauled me up. “I really hate you...”
Ignoring the remark, I looked around and questioned Sam, “Where’d the family go?”
“No idea Sir, they ran away as soon as they got out. Probably doing the smart thing and getting the hell out of here.” He said whilst looking around to make sure no one, or nothing, was coming towards us.
“Where are all of the guards then?”
“I think I saw them go up to the castle Sir.”
“So the king decided to get all of his guards to protect himself rather than investigate this and protect his city? How selfless...” I said sarcastically

After some deliberation we started to walk towards the crater to see exactly what the situation was. As I moved forward I could feel something, a presence I had not felt before. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that it was unnatural. As I moved closer to the crater I started to hear screams and shouts, just like the ones I had heard just before we got into the city. I looked around to see if anyone was around, all I got were strange looks from Kate and Sam. I noticed their lips moving, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The noises became louder as I approached the crater.

The instant I stepped on the edge of it I completely blacked out for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes I saw that damned blue filter again, but my vision was too blurry to see anything, all I could make out was the basic outline of the place I was in. It looked nothing like where I was a few seconds ago, the landscape was mountainous and had a roof over it. When I saw the lava oozing from the roof I recognised this as the place from my earlier visions.
I blinked a few times to clear my vision, it did nothing to get rid of the blue filter, but it did make my vision slightly more clear. After examining what I was stood on I realised that the floor, the walls, the roof, everything was made up of flesh of some sort, possibly human flesh, I couldn’t be sure.
This was the only vision that I could move around freely in. I noticed a cave one the other side of the relatively flat land I was on and decided to head towards it, I’m not sure why, it just felt like the right thing to do. After about a minute I reached the cave and looked behind me to see if anything was happening.
“Oh bugger!” I shouted rather too loudly. The army I had seen in my previous visions was back and had gathered around me. This time they were close enough for me to be able to see them properly. There were probably about two hundred of them there alone and it was made up of a mixture of zombies, skeletons (with bows and arrows) and a kind of hybrid of zombies and pigs (which seemed to be the higher ranking ones, if ranks existed) which had Creepers chained up like attack dogs, ready to unleash them, and trust me, the Creepers looked ready to charge.
After staring at me for some time they all parted, revealing a figure in the distance standing with their arms stretched upwards and outwards slightly like they were Moses parting the Red Sea. The figure had long hair and was rather thin, other than that they were a silhouette. I recognised the silhouette though, but I couldn’t tell where from.
The figure started to walk dramatically forwards, again I recognised the walk and everything about this person, I just couldn’t quite get who they were. As they reached the middle of the group I finally recognised them.
“Kate! Please don’t do what I think you’re going to do!” I shouted at her, trying to find my sword and diamond, but they were curiously absent. She started chanting things in a very slow and echoed voice as she walked, things like, ‘There’s no escape,’ ‘You are weak,’ and ‘You are nothing.’ I couldn’t do anything to stop her, I just had to stand there and await whatever horrors she had in store for me.
Once she had reached me, she put her blood-soaked face right in front of mine and grabbed my throat, lifting me up as she did.
“We will conquer. We will enslave. We. Will. Destroy.”
She dropped me, but I didn’t hit the ground, I just kept falling into darkness. I can’t say when I stopped falling, the vision ended before I felt the ground beneath my feet again.

Coming soon!